Jachut

That's exactly what I did and its a big lesson about sliders! I ate tons more, but it was all that stuff - salad, fruit - that I couldnt eat with good restriction. For the first few months I actually lost weight.

Yes, mine was unfilled for nine months while I had treatment for cancer. I pretended I was still banded and I kept running right through chemo, I managed not to gain weight. Its taken me five months to get restriction again, its been hard and frustrating, but it is possible not to pile,on weight.

So true. I got sooooo skinny during chemo, but I was elated that the scale read 60kg (which is underweight for me by the way). I've regained 5kg. I'm 65 (somewhere between 140 - 145lb) at 5ft 10, all the clothes I was wearing when i was so skinny still fit (I've made huge efforts to regain lean muscle, not fat) and I'm still thin, I know that objectively. But i feel like a fat cow because my weight has gone up by 5kg. I had cancer, for crying out loud, I was deathly ill and having horrible treatment. But I feel like a failure, yep because my weight has gone up by 5kg. Its now 2kg above the bottom of my healthy weight range. But I'm beating myself up for not being underweight still. All because of a stupid number.

I'm a pear and despite my BMI being 19 and all my chest bones showing, I still have a fair amount of padding on the backside and thighs. People tell me all the time I'm too thin but as soon as I get enough weight on me to hide the ribs in my chest, I have a muffin top and saddlebags. I have to stay skeletal on top for my lower half to be anywhere near acceptable to me.

I'd be eating the furniture on those spartan rations and going insane due to lack of taste and variety, but that's just me. If you can stick to a diet like that, you'll be a stick insect in next to no time. Its true that you should really only eat for about 20 minutes - you'll find that if you take, say an hour to eat a meal, you can put away a lot. If you graze all day you can also eat a lot. If you sit, concentrate and eat in a 20 minute session, you'll restrict calories. I wouldnt worry so much about not losing as having no energy, losing my hair, looking like a deflated balloon on a diet as extreme as that. But we all have different points of view on that score so that's just mine. No fruit, no wholegrains, no good fats like avocado or nuts, only one vegie, I just dont think that's healthy. Protein is only a part of a balanced diet, not the only important thing. Its also very important for bandsters, who are so restricted in what they can eat, to eat different things every day to avoid nutritional deficiencies.

I agree - you might stop losing for a while if you eat too little, and you might lose if you suddenly eat. Lord knows why but enough people here have tried it and its worked for them. But the plateau caused by eating too little must pass or people would never starve to death. The theory around high Protein diets and why they work is more to do with your body's insulin. The insulin surge caused by a high carb food causes your body to store fat more readily. Protein doesnt cause that surge and thus depresses the fat storing mechanism of the body - in very simplistic terms. But that doesnt really take into account that if you eat a slice of bread with an egg, you've slowed down the glycaemic load of the meal anyway and wont get the huge surge. This is why many people believe in a low GI diet rather than a low carb one. I know for sure its darn hard to stay at a reasonable weight on a diet of Cookies and muffins and the more you eat of them, the worse you get, you just want more and more.

It is true that what is a huge deal to you - being obese, or losing 30lb - often isnt even noticed for others. To be honest, I technically had 80lb to lose and I ended up losing about 120, at 30lb down, I was a bit smaller, yeah, but still very overweight with fat bits and rolls and such and it wasnt terribly obvious. I think people might have thought I looked a bit different around the face, like maybe I'd changed my hair or something. But at 30lb I'd barely gone down one size! People do hesitate too. I've lost count of the number of people who've said this year how great I look and the weight I lost has been due to cancer, chemo and having an ileostomy. Its rather uncomfortable. A lot of people wont speak up just in case. Dont be disheartened, you have to get through that early, less noticeable weight loss to get to the really good stuff where people comment if you lose 4lb!

Yeah, it makes me very sluggish and my running and exercise takes a sharp nosedive, i cant function without a small amount of bread/cereals in my diet. But it works if you stick to it. So does ordinary calorie cutting. I too find it hard to understand how you can eat 1000 a day and not lose, and my natural inclination is to think "starvation mode" is a crock. But - you have to remember, this is a large community of people who are or have been overweight. Odds are there's more than a few here whose bodies are just not workign the way they should. I know for a fact that at my height and weight and level of exercise, the charts say I shoudl be eating 1000 calories more a day than I do - yet I absolutely cant. Eating 2800 calories a day (and realistically and honestly, it wouldnt have been much more) is how I got obese. I maintain on 1800 - I ought to be losign 1kg a week on that.

Those sore muscles are retaining water. It'll go away soon and the exercise will help your weight loss - but you're unlikely to ever see a huge drop in weight simply because of exercise, its consistency and doing it with good food intake that just keeps weight dropping slowly and steadily over a long period of time.

