Jachut

It can be very hard to remain positive but its the most important piece of the puzzle. Your attitude will determine your results. Its so true that as a general rule, the people who post are the ones experiencing difficulties. what's more natural than to reach out and ask if anyone else is having the same trouble? When things are going well you just tend to get on with it all and dont ask questions. there ARE lots and lots of successful bandsters out there, they just dont tend to be online giving the positive side of it.

Protein shakes actually can be really harsh on the stomach, not to mention if you're making them with milk, its often a lot more milk in a day than the average adult is used to. Also, liquids in tends to equal liquids out. its a fairly normal post op experience, but you do have to be mindful of dehydration. Things like benefibre and metamucil help as they provide some bulk to the stool and slow down its passage through your body. Also, you could ask your doc if you can have something like Imodium. But also - I was never put on a shake regime. I got through liquids on things like fruit smoothies, thin yogurt, pureed fruit and home made vegetable Soups - with meat blended into them for protein. Protein Shakes just arent such a big thing here, they can be part of a post op regime but are not often prescribed as the be all and end all weight loss. so perhaps try taking in some other foods too - in liquid form of course.

I'd liken it more to eating like a lady. No more gulping like a pig. I find it quite easy becuase in Australia, we eat with our fork in our left hand ALL the time. Its customary to cut off a piece of food, eat from the fork in your left hand, then cut another piece when you're ready. We dont cut up lots of bits of food, then switch the fork to the right hand and fork it up. So we have that natural wait time, whilst we cut another piece. That's all I've ever really needed to do, apart from chew better than I used to. Several times during a meal I will put down both knife and fork for a bit of a breather. But really, its just eating with nice table manners and not like a piggie at the trough. Nothing as complicated as timing bites. And it becomes second nature anyway after a while.

Hope all is OK for you? I definitely notice being stressed. I'm starting chemo tomorrow, quite nervous about it, not looking forward to looking "sick'", not to mention feeling it. Nothing has gone down well this weekend, even coffee has some hang time. I"m tight as tight. Feels better today though.

Every day. I run or do boot camp about five days a week, but on those other days I'd at least go for a walk with my DH.

I had an all out fight with the lady at Weight Watchers once, she measured me at 176cm. I have been 179 cm tall all my adult life, and even before, since I was about 15. I didnt like being 176 because it meant I needed to lose even MORE weight than I thought. Years later and I'm being measured and weighed a year down the track from getting banded at my yearly check up. Lo and behold, 179cm! I remarked on it and the nurse told me that you lose height when you get fat because your butt gets so big that you cant get as flat against the wall to be measured! It'd be the same with your pants. Especially as a man, you either have to be harry high pants and wear them high enough to go over your belly or wear them under the bulk of it, in which case, you'd need shorter pants.

It depends how much you drink - I only drink milk in tea and coffee and on cereal. I grew up on skim milk so that's all I use, but if I were drinking milk based drinks like Protein shakes made with milk, then I'd be sure to use skim. The fat in dairy is saturated animal fat, not one of the good fats! You're better off eating other types of fats and getting used to skim milk if you ingest it by the glassfull. But if you drink say a cup or less a day in tea and coffee and the odd bowl of cereal, then I would stay with what you like.

I can eat way more than that. That's starvation, its ridiculous, if that's all someone can eat, they're WAY too tight. I can eat what would be an normal meal for a small woman with a moderate appetite. What I would eat for dinner for example, would fill a bread and butter plate - I serve it on a salad plate, but it would fill the bread and butter plate.

When I feel like that (and lets face it, most women do, our lives are so busy), getting out int he fresh air for a run blows those cobwebs away. its the hardest thing in the world to do, walk out the front door but it really does energise you.

No, that's not really accurate. I mean, I eat fairly "normal" portions of food for a very small woman, a ladylike eater, or someone who just was watching their weight. Yet I'm 5ft 10 and 150lb, I should be able to eat a fair amount of food and maintain my weight. I cant, its as simple as that. I cannot eat what I "should" be able to eat - particularly given that I run daily and do bootcamp. Probably because we starve our bodies to get this weight off. We subsist on pretty low calorie diets of below 1500 a day and for most people more like 1000 to 1200. Once you have done this to your body, there really is no coming back from it, normal eating is out of the question. Metabolism slows, our bodies learn to deal with the low calories and if you put a more normal 2000 or more into your body, you will probably gain weight. I can maintain on 1800 to 2000 a day which is a very normal amount but as I mentioned, I'm rather tall and I'm extremely active - I'd burn about 500 to 700 calories a day in exercise. This means I"m eating about 600 to 800 loess than the charts say I should be able to. And lets not forget, what most of us thought of as normal was well and truly overeating, despite the fact that many other people eat that much and dont get fat. I never had an unfill when I reached goal, weight loss just petered out, and eventually stopped. I kept up the exercise and over time my band has loosened up a bit and I can eat more than I did but I've found my maintenance level without actually unfilling.

