SpecialK

Good morning everyone or should I say G'day to those down under! I appreciated all the encouragement for hitting my latest milestone. Wanted to be sure you all know I'm not the kind who wanted any recognition (not bragging) about making a donation. My real motivation in sharing my picture of holding onto 60 lbs of something was to give you an idea for how to keep measuring progress. I'm actually trying to think what I want my next milestone to be and I'm kind of stuck other than to say my next 10 lbs or my next set of new numbers. I still have my special goal of getting on a plane and not needing a seatbelt extender but I don't have any plans to fly anywhere over the holidays so I don't have to consider that one. What is your next milestone you are working toward?

Thanks for the inspiration to keep working it One Day at a Time and be Thankful. I bought 60 lbs of rice and tried to lift it and carry it and could barely hold it long enough to take a picture. I also did this with 40 lbs of sugar when I was at that point and in both cases, it amazed me that I had been carrying that around 24 hours a day especially up and down steps with painful arthritis in my knees. Keep hanging in there. 55 lbs is wonderful progress. Hang in there one day at a time, you will achieve your dreams.

I don't have any magic, I wish I did for you but these are my ideas. 1. Get with your bariatric support group if your doctor/hospital offers one. Get with their nutritionist and keep in regular face to face contact for accountability and support. They want you to SUCCEED! and I'm sure will support you. 2. If you saw a psychologist or did a psych eval with someone before getting approved to be banded, consider going back to that person who has a relationship established and get the counseling going to see if they can help you get to the bottom of what has you off track. Again, they can give you impartial advice and will be a great cheerleader to help you. 3. If you aren't doing daily food logging for self accountability, please do use this right away. Sometimes just seeing what we are eating in writing is powerful. I use www.myfooddiary.com, I hear alot of people like www.sparkpeople.com and others have mentioned www.dailyplate.com but whatever works for you, consider this right away. 4. See if you can get a mentor or lapband buddy connection. See the lapbandtalk mentor/buddy thread where people are offering to do this. If you can find someone locally, find someone you can call up on the phone.

Okay Shamrocks, I have finally found the courage to post a picture here that shows my -60 lbs and I kept up the theme I did when I donated 40 lbs of sugar to the local food bank when I was at -40 lbs and this time donated 60 lbs of rice to our church's Haiti hurricane relief because of the devastation and extreme hunger situation there right now. I have to tell you, I couldn't carry all 60 lbs at once except for the 60 seconds I held that long enough to take this picture so how in the world was I carrying that around 24 hours a day and up and down steps? I'm so thankful for this progress. Each bag I'm holding is a 10 lb bag of rice. NSV-->Something magical must have happened this week that I can't see in the mirror because I had 3 people come up to me and say, you are losing weight, as in melting, aren't you! I said YES! thank you for noticing I'm really watching what I'm eating and exercising and its working! All truth...I still haven't widely publicized about my WLS and that's my business to decide who to tell and not. So, I'm a smiling x6! :thumbup::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin: THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT -- LET'S KEEP ON LOSING!

Okay Fenton, repeat after me... One Step At A Time... Make it to September 30 on program. Think of those Halloween candies as poison - don't even consider putting that deadly stuff into your body! Then get through November, then December, then January, and before you know it, your February snow boarding trip will be here and if you stayed true to yourself and what you really want out of life, being healthy, you'll be able to enjoy that winter vacation at whatever weight you are at that point. My Water aerobics class starts back up this week on Tues/Thurs and I have to say I really missed it. Slacked off too much and didn't do enough to compensate for missing those two workouts. A friend got me this Mitch Gaylord DVD where you do exercises using this 2 lb ball you hold onto while you move your body to their counts and exercises. I watched the DVD to see how it would be and I think I can start with the 10 minute version and see how it goes. On the 60 minute workout, even those two little buff body folks in the DVD were dieing and sweating like crazy so I know I won't make it through the hour version for quite some time. Okay, I promise to do the 10 minute version Weds before work and Friday before work. Hold me to my word Shamrocks! Plus the water aerobics is 60 min Tues/Thurs so hopefully this will get my metabolism working a little.

Lyn, sounds like you are a little discouraged with the scale thing and I totally understand. I wouldn't push too hard to get fills on a fast schedule. Instead here is an idea to measure your success until your next fill -- get out a tape measure and take those measurements today... then take it before you go for your fill or weekly and see if you're changing size but not pounds. I am going to take my own advice if I can get the courage up to do it on the tape measure thing. I opened up a new workout DVD someone got me for my birthday in January and it had a tape measure and a book to log your progress included! One thing I started tonight is using my digital scale on my counter -- to weigh out what 2 oz or whatever really does look like. Maybe I'm eating more calories than I think I am :redface: so I'm going to try this as just one more discipline thing.

