Jachut

DeeDee, we're different body types, but skin wise, we're very similar. I get your "I may have painted a rosier picture than reality" feelings, but in reality, you look gorgeous. I'm the same. I feel that I'm squishy, I feel self conscious of my small little belly roll etc, but truly, the result from a big weight loss is very good and the exercise has toned me nicely. We just need to relax about our bodies! You actually dont look like you've ever been fat and you dont look at all like you need to cover up in that swimsuit! Where's the bikini! Get out there and show it off, you look really great! I have the bumpy cellulite thigh thing going on too, but the truth is, most people notice your overall shape, and yours is great - and dont notice those small imperfections like we do. do you REALLY pick apart other women the way you do yourself? Probably not. And men just notice that you're hardly dressed, lol.

Sigh, nobody's ever happy. I'm the opposite - tall tall tall, so I'm always on the hunt for super long jeansto be worn with a heel. Completely the opposite to most of you, I have a butt, and thighs but a slim waist and a flat stomach. So I buy stuff to fit my bum and it gapes at the waist. But at least this is super easy to take in. I dont struggle too much with jeans because I'm lucky to be the right shape for them, but to me, its a matter of when you find what fits you, you stick with it, buy a couple of pairs etc. Or have a pair altered. Have the legs run in if they're baggy when the waist fits. Its worth the effort.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think its mostly user error that leads to complications. I think that people differ in how much work they can do with this thing, and I mean that not in a moralistic, judgemental sense but a simple observation of how sick they are when they get banded. Because obesity is definitely a disease. I do not think everyone's body copes with a tight band. And the band was never designed to be tight, so that pb'ing, getting stuck and being able to eat certain foods is a daily reality. That's too tight. You need the band looser and you need to work hard WITH the band, and rely a lot on your own strength and determination, with the band simply there so that you can stick to small portions without being overly hungry. Complete absence of hunger is not the goal, nor is the band doing all the work. Yet, that's what I reckon 90% of patients/doctors together are aiming for. People are not necessarily having dire trouble, and feeling awful side effects but they're too tight nonetheless and that maybe even includes myself! I'm no differnt to anyone else in that I just want my appetite to not be there. Over time, this leads to erosion, slippage etc in some people. I think that the aim should be a normal, varied diet including all food groups, and a much looser band, not this half cup at a time serving of mainly Protein, for which most people need to be pretty tight to cope with this type of regime.

Saturated fat is saturated fat, its all the same. There is often less of it in poultry than in red meat, but dont assume so. Really lean ground beef could easily have less saturated fat than chicken or turkey, depending on what's gone into the mix. Probably the worst choice is the budget stuff, that's just lips and assholes and very fatty. You'd need to always buy the lean one.

It depends a lot on genetics but also how heavy you've gotten and how long you've been that way. For women, a couple of pregnancies probably do the most damage, only we dont know at the time because of all the fat we have! I reckon at your age and weight, you've got a really good chance of getting out of this pretty lightly. That's what's good about tackling 70lb instead of 140! You might have a teeny bit, but believe me, you'll be so thrilled to be normal and thin and when you look around you so many people these days are so big, that a bit of loose skin goes unnoticed. I mean, when everyone under the age of 20 is walking round with their butt crack showing and their muffin tops bulging over their jeans most of them look worse than a bit of loose skin ever will, lol. Dont I sound OLD? tee hee (I dont mind a pair of butt crack baring jeans myself)

Well, I didnt have to do a pre op diet and post op I've never done more than the very occasional Protein shake. One of the reasons I dont consider Protein shakes a particularly healthy choice is the artificial sweeteners, not to mention I have a very sweet tooth and yet I find them revoltingly sweet, certainly too sweet for me to want them as a regular food. If I want something sweet, I have the real thing. To me, sugary, sweet foods are something you should only have occasionally, and replacing the sugar with an artificial sweetener does not make them OK to then have every day. I didnt have sweetened tea or coffee prior to surgery anyway, I like it plain so that wasnt an issue, and nor was I a diet coke or real coke drinker. So my issues tend to be more Cookies, cakes, wine, stuff like that. I stick to those things as occasional treat foods but have the real thing and enjoy it when I do. Of course there's sugar also in many many things like yogurt, and mayonnaise, and baked Beans and tomato sauce and all those foods we have everyday, personally, I just dont worry about it, I think you'd drive yourself crazy. I just eat what I want basically. I've been very successful.