Love your optimism Shirley, you are always so upbeat and that is why you've had such great success, despite a hiccup or two along the way. Onederland is just around the corner!

I still push myself and aim for improvement and achievement six years down the track. Nowadays a day off for me might mean a six mile walk with mybhusband or a spin class! If its easy its not really doing much - but you should take it easy once or twice a week.

Got back into my true religion jeans thiscweekend, theyd gotten a bit too snug. I might even be brave enoughbto wash them soon!

Depends entirely on your motives and what you want from your exercise. I like the gym for the variety of classes - I'm primarily a runner and I love it, but I like to go to a spin class or Body Pump Class. Personally, I think the gym is a pretty inefficent and ineffective environment for inexperienced exercisers. I dont think walking on the treadmill for cardio and then working out on machines is the best use of your time. If you're unfit and just getting back into exercise, then you'll get results of course, but as you get fitter, you're much better off doing interval cardio and real functional fitness activities like you'll find at a good bootcamp or with a trainer. Kettlebells, sandbags, heavy free weights - you can do all that in a gym of course but you'll have to seek out the trainer or develop the knowledge to do it yourself - my experience of big chain gyms here as well as small ones is that they tend to have the cookie cutter approach. Body Pump, for example - a great fun activity, will build muscle endurance. But it wont build you big muscles or greatly increase your lean body mass. However, does that really matter? I personally enjoy it, dont want big muscles and dont really like strength training. But I've never had the results from a gym workout that I got from Boot Camp! That was awesome, an adrenaline rush, skyrocketed my fitness, and was great fun as well. I'd always pick that over a boring old gym workout. Be honest with your time commitments too - I've got a gym membership but I've gone one because I can afford to run one that I dont use a lot. I use it to do a spin class on a day I want to exercise but dont want to run - I might go once or twice a week. I am NEVER going to have the time to make five scheduled classes a week and I am NEVER going to have the time spending two hours doing cardio and a weights machine program. I run at 5pm one day, 10.30 pm the next, whenever I can fit it in and that suits me. Are you self motivated? I am, so I dont need the gym to guilt me into doing the work because I've spent the money. I know I will get on my treadmill at home, or go out for a run. But if you're not like that, a gym can be a good motivator. So there's lots of factors to consider.

Its such an unfair situation that it is so difficult for some people. I can report from the "people who dont change what they eat, just eat less" camp. That's me. I lost pretty easily with the band, right from the word go. I kept losing way past the point where people plateau. I eat carbs. But I do eat healthy overall - I dont stuff my face with white carbs, sugar, crappy foods. But I do eat anything and everything. I use the band to let me live a very normal life - I can join in that morning tea at work because I dont over do it. But is that as effortless as it sounds? Not really. I exercise REALLY hard and a real LOT. I run miles and miles and miles every week. Not just slow steady jogging, I do interval stuff. I might burn 900 calories in a session. I chuck a 20kg sandbag about raising my heart rate to where I almost see stars, not push a weights machine in the gym around. If I go to the gym and just do a spin class, I feel guilty that I still need to run a bit that day. I really work hard. That allows me to "eat whatever I want" in small portions. Its the other half of the equation. So, the way I see it, its a trade off. You can low carb, change what you eat totally work really hard at that side of the equation and do zumba and a gym program for the other. I just choose to balance my equation by burning insane amounts of energy. Its how I handle my "eating issues". I have them like anyone else. But I manage them by allowing for them (yes, I know I will most likely boredom eat at 4pm at least four days of the week) and by burning more than I eat. I know I can never totally give up wine or chocolate! I dont have a turkey neck and no muscle either. That comes from fast weight loss and excessive calorie cutting, not from eating or not eating any particular foods. Many low carbers look like deflated balloons at the end of their weight loss too. You have to find your formula. Its different for everyone. You know you cant eat a gallon of icecream at a sitting very often. But you dont need to be perfect either. You dont need to hate yourself for not being able to eat perfectly and never slip. You can slip up, and quite often, its getting back on the wagon that matters. Seek out some help if you feel you need it, and if your best attempts on the eating half of the equation arent quite getting you where you want to be, adjust the exercise side. But every good day is a triumph and every attempt at a good day is better than how you used to be. There isnt a deadline to finish this journey either. Day by day, week by week you get there. Sometimes the good days outweigh the bad and those periods are satisfying, sometimes you really have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But you can do it if you're realistic about it - accept that the band changes very little about you, you have to do it. But its a process, not an instant phenomenon. If you can look back in a year and see how you've changed, then its a success.

Very true - I didnt have to do a pre op diet - BMI was 35, liver was fine, etc, but I thought it would be a good kick start. I couldnt hack it - I fainted everytime I stood up by day 3. I guess I could have perserved if I'd really "had" to to do it, but sheesh, that was hard core. My doc told me not to be an idiot and to eat something, lol. But sudden lack of food can make you feel pretty crook.

