Fanny Adams

In the post-op healing phase, that's probably a good idea, but when you get back to solid foods, you should really think about putting fibre back in your diet.

@Dawnstunes: Congrats on what you have achieved! You've lost more than I have in six months, so don't think that isn't an achievement - it's wonderful! Slow and steady wins this race and we'll all get there in the end.

LOL!! I'd try that line about "these friends of mine" but I don't think anyone would believe me - true though it is! :party:

Yes, my point of view is an opinion, nothing more. However, I am not speaking from ignorance or a lack of capacity. I too have felt that "conversion" moment, have believed that I had a "personal relationship with god". I come from an atheist family and went seeking in my early teens, attending bible classes and going to many different churches over the course of several years. I had myself baptised into the Church of Christ at 15 years old and at that time, was convinced that I really felt "his presence" in my life. However, the older I got, the more I questioned it. The more I learned about psychology and the power of our own minds, the more I realised that all that emotional reaction to "hearing the Word" was just that - emotion, happening inside my own head. Take an objective look at the language of prayer. Pretty much all of it comes down to "Daddy, help me. Daddy, love me. Daddy, please make the bad things go away". Now I love and adore my Daddy and will always be Daddy's Little Girl, but I'm a grown up now and I don't need him to shelter and guide me any more, and I certainly don't need an imaginary substitute in the sky.

Hi Christasha. My day today is going to be a great one *dances around* - see my other thread as to why. It's funny, yesterday I was miserable with the first cold I've had in years and years and went home from work early. Today, I get smaller pants and all of a sudden, the cold isn't bothering me anymore! LOL! I'm still stuffed up, nose running, sneezing, etc, but right now I just don't care!! *dances some more*

Whoohoo!! Twelve months ago, when I started my new job at a new mine, I had the horrible experience of having to go up yet another size in men's work pants and had to tell the guys in the store what size to order - which they didn't even have in stock! There was a whole embarrassing kerfuffle that went on for months as they had to order my size (127cm). When the pants finally arrived months later, they just fit and in the weeks before my surgery, they were really uncomfortably tight. Three months ago, they were falling off me and I went back to the 122cm pants I was wearing at my previous job. These have been getting looser and looser and this morning when I got up off the bus seat, I almost left them behind, so I thought "Right! Time to change!" It was a wonderful feeling to walk into the stores and announce in a loud voice "I NEED SMALLER PANTS PLEASE!!" What was even better was, after I tried them on, I didn't just go down one size to the 117cms, I fit into the 112cms and THEY'RE NOT EVEN TIGHT!! :biggrin::wink_smile: WOOOHOOOOO!!! PS: I would have put this in the NSV thread but I couldn't find that. I went back 4 pages on the index too - where did it go????

My comment was badly worded and even after I edited it, it didn't really convey the sense that I meant. With that said, there are several instances where I see a "believer" as being ostensibly weaker than a non-believer - although in the overall scheme they have the same strengths. One is the believer who has that "conversion" moment after a major life crisis or failure. You know, the ones the Salvation Army claim when they help an alcoholic out of the gutter. Most of the stories I have heard on those lines speak of crying out to the heavens for help and feeling the answer unmistakeably. Their belief ever after is unshakeable because they have FELT the power. The other is the day to day believer, who prays for guidance and help with their daily lives. These people will often say god speaks to them in their hearts, they pray and the answers come to them. They feel a personal connection with him. What all of these people, the hallelujah convert and the daily devout, don't seem to take into account is that ALL of this interaction, emotion and divine response takes place between the bone walls of their own skulls. It is all a state of mind. The human mind is an amazing and powerful thing and it is more than capable of deluding our conscious selves into anything it wants us to believe. We reach out into an uncaring universe and cry "God save me!!" and we hear an answer - that's our own selves answering, in a disguise we can accept. At a conscious level we have no faith in our own ability to make decisions, find strength to face life, etc, so we pray to a god for strength and guidance - what we find is our own inner strengths and our underlying feel for what we should be doing. To me the desire for religion is a remnant of the childhood desire for a loving nuturing parent. As human beings, we NEED that in childhood as a survival thing - without love between parents and children, we would not survive as a species. When it comes time to grow up and face the world alone, many of us are afraid to walk without that comforting parent as our shield. So we create our own "parent" and give "him" all the powers that we need to help shelter us.

Whoohoo! When you get to that goal, remember, Sydney is not the be all and end all of Australia. Come to the west side too! West is Best! :biggrin2:

Looking good, Nat! Look at that jawline come out! :tongue2: Congrats!

I don't eat breakfast until at least a couple of hours after I wake up and I've usually had 2-3 cups of coffee before I can face it. I take my brekkie into work with me and eat it around morning tea time. My doc says if you don't feel like breakfast, don't eat it! Save the calories for the evening when you are hungry.

:tongue2:

Many people report that both ToM and stress cause the band to feel tighter. If you are finding that you are losing well and not too tight when not on ToM but get uncomfortable during, you probably don't need another fill. If I were in that position, I'd just forget about eating in the mornings during my ToM and save those calories for the evenings when I wanted them. If it turned out that I didn't want more than my usual evening meal, well that's great - less food in for the day! It's not like we don't have reserves and are about to fade away to a shadow . Good luck with your journey!

I think it was directed at me, re my comments on those who do believe in a religion.

It's the latest fashion in porn, so I think a lot of people are doing it because they think it is sexy. Guys apparently get talked into shaving themselves because it makes them look bigger. I've only seen it once but I thought it made him look like a plucked turkey neck! EWW!!