I signed up for the Mt. Carmel team for the Walk from Obesity at the Groveport Rec Center on October 5. I hope I'll see some of you there.

This is something I have been considering since I live alone and would need help getting up and down post surgery for tummy tuck/body lift after I complete my weight loss. I've heard several others with 100+ pounds to lose saying they are considering the same so I thought I would share that I noticed in this past Sunday's paper that a local drug store chain called Drug Mart had advertised Lift Chairs as significantly savings off the Manufacturer's list price so I went out to the internet to read more about them and it looks like a possible option. they have more deluxe chairs too. I pasted the info on the 2 chairs that are on sale right now, and maybe you could check in the future too, and see if this might be something you'd be interested in. Another option I've considered is ordering off the internet where there is Delivery included and paying a little more but not having to worry about how I'd get the chair home from the store. Here is one link but you could find others I'm sure: http://www.spinlife.com/content/featuredPages/3UnderLiftchairs.cfm Drug Mart store locations are: Columbus - 5599 N. Hamilton Rd., Grove City, Hilliard, Lewis Center, Pickerington, and Powell. Open 9am - 10 pm every day. Golden Technologies lift chairs.doc

My cafeteria at work is really on a big eating healthy thing and they've started displaying the calorie and nutrition counts of various things and its definitely shaping my selection of lunch items -- things I used to get and then now I see they are 800 calories for a serving versus yesterday was a skinless, boneless chicken breast with a balsalmic barbeque like sauce and 1/4 cup of steamed brocolli and that was like about 300 calories. So, keep reading those nutrition labels all you Shamrocks and make good choices. Its not magic, its about good choices and as Fenton said, exercise!

Well the scale is down another 2 lbs this a.m. so I guess the trick of Water retention or whatever my body is playing with me and my sanity, is starting to resolve itself. WOW!! Just for good measure I'm working my butt off at home today steam cleaning carpets and doing other physical things and I best be getting back on the exercise wagon that I fell off since Sunday's crazy storm conditions and power excuse for not working out or walking. Sorry to say I didn't make my 60 lbs in 6 months goal I had set for myself but this was a crazy week so I'm going to give myself a break and just be thankful I am where I am. I'm stockpiling up 60 lbs of rice (6 of the 10 lb bags) to donate to my church's food drive to send relief to Haiti -- they are desperate down there and my church has a mission we support. I went there many years ago on a mission work trip and it really taught me to be so thankful. Anyway, the latest round of hurricanes really hit Haiti hard so they are going to send a container of dry goods and non-perishables so this sounded like a great excuse to donate some food. I am proud that it has been about late June when I did the 40 lbs of sugar donation to Celebrate my -40 lbs milestone and that went to the local Westerville food bank so I do take care of those at home as well as have a heart for those abroad who are suffering.

I am learning that stress can do weird things to a body -- like showing I gained 5 lbs without warning and without eating beyond a 800-1200 calorie level for the past week. It has to be some crazy metabolism and retaining Fluid thing but it is hard to see the number on the scale up. I got power back on at 6pm Thursday and got a good night's rest and this morning the scale showed down 2 lbs from the +7 it was yesterday at 6pm but I'm hoping each day this weekend with more relaxing back into normal mode will drop that excess away. I still have good restriction and I'm still making good food choices so I am sharing my struggle to help others know you gotta hang in there. This too shall pass. I'm going grocery shopping tonight to replentish my refrigerator now with skim milk, eggs, yogurt and all the other things that I had to throw away. I imagine this thread is quiet for now because so many are trying to get back into normal mode. Wanted to throw out a reminder about the Walk from Obesity is at the Groveport Rec Center Sunday October 5 so that will be here before we know it. Hope to see some of you there.

I have electric power as of about 6pm when I got home from work! Yippee! I am going to cook something in the microwave to celebrate since I haven't been able to use it in 4 days.

I have missed my Ohio lapband buddies these past 4 days. I got home tonight and had my power on and what a blessing. :biggrin: For those outside of Ohio who don't know what happened, the backlash of Hurricane Ike brought catastrophic tree and wind damage and took out power lines everywhere, shut off power for more than 1.6 MILLION households, closed all the schools for days, and generally drove us crazy... maybe I should get a shirt that says I live in Ohio and I survived Hurricane Ike!