Oh, of course we do. However our system works a bit differently in that everyone, regardless of income is entirled to medicare coverage and then private insurance picks up the gap over that, to put it very simply, if not entirely accurately. So even though there's been all this news about the band being covered by medicare in australia, its just that most doctors dont operate in the public system, in public hospitals, but operate privately. But medicare will always pick up most of the bill. I've even had a rant or two on it myself, although usually its about stuff like childcare benefits and family assistance. Plenty of people abuse that system, my particular beef is tradies such as plumbers and electricians who work for cash and then reap all the assistance without declaring that they actually have income. That's the "australian way" mate! Grrrr.

I lost almost 100lb to get to my goal and a BMI of 22. I went from about 245, to 150, BMI 36 to 22. It took me about 2 and a half years - so a long time. There's reasons for that. For me, giving up dieting and any dieting related behaviour was what I felt I needed most. So my approach was not to diet. I dont/didnt count calories, Protein etc I dont log, I eat what I want to eat rather than diet (luckily I usually choose healthy foods). So my weight loss was relatively slow. But I'd lost about 70 lb of that by the end of the first year, so within a year I was within a healthy weight range, it took me a year and a half to lose another 30lb or so. I've now been trying to lose 10lb for over 2 years, lol.

I've been banded 4 years and probably only really pb'd 10 times or so. It always happens to me due to eating too fast and not chewing enough. I'm very prone to it when I'm starving hungry, or when I'm eating with others and not concentrating. There isnt a food my stomach cant handle, only certain foods I have to be more careful with than others. Oh, and potato chips which give me foul, painful acidy heartburn. I dont eat those, ever. Some of those times have been surprise pb's when I've been unexpectedly tight in the week before my period arrives.

Here is where I'm very lucky. If someone gives me a homemade gift like that, I just about vomit at the thought of eating it. I would never ever ever ever eat something cooked in someone else's home, packaged up and transported. All those bring a plate dinners, I only ever eat what I've bought. Its a crazy phobia I have. I will eat something someone cooks in their home, but if they bring it somehwere else, I cant eat it. The thought makes me feel sick. So I would have no temptation at all to eat someone else's Cookies or fudge.

They ARE flabby! Havent you noticed how the men stop taking their shirts off? Its all lighting and tricky camera work but every now and again you get a glimpse. The winner here in Australia a season or two ago had major all over plastic surgery and was very open about it.

I did a fake shudder Indio - purely because I would hate to live low carb. I love my carbs. I believe that I *ALSO* made the point that what works well for some doesnt for others. In fact my whole post was about what works for some doesnt work for everyone. Dont be so darn sensitive minimeme! It's hardly important to ME what you choose to eat, nor does my opinion matter at all to you. If I dont like the sound of what you're having for lumch its hardly the end of the world is it? I can eat what I like because I happen to like mainly healthy foods. I cant eat what I like in the sense that I can eat a cake everytime the urge hits me. Nobody was being that literal.

I wouldnt say I had no excess skin at all, on a few areas, I'm a little squishy. But i dont need any PS and I can wear a bikini at the age of 42, after 3 babies. I'm pretty happy with how my body held up.

I think it probably took me an entire YEAR to come to terms with the small amount of food on my plate. Quite aside from physical satiation, there's the mental issue. We're used to seeing a big, full plate and its a hard habit to change. Now my kids are simply astonished at how much other families serve their children when they happen to be at someone else's house for dinner. I get mad at my kids for wanting to snack so much, but I actually tend to underfeed them. We all eat off salad sized plates and I serve rather small meals to everyone because I cant believe people can eat so much! I have growing teenage boys and I serve them what a small woman would eat (DH is banded too).

