Jachut

Hmmm, sort of. I dont really like ice cream much for instance. I dont dislike it but it has never ever been a problem or temptation food for me. Since banding, I do eat it more than I ever did (which is still not often). Because its easy. I have always had a sweet tooth. I dont think its increased but sometimes I indulge it more simply, I think, for the experience of eating unrestricted - since sweet things like Cookies are so darn easy to eat. Sometimes I just plain want to eat without having to chew, without having to wait for it to clear etc. And I find I have to e very careful careful with post exercise nutrition, I must have some protein/carbs mixed (like skim millk and some nuts) within the hour as I might burn 1000 calories in a long run and if I dont restore the glycogen and energy, I will have WICKED carb cravings all day long and will jsut graze without stopping. That's what I'd suggest. Really stop and look at your diet. Are you perhaps hungry, lacking and that's giving you the cravings? Do you eat five small meals a day or three. Can you rejig the balance, cut some carbs, include some carbs, whatever in your meals, never let yourself get hungry etc etc to try to quell those cravings.

I think you DONT respond in your previous pre band dysfunctonal dieter fashion by throwing yourself into a fad diet. That will most likely send you into a spiral of panicky dieting, followed by binging. Deep breath. You've gained 12 lb. Why? What behaviours led to it? Decide, and then change them. Cut them out. Get back to your steady, sensible plan, pick up the exercise and carry on. 12lb will take a little while to come off but you know you can do it. And you KNOW that if you go on a strict liquid diet you will probably lose 12lb of muscle, Water and a little bit of fat. Not 12lb of fat. Get another fill if you think you're ready for one. You have the tools to fight this with, use them, dont let your mind take over and think you must punish yourself with silly diets or that it must come off within a week. You've already lost a lot of weight, you know you can do it. So just stay calm, and get back with what you know you should be doing. And good luck!

A very good article! Its truly a hard thing to do and being at goal does not make it any easier than it ever was to really accept yourself. Personally, i think the advice to wait 2 years after you hit goal for plastic surgery is very good advice. I know how I felt and i was fretting about not having the money for PS becuase I *still* wanted to change a million details about myself. I wanted face work, I wanted boobs, I wanted a thigh lift and i wanted a tummy tuck, most of which I dont even need. I just didnt know how to stop wanting to change. I dont think PS is wrong, not by a long shot (and I am still getting the boobs done), but I think you need to be sure about your reasons because eventually, you need to learn to just be happy with what you are and shift your focus away from changing yourself. Its a very difficult process, but it does come with time.

I'm usually up a pound or two at that time of the month. But although the steady weight loss is fantastic for a few months it cannot go on like that forever. Most people bounce around up and down a bit. You do not see a real trend over a few days. If you're lighter and the end of the month than you were at the beginning, then you're doing great. 2lb is nothign to worry about, I bet its gone in a few days.

Lol, that's funny. I've been told how come I dont look all wrinkled and sick before too. I think that's one of the best things about the band to be honest - the slower weight loss and absorption of what you're eating prevents that.

My doc didnt need me to do it because i had a BMI of 35 and i had by chance had a liver ultrasound (my GP sent me for every test imaginable when he wrote my referral) and there was test results showing that I didnt have an enlarged or fatty liver. DH had a BMI of 35 but knew he had a fatty liver (from previous testing) so he DID have to do it. I was just lucky. If I hadnt had the liver ultrasound and liver enzyme tests, I would have had to do it.

