Wheetsin

Well, let's see. I didn't eat Breakfast. For lunch I got some sushi rolls, about 1.5" across and deep. Average size. I ate part of one about 40 minutes ago and can still feel it there. For dinner last night, I ate about 1/3 of a wrap made from a normal-sized tortilla. That would probably compress down to about a cup. If Im getting something like cottage cheese or tuna, I will grab - probably the equivalent of a baby food jar. So - as you can tell from my example, I don't give a $^#& what volume of food I'm eating. I eat when I'm hungry, and I stop eating when I'm no longer hungry. It's never much food. I think the quanitty thing is a (good) guideline surgeons use to guide those who don't yet have a feel for how much food they need post-op. Once people get to that point, measuring portions seems to go out the window.

I should probably add, I'm around 5'11 and have broad shoulders, wide hips, both of which effect my sizing.

Many bandsters find that bread, above and beyond all else, is nearly impossible for them to get past the stoma. Yes, you can chew it up, but it has a ton of gluten in it, and even well-chewed... heck, especially well-chewed, it's that much more sticky/gummy. If you chew up bread and swallow it, you've basically just swallowed salive that's about the consistency of gummy pudding. That's not very user-friendly when it comes to a very small hole. Human saliva is pretty thick, you jsut don't realize it becaause it's spread out. Imagine (eww) a glass of thick human saliva, with a piece of bread in it. Mash the bread around, and imagine how thick that's going to be. Hence the problems with it.

I'm 235 - 245 now, depending on the day. Tops are between 14/16 and 18/20, have some in either size. I bought a regular misses 1x at Kohl's the other night, and a junior's 2x at Target. Pants are 18 - 20, the occasional 22 if I'm somewhere that they run small. If I'm just going to walk in anywhere and try something on, I will grab a 20 and go up or down from there. Pre-op I was 382 and in a 30/32, which fit most of the time, but not always.

I just found out about their decision to do it this morning, so I hadn't really thought much about their success, ability to change, etc. Do I think they could... I know they both could at first. I think my mother would have the hardest time staying with the program. But maybe once she lost the weight (she's only been short term successful with weightloss one time), that would be enough to motivate her. My feelings aren't (yet) stemming from concern about their success. I'm being much more shallow than that. And I don't as of yet feel any responsibility for their success/failure. I've already told them it's up to each person to make this work. Right know the rift it's purely - I want you to be healthy, but son of a bitch, you gave me so much shit about doing this, and now that I've been successful, you're going to turn around and do it too. The bypass probably would be a better option for my mother, but she won't do it. I've talked to her about it. My father - probably the better band candidate.

Just answered this in a different thread.

There's a HUGE difference between "starvation" and "what's required to maintain a healthy weight." The lap-band limits your portion size, in most cases. Many people at or close to goal find that they're eating portion sizes that maintain their weight. I know MANY bandsters whose "tiny portions" are actual, regular portions... just sooo much less than they mammoth portions they were used to. Keep in mind that obese people require many more calories to maintain their weight than non-obese. Let's take some random person (we'll call her Jane). Jane at 400 lbs takes almost 3,800 calories to maintain her weight -- that's neither losing, nor gaining, but just staying 400 lbs. If she eats more than that she will gain, and if she eats less she will lose. Jane at 150 lbs takes 1800 calories to maintain that weight. Decreasing Jane's intake by 2000 calories is not starving her, it is getting her to a normal intake that will enable weightloss. Most bandsters seem to target around 1000 calories. That is essentially a reduced calorie diet, made available through decreased intake. I'd have to wager that if anyone here could MAINTAIN that, they'd not be here. We could all cut our calories for some period of time, but where are we in a year? 5 years? 10 years? Could I eat like I do now, without the band? No way in hell. I don't have enough willpower, and was too eractive to anything that felt like hunger, and way too ingrained in my bad bheaviors. We absorb/digest everything we eat, that passes through the stoma. Just like anyone else. That's why lap-banders are more accountable for their actions (IMO). If we sit around eating ice cream all day, we metabolize it and will not lose weight. As long as adequate nutrients are going in your mouth, and you're not yakking them back up (not very likely), we get enough nutrients.

For headaches, you cal also try Tylenol's "Rapid Blast". It is extra strength adult Tyleon in liquid form. There is also a liquid Tylenol PM. For sinus headaches, a dose of Rapid Blast followed by a about 1 tsp of liquid Benadryl does wonders!