For a few months later this year and early next, I'm going to have to dress for a tummy as I need to have a temporary ileostomy. I've bought myself some HOT maternity jeans, lol. they fit me nicely everywhere else and allow softness over the tummy so as not to squeeze the hardware I'm going to have attached to me. Surprisingly, I find that even with a super flat stomach, maternity pants are very comfy and stay up! And no muffin top. I might be onto something here. Personally, I think that with a pannus, this would be a good idea - certainly way better than buying to fit your tummy and having your legs swathed in yards of extra fabric?

Probably not. that's not to say it wouldnt be a sensible idea for some people. I mean, I told someone I had a lapband the other day and she said "why on earth would YOU need one?". I may be 150lb and 5ft 10, and look pretty fit and toned, but I am an obese person and I always will be. I need my band to stay this way. I could have maybe lost that 100lb without a band, for sure, (not likely, lol) but I would always be fighting my body's tendency to want to be heavy and always waging a battle over appetite and food. I can see that someone who may not actually be overweight but has to work mightily to not be could benefit from something like a lapband as a preventative measure. But unfortunately, I doubt you'd get any doctor to do it, or any insurance company to pay for it.

I have never low carbed, i eat bread, rice and Pasta (not white though, and not pretend wholemeal supermarket bread either). I wouldnt dream of touching a Cereal like cornflakes but will eat things like organic muesli. My diet is more carb based than Protein based, but of course I get enough protein too. My feeling is that low carb works well for weight loss but it is my whole body health I am interested in, ironically, it hasnt protected me as I have recently found out I have a tumour in my bowel. However, the way I eat and exercise is the recommendation for my lifelong diet when I am recovered and I can only surmise that my earlier years of not such a great diet (and not so bad either, these things are so random and we have a strong family history) and lack of exercise. Facing radiotherapy, chemotherapy and major surgery, I feel even MORE strongly now that people should not risk their health simply for weight loss. High protein low carb can be healthy but for most people it only means an alternative awful diet to processed carbs. It means high animal products and high saturated fat, low fibre diet that is missing the nutrietns of a major food group.. Its a fad, a trend and nothing more and it really worries me what people are eating thinking they are doing great things for themselves. If you can get down four or five cups of healthy, low or non cooked vegies per day with your protein, then for sure, skip the grain products and carbs. But who on earth can do that with a lapband? But simply from the "this is a lifestyle not a diet' point of view, I agree with you entirely, cut down, reduce portions, cut out the rubbish and you'll lose weight. I lost 100 lb, easily and have kept it off for a couple of years now.

No, why fill and restrice ALL foods when you dont have to? If you're not happy with the rate of loss then you can choose that option, if you're prepared to make the sacrifice. For me, the goal was to eat like a normal person, never to cut out a food group or avoid particular foods. I had no trouble losing weight and keeping it off doing this (I do have the odd sweet treat and I like a glass of wine), the only trade off I guess was that I didnt lose weight spectacularly fast, but I can promise you, from the other side of the fence, I really couldnt care!

For me its rather violent, just like vomiting is, its not burplike at all. Its also loud, with a huge cough and lots of spitting, its not discreet either. It takes AGES for the offender to come up and I really suffer, thankfully its a once in a blue moon event for me.

I've never felt nauseous or vomited after an anaesthetic, but they've only been short ones, 45 minutes or less. I've had quite a few in my lifetime, maybe six or seven.

A muffin top is the only real sign I was left with that I was once obese. My stomach flattened and I dont need a tummy tuck unless i really wanted to trade a scar for a small amount of loose skin. However, despite not hanging or being really bad, my skin IS a bit loose and its the muffin top that shows. You cant exercise that away, its just where the hang tends to settle. I have a couple of shapewear items that help with certain outfits that show it, otherwise, I dress to conceal it - and that doesnt mean wearing baggy clothes. I often use a pregnancy belly band - they're an Australian invention, but its just a little bit of elastic that has a button on one side, button hole on the other, comes in several lengths, I just use the one inche one, you button it onto your jeans and hey presto - it lets out the waistband just that bit so that it doesnt pinch and give you the muffin top. I have lots of jeans that fit me well all over, and arent tight, but pinch just enough at the waist to give me a bulge. Otherwise, if I'm wearing a very clingy top, I just wear a shapewear type camisole (cant BEAR the feeling of tight girdles and stuff round my waist but strangely its comfortable if its a top rather than a bottom, go figure). Truly, with huge slabs of fat that women go round showing over the tops of their low riding pants these days, a small roll round the middle is hardly a worry, I just dont worry about it, and avoid things that really emphasise it. But the real key to losing fat around your middle is cardio - hard and lots of it. It melts away body fat. No amount of crunches will make any difference.