Here's a funny one about STILL operating without electric power except by generator for limited hours ... can't see the digital scale numbers well enough to weigh myself every day.... looking for the Glass Half Full mindset here.... I bought 1 chicken breast at KFC to make myself eat some 'hard' Protein instead of Soup at dinner or something easier and I ate 1/3 of that chicken breast and was totally full and stopped. I actually practiced watching my car clock and taking a small bite, waiting for another minute to tick off the digital clock, then a next bite, etc. Saved the rest for 2 hours later and finished about 1/3 or so more after nibbling tiny tiny bites and chewing. Truly a learning experience here after months of evidently not still eating slow enough. I'm with Scrappy and her Garfield graphic now, when I do get on that scale, I'm going to jump up and down if it hasn't moved downward after all I've been through this week. Please God, hear my prayers... I've been a good girl :-)

Anybody have a Bodybugg and use it and what do you think of it? How much are they? I noticed that they Biggest Loser Families show was using it last night. Did you see those incredible weight losses -- one guy lost something like 24 pounds in a week! Even a couple girls lost like 17 lbs in a week. I love the show because I see how motivated they get. I did notice they worked one lady so hard she was puking in a trash can..ugh! Okay, get into the gym and start burning more calories.

Camping at home is overrated.... day 4 without electric power in central Ohio but the electric company is working like mad to get power back on as fast as they can and to as big chunks of people and then the poor rural folks like me are lower priority. They say maybe by Sunday so that will be 7 days. I threw away all items in my refrigerator yesterday that had been opened. I mourned the food loss as only a person with eating challenges could. On the positive, my brother who lives nearby got my power generator going for me (it was in the garage collecting dust for 3 years from the time I bought it) and I got it connected up and started and lo and behold---partial power! I had been smart enough to pay for an electrician to wire up a power transfer switch box to my electric circuit panel so I plug the cord from the generator into the special wall socket and then go to the breaker box and flip a few switches and my refrigerator, AC, furnace blower (the electric part of a gas furnace), water sump pump to keep my basement dry, and my master bedroom lights are all working! Yea!!! It felt good to be able to snuggle in my bed with a good book and read with real lights - reading by candlelight or a flashlight once you get past the big 5-0 doesn't work as well. So, I'm actually less depressed than I was yesterday because I got a good night's sleep and feel hopeful I can do this for 3-4 more days. It will probably cost me a 5 gallon can of gas each day for the convenience of power in the evenings and overnight but it will be worth it. The gym at our work has allowed anyone to come and take a hot shower until their power is on too -- did I mention those with electric hot water heaters have no hot water... at least I have a gas water heater and a gas stove so I can heat water up for coffee but being without a microwave seems so weird! Okay, enough whining from the peanut gallery. I can't imagine how it must be to be in Texas, Lousianna, Florida and other states where they have hurricanes take out power for a week at a time on a regular or annual basis. God bless those hearty souls! At least for us here in Ohio, we are having perfect fall weather so we aren't sweltering in the heat and humidity like Texas is for now.

I can tell you where all of us Ohio bandsters have been hiding... we have no electric power since Sunday Sept 14 and many of us aren't projected to get it back on now until Sunday Sept 21... so I had to wait to get to work and have internet access at work. Or we could sneak out to a Starbucks or somewhere that has wireless internet if we had a laptop with wireless -- which I don't -- so we're just disconnected and it does feel weird. Who would have guessed Hurricane Ike's backlash would take the power out in Ohio for 350,000 people!! We're all cleaning out our refrigerators and freezers and have to toss a lot of our food which is sad for so many who cannot afford it. So far I'm hanging in but I threw out all veggies, fruit and dairy products so far this a.m. after more than 36 hours without power because the inside of my refrigerator didn't feel very cold at all. The freezer thankfully is still pretty solid frozen but I doubt I can hold out until Sunday. Will start cooking and giving away food if I have to. That's a real overeaters' challenge to throw away perfectly good food.

I'm having internet access withdrawal symptoms...just kidding :thumbdown:No power like so many of you since this past Sunday at 4pm and its not projected to be back on now until maybe Sunday so the only internet access I have is at work on the weekdays. Still very restricted from this last fill - I'm trying to hang in there but it is definitely true that when you are very restricted its easy to want to fall back to something that slides right down but I'm doing my best to resist. Having a nice bowl of Soup for lunch and had a Protein bar for Breakfast so doing better today. Yesterday I had a slip and tried a scoop of pumpkin ice cream when I was up at Amish country. Then I could barely finish a bowl of vegetable soup a couple hours later due to being very restricted. Still learning as I go.