I have two older brothers, so maybe that's where it comes from I was forever tagging after them as a kid, climbing trees and getting into fistfights with them. My entire wardrobe consists of either jeans or pants with tops of varying degrees of girliness. Standard wear is a simple t-shirt or tank top and my idea of "dressing up" is to put on a fancy top to go with my plain black pants.

So how girly is girly for everyone out there? I really don't see myself as a girly girl, although I will get dressed up on occasion. I can't stand dresses and skirts (that could be just coz they make look fatter than I am), don't get into manicures/pedicures, shoes or shopping. I do wear a little makeup most days (mascara and blush, nothing else). I was an outright tomboy as a child and was thrilled whenever someone would mistake me for a boy. That changed with a very early onset of puberty and I do like playing the sexy vamp on occasion, so I have some elements of "girly" in me - but frills and bows and fussing with clothes? Not me at all.

"Angry" is the wrong word. The correct word is "irritated" at your assumption that as an atheist, I couldn't have read the bible because if I had, I would have been smitten by its "obvious truth"; and at your assumption that the reason I don't believe in a god is because I am "angry" at him. My belief system is complex and I have spent a lot of my life thinking about it and how it was derived. There is too much to go into detail, but it can be summarised thus: * I believe that the physical world is a logical, rational and knowable thing, which can be explained by science and knowledge. While we may not know all the details as yet, the overall theories are sound, internally consistant and our knowledge of the facts is expanding every day. Each branch of science, from astrophysics to geology & plate techtonics to biology, reinforces the concepts in the other branches and makes a logical coherent whole. * That the "spiritual" world is entirely and completely a construct of Man's imagination and every part of it, from the deeply felt emotion of "being touched by god" to the sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, can be explained in this way. * That the concept of all religion, and most especially Christianity, is internally inconsistant, contradictory, inherently illogical and impossible. That the persona presented by Christianity as a god, if it were to exist, would be the most evil monster we have yet to conceive. * That people who believe in this delusion are either weak irrational people who need to seek outside themselves for a crutch to get them through life and/or are deliberately blind to rational thought. The irony is that in reality they are not weak at all - the strength they think comes to them from a god is in actuality their own inner strength, disguised into a form they can believe in, because they don't believe enough in their own power.

I have heard that the peel on an apple can be hard to eat if you are very tight, but I don't have a problem as long as I chew really well. When I'm living in the mine site camp (I work at a remote mine, 3,000km north of my home 8 days out of 14), I eat the same thing almost every day: Breakfast: Poached egg, 1/4 cup baked Beans in tomato sauce, 1/4 cup tinned mushrooms in sauce (about 170 cal, lots of fibre in the beans) Mid morning snack: 1 doz pitted prunes (150 cal) Lunch: 1 cold chicken leg, 25g Brie cheese, 25g mixed almonds/pecans/dates/raisins, 2 strips each of fresh celery, red pepper, green pepper, carrot, 2 snow peas, 4 slices cucumber (with skin), 2 slices canned beetroot, 2 rings canned pineapple (in pear juice, not syrup). (About 250 cal) Afternoon snack: small red apple (80 cal) Dinner: 1 baby boiled potato, 1 floweret broccoli, tablespoon of either sliced carrots, peas or corn (boiled/steamed), either 1/2 cup of whatever casserole looks good or 2-4oz of lean meat (roast lamb usually). (About 3-400 cal) Dessert: Tiny piece of cheesecake (2" x 1") or similar (about 200 cal) Total: roughly 1200 cal. Hehehe - there is NO shortage of fibre in my diet!!

I wonder how pretty the flowers are in Dafur? Do you think all it takes for those people is to look around them and see the hand of god?

LOL! What makes you think that atheists haven't read the bible? I've read it several times and in several versions and spent quite a bit of time in bible study classes, before they kicked me out for asking too many "hard" questions and "disturbing the faith of others". The bible is probably one of THE main reasons that I don't believe in a god. Well that and logic...

Where did you read to avoid food with fibre? I've never been given that advice. I eat fresh raw veges with lots of fibre every day and eat a dozen prunes as my mid morning snack. I HATE getting bound up inside and will go to substantial lengths to avoid it! I don't like the artificial fibre in Metamucil very much, so food with fibre it is!

My surgeon says that the average is that 50-60% of excess weight is lost after 2 years. You have to keep in mind that an average means that some people lost 100%, some lost 0%. You can lose it all if you want to put the effort in.

Hmmm... jelly (and yogurt) was on my list for the full liquids stage and potato bakes were on my mushie list - as given by the doctor. What do you see as "after the liquid and mushie stage"? My first "real" food, i.e. not Soups, not pureed, just "normal" food was grilled chicken, boiled potato (a tiny baby one) and steamed veges. I kind of phased my "mushies" slowly into "soft foods", without much of a distinction though. I ate quite a few slow-cooked casseroles that would have been "normal" food and counted them as mushies in the later stages of that phase.

Good luck with the support group and the new focus, Brandy! I hope that works out well for you.

I am not a very hairy person anyway, and have never had a problem with curlies outside the bikini line. I'm blonde and all my hair (legs, armpits, etc) is very light and wispy. If I'm seeing someone, I will make an effort to trim the hairs short, and will occasionally shave a shape into the top area for fun, but that always comes at a price of horrendous itchiness afterwards. I have used Nair (the one for delicate skin) a couple of times to really reduce the forest, but that tended to leave me looking motheaten as it is very hard to control the edges. I wouldn't mind using this option to get rid of it all, as I don't have a reaction to it, but I'm with Jachut in that I think the bald look is a little bit creepy and smacks of pedophilia. I haven't been seeing anyone on an intimate basis for 12 months anyway, so at the moment, I'm at full bush, hehehe.