I dont think that anyone can tell you that it simply wont be that bad afterwards, but truly it isnt :-) In fact, you can have a bit of a binge on what you love as long as what you love isnt say, a huge steak with a plate full of raw asparagus!! Not the case for most of us, ice cream and Cookies will go down fine and although its much much much easier to avoid too much of those foods and eat well when you dont have mindless appetite, you can still eat them and avoiding them will be more of a challenge than not being able to comfort eat. Dont let that alarm you, the band really does give you previously unimagined willpower. But for you obviously, certainly for me and indeed for most people, this will be the first time in our lives despite all the diets, that we've truly and honestly faced the fact that overeating does net some benefit to us and we're afraid to give it up. I backed out of seeing a surgeon TWICE before I got there. It was a really inportant experience for me - I'm not really an emotional eater, I have never got to the bottom of why I overeat but I realised that I was getting something out of it for the first time in my life. That really helped me for some unexplainable reason.

I dont do fake foods either, I prefer moderate amounts of the real thing. I really dont like artificial sweeteners, I have a morbid fear of getting a brain tumour from eating them, but I did buy some Stevia recently and that's very good, no aftertaste and its natural. Because sugar itself is fairly poisonous, much as I love it. But my theory is that if you need to make the food fake in order to be able to eat it every day, then you really shouldnt be eating it every day!

There's also one other very important point to remember, and one I have to tell myself as I have done this to myself before when I had a caesar. It is IMPERATIVE that you rest and let the huge incisions heal. Otherwise, what point is there having a tummy tuck if you end up with enormous incisional hernias becuase you didnt give it a chance to heal up. I've got two golf balls on either end of my caesar scar a) because the pain relief they gave me in hospital was just too bloody good and I didnt feel like I'd had anything done and I'm not a lie around type of person, and i had to be a hero when I got home, wouldnt accept to much help around the house and was out walking the neighbourhood, shopping etc very quickly. I felt fine, but now I have testicles, lol. They're not THAT bad but hernias can be dangerous too dont forget, especially if you have an incision the size of a tummy tuck one, through which important organs can bulge (and strangulate). It is absolutely unrealistic to be thinking of work three days later, sorry to be blunt, but that's just not sensible. You'd be putting your health at risk and you're going to be still in an anaesthetic fugue anyway. You dont have to disclose exactly what's done, surely. Say you have to have surgery but dont make it sound cosmetic or elective. Say you have a bowel obstruction for example. Medical certificates dont have to specify.

Truly, I dont know if you ever get over being fat in terms of how you see yourself. I dont mean you wont be ecstatically happy with your body and your results, but I dont know if you can ever REALLY see the new you without a shadow of the old you. I am so pleased with how it worked for me, so happy to live in the body I have now, yet I would still say that I need to lose weight, its stupid. I mean, my chest bones stick out, I can see that but I dont look at that bit, I see my fat bum! Yet the other day when a doctor was trying to read a CT scan of my abdomen, he complained that CT scans are no good on skinny people, he couldnt distinguish between my bowel and my uterus becuase there's absolutely no fat in there separating them, making them easy to see. Those changes will be going on in YOUR body too, right now, but its not necessarily going to show on the scale, fat doesnt weight very much overall and small amounts that can make big differences to your health will not necessarily hit you in the face when you jump on the scales. Just keep plugging away, it will work. but unfortunately you have to have patience too, you will see the weight loss eventually but it takes a long time, and for me, the last 20 or 30lb were what REALLY made the difference. Even though you may have lost 50lb, at any given point in time, you may still be significantly overweight at that point and you get frustrated because you still see a fat, out of shape body. But you have to lose that first 50 to get to the second kind of thing. Try to appreciate every little victory on the way, those non scale victories are sometimes even more elating and more inspiring than the scale ones.