It wont work, whatever his motives. Thinking you can simply gain temporarily to have the "fat experience" is insulting. He wont know what its like to live your life on the outer, to struggle for self esteem, self respect, that feelign that you wont EVER lose the weight. All he'll find out is how darn hard it is to move with the extra weight. Even then, he's been superbly fit. He wont lose that in six months and his body wont lose the memory of its set point weight and fitness wise. The weight will come off easier for him that it will for someone who's been 400lb for 20 years. Good on him, I think personally his heart is in the right place, but he's just showing how maligned and misunderstood obesity is in our society.

17lb in four weeks is actually excellent weight loss. I think people think weight loss surgery and imagine weight literally falling off, but remember, this is a surgery which really only has a pretty minor effect on your digestive system at first - maybe mild restriction, certainly a week or two of being unable to eat normally until the swelling goes down. Its not like bypass where you're instantly and forever altered. In the fact of that, what you've been doing is pretty much dieting without much assistance and as such, 17lb is fantastic! Complain all you like though, this is a frustrating process at times. I dont think there's many of us who can truthfully say we didnt secretly think the band would be just a little bit magic. Its a bummer to come back down to reality and realise it isnt. But it will get easier with restriction. the other thing is that I think many of us have bodies that are terribly efficient at processing what we eat and storing it away and are terribly good at not letting go of it. D'oh! that's why we're fat. So many of us truly eat no more than what a lot of people out there eat and they dont get fat from it, yet we do. I know personally that I lost weight well and successfully, but it took me a lapband to do it of course - I'm 5ft 10, 140lb and run 8 to 10kms most days. All the charts put my caloirie needs in the 2500+ category - guess what? I maintain on about 1800 and begin to gain on any more than that. It just doesnt add up - but it gives credence to my belief that whilst I ate badly it was no worse than most people and they never got as fat as I did. Likewise, we all know many people cut out alchohol, switch to skim milk and walk half an hour a day and voila! That pesky 20lb bothering them is gone. If only hey?

Its on DVD unfortunately Elcee - and I'm no lawyer but I'd say copying someone's DVD and putting it on youtube is not that smart an idea, lol. It does make sense though, doesnt it? Hey Corrigan, I definitely dont do everything my doctor says, lol. I reckon of Protein shakes work for you and you like them, then that's all that counts. I'm a big believer in considering and respecting everything your doc tells you and then finetuning it for yourself. Because we all know there's a zillion people here who drink Protein Shakes and eat a low carb diet (both things my doc and many other Australia docs dont believe are strictly necessary) who are hugely successful! I speak up more to ease the guilt of those of us who like our bread, lol.

Thanks guys - no there's been nothing easy about maintaining it. Its not like its so hard that its not doable, but I've certainly had to apply myself each and every day. There's been many days when I've been really really naughty! And you know, obsessed as I am with being skinny, I'm OK with that. I've had cancer FFS, there's more to life than always worrying about your weight. But it just goes to show that you dont HAVE to be perfect all the time. You can fall off the wagon, you can eat poorly, you can struggle with restriction and its not the end of the world. I cant lose without restriction but I've been able to maintain. I'm glad to be an inspiration but believe me I am no different to anyone else here, I have the same disorders/hangups/difficulties. On a bright note, it seems I have restriction. Hoo-bloody-ray. Finally. So its bye bye to the occasional Peanut Butter AND butter on toast in the mornings, oh how I will miss you. But oh, what damage you do to my thighs!

DH had exactly this explained to him - we attend Prof. O'Brien's clinic, so they're at the forefront of band research as Prof O'Brien was one of the band pioneers, and heads research units through Monash University. So when my clinic states that low carbing is a crock, Protein shakes should not be consumed after the initial stages, 3 small meals a day is what you should aim for etc, I feel quite confident that they are not leading me astray. And yes, latest research shows that food does not sit in the pouch for hours (or shouldnt) but rather glugs and chugs through the stoma rather like Water going down a blocked drain, there's this forward and back sort of phenomenon before it finally goes through. Guidelines are about a bite a minute, small bites. This work, plus the sheer time it takes to eat at a bite per minute is what creates satiety. This also answers that perplexing question - why can you get instantly stuck on the last bite of your meal when it should be sitting on top of all the food you've just eaten? Answer, it isnt, everything you've just eaten has gone through. Its also why you can pb more than just the stuck bite - as it chugs and glugs, it mixes up and it doesnt go down strictly in the order that its eaten. Also, you can have something sort of refusing to go down but as it churns around, stuff goes down around it and you might throw up an hour later when your body has finally had enough of trying to get it through. I've got a video showing what they think happens.