A "good" time is what you can do, dont be so hard on yourself. You dont *really* burn a lot more by running faster, and going slowly and being able to breath actually trains your body's aerobic systems so that you will slowly gain stamina. You want more mitochondria in your cells to process the oxygen to give you energy and working too hard (to go fast) in the anaerobic heart range doesnt lend itself to that. Slow steady exercise is necessary for good aerobic fitness. So if a 14 minute mile is challenging enough to have you breathing hard and sweating, it is doing your body good. And whilst it may be discouraging to only burn 170 calories for your efforts, over time you become fitter and one day you will be running 10ksm in an hour and buring 700 calories doing it. But you have to get from now to then and you're doing exactly what you need to to achieve that. Here's how I would approach it. To lose weight, we have to burn calories, so 170 is a bit frustrating. I would map out the 5kms. I would go out and just run as much of it as I could to get a base from which to start, you have 1.2 miles. I would say right, for the next 2 weeks, I run 1.2 miles, walk the rest. Then I would run 1.5 miles, walk the rest. Then maybe 2 miles if you can make that big a jump. And so on. If after I had cooled down with a bit of walking and i felt like running a bit more, I would, but that's a bonus. Over time, you will find you can run the 5K. Take it slowly but surely. At least this way, you're covering 5K, you're pushing yourself to run as much as you can and then the rest can be easy walking, and you will have the distance nailed in your head. this is how I'm approaching a half marathon. DH and I currently walk 15kms. I *can* run that far, but it is very very tiring. It really is helping me to visualise 15km, to be familiar with it, rather than it being the occasional thing I manage to do. We are going to run/walk our first half together becuase for some reason, I've always been a bit afraid to just go for the half, the distance scares me and whilst I love running, running for 3 hours on my lonesome is not that much fun and it feels absolutely awful to boot (think utter utter crying exhaustion). I need to do it this way to get there. I'm not even thinking about bridging kilometres 15 to 21.1 until I have 15 well and truly mastered. I hope it will work, I think it will. I remember my first 7.5k race and I thougth the end would never come, it was horrendous. Now 10K feels like nothing to me, nothing at all. Its easily visualised and anticipated. I woudl suggest not worrying about your pace. You will see all shapes, sizes and abilities in any race and you wont be as slow as you think. As a beginning runnner, you will have HUGE gains in speed and fitness that I could only dream about now. You will get faster without having to do anything. Does that make any sense? Keep up the good work!

You've done pretty well considering. Dig in your heels and really try to keep on top of the weight gain and hopefully this will be fixed for you in no time. I've got everythign crossed for you that its your port rather than the band so that it can be easily accessed and fixed.

Yes, it does come off slower if you have more to lose. That's *almost* 1 lb a week you know (17lb lost in 6 months), its not as little as it tends to sound. I guess you have to do everything you can to get your metabolism - eat little and often, do some strength training to build up some muscle, try interval style cardio (where you work really HARD for brief spells, like seeing stars hard) all of which will increase your metabolism markedly. Stay away from the soft foods, try eating little and often - five or six small meals a day, and on top of daily exercise, try to never sit down, be as active as you possibly can, stairs instead of the lift, park further away, all that stuff. It all adds up in the end. You sound a lot like my DH, he wasnt even that big an eater but got to a BMI of 35 because he simply has the metabolism of a slug. Add a desk job to that and you have a weight problem that is going to increase over time. He needs a lapband simply to avoid getting really fat, but to lose he has to WORK hard.

I didnt track but I can tell you it averaged one pound a week or less and that most usually, I wouldnt lose for like 3 weeks, then 2 or 3 pounds would disappear overnight. It took me two and a bit years to lose 100lb, I have very little loose skin, it was a lifestyle change rather than a diet and i never needed to drop below 1500 calories a day and I exercises hard and consistently. Once I hit goal, I changed nothing. My weight loss just petered out, I didnt declare goal and 'stop dieting'. I do exactly the same to maintain as I did to lose.

It is for me. These days, if I'm unrestricted enough to get in enough calories with 3 bigger meals, I've also got too much appetite. When I was a bit TOO tight, I couldnt have eaten five or six times a day. I simply wasnt ready to eat after 3 hours and it would be miserable, painful and unsuccessful obviously because my pouch was still too full. Now I can eat enough at a meal to get me through to the next meal but I *CAN* eat in between, which is what I try to do because it keeps me from eating rubbish if I'm always satisfied on good healthy food. I'm not necessarily hungry in between meals but I eat anyway. But if I could seriously *only* get in 500 or 600 in a day then I'd say I was too tight.

Sinkers. In fact I have ghost ones sometimes, they're gone before I can even flush. I usually cant even get the magazine open before its all over. I eat lots of fibre and good carbs. I never have any trouble producing poop. Daily. In quite impressive quantity.

