Jachut

Well done, thats awesome. Jeez i wouldnt want to have to buy clothes in asia, even at my size 6. In Bali, everyone was in hysterics at my feet - size nine, i mean not amazingly big, and they thought i was a giant!

Clothes that are too big make me feel thin, i have a very bad habit of wearing too large clothes. So by the time i thought i actually needed new oned i was well down into the next size. I wasnt dealing with corporate wear so everday clothes are pretty cheap.

I couldnt finish a childs meal most of the time either, those are huge too. And mostly rubbish. Im happier to pay the money to let my kids eat real food from the adult menu and leave most of it. But my two eldest are well beyond childrens menus now. Hopefully your hubbies only gain your leftovers and not your lost pounds! Mine is banded too but was never a big eater like a lot of men are.

Im not gaving any trouble in fact ive been unfilled for eight months for some unrelated surgeries. I havent gained, but im pretty single minded about it. I have continued running/bootcamp/bodypump and eaten well through radiation, chemo and major bowel surgeries. But the band was a large part of me becoming that person!

You really need to measure and accomodate your shape - i'm a pear so always go by hip as a too large waist can be altered, but you can still getbit wrong as sizes vary by brand. But once you start youll get to know your faves. I,m 135lb and a US6 but im 5 ft 10 so little help.

Im not that happy. Dressed, i am rapt with my new bod, i know i have a great figure. You really cant tell i was ever big. But it IS a 43 year old body that has born three children and has the scars of a cancer battle, i even had to endure a stoma for eight months. It is marked, a bit flabby, and its knees and hips hurt and it now faces a battle back to normal bowel function. Plastic surgery would make it slammin' but its not really in me to go down that road, i truly think i need to embrace my age, my issues. But does that woman in the bikini in that teeny photo feel like strutting it and showing it off? Not really. Im not 20 sad to say

And in fact i would say that this mentality is the main reason for the rather poor success statistics that the band has - way more so than any inherent faults of the band. I totally believe that most people frustrated by that fine line between finding restriction and being too tight are simply failingvto recognise what the band can do and what they must do. Truth is that no amount of restriction will prevent you eating forbidden foods. But in fairness to the op, she sounds like she has made a start in the right direction and i for one DID in fact loose an awful lot of weight almost automatically at first. I know i did on some level expect this thing to control my behaviour and that it has done. I also know that i have changed drastically as i havent gained at all, even being unfilled for eight months

It is frustrating, especially whrn i have had much bigger gi surgery involving first making an ileostomy and rerouting my plumbing and then reversing that last friday and both times was on fluids, and not even clears, for only a day or two. I mean i had bits cut and removed! Nonetheless the band needs to heal really well and scar tissue needs to form to hold it in place and personally i'd rather err on the side of caution. I just dont get going through this surgery and being unable to stick to the post op diet, i really dont. Nobody says you havevto starve, just stick to a certain food texture! but she may not havevthe samebguidelines as you.

It was clear liquids from midday for me, that will all clear your system quickly. So black tea or coffee, broth, apple juice, gatorade or jelly and not much else.

Yes my later fills were all .1 or .2 cc

On the other hand i dont think about sugar or carbs at all. I mean i try to stay away from sweet foods but i eat plenty of wholegrains.

Youll know you cant when it causes you pain, excessive salivation or vomiting! You figure it out pretty quickly. I can eat bread but it is a food more likely to get stuck and over time you just dont fancy it so much anymore. I had my band unfilled for six months and really really enjoyed toast for breakie again but oh boy once youbput butter and jam on it its a fair whack of your daily calories. Fill back up tp my normal level and suddenlybi just dont want it anymore. So just try it cautiously and if it doesnt work for you take heart thatvyou wont really miss it.

Id work on building up your exercise, you're doing great for two months but I agree with the above poster - I was runnung between four and six miles a day and doing bootcamp to keep the weight coming off.

Id work on building up your exercise, you're doing great for two months but I agree with the above poster - I was runnung between four and six miles a day and doing bootcamp to keep the weight coming off.

I lost about 120 lbs with a 4 cc.band and am still doing great with it.

I would go so far as to say that.for me slow eating is the prime factor - it really is true that you eat less when you eat slow.

I do something pretty much every day. Three days will be big ones like a long run and a body pump class, two days might be just a five k run or a spin class and two might be really easy days like water aerobics or a walk with hhbby. I have other things that I like to do like an incline teadmill walk pumping dumbells or sandbag training, so although its often seven days a week theres lots of variety, I dont get bored or injured that wsy. But lest I sound obsessed I dont hesitate to take a day off if im tired or busy.

