Jachut

That's how they do it here. Granted it was later than 2 weeks post op before I started solids but by and large in Australia: you dont count calories you dont low carb it you dont count Protein you dont eat special foods like shakes or bars You eat a normal, healthy diet based around the standard food pyramid, healthy choice is encouraged of course, and the aim is not to to eat junk like most of us did pre band. But the emphasis is on a NORMAL diet. It sounds scary if you're a person who likes structure, routine and diets. It puts the responisbility squarely on your choices rather than rules. I tend to agree that logging, counting and measuring is no more healthy food behaviour than overeating - but that's a personal thing. I also suck at making the beds and keeping up the washing, so that says something I think, with regard to my attitude to organisation around food. At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters for the normal person with no real metabolic problems is a calorie deficit.

Well, the portions are only a guideline - personally I've never ever needed to drop calories that low or eat that little. I lost all of my weight on 1500 calories a day or so - not that I count, that's more a rough estimate. And you know how it is when you estimate, I probably ate more. My doc's literature has the half cup advice too but he pointed out to me that if you're losing on more its totally irrelevant. I just dont worry about it, I ate what my appetite guided me to ate and when that was too much to lose, I had a fill and ate a little less.

Oh, I have as many head issues as the next person, lol! I think the greatest part of my success was exercise - I run regularly. I am discplined in that respect because I have to be - to allow for my eating, lol. I am no dieter. I dont go without much. But I've learned to keep it appropriate, and I've learned damage control for when I dont. I think its important not to think that those who have succeeded are some kind of super people who've overcome all issues. They arent. We will all have to work ont his for a lifetime. But it IS doable - focus on your strengths and learn to manage your weaknesses and you will get there.

I had nothing but support from all of my thinner friends. The only time I've had a barbed remark made it was a) from someone that I wouldnt call a close friend and :eek: that person had rather a large weight problem themself. Jealousy I'd suspect. Many thin people work hard at their weight too and know just why you'd want to win the battle. I have been surprised to learn this week that two of Eliza's friends mothers whom I assumed have always been thin have both had large weight losses - like 80lb or more themselves!

Every now and then I might, I've never really liked soda. I dont like the fizziness anyway. Now champagne, that's different. I've had that more often. But if I do have a diet coke (which even one sip has me worrying about losing my teeth and developing a brain tumour, lol) I can only have a few sips out of a fresh bottle. Its just too gassy. If its flatter, like after having sat in a glass for 10 minutes, I can drink the whole glass easily. It doesnt cause me any discomfort.

Dont look at it that way! For some people, yes, they have to hit a certain point before they lose. But I found it quite different. For me, every stage of restriction was a sweet spot. At first, your body requires only a small calorie restriction to start letting go of the weight. So you dont need a lot of restriction because as long as you choose healthy, eating a cup and a half of food each meal is easily enough to have you losing. Sooner or later that peters out, you get another fill. Now eating a cup at a meal will start the loss again. Then a few months later, you've stopped losing. So have another fill and drop to 3/4 of a cup. Then 1/2 if that's what it takes - personally I never needed to drop below about 3/4 of a cup. But sneaking up IS prudent even if you end up being one that doesnt lose until you get really good restriction.

I really just dont like bread like I used to although I can eat it and I still enjoy a piece of toast occasionally. I love crispbreads - do you guys have Ryvita over there? They are awesome, about the size of half large slice of bread, very grainy, a good low GI carb. I eat those a lot with things like avocado, tuna, and tomato and salt and pepper, YUM. I'm not a low carber, so I dont worry about eating things like that. But one thing I did try last week which I'd read often but never done, was rolling fillings in a lettuce leaf. It was really good! You've gotta love that two Ryvita's are 80 calories versus about 180 for two slices of bread and you've gotta love that a lettuce leaf is like 20. I got a large cos leaf, and rolled into it some avocado, lean roast beef, tomato, grated carrot, cucumber and beetroot - exactly like the salad roll I once would have eaten but about 150 calories. It was filling, it stuck with me and it gets me past that I dont want to eat salad in a bowl block that I have at times. You need a large, sturdy leaf - cos is great, and big iceberg leaves too. Luckily at most supermarkets you can buy the leaves rather than the lettuce as a whole because then you can select big ones and avoid using only the outside of the lettuce.

I do look older and I dont. I have really deep hollows under my eyes, that's weight loss for you, I always had deep set eyes and now my face is a bit skeletal. But I'm not thin enough on the bottom half, lol. I have the very beginnings of a turkey neck too. But on the other hand,I dont look like some frumpy grandma now either. I have a youthful shape and tone thanks to all my running, I can wear funky clothes - not mutton dressed as lamb, but shaped, stylish and appropriate for my 41 years, I dont have to hide behind long curtains of hair. I can wear a bikini! So a few lines and shadows round the eyes dont bother me. I dont think botox would help my face much. Its not wrinkles, its the deep eyes that age me, and I have quite deep nasolabial lines too. That's more a job fillers. Until they find something that I pay for ONCE that lasts forever, I wont be going down that track, its too expensive. I find a good spray tan which I maintain at all times is my best friend. It hides uneven skin tone, gives you a glow and makes you look healthy, I dont mind looking my age if I look nice! I hate the look of a face full of make up and I'm not fond of that nipped, tucked and botoxed look either. I reckon its WAY better to make the most of what you are, really, who cares if someone knows you're 43 if they think you're a great, fun, attractive person?