I've had two experiences from unfills. One unfill I had because I did exactly what you did - had a fill I really didnt need. I was uncomfortably tight, so I had 0.1cc taken out (4cc band). It relieved things, I began to eat better (not sliders) and it had no adverse effect on my weight at all - I was maintaining by that stage, thought I might like to lose a little more but learned that to do that, you have to full your finger out and work at it, not go along for another "magic" fill. It was no big deal getting unfilled and I learned a lesson. Second unfill was last year just prior to my huge bowel resection, radiation and chemotherapy and that was a total unfill. It has taken me a year to get back to restriction and I may not be there yet - just had a fill today that feels good, but we'll see in a few days time. Its been incredibly frustrating and i've worked like a dog not to gain weight. I would do almost anythign to avoid unfilling totally and disturbing my band again - and that means if I had a fill so tight that I thought it might actually cause damage through vomiting, I would unfill slightly to avoid such irritation to my stomach as to necessitate a total unfill. Because if you unfill totally, you cant get it back in two weeks, it takes months to fill up again. but if its manageable tight - you can drink, you're fine if you eat slowly and avoid certain things, and you think you can avoid the sliders trap, then you can probably afford to wait and see and perhaps if you lose a little, it will loosen.

Hope you feel better. A surgery is a big deal for your body and will weaken your immune system, you're much more likely to pick something up. I often find I get sick if I really kick the exercise up a notch and I will ALWAYS get sick if I go for a swim in an indoor public pool. Yet I can work in a classroom full of five year olds and not pick up a sniffle.

Its now a year since I unfilled my band totally for my bowel resection and chemotherapy and I've learned a LOT about myself and my band in that time. I've been gradually refilling since about July. I'm proud to say that I'm just about exactly the same weight I was when I was unfilled last year. I did lose about 15lb due to my surgery and the chemo and I have regained that. But I have learned that I definitely need that band working in order to maintain my loss for life! This has been the most frustrating part of my journey and something many bandsters experience at the start, but I avoided. I unfilled my 4cc band with 3cc in it. I have gotten up to 3.6cc and dont have half the restriction I did. I can eat entire sandwiches, I get hungry between meals, I can eat raw carrots, apples with the skin, cold yogurt, all the stuff I used to struggle with. If I go out for dinner I am positive I could eat an entree, main and dessert if given enough time. I dont vomit, dont get stuff stuck. But man is it hard to keep weight off! I have worked my butt off this past year, I have been on a "diet" the entire time and I run incredibly tiring interval runs of an hour in length and covering 10 kms or so, a few times a week with 'small" rums of 8kms of steady pace the other days. I do Body Pump. And I have still battled to keep that weight off. I average around 2000 calories a day and that is with effort not to eat more, and extras. Its doable, I could live without my band and would probably never see 240lb again, but I sure couldnt maintain a BMI of 20. I've just had a fill of 0.2cc and I can "feel" my cup of coffee. Yippee. I want easy street for a while. I want to maintain without thinking about it. I think I've learned enough lessons now. I sure have a renewed respect for all those vacuous hollywood starlets. They may not be the sharpest tools in the shed but they sure know something about hard work to maintain those size 0 bodies - not that I'd want to go there. Its work, no doubt about it. Please please please let this fill take and give me what I'm looking for. My doc said she'd do a barium swallow if it didnt. She said bands often shift when they're unfilled but usually you can tolerate less fill afterwards, this is a little unusual (and we're positive there's no leak). It must be the fact that I lost 15lb when my BMI wasa already just 20, and I know because my colorectal surgeon remarked from the CT scans I had that there is simply so little fat separating my organs that he could barely read the scans and tell one organ from another. I'm glad I regained that weight (and I look better for it) but I dont want to regain any more! Fingers crossed xx

That's definitely time for an unfill. Hope you feel much better.

I dont think your BMI has a lot to do with how well you recover from the surgery - people all have different tolerances to anaesthetics, different pain thresholds etc. I'm pretty fit so I recover pretty fast and pretty well from things like surgery and that's perhaps got a little to do with not being overweight before and having a BMI of 36 at the time of lapband surgery - I could be fitter and more mobile than someone much heavier. But that said, at a BMI of over 30, I popped out 3 babies with no pain relief, in the space of about 40 minutes per labour and was right as rain within a few hours. I was much heavier than a lot of women who find childbirth a lot harder than that. I dont even think childbirth hurts that much - certainly not as much as a brazilian wax, lol. So its totally individual. I do think your BMI can affect how successful you are with this surgery though. Obviously over the years eating and exercise habits slide and we get heavier and heavier but it is pretty much a given that someone who has a BMI of 35 is probably more mobile, fitter and eats better (if not well) than someone who has a BMI of 50, and so has less work to do to get themselves onto a healthy track. Not that that's strictly true either.