Interval training! If you need guidance use something like treadmill trainer or cardio coach (www.cardiocoach.com) which are guided workouts for use on cardio machines, the 40 minutes will fly by and you'll get a much more intense workout than with steady state. I love to do things like sandbag workouts - google it, you'll get heaps of ideas. I made a sandbag from a duffel bag and a few 10kg bags of rice from the supermarket - try doing turkish get ups with a 30kg sandbag and you'll know what hard work is all about lol. The rice/sand/wheat whatever shifts and moves so the load is always changing, which works all your stabiliser muscles too and your core like nothing else - this is functional fitness at its finest. I got most of my ideas from youtube - Josh Henkin is the expert on this and its a great workout to do at home. The sandbag is cheap too so all you have to do is buy something like a bag of sand or potting mix if you go away somewhere and you've got a great mobile workout too. Another thing to google - Steve Pfizers treadmill bootcamp - insane. Really fun, really intense aned a totally new way to use a treadmill - but perhaps not in public! I also walk on an incline on my treadmill and pump handweights to give my knees a rest from running - its actually a pretty intense workout. I just make it up as I go along. Again, you might not be able to do this in a gym, they probably dont want you using dumbells on their expensive machines, I do it at home. It also sounds like you'd be ready to run outside, it burns more calories and is harder and more functional than a treadmill or elliptical. You might also like spin classes.

Argh touchphones!

Same as you - jealousy from other women snd the assumption im vain and vacuous. Attention from men, sometimed appreciated, sometimes unwanted. Much better service in shops etc. I font get ignoref often anymore.

Its not that easy, and I think in fact that its a lifelong challenge. My inner dialogue may be offensive to some here, and I dont mean it to be but this is how I approach it. I'm not a reformed fatty, I am a fat person in remission, and I have been there and indulged in all the practices most obese people have. I've wallowed in custard tarts and whipped cream, hidden food and eaten in secret, eaten in my car, all of it, so I'm not passing ANY judgement. BUT to see a fat person walking through a mall sucking on a big plastic cup full of iced coffee and whipped cream is disgusting. To look around the food court and see people jamming their gobs with greasy fast food is stomach churning, its utterly revolting whether its being done by a fat OR thin person. The smells of those food courts when you really take the time to notice are horrible -grease! Sitting in your car stuffing Cookies down your face is a miserable pathetic thing to do. Making excuses that you're too busy to cook or must go through the drive through for Breakfast becuase you're rushed, or cant afford to buy decent food or dont have time to exercise is just delusional pathetic baby behaviour. Its being a whiner and playing the victim. None of us would have much time for someone that failed to take charge of any other aspect of their life, preferring to make excuses for not changing it and blaming other people/situations instead of accepting responsibility. Very few of us are like that in other parts of our lives - we're successful workers, spouses, parents. But we have all been their with our food and eating and exercise habits - and its a very unattractive personality trait. I simply decided I didnt want to be that sort of person any more and it was time to bloody well grow up and face facts. And every time I slip, I think about how disgusted I would be if I saw somebody else indulging in that behaviour. Its enough to stop me most of the time. Sorry if that's harsh, and I understand that therre's all sorts of emotional and psychological components to obesity but for a lot of people, it really is that black and white. You either want it or you dont, and if you do, then shut up and get on with it kind of thing. Works for me, might be a bit in your face for other people, lol.

Not wanting to jump to conclusions but you dont give a lot of info. What do you eat? 3 small meals a day no Snacks? or Five even smaller meals? Do you do a good hour's exercise most days? Do you avoid sugar, white flour and bad fats, keep away from alcohol for the most part? Are you sabotaging yourself with hidden calories - sweet, syrupy coffees, soft slider foods?

Very true - of all cardio machines really - fast with low resistance is not that valuable workout wise. I dont think I ever use my treadmill on an incline below 4. You see so many poeple in spin class too with their legs flying when you're supposed to have a high resistance.

Seriously, I think this view that training at layman level requires specialised nutrition is problematic - I wouldnt feel the need to eat before running 4 miles. Its a seriously great achievement for a former overweight person to run four miles and you deserve huge kudos for doing it. But in terms of serious exercise, its not that far or that much that you'll keel over if you dont eat before or after. It burns only somewhere between 300 and 400 calories. Even if you did two options on a day, a normal daily intake is going to be ample, but I agree with you that 700 calories is really leaving you a bit short of energy but the whole idea is calorie deficit and at our level of traiing, energy bars, shakes etc do nothing more than add calories that you probably dont need. Just a banana would do the trick - I think you need carbs to perform cardio well. I dont generally imbibe anything other than Water afterwards.

It took me and entire YEAR to adjust to what a reasonable dinner plate looked like. I overserved myself enormously at first, it gradually got better but it took a year for me to be comfortable seeing like one tiny lamb loin chop, a spoon of mashed potato and a small pile of peas on a salad plate as dinner! Now unfortunately I underserve my poor growing teenage boys. They get literally 1/3 the amount of dinner their friends would get and then I yell at them for snacking! I cant bring myself to believe that a human being can actually ingest, for example, a restaurant sized meal and survive. It actually stood me in good stead whilst I've been unfilled for 8 months. Becuase I still served what looked normal to me (ie. small portions) and when you're not mentally thinking "this isnt enough", surprisingly, it actually IS enough.