Jachut

Most days I run outside for about 45 minutes. Some days I do an interval style run on my treadmill instead. At various points I've done regular circuit training at home (I make it up, use a sandbag for weight), and other times, Imight feel like going to a spin class. I love exercising!

YOu have to experiment a bit with this, I normally eat about 3 hours before bedtime and only have a cup of coffee after dinner. DH likes to make hot milo - milo is the same sort of thing as activity but as Aussie as vegemite :-) I cannot have milo at night, although coffee is fine, the milo gives me the sense that its going to back up and I cant like down and relax, I'm afraid of vomiting. Weird, its the same volume, but it must be the thickness or something. I have the old 4cc band too, there's 2.8cc in mine, and my fills were as tiny as 0.1cc and I've had a 0.1cc unfill once too when I got inexplicably tight - it made all the difference. But with 2.8cc in a 4cc band I can eat bread, toast, I can eat about a cup at a time, I can eat nearly any food actually, so you're not necessarily going to be very restricted at this level. but reflux with any regularity always means too tight. I'd prefer my band looser (like 2.8cc is for me) and make up the difference with running every day than to suffer reflux, huge restrictions on what I can eat, etc.

I think the goal is to eat like a normal person and learn to handle all foods. Personally, I believe if you grit your teeth and hang in by sheer willpower and avoid certain foods or entire food groups and panic when you're served mashed potatoes in someones home, or paintakingly remove grains of rice from your curry, you've not recovered from obesity, you're just holding out and eventually will cave. You've swapped one set of unhealthy eating behaviours for another. The key is to learn to eat whatever you want, but for you to actually want healthy foods most of the time, which only tends to happen when you have a normal and sane relationship with food. If you truly give yourself permission to eat whatever you want whenever you want it, you get over wanting chocolate for Breakfast, and it kind of all becomes normal. Takes time, but I think its key. That's becuase I think that losing weight from our bodies is really secondary to fixing our heads.

I dont like cold. It can give me a really painful belly ache. I hate cold fruit! I always have to take fruit out of the fridge the night before and bring it up to room temperature and when I take salads to work for lunch, I take them out of the fridge an hour before to warm up a bit. But that's not the band so much as me, I was always like that. I dont have sensitive teeth but there's something about the sensation of cold food that I really dislike.

Elcee, early on I noticed no time of the month symptoms. Then as I gained more restriction, I had a couple of events, my first pb came about a year after being banded. Eventually the pattern became obvious, I'd always get stuck or pb once or twice in the week before my period. Now, at good restriction, getting slightly stuck happens pretty often, not many meals go by where i dont have to pause to let something go down. I can also eat quite easily in the morning. I've just gotten back from a run and ate a piece of vegemite toast and am actually thinking about another! Isnt it funny, to me now that seems like absolute gluttony, a second slice of toast. I wont do it, but I could.

Pretty sure I want from 110 kg to about 82 kgs the first year and then from 82 down to 69 over the following fifteen months or so. so.....not quite 30 in the first year. You sound like you're having a bit of a process to get to great restriction, I found it much easier with a 4ml band, it came from the get go, and each fill just topped it up a bit. That really helped. By the end of the first year too, I was running between 6 and 10kms most days of the week and that made a huge difference. Hang in there, its not a race and when you look back, you're really not going ot care how fast you lost it. If its stopped, its fill time, and you need to increase exercise probably too.

I was going to start in with a lecture on why you are eating that little, but you ARE only 3 weeks out. Give it time, and as you heal, your calorie intake will increase, eventually to a point where you dont lose any weight, lol, which is when it is time for a fill. Long term, it is no way necessary to survive on such a tiny calorie intake and your body will thank you for eating more so that you can move more. As it is now, you're not only barely eating, but you're still recovering.

You can do this! Especially with a large weight loss, there's only so far diet will take you, the rest has to come from exercise. Its just a necessary part of the equation and honestly, with time, when you see what it can do for you, you can learn to at least like it a bit.