Hmmm, well I'm not an American. But to me, it comes down to the whole social welfare system. In Australia, its a sliding scale but over about $80,000 a year in income, you're paying 48 cents in the dollar after your first $42,000 or so. So we're taxed pretty highly. Where it falls really short is with all our family benefits and childcare rebates. If you're on $300,000 a year, you're set. And of course, most people on that much money pay heaps to their accountants to cheat the tax system entirely and hide all their income anyway. If, like doug and I, you fall in the $80,000 to about $180,000 bracket for income, you pay top tax rates AND you get jack shit in terms of family benefits, childcare rebates, so yeah, you pay like top dollar for childcare - average now $100 per day here for full time care. So people like me get forced to stay home from work because their husbands earn over $80,000 and they cant AFFORD to work. But $80,000 isnt a big salary these days so it can get really tight raising a family unless you earn not very much or a real lot. Two incomes adding up to $80,000 is also a LOT better than one income, we really need income sharing in this country. To top that off, we really get forced into private health insurance because although our public health system is very good and you really can rely on it for all but elective surgery, if you dont have private health insurance you get taxed even more. I read a study somewhere where it figures that this middle income bracket is paying the equivalent of about 60% of their income in tax (when you work out what we pay and what we dont get) while the lower income brackets pay about 5%. I just dont think its fair. There is absolutely no incentive in this country to study, get yourself qualified and get a professional job. You're much much better off being a tradie - like a plumber or an electrician and running all your personal expenses through your business and charging heaps to boot. All the people in that situation we know of are LOADED yet declare only about $50,000 income per year. Grrrrrr. So its not a rate per say, its the whole system, which I imagine is the same anywhere.

Yeah, that's really why I dont go in for huge phallic shaped ones. I worry that DH will feel, well, unmanly. I'm going to tell you a dirty little secret :pray2: We got that box of vibrators by accident, like I mentioned above, and the company rang asking for them back. Oh, shoot, they got lost in the mail! We binned most of them, but we kept one, but I have to use every ounce of willpower to tell DH most times that "no, I dont want that, you're enough for me". Oh, my GOD it is fantastic. I cant find a pic of it online. It has a normal sized vaguely penis shaped vibrator only it has this mean hook on the end and the head of it moves up and down, so the hook "strokes" the g-spot and then it has a vibrating bud that you hold against your er, more sensitive bits. The ony disappointing bit is that its over in like 30 seconds with some rather dirty screaming taking place. :grouphug: But I so feel for poor DH, who is modestly endowed and more than adequate with a little help. But oh, if only he were 10 inches long and about 5 inches in circumference with a hook on the end :smile:

I had the same experience, I avoided telling my inlaws for AGES, because I thought they'd be judgemental. Afterall, everything was better in there day and mobile phones give you head cancer and young people these days want everything at once, blah blah blah. They're just OLD. But they were very supportive in the end. Of course, once DH decided to get banded they thought it was the most perfect idea, lol. Next year, once i have a teaching job lined up (I graduate next year) I'm having breast surgery. I wanted a lift, but have been advised by several surgeons that after feeding 3 kids for six years and losing 100lb I have no breasts left to lift, just empty bags of skin, it will have to be a small implant. I'm DREADING telling them that. In fact I wont tell them I've got implants, specially not my sister who is a breast care specialist and is very anti them becuase they make cancer detection and treatment very difficult.

Like that crazy woman that's doing EVERYTHING Oprah says for a year. Sheesh.

Its come full circle for me now. I can finally understand that when skinny people complain about being fat they're not "just saying that". I am most definitely a thin person now. But I had some fill removed about four months ago, after some menstrual difficulties I was having appeared to make me tigher than a fishes proverbial. The unfill made little difference until 3 weeks later, problems appeared to resolve and wham, I'm suddenly so wide open. I have really had to work hard to maintain. But over time, its creeping. I'm about 3 lb up now, after a huge weekend where we had three big events on. I seriously feel ENORMOUS. I feel bloated and miserable and really fat. Truly, I do. Its 3lb! A week or two of sensible eating and it will be gone. Another fill (have an appointment for 3 weeks time) will keep it away. But until then, I'm one of those annoying thin people that moan about being fat. I have lost all perspective on how fat I used to be.

Why would you have a NG tube for foot surgery? They will intubate you for a general anaesthetic but it wont go into your stomach. Hope you heal up fast, I've had heel spur surgery before and it was very successful for me - I had heelspurs on the backs of my heels rather than underneath. I had both feet done at once, lol, thank goodness I was only 18 and had my parents to look after me. Two feet and crutches, sheesh.

Reminds me of a joke..... man goes to the doctor for a check up. Doc says "well, I'll need a stool sample, a semen sample and a urine sample". Man says "no problem doc, here's my underpants". Lol.