Mine was very supportive, didnt even question me, simply wrote out a referral letter, even though I had no comorbidities. I think its a little different here, there's no wrangling with insurance companies for one thing, if the surgeon will do it, its covered, pure and simple. But also my observations from here make me think that although Australia suffers from similar obesity rates as Americ in terms of proportions of people who are obeste, a lot more people are on the lower end of the obesity scale. So we tend to think that a BMI of 28 is overweight and something needs to be done, whereas I really get the impression from years on here that when you're looking at a lot of people suffering from really really high BMI's on the street every day, that a BMI of say 34 doesnt alarm a doctor that much. My BMI is 22 now and I'm not usually the thinnest woman in any room. I'm not unusually thin or anything, I'm very normal, which is puzzling when we have such a huge obesity crisis.

There's so many people out there that have had or are having similar experiences, its just so common now. thanks to everyone for their good wishes and all my love to those who are also going through similar things. The mind is an amazingly resilient thing really, I found it went through stages, a few days of despair, crying, being really emotional about it all, unable to sleep etc, then a few days of feeling real panic, then a sort of calm descended. The body naturally wants to heal itself, and the mind is an important part of that. It just doesnt let you wallow in that shock for too long. But I find although people (my mother, lol) are telling me to slow down, clear the calandar and concentrate on getting well, having something like work and fitness to focus on is just so important for me. I need a focus. Overall I am really positive about this - and strangely, my sweet tooth is gone, lol. I dont want to eat ANYTHING that may do harm.

Well, we've had a really positive oncologist visit today! The main treatment is the radiotherapy to shrink the tumour prior to surgery. Chemo is an added insurance only and will be very mild, one drug only (5 FU) and by infusion drip, 1 drop per minute 24/7 for a few weeks. The oncologist said I would feel fatigue, for sure, maybe lack of appetite but very very unlikely to be nauseous let alone vomiting. Diarrhoea maybe a problem, and mouth ulcers, sore hands and feet but that anyone determined could maintain their fitness through this, if not peak performance! I am also most likely to be ready to return to work for a while post treatment before surgery (they give you a few weeks to cook, the tumour continues to shrink and makes it all safer) and that my prognosis is "excellent" meaning its 95% sure I will be here in 5 years time, if I dont get hit by a bus first. I think the dealing with the fear and anxiety of the past few weeks will be the worst part, to be honest, but I'm not looking forward to an ileostomy bag much, even if it will be only for a few months. Postive thoughts produce positive results though and focussing on fitness, and continuing with my teaching career are good things to focus on. I will also probably keep my hair he says, which is is not necessarily a good thing, I have crap hair and was kind of looking forward to having good hair days with a wig every single day, lol. But yeah, I have no reason to think this wont be anythng more than a horrible memory by this time next year, a mere blip on the radar. And thank god I have done so much positive for my health over the past five years, it will stand me in very good stead.

Well, how quickly things change and how soon we have to eat our words. I'm about to start chemo and radiation therapy for rectal cancer. I've thought about breaking this news here and didnt want to start a thread to just do it. My feelings about my band are complex. By a wonderful stroke of luck, I've found a colorectal surgeon who is experienced with lapbands. His support is wonderful. Every specialist has expressed utter disbelief that I've contracted this disease at the age of 43 (but there is familial history) but how wonderful it is that I'm so slender and so fit - it will render treatment easier on me and possibly more effective and greatly reduce my change of recurrence (lets not forget I spent 20 years overweight if not obese and eating a pretty sugary diet). I dont want to unfill. I feel like everything has spun out of control and I've lost my identity as it is. I cant work for a while, I cant control anything. My lapband surgeon is only suburbs away, i can unfill at the drop of a hat if I need to. As it is, my band is filled for maintenance, I can eat healthy and enough to keep weight on. I am a very non nauseous person, I've never vomited after an anaesthetic and if anyone is going to be able to control nausea and minimise any vomiting, it will be me, I have a cast Iron gut. I'm stubbournly clinging to the idea that even if I get too tired and sick to run I'll be able to do some walking. I just feel like I cannot give up that side of myself, I've worked too bloody long and hard for it. I've also stayed out of the high Protein threads. Eating complex carbs and lots of fruit and veg hasnt saved me but it IS the recommended diet for the health of your diegestive system. I simply cant read about what people our eating without wanting to scream. A diet high in saturated fat, animal products and processed foods is SO dangerous. Overall, I'm just majorly PISSED OFF which is fuelling me with the courage to fight this. But I am not going to unfill my band until I know I have to. I also have to deal with a temporary ileostomy later in the year and being overweight is a major hindrance there also. I believe the right choice for me now is to try to maintain what elements of my health I can control.