Not with a band, but my third pregnancy at 35 was a complete surprise too (but what a blessing!). I was 104kg or somwhere around 220lb when I fell pregnant and I was worried about getting fatter. My doc said that as long as I ate really WELL, the the calories werent an issue, that it was fine to diet moderately and lose body fat, just not starve my body of nutrition. A healthy, normal pregnancy only requires about 200 calories a day extra and only in the third trimester anyway, and it does not require your body to lay down fat. Especially when you've already got plenty. You can expect to gain about 6kg at the minimum for baby, Fluid, extra blood etc, but if you're losing fat at the same time, you can negate that gain. I managed to not gain any for the pregnancy by following weight watchers and allowing about 30 points a day. I got home from hospital 25lb lighter than I'd been when I conceived and I had a gorgeous 8lb baby girl to boot. I ate really well for that 9 months and have often since wondered why i coudlnt just do it all the time, but as usual for me, it all went way wrong during breastfeeding and over the years my eating habits got worse until I ended up deciding to be banded. But that pregnancy was like being banded anyway. Eliza was very very high and very very breech the whole time I had the most revolting heartburn and reflux and couldnt eat more than a half a cup of food at a time before feeling stuffed - in fact I truly had better restriction than I do with a band. when I got banded, I secretly hoped and prayed it would be like being pregnant with Eliza and for me, it actually is - without the reflux of course. So I cant really claim to be made of sterner stuff than the next person or gloat about how easy it was not to gain weight during pregnancy becuase it was kind of a special case. during my first 2 pregnancies I only gained the recommended 8-12 kg (20-30lb) and that disappeared by the time I left hospital so I'm also not a pregnancy gainer, my body seems to handle it well. Dont even ASK me about breastfeeding though, that's when I piled most of my excess weight on.

lol at "wogging". My DH kindly called it joggling. Not that he managed to get off his ass and do any. Pretty easy to be an armchair critic, hey?

I was 38, 5ft 10 and 245lb when I got banded. i am now 150lb at 42. I lost weight quite slowly compared to some, none of this 100lb in 9 months stuff, it took me a good 2 years to lose it, but it was steady and I lost well over 100% of my "excess" taking me well below the top of the normal BMI range. I also ended up with very little loose skin. I've got enough that I feel a bit dejected about it from time to time but really, you cant tell i was ever as fat as I was.

You know, I "only" had a BMI of 35 when I had the surgery and I had to lose 30lb before anyone even noticed - and even then it was just a bit of "oh, have you lost a little weight". The really spectacular changes only really came in the last 50lb, not the first 50. I was still fat and I think to people, they dont necessarily notice that you're "less fat" until you really start to get some of the features of being thin - like a neck and collarbones! Dont be disheartened, you have to get through this stuff to get to the good bits, where your weight loss shows with every 10lb. And I think people do notice too but are often reluctant to say anything until its beyond doubt that you HAVE lost.

It doesnt matter that you're running slower than you can walk, if you notice, its still tougher than walking becuase you have to leave the ground. What you're doing is building the strength to run. I started out so slow I could have walked faster too. But it was important to me that I run and I could feel that it was harder on my body - therefore making me fitter. Over time it DID. Running slow is how you build a good aerobic base. It is absolutely pointless going out too fast as you develop your anaerobic system and dont develop your aerobic capacity -which is your true powerhouse. Many runners believe you have to keep your heart rate down around 65% of its max when running to develop your aerobic system to its fullest and that's actually REALLY hard to do.

I've had mine resized twice, but it needs it again. I was looking at it and thinking i'd like a new one, lol, I no longer wear any yellow gold apart from my wedding and engagement ring and it no longer sits well with my other jewellery which is all of way different style. My taste has changed a lot in the 20 years since I got married. I've decided that as a present to myself when I land my first graduate teaching job, I'm going to get them entirely reset (I already had that done once too) in white gold, something really modern. That way they're still my diamonds, not an entirely new ring.

I think your best bet is to retrain your taste buds and learn to eat sweet foods only in moderation. For day to day eating, you should be focussing on non sweet foods, not replacing all the foods you used to eat with artificially sweetened versions. In some camps it is believed that artificial sweetners have all the same effects on blood sugar and body chemistry that sugar does anyway, so apart from a relatively modest calorie saving there's really no advantage to imbibing what is arguably a product with no health benefits and even dangers. drink plain Water and plain coffee and tea on a daily basis and ENJOY the real thing when you want something sweet! Just have it only every now and then.

In many cases it DOES provide some restriction, just not a lot. But the point at which they place the band on your stomach is actually not that big. I dont think it would be medically sound practice to place a device like that round your stomach that cant be un-restricted! The band is purposely designed so that it can be unfilled when it needs to be and the size of it is part of that. Otherwise there'd be way more emergency surgeries to remove it than there are!

Sheesh, I thought a blood clot was always a medical emergency and that if it wasnt surgically removed post haste, you certainly wouldnt be allowed home to walk around with it! You'd be in bed, being medicated and monitored!