OK, I know that I'm simply prolonging the argument, but I cant help chiming in again. This baffles me. In Australia, you can get banded from a BMI of 30, given the right history. Would you say now that you're much heavier that you couldnt have benefitted from this surgery way back when you were "not heavy enough"? And if you didnt need the surgery back then, why didnt you lose the weight? How come you got fatter? I get the anger on the tax issue (even if I dont agree with it, political opinions are valid on all sides) and I certainly get the view that gaining weight on purpose is self destructive, but I simply cannot understand the hypocrisy of obese people saying the surgery isnt needed when patently, they themselves have failed utterly to control their own weight. It simply makes no sense and it absolutely smacks of thin discrimination. I just want ONE person to explain to me why they're happy that they managed to get REALLY fat before they had the surgery and to tell me honestly that they didnt want to lose weight way before they got to this stage. I want one person to explain to me why, if a BMI of 34 is so attractive and healthy that they didnt choose to stay at that BMI. If you would have no issue at all with her having the surgery if she were self pay, I could get that. But the feeling coming through is that at a BMI of 34, you consider her a lightweight who doesnt have the same level of need as you do (meaning you in a collective sense). Dare I say that there are people in this world who would resent YOUR surgeries because they think fat people are lazy slobs who ought to simply eat a bit less. Its for this reason that I just dont understand this closing ranks against the lower BMI patients.

In any major fun run I've entered, there has always been loads of walkers too. You could enter almost any 5, 10K or half marathon race and walk it, as long as you walk at a reasonable clip. There's usually a time limit, but for many half's I've investigated, its often 3 or 4 hours, which is plenty of time to walk the distance. Dont know about other runners, but when I do a distance like that, I'm so darn slow I can walk it in not much longer!

Totally normal. You dont have to survive on 500 calories a day forever. You have plenty of resources - lots of fat and a good stockpile of nutrients in your body to get you through a couple of weeks of this. It wont harm you, although you lose a lot of Water and a bit of lean body tissue on such an extreme diet. But your stomach must heal and the swelling after surgery makes it impossible to eat much more. When you begin to get more hungry, you will probably naturally take in more calories - which is why people's loss tends to slow markedly or they even gain a few pounds as the time for your first fill approaches. That's perfectly normal too AND its perfectly fine to take in more but you must take it in the correct form - liquids when you're supposed to be on liquids, mushies when you're supposed to be on mushies and solids ONLY when you've been cleared to have them. Dont rush the schedule ahead, but do realise you have no fill and you might be feeling extremely hungry in a few weeks time. I didnt at all and in fact made it 12 weeks before I needed a fill, so you can be lucky as well. almost anything is normal hunger wise at this stage.

I'm lucky that I dont become problematically tight but I definitely tighten up with a cold. The other thing I've noticed is that when I've caught anything viral, you know, that type of thing that starts with the chills and the aches and pains, I always get a BAD stomach ache now since banding. Its always one of my aches and I really cant eat. Not that you really want to when you feel like that, but I really cant. It just hurts. And that time of the month of course. I often get a surprise PB once a month to let me know what to expect in a day or two.

That sounds ideal fto me. Tecnically, you shouldnt "feel" restriction. You shouldnt feel pain, discomfort, any sort of "hard stop" meaning you get that I must not eat one more bite feeling. You shouldnt pb with any regularity, and when you do, it really should be obviously user error. What restriction is is eating a smaller portion and feeling satisfied and staying that way. You might still think mmmmm.... donuts an hour after lunch, but you shouldnt be physically hungry. Some people are luckier than others with regard to how much their appetite and interest in food drops away after banding, for me, no matter how tight I get, I will always be interested in anything put in front of me. My worst downfall is eating with my head, not my stomach. You cant fix that with a lapband. Good restriction or a sweet spot is ideally that level of restriction, but it doesnt diminish only three weeks after a fill. I found I got a constant restriction level but as I got more and more fill it would last longer and longer, till my last one lasted well over a year before I felt I needed a top up. But I have a 4cc band which tends to work more that way than the larger capacity bands now in use. How much you should eat at a sitting depends only on how weight loss is going, if you're losing reasonably, then there's no reason at all to fret about eating more than 1/2 a cup at a time, and I never had to eat that little to lose weight.

