Jachut

I only ever lost 1 kg a week or so, and I got to goal eventually. Not only that but my goal was quite ambitions - went WAY past the 70% they say you'll lose to lose more than 120% of my excess weight to get to a BMI of 22. 18kg in 20 weeks IS fantastic. The band truly isnt meant to give you massive fast weight loss as you sneak up on restriction - you dont have lots at first and by the time you do you've often exhausted the easy weight loss and are on to the long hard slog part of it. As for changing sizes, well at a BMI of 36 I had to lose 17kg before I went down a dress size and before people actually noticed. Now I lose 2kg and my pants are too loose! The lighter you are, the more every kg shows but its a big slap in the face to realise you've gotten so fat that 18kgs barely makes a noticeable difference. Dont worry, you're on the right track and you're doing great!

That's exactly what I found too - I never had a particularly tight fill so I didnt hit goal in a blaze of glory, I just kind of petered out and left the Fluid as was. I kept up the same diet and exercise routine, and over the past 18 months have had two very small top up fills to keep me on track as I began to get hungry and eat more to the point where I kept having to lose the pesky 2lb I'd keep putting on. I still run heaps and am very dedicated to my exercise and I still try my hardest to keep to a healthy diet - but realistically, I do eat more naughty things now as its just impossible to keep the kind of motivation going that you have when just starting out. I just never stop dragging myself back on track and remaining vigilant.

How's your blood pressure?

I agree, you dont say that you've had terrible trouble with the band just a probable pouch dilation. No reflux, slippage, undue difficulty with foods etc? If that's the case I dont see why you wouldnt simply continue on with a conservative re-flling program to get back to good restriction and then continue on with the work of losing weight? Why would you have another surgery when nothing's really wrong? It wont be easy and if you've let your eating habits slide (which we ALL do at times and which is really hard to recover from), the sleeve wont police you any more than the band, you can eat around any surgery. of course, if you really WANT a sleeve and no longer want a band and the added surgery doesnt phase you, then I guess there's no reason why not to either, its your choice.

I found a lot of people became, not exactly nasty, but judgemental about what sort of vain self obsessed shallow person I must be because I am thin and fit. People whom I already knew dont treat me differently, to them I am me whatever shape I come in. I mean people whom I dont know or whom I have met since I lost weight. At uni, suddenly, I am "cool". I'm no longer one of the boring studious mature age students - not that I ever was, I never sat in the front row at lectures or mixed only with other older students, how boring! But I get those "oh, you wouldnt have to worry about THAT, you're skinny" comments, and I find I'm not "one of the gang" at school and such. When I was fat I was that "normal fat" - bmi of 36, I blended right in, didnt stand out, I wasnt unusually fat and I wasnt threateningly thin. Now I'm the odd one out because in any group of late 30's/early 40's mums of a few kids, nearly everyone is in pretty terrible shape. Nobody exercises, nobody eats well, etc. Except me. And people tend to resent that and assume I have my priorities all wrong and that all I care about is myself and my appearance. I dont mean everyone of course, I have lots of friends, but I can honestly not name ONE occasion where I was treated badly for being overweight, but can think of a million uncomfortable moments when someone has resented my thinness.

I actually wore jeans to and from the hospital without a problem, and as for pulling things over my head, well I could get dressed just fine by myself. It honestly wasnt a big or painful surgery to me.

A good pace for you is if you have your heart rate above, say 130 bpm. Whatever pace that is. You sound fairly fit, my guess is you should be running more/walking less if you want to keep improving. You'd be getting to the point where its not POSSIBLE to walk faster but you're not taxing your cardiovascular system much. I cant walk much above 5mph (a 12 minute mile) before I simply must break into a jog. And I find it hard to maintain that walking pace without slowing down as my legs/back get tired, but it doesnt even make me breath heavily, I simply must increase the pace to about 6 mph or more (and thus jog) to get a cardiovascular workout. Although OF COURSE, if you can walk that sort of pace and dont particularly care about getting fitter than that (it'll definitely keep you out of the cardiac ward) and you're weight loss is going how you want it to, then keep up the good work. I just get a thrill out of saying I can run for a whole hour, which is my motivation to do it. And it will boost your loss noticeably, but eventually you adapt to that too.