I think you have to eat well, exercise lots, do some strength training and hope for the best. You WILL lose some lean body mass during a large weight loss, it is inevitable. But that doesnt mean your fat to muscle ratio will actually alter. You wont need as much muscle to support your weight and you will have less fat so it will remain at a healthy ratio if you do it right. Fast weight loss is generally not all fat loss. You just dont lose 4lb of fat per week, sorry to say. Very low calories tend to encourage lean tissue loss as well. Slow, steady and with plenty of exercise is the way to go.

I hate to state the obvious but if you cant eat enough calories in a day you dont have good restriction. You have too tight restriction. However, I think good restriction *can* mean that you need to eat five or six times a day, that's a good way for bandsters to go.

I never realised how pear shaped I really was. I'm a healthy weight now, but I still have plenty on my bottom half, I desire to lose about another 20lb really, and even THEN I would have thighs. however, the top half, sheesh. I never expected that you would be able to see all my ribs in my chest, or the joint at the tip of my shoulder. YOu could cut yourself on my collarbones, I can make my son just about vomit by tautening all the cords in my neck and my hands and feet show every single tendon as good as any anatomic diagram. yet, overall, I'm not that "skinny". I'm not skeletal. My hip bones dont stick out much, you cant see all the ribs in my back, etc. I find i have trouble sleeping on my side though. My knees are too bony to rest on top of one another comfortably.

I tend to get annoyed, but I know the problem is really me, lol. I just have no patience with people less strong than myself and I freely admit it. I have made mistakes, I fall off the wagon, but I consider my journey a whole series of steps, and perfection at every stage is not crucial. But I did follow post op instructions becuase it was important. People who cant get their act together, commit themselves to this journey and do it well tend to annoy me. I am a bit of a perfectionist in every other area of life as well - I achieve big things, yes, and I get admiration for it, but it also makes me an intolerant pain in the arse. So I try to avoid these threads now. I would make a useless counsellor or psychologist as I would just tell everyone to snap out of it. I'm damn glad my kids are pretty smart and do well at school because I wouldnt be very patient with a child who struggled. I'm a hard taskmaster. So I try to apply that to myself because I can be very harsh on people who arent quite so strong and I'm not the best one to give help with these threads. Im a good person to be banded actually. It suits me personality wise. Others should have considered other surgeries. I try not to apply my standards to them. But obviously at times I do. And it usually results in threads that are 52 pages long and end up being locked, lol.

Whilst I dont think that the odd Protein shake ever hurt anyone, nothing would induce me to be swallowing them daily. That's a lot of soy to be taking in and it DOES contain phyto-estrogens. Personally, I think they're a moderation food.

Oh, yeah, sorry, I misunderstood. I believe with some tummy tuck procedures you can get it covered, but its rather unusual. You have to go to a specialist reconstructive surgeon, and you have to be deemed medically in need. Most likely, it will cost you a bomb unfortunately. Cosmetic surgery is very difficult to get covered in Australia. Even with private insurance, that just covers the hosptial bed and will not usually pay out towards the surgery at all. Chickie has been on the board today, I know she got her tummy tuck covered but she's the only person I've ever heard of who has.

I dont know an awful lot about the sleeve and the band has worked fantastically well for me. BUT - if I were in the US and coping with the insane medical system you have, I would be very very strongly leaning towards a sleeve due to less intensive aftercare. Here, if you need a fill, you get it, it costs nothing, if you get a bit tight, you go back, you get a bit out, it still costs nothing, and if the following week you decide you really WERENT too tight, then you go back and it costs nothing. The surgeon is a few suburbs away, you dont have to fly interestate or out of the country, if you get banded by one surgeon and then move, you wont have another surgeon refusing to treat you because you werent originally his patient, etc etc etc. Sleeves are becoming more popular in Western Australia because its a simply ENORMOUS state and people are coming from very remote rural areas for banding. The less follow up required, the easier. When the band works well, it works very very well. YOu need to consider your strenghts and weaknesses. You need a fair bit of mettle to work a band and lose weight really successfully. You need to be preapred to eat right, to exercise, etc. Basically you have to do whatever you would have to lose weight before hand, it just makes it easier. Which I would hazard a guess to say that is true of ANY weight loss surgery. The band CAN be very difficult for some people and they struggle to find good restriction etc. That would be my thinking if I lived in your country. Other than that I cant comment. I am banded and it's suited me really really well, but obviously its super duper easy to manage a lapband and the required aftercare here. I dont think reversibility is such an issue really, not from my perspective three years down the track. I needed WLS to get the weight off and I need my band to keep it off. I would never in a million years remove it unless absolutely necessary and THEN I would convert to another surgery in a heartbeat. So yeah, that wouldnt be a huge issue to me.