I dont like them either, so I dont drink them. its perfectly possible to get enough Protein from food, depending on whether you think you need 100 grams a day or not. If your goals are a bit lower, you can eat it for sure. But try to eat it from healthy low fat sources, not high fat cheeses and deli meats etc.

People DONT flush though. Eeeeew. Although for my kids until they were a good 2 years old, there was too much mess to be able to flush anything - groooooosssss.

You'll find that fuzzibunz, with hemp or microfibre inserts are way trimmer and much less smelly than cotton prefolds anyway. Hemp is antimicrobial and when the delightful odor of poo pervades the room it wont be coming from your baby's bum! It will smell enough to know but not enough to clear a restaurant. But cloth diapering can be expensive - especially if you go for a sized system. we used prefolds and covers in the early days - you dont ahve to fold and pin, fold the prefold in 3 across the seams, lay it in the cover and velcro the cover into your baby - google trifolding. That was cheap and easy for the newborn to 3 months period and then we invested in sized diapers after that.

I'd be more inclined to follow the nutritionist - in terms of long term dietary guidelines and the doc for the post surgery schedule of how to get onto solid foods. Here, the doctors make no bones about the fact that they are SURGEONS. They place the band, they fill the band. That's it. They give the after surgery guidelines but they dont in general tell you what to eat. That's because they're SURGEONS. They are not nutritionists. It really concerns me that so many surgeons are acting like they've got a lifetimes eperience in nutrition when really, their training is in the mechanics of band placement and maintenance. A nutritionist is way more likely to be more knowledgeable and give you more serious advice and less personal opinion than a doctor. To me, its like going to an opthalmologist and asking for gynaecological advice. Yes, he's a a doctor and will be more knolwedegeable than a lay person but that's about it. Then again, the nutritionist I saw was all for the five basic foodgroups, carbs included, which sits well with me. If I'd been told to go high Protein, I would have ignored her.

I've always been one to shoot for the lower number but I know that's because my body type is such that I'll always be someone who is healthier at the lower number. I'm 5ft 10 and 154 now and not super skinny, so you can see, as mentioned above that if someone is 5ft 9 and 170 and superskinny, we must have quite different body types. Of course, it depends what we both call super skinny too. But the point is, my healthy weight range is (I'm going in kilograms here, cant convert in my head) 63 to 79kg. That's a HUGE range. And I always always naturally sat at about 82kg. I thought I had an ENORMOUS weight problem, and I spent my entire youth desperately dieting. I've got photos of myself now, about two years ago at that weight, a year into my journey. I look pudgy, bloated and not my best. Once or twice, I got down to about 75kg, once I got to 72 for my wedding. It never held, it would bounce right back up to 82. With the band, Im now sitting at an easy 70 to 72. No effort at all. You probably CAN do it, but I think too your body will take you where's best for you if you allow it to. This is just where my weight loss petered out and stopped.

An unfilled band will let the food through at an almost normal pace, so the pouch doesnt get full. The food just drops through to the bottom part of the stomach, it is ENTIRELY normal to be able to eat like this early on in the journey before you get restriction. A fill will make the hole smaller, and food will begin to accumulate in the pouch when you eat, and you will begin to feel full much quicker.

My kids love it. They love the fact that most people these days are overweight and out of shape and they have the hot mum, lol. And they love boasting about the fact that I can run 10kms to their friends, they even fib and say they came with me. They love that I dont wear daggy, embarrassing clothes too. Of course, I never taught them thin is better. We had in fact talked about how everyone is the same and deserves the same respect on a number of occasions, particularly when I heard comments about other people. But the fat prejudice has set in, it comes from more than just home, I fear. And I suspect my journey, and my obvious relief not to be a fat person anymore has reinforced that for them. DH is now banded too which reinforces it doubly. We have definitely sent the message that it is not good to be fat and that we are willing to take quite drastic steps to avoid it. It was never my intention to reinforce the fat is bad message, but I think we have. They are 12, 11 and 5. Of course, Eliza who's 5 remembers no different. But the boys do.

It sounds rather tight to me, but I agree, there's probably not much harm in waiting till it loosens, at your stage you'll lose weight pretty fast and before you know it it will be more manageable. If you're really suffering hunger, perhaps eat a bit more often?

I think its normal. I'm not menopausal yet but I had about 9 months of horrendous menstrual symptoms, awful PMT, horrid period pain, developed endometriosis, none of which I'd ever suffered from before. It all sort of gradually died down again and my periods are normal now.

The thing is, its a fine line. At least Protein shakes by and large are healthy - low fat and usually *good* fat and a low calorie way to get your Protein whereas eating lots of animal products, cheese, meat, deli meatn(even the low fat versions), whilst part of a balanced diet, the whole proportion of your diet gets way off track with such low calories as bandsters typically eat. People think coz its protein, its great but forget they're often taking in 40% of their calories as fat, mainly saturated fat, and completely and utterly ruining their Omega3/Omega6 ratio too. A high protein diet doesnt have to be a deadly, cholesterol raising one, but the way many people do it, it is. At least shakes kind of help prevent that. If you eat legumes, pulses and tons of fish its a different story.