Yes, I can relate to that. I can eat almost all foods, but many dont appeal to me much anymore, although for the sake of a balanced diet, I still eat them. I no longer enjoy the meat and 3 veg type meal - even a good roast dinner like on Christmas day. I make them still as its a family staple, and a good way to get in your Protein and vegies. But I'd be happy with Soup every single night. I went years and years without eating yogurt - although I liked it. Its a staple now. I dont eat a lot of bread. I can eat it - even most of a sandwich but I just plain dont fancy it much. Thankfully I never ever crave McDonalds or pizza or similar. I cant eat in food courts, I stand there staring round in despair for half an hour before giving up and buying coffee. I dont want ANY of it (although I could have a healthy sandwich made up). I can easily go into McDonalds with my kids and not even be remotely tempted to eat anything. Sadly Cookies are more appealing than ever. All the difficult "solid" foods that are a bit harder to eat basically no longer appeal like they did. But you know, I think its dangerous to give into that or you end up with soft foods that are easy and then up goes your calories. If I want to be sure I'll go from lunch to dinner without snacking, then I *MAKE* myself take the time and effort to eat a sandwich. Because yes, I can eat a yogurt in five minutes, but I'll be looking for Snacks an hour later.

I never viewed fills in terms of a "sweet spot" since honestly EVERY fill had me losing weight steadily again. But what I found was that the more fill I had, the longer the next fill would last. So at first I needed another at six weeks, by the end it lasted more like six months - weight loss slower, not as dependable week to week but still kept going (and you expect that close to goal).

Slow and steady wins the race guys. I was never a fast loser either, no more than 1-2lb per week (which I considered FANTASTIC) yet here I am 3 years later, all that extra weight gone and quite happy to wear a bikini in public. It adds up over time, incredibly.

In Coles the other day I bought a sports drink - I think it was Powerade (might have been Gatorade but dont think so) and it was called No Sugar. It was GREAT. All the benefits of an electrolyte replacing sports drink without the calories and sugar in Gatorade (6 cals from memory) - I powered through my spin class! There's also low calorie cordial We have De-Gas - again that is available in the supermarket or the Mintec tablets from the chemist work well too. Sugarless pospicles - well really, WTF would you bother? There's barely any calories in a plain old lemonade icypole anyway - about 40. I've never seen artificially sweetened ones anyway and to tell the truth, although I bought that powerade, on the whole I avoid artificially sweetened stuff - I'd rather have the sugar than artificial sweetener - there's all sorts of low calorie/low fat ice cream. You'll find our docs dont have this low carb obession that is all the rage on this board, small amounts of sugar are quite OK to consume. And seriously, post op you want to concentrate on real foods in liquid form - proper Soups, fruit smoothies, V8, yogurt - really nourishing liquids, not processed artificially sweetened crap. I got through the post op phase quite well without jelly, popsicles and gagorade apart from if you need to occasional sweet treat. We're also not generally encouraged to view Protein shakes as an entire food group either. But GNC has a good range. Good luck!

I doubt it. If you're in bandster hell, hungry is hungry is hungry and its going to take a lot of willpower no matter what you're eating. But I get your point - a program of some sort gives you boundaries. I'd be tempted to order in something home delivered - all calorie counted, portion measured etc. Most of us can keep that sort of thing up for a few weeks.

Its probably not even the chicken you know, its eating without really focussing. If there's one thing I cant do its eat without sitting down to do it properly. If I eat properly, I can eat anything most of the time. But mindlessly putting things in my mouth whilst doing something else, forget it. And if I've got five minutes to eat lunch because I'm running late - I dont eat. I cant hurry it either. And for some reason if I go that long without eating I will always have trouble - I think I eat too fast coz its been so long but also being hungry and going without food tends to make me really tight.

Well it was definitely taken seriously by my surgeon. So do you have any idea what it actually is? What specific injury have you done or is it just pain? The obvious answer with exercise is non weight bearing - swimming or would you be able to use a spin bike or even a recumbent bike? And like you say, upper body stuff. Dont get too stressed, at first, its likely you'll lose weight well without much in the way of exercise. You'll probably be able to get a significant load off which may help considerably.

This is the exact thing that spurred me to surgery, I was becoming more and more debilitated by my foot. I was only a 36 BMI too. They never really figured what it was - severe bursitis was the guess - as my achilles tendon was fine, and we tried all the stuff - physio, orthotics etc. I still use my orthotics because I do have flat arches. Anyway I certainly could not walk for exercise, no way. I couldnt do much of anything at all and in the end I had a cortisone shot which brought me six months of relief. In that six months, I started working out on the elliptical, had my surgery and began running. Eventually the pain came back but nowhere near as bad as it hd been and running was strenghtening all the mucles in my foot, ankle and leg and the lesser weight load helped. I had pain mainly on getting up in the morning, but not all day anymore. And a bit over three years later after some acupuncture (which was quite miraculous) I'm completely pain free. I would highly recommend the cortisone shot if its an appopriate measure for your problem- its a drastic measure but its what I needed to get me started.