I *can* eat at fast food places, but if I can come up with an alternative I will because things like McDonalds are amongst the hardest things for me to eat. I can eat the nuggets, but I dont really relish the thought of radioactive chicken giblets, lips and assholes pressed into a nugget shape, thanks all the same, lol. If forced, I would eat whatever I can that sounds doable, our McDonalds have McCafe's attached, and I will ALWAYS choose a coffee over the food and simply not eat. If the family wants takeaway or we were with friends the other night and they all wanted KFC (which I have not eaten anyway for 25 years it is that disgusting), I put together something out of the fridge. There was some chicken, frozen peas, some Pasta salad in there. I will always take that option when I can. I usually have a muesli bar or something similar in my bag for if I get caught and am really starving. Proper restaurants are not a problem to me, there is always something on the menu, I can eat most foods and it truly doesnt bother me to order food, eat 1/4 of it and send back the rest. Children's menus here are always nuggets and chips, burger and chips, spaghetti bolognaise, I dont go out to eat rubbish like that. So I order what I fancy off the adult menu and eat as much as I am able.

OK, I'm sorry for the harshness of my comments, but do stop and examine your own feelings. Your own thread is teeming with judgement of him. You call him vain and narcissistic and are petulant that he's taken what is an important surgery to you and somehow trivialised it. It actually struck me as a really nasty thread. Really, all that should concern you is YOUR journey. I'm a bit mystified as to why you'd waste the mental energy on resenting other people for theirs. Its not a competition between you and him, but it seems that on some level, you've seen it as such. So in the spirit of feedback rather than judgement you asked how to get past it, I would say, why would you need to? Its none of your business. You have your band, he cant threaten that, you have the potential to make the most of your weight loss and whatever he does is irrelevant. So relax and enjoy YOUR journey.

Without a doubt running. Committing myself to high quality exercise in valuable amounts - an hour five days a week plus some strength training is definitely the most potent factor in my success. And, forgive the smugness, lol, but I am not only thin, i look REALLY fit. I have shapely muscles, I look way way better than if I had have just starved myself skinny. I ate fairly good quantities of food the whole way through.

Heather, what was your weight gain like in previous pregnancies? I gained none in my third, like I said, but in my previous two before that, it was only 10 or 15lb both times. I'm just not someone who gains a lot of pregnancy weight. Dont even talk to me about what breastfeeding does to me though, I piled it on then!

You want me to be honest? Yep, I think you're wrong to resent him. You cant know all his issues, you cant know whether he really struggles to maintain that weight or not, you cant know how much even a little extra weight bothers him. Its really none of your business. This makes me quite mad. People are SO quick to scream discrimination at every turn, everything that goes wrong is because they're fat, people hate them because they're fat, people judge them because they're fat. But you're doing the exact same thing. In Australia, they band from a BMI of 30. Because that is obese, and obesity is serious. They dont believe you should have to become ill before you can be banded. Prevention is WAY better than cure. I got banded at a BMI of 35, before I was sick or had comorbidities. I wanted to prevent them, I wanted a healthy old age and above all else, I wanted to look much much better than I did. Really, where do you get off judging someone else for what you consider a "vanity move"? So what? Do you never do your hair, wear make up, or dress nice? Are you not going to enjoy the cosmetic benefits of your band? Sheesh. There is enough band surgery to go around everyone. What the heck would it matter to you who else had one? Or why?

I want to update this, lol. My boobs have shrunk even more (lost a kilo or two) and when I put my bikini on the other day - there was no wrinkly overhang visible. They're now probably a C cup and small enough to be entirely contained. So that's how to save 10 grand on boob surgery. Just diet till you dont have any :-(