Well, that's my point, its guessing. Obviously I *DONT* burn the average for my height, weight and activity level or I'd be scary skinny on what I eat. I kind of take the view it doesnt really matter. The balance is obviously OK for me as I'm normal weight and stay that way effortlessly. I dont particularly need to know the numbers.

I think you just use what is appropriate for whatever you're cooking. I buy the 5 star lean ground beef - which here in Australia is pretty lean. I always brown it off, tip out the fat, rinse it and pat it dry too, so its really a very reasonable option. I wouldnt substutite turkey for things like spaghetti sauce and chilli because I can taste the difference, but I would always use turkey or chicken for something like Thai Chicken Cakes, stir fries, stuff like that. Red meat is high in Iron and most women benefit from a few serves a week. Its more a function of how much other saturated fat you have in your diet - if you avoid the bad things like deli meats, cheeses, full fat dairy, you can afford to use the beef.

I got quite squishy and was very alarmed, lol. But in the end, I ended up with very little loose skin. I would now desribe my skin as about 1/2 a size too big for me. I now feel firm and toned, I have visible muscle, and you can feel that my body is very fit. But it just has a bit of drapiness over the top of it - probably nothing anyone else would ever notice. It was definitely serious exercise that got rid of the squishiness.

that approach worked for me too and it is beyond me why anyone would want to count calories, obsess over Protein or measure portions or even WORSE (to me, lol) low carb it *shudder*. But I think there's a couple of different reasons why people need and like different approaches. I ate reasonably well before banding - of course I ate too much crap, that's how I got fat and i have a real problem with foods like Cookies, cakes and muffins. But I knew what a healthy diet was, I cooked well for my family and ate a lot of healthy foods. I dont eat things out cans, boxes and the freezer section of the supermarket, and I have the skills to cook from scratch. There are people who have become so consumed by the disease of obesity that they dont even know where to start to eat healthy. They need a "program". On the other hand, I was able to trust that if I "ate what I wanted", a good proportion of time that would be healthy. My only real problem was portion size, but that isnt true for everyone. Then there's people who are just like that. They love routines, they love rules, they love to follow something. My mum is like that. She loves to live on weight Watchers even though she's not the least overweight. It drives me freaking crazy and running straight for the nearest Donut King. Then there's people who just want the magic fix. They need to believe in the latest diet because they have not yet faced the reality that it is THEIR choices that affect their result. They want to follow something and when it doesnt work, they can blame it instead of thinking about their own choices and decisions. the same is true of exercise and our approaches to it. I cant for the life of me understand why you'd need a body bugg and a heart rate monitor, its not that freaking scientific. I reckon if you go out, work hard, sweat a lot and get out of breath, then you're doing great. But some people have a need to know their heart rate and how many calories they've burned. They need to know the sums add up. Nobody's right or wrong, but I certainly got a band to just eat what I want forever more and never diet again. For me, any approach that resembles dieting is dysfunctional and does not lead to a healthy relationship with my body. I would not consider myself "cured" if I were thin but counting calories, logging, adding exercise calories burned the way I do becuase I eat what I want and enjoy exercise and stay thin as as a result. And lately, I dont even care about the scale, have been checking maybe once a month. Major breakthrough!

Its a good lesson to learn, isnt it? I posted in another thread that my 14 year old and 12 year old boys eat about the same, yet my 14 year old is about 180 lb (guessing here), the 12 year old I know is 90lb. If anything, the heavier one eats healthier! My husband's whole side of the family has the metabolism of slugs. they're not particularly fat, but they're small eaters and just sooooooo lazy and inactive. My two boys, the older is the same. He will have a game of basketball, come to circuit class within me but when he's not being deliberately active, he's completely inactive. Whereas the 12 year old is typical - never sits down, always riding, scootering, kickign a ball, runnning around. Just so different, but inherently, not on purpose. We are what we are I guess and we have to learn to live with it and manage it. I dont know how I'm not as thin as a stick eating 1800 calories a day but burning what I do. I run, do bootcamp, circuit training and eat a lot less than most other people I know, and yes I"m "normal" thin, but it surprises me how I'm not super skinny when I compare to others. I think there really are reasons why some people become obese and some dont.