Just try it, you will probably be surprised. I can eat iceberg lettuce very easily, and especially if I slice it like you would cabbage for coleslaw, rather than just pull the leaves off. The darker green lettuces and salad mixes I have a bit more trouble with, they're tougher and dont chew up as well (less Water in them probably) but they're more nutritious of course, so I tend to mix them.

Oh, what an innocent question and what a debate it can cause, lol. Personally, I dont think everything must be sugar free. Firstly, i dont think artificial sweetener is the answer, what you need to do is retrain your taste buds to prefer less sweet things and when you do have something sweet, eat the real thing and keep it as a treat. Think about it, people eat artificial sweetener at EVERY single meal just about and that is not a healthy diet. What is healthy is fresh fruit (naturally sweet), vegies and non processed foods. What is healthy to drink is plain Water. The odd sweet drink is fine, just not everytime you drink something. Get used to natural or greek yogurt, not sweet fruit flavoured ones all the time, have ice cream once a month and eat the real thing, not artificially sweetened low fat ice cream every day etc. But there's loads of people who really do support and follow a low carb lifestyle and of course, sugar is avoided at all costs, as a bad white carb. Personally, I dont subscribe to it, I think there's as many problems with low carb as there are with low fat/high carb and that moderation in all things is probably the safest diet to follow. Which means sugar - occasionally - and non sweet foods most of the time. Dont forget potatoes, white bread, white rice are pretty much just sugar, only not sweet.

This is such a touchy issue - even people who are obese themselves bicker over this one. There's been so many debates on here about whether someone is fat enough for surgery, lol. Fat is fat is fat, I dont see the point in waiting till your ginormously massive, barely mobile and in serious poor health before doing something about a weight problem. but like cosmetic surgery, this is very much a personal decision and its not for anyone else to decide what is acceptable for you.

Good luck with your journey. I started mine from a reasonable place in that at BMI of 35 I was a relative lightweight but I had the musculoskeletal problems starting to set in with a bad ankle that stopped me being able to walk for exercise.I'd had it for 2 years and piled on weight in that time due to the lack of activity. You would know just how much easier it is to move your body around when the weight is gone, as you've lost it before. I run for an hour a day now and i would never have dreamed my body could cope with that, but not only do you have this weak part - in your case your knee - but all the muscles and connective tissue around it weaken and make exercise even more difficult and pain even more likely. Slowly and steadily I added to my walking/jogging regime and it took a long time but my body has gradually strengthened itself remarkably. so the band will take care of initial weight loss and you can work slowly and steadily towards getting back to a higher level of exercise going by what your knee can handle. And of course, it might not be high impact weight bearing - there's always elliptical, spinning, swimming or circuit stuff that doesnt give you the pounding that running (and even walking) does.

It is NOT easy to learn to eat slow!!! I think its more of a deep rooted instinct in us to bolt our food than we realise. It took me a good 12 months for it to really settle as a habit and what I love love love about being banded is that I eat like a lady. I was always embarrassed about how I inhaled my food but when I tried not to, it was such hard work and took such concentration that I didnt enjoy anything I ate! Now I eat nicely, slowly and am never the first to finish.

Gallbladder would come to mind for me and unfortunately, with the diets people eat and the shape they are in these days, 24 isnt too young.

True - lol. I do "aerobic housework" when I dont feel like running. Put on the ipod, get dressed for my run and do some housework at TOP SPEED - things that dont usually get done like cleaning windows, vacuuming the entire house at once or cleaning the floor on hands and knees. I scrub really hard and jump around. By itself its pretty good exercise, but just getting the blood pumping will usually get me more in the mood to then go out and run.

Healthy fats,some fruit, and plenty of vegies, and for Breakfast every morning I eat a couple of prunes - I like them canned in syrup, they're soft and I just drain the syrup away and rinse them before storing in a container. Drink plenty of Water and I go for a nice long run every day. All in all, that keeps me once a day in the morning regular. However, we dont get told to focus on Protein here, so it doesnt worry me in the slightest to eat vegetable protein sources - like chickpeas, or lentils and skip meat all together for various meals, i eat plenty of grain foods - breakfast is usually a couple of prunes, a few tablespoons of organic muesli and half a piece of wholegrain toast - so I still get a lot of fibre. Eating like that, and not focussing on protein, I still have hair, I lost all my weight without losing my muscles, I have good skin and nails, a very healthy metabolism (I eat about 1800 a day to maintain my weight) etc. So you really can afford to swap some of that protein for foods that are good for your bowels!