OK, I definitely didnt jump ahead of my scheduled diet - I stayed on liquids/mushies etc as I was instructed to. My instructions for full liquids were "anything that goes up a straw". Start very liquidy, and progressively thicken so that by the time mushies starts 3 weeks later, I was having quite thick liquids. I needed carbs too. I made Soups that contained meat, vegies and Pasta and blended those well, to the liquid consistency I needed by adding broth as required. I blended down family meals with broth and ate those too. Real food. Tiny amounts, liquid conistency, low calories but real food. I stopped passing out once I started eating properly and stopped trying to live on Optifast and V8 juice. If you need some carbs, then have them but stay with the consistency you require, DONT eat them in solid form. Even something like leek and potato Soup is going to give you a good energy burst. But losing so much weight so fast - that's just Water weight. Its not the cause of you feeling low, that's anaesthesia and very low calories. Let your body lose what it loses, it will slow down and even out soon enough. But stay with liquids and mushies as you're instructed. You can do real damage but not know it till months down the track when you have a slip. There is NO need to starve on liquids, instead of trying to survive on Jello and popsicles just blend up some real food. You can get in a good 1000 calories a day or more this way. Fruit smoothies, yogurt, blended soups etc.

That's wht I said - you dont "catch shingles" but you do catch chicken pox and then that virus lies dormant in your body forever, so that shingles can flare up in times of stress or if you become rundown etc. But you have to catch chickenpox at some stage first for the virus to enter your body. I've been around chickenpox as an adult five or six times, including when both Doug and the kids had it and never caught it myself, so I must have had it at some stage and not realised it, weird huh? Usually you'd know if you had chicken pox!

I didnt have any problem with it.

I had LOTS of resistance from the get go, was very very lucky. However, its entirely normal not to feel it till several fills down the track, luck of the draw entirely. Dont panic, this will work for you! What's weird for me is that I'm not a sweller. My stomach is remarkably stable, I dont swell after a PB and remain irritted, I dont swell and get irritated after fills, I've not been prone to the overfilled/unfilled cycle, I can eat any food and dont get stuck/pb often. So one would actually expect that I wouldnt have had lots of swelling after surgery to cause restriction.

You catch the initial virus dont you? You catch chicken pox. But I thought you had to have had chicken pox so you have the virus in your body before shingles can develop.

You've got the idea. I'm so loose at the moment I even can eat pancakes at Breakfast time. But I know for me now, maintaining, the answer is not getting tighter and tighter. I've become quite adept at eating round the band if I want to. The answer is to plan, to prepare, to stick to my plan and to meet every challenge where I want to turn to food head on. Today, tomorrow and every day for the rest of my life. I am not perfect every day. Sometimes I fail utterly. So do "naturally thin" people. It doesnt matter as long as it doesnt happe too often. And by continuing to exercise, no matter what, whether I've eaten well, badly or inbetween, my weight has remained absolutely steadily through days of great eating and days of eating entire packets of Cookies. This is why we need our bands FOREVER.

Not at all. You're sensible. A BMI of 35 is well and truly obese! Its obese enough to land you in hot Water a few years down the track. I was about the same, I didnt have health problems YET but I didnt want them in the future. And I really am over worrying about whether I will offend heavier people who have more to contend with or who are thrilled to have slimmed down to 35 when I say I was damn fat, i felt disgusting, I looked horrible - bloated and unhappy with rolls of flabby flesh. No way was I waiting until I was even fatter. I did get one comment in the hospital from a nurse about being "small" - well she was probably heavier than I was at that stage and she asked me why i was doing it. And I've had lots of friends way bigger than I ever got express their feeling that they would never do anything so drastic. I dont care - I'm thin, I'm healthy and I feel hot. They're well, not. Its a very sensible thing to do for your future health and your own feelings and beliefs are all that matter.

Yes, you dont catch it, you have the herpes/chicken pox virus in your body dormant and it can flare up. Weight loss is very stressful on your body, any change can be. But its most stressful at first, your body gets used to it some desgree, so hopefully this wont keep recurring.

You're not just feeling the glandular material in the centre of your breast are you? Look up a diagram of the breast, the glands and milk ducts spread like a bunch of grapes and each breast has hard masses at its core if you squeeze to feel it. Those "lumps" are normal. What is not normal is lumps under the skin nearer the surface.

I can - but it takes me ages. It normally goes significantly flat because its open so long. Calorie wise I find light beer a good choice - I've always been a wine drinker, but that goes down faster and easier and the calories add up.