Be sure you use the latest post so we don't drop anyone! Name_________Start Weight__CurrentWeight______Goal______Lbs lost *****:confused:***********:thumbup:*************:scared2:**********:smile:*********:confused:* 1day at a time.....263............258.5..........243..........4.5 2BHealthE!.........194............179............194............0 ahsem2bme..........244............244............225............0 aJoneen............223............221............213............2 Aphrodite1984......208............208............190............0 Ariel..............199............196.4..........180..........2.6 ArmyWife4life......209.5..........209.5..........190............0 Barb12590..........228............223............213............5 Bea1128............210.5..........207............188..........3.5 Brandymom1234......227............151.9..........135..........4.1 Caramia71..........208............203............195............5 Crzytchr...........281............277............265............4 DebinFl............181............181............168............0 georgiagirl........245............234............230...........11 HarleyGirl.........188............187............175............1 HeatherA...........210.5..........209............200..........1.5 HeatherO...........155............150............140............5 Ivyrose325.........212............212............199............0 Jazzyywan..........255............255............190............0 Jodi_620...........196............188............177............8 KikiVal315.........237.5..........235............220............0 Lana24.............208............195............185............0 laurigee...........180............180............160............0 Leslie2Lose........220............214............205............6 lindar172 .........274.2..........271............256..........3.2 LisaB..............205.5..........200............180..........5.5 livn4thm...........235............235............210............0 Long2bthin.........248............244............230............4 Luu2008............203............199.5..........183..........3.5 KikiVal315.........237.5..........235............220..........2.5 Mamanmidwife.......299............293............280............7 mamato3............186............186............170............0 MarinaBleu.........226.5..........226.5..........216............0 memom..............210............210............170............0 Minxz..............299............287............280...........12 mominlv13..........299.8..........295............275..........4.8 nip50..............175............173............160............2 NurseNiki..........258............255............239............3 odamay.............242............242............225............0 paige65............252............247............232............5 Peaches11..........205............205............194............0 pj_txlady..........220............220............200............0 Redtulips3.........180............180............170............0 Renee74............214............213............199............1 Renewedhope........171............170............150............1 reif78.............294............195............185............0 shaversd...........230.5..........227............210..........3.5 SpecialK...........294............290............280............4 Sunshine2..........177............172............167............5 Tess...............304............304............280............0 thatDEgirl.........211............210............195............1 Turler.............225............219............210............6 wendyw.............192............192............172............0 wowox7.............195............190............170............5 WyominGirl.........327............321............312............6

I went off my cholesterol medicine and didn't experience a gain but a blood pressure pill has alot more to do with body Fluid level so I can't really say. Hang in there you will get it off. And yes, I do the same, don't adjust my ticker up if I have a gain but it doesn't get to come down either until that is back off. I had a good loss Thurs/Friday as my fill kicked in and then Saturday went sugar crazy and so I was up .5 pound this a.m. I mowed the grass (riding mower but I have 2 acres+ to mow) replanted two trees, and washed the car so I did some big time sweatin today as pennance... watching more carefully on eating today and hoping to hit my -60 by my 6 month bandiversary but I won't get there if I get crazy on Starbucks Frappaccino for passing my PMP exam either. I also wanted to say I can eat a Protein bar and not PB when eating a sausage link or another solid item is very hard right now. Go figure? I can't just eat 1 egg or just 1 sausage link as I know that isn't enough protein and calories to go on. I divided my leftovers from my Chinese dinner into 3 containers of about 1/2 to 3/4 cup and I am seriously doubting I can even eat that much.

Hi Cyndi and welcome to the board. A couple things I'd suggest is checking in on the 2008 Bandsters thread under the October group and you'll find the other folks who are going through stage by stage the same things as you. Its a great way to interact. Also, check out your Wisconsin thread under USA Local Support groups section and you might find others in your area to share with. Good luck!

Welcome to the board from another Buckeye! Go Bucks - Beat Southern Cal! Be sure to check out the Ohio subforum under USA Local groups. You'll find those in your city of area of Ohio.

Heather and friends - there is a chance I won't make it to the mall today because my Mom called and wants me to take her to do a few things early today and its out in Pataskala and its a priority for me taking care of her given she lost her husband and that's important to me. I won't be able to have a balloon probably but if I can make it before you wrap up at 4pm I will.

Okay friends, this latest fill is really kicking in... I only ate about 400 calories yesterday and about 800 the day before and unfortunately yesterday I had my worst PB and sliming episode ever so I am definitely going back to full fluids and mushies today to get my calories back up and to give this fill more time to settle in and for me to learn what I can and can't eat. I am doing a happy dance this morning because the weight is dropping since Monday as well after being pretty stubborn.

I'm sorry but I think that is totally inappropriate for the dietician to be counseling you against lapband and raising doubts when your own doctor and your family has thoughtfully considered this as well as you yourself. I would disregard what she said as I am wondering what her motivation was.. was she trying to talk you into RNY or VSG or just talk you out of WLS all together?