I have such mixed emotion over this, and I feel bad for that. Need to get this off my chest in a big way, and it's much more rant than logic. On one side, my parents have completely given up with their weight. They were always hefty, but not always obese. Now - especially in the last year or two - they're out of control obese. My mother is pretty much out of all store-bought clothes. We tried to find her something to wear to a wedding in the spring and at Catherine's (sells the largest sizes around here) she was in their largest, 6x, tight. My dad is about 5'10 and in a 52 pant. Neither of them can walk from their car to their house without being completely out of breath. Hell, neither of them can get off the couch without being out of breath, and I don't feel sorry for them, I feel sickened. All they do is sit in reclining furniture and watch TV, eat 5 or 6 plates and 3 or 4 deserts at buffets, and wonder why they're gaining weight because "I don't eat that bad." (as my mother says, while she claims to be eating healthy grilled chicken, which is actually a grilled chicken breast smothered with cheese sauce and sour cream). My mother is the type who doesn't like to own her actions, and is constantly seeking out a medical reason for her obesity (her latest is that she thinks she must have Cushing's, because she has a large pannus) and the next big cure, book, herbal remedy, whatever it may be. *sigh* They don't admit to giving up, but they have, and this is going to be one of the only things that will help them. I KNOW THAT WITH NO DOUBT. I want them to be healthier and live longer, so I am in support of them getting the band. I even made their info night seminar appt, went with them, answered their questions, did their insurance battle for them... just about did everything for them (once they started expressing interest). I want healthy parents. We're going on vacation in Spring and my concerns are 1) they will not fit on the plane and will be humiliated, 2) they will not be able to walk with us and will opt out of some activities rather than face am embarassing compromise like a wheelchair or scooter, 3) they will be disappointed that the trip is not planned around food. When I go on vacation with my parents, those SHOULD NOT be my top worries. I want them to move beyond their weight, and I KNOW that some type of surgical/behavioral/manual intervention is the ONLY way it's going to happen. I want my parents around for a long time. I want them healthy, and able to breathe and fool good about themselves. So in that sense, I WANT them to get banded. Very badly. Their insurance JUST started approving the lap-band. My mother called me today to ask for more help in getting this done. I asked her if she had made up her mind to do it and she said "Yep!" And I was just like... oh. Good for you. I couldn't even pretend happiness. Which is where the flip side comes in. To be completely honest, I love my parents, but they disgust me. Now that I can see their behaviors for what they are, without being immune to them because I'm doing the exact same thing. I hate eating out with them because I can't stand to watch them eat, it repulses me. I can't stand to listen to their excuses for being overweight. I can't stand to hear their pathetic distortions around diet. Huh mom, have you ever tried just cutting back your calories if you REALLY want to diet? No! That's because you aren't looking for a diet, you're looking for a quick fix that requires no committment or determination on your behalf. Surprise, you're not gonna find it. I feel resentful and spiteful. My mother, although she did not vocalize it and did support me in her own way, was very much against me getting banded. It didn't matter, I was doing it anyway, but I did want to have talks with them about how they felt about it. When I first told her I was really thinking about it, her response was, "Oh, so you're giving up? You're not going to even try another diet?" Man, those words stung, because I didn't see it as giving up, I saw it as the most logical solution to my growing problem. Her second remark was, "You know I'm going to be jealous if you go and lose a lot of weight." She was one of those people who would always have some kind of comment about the easy way out, about how it just doesn't seem normal, she just couldn't understand, etc. I lived with that for about a year, until she started seeing the results AND seeing that I was still healthy AND seeing the ways my life was changing. Then things changed with her. She suddenly started talking about "maybe" wanting the band, and "maybe" wanting my dad to have it. Even when I started losing the weight and was offering to hand over TONS of clothes to her, she took them, but had her own sort of anger about it. Like after giving her 12 bags of clothes, I asked if she knew anyone else who could use them and she was like "Uh what about me?" I know she was jealous, but she was sooo judgemental. I'm very much in a situation where I took the full 100% brunt of her jealousy, disgust, resentment, her own hate for herself and her situation, etc... I took it all, head on, in the form of judging me for what I did, and aggressive/passive aggressive reactions to my situation, and I swallowed it like a ball of throns for over a year. And now that she's seen me lose the majority of my weight, and be successful, now all of a sudden she wants to do it too. I fell like - yeah, give me shit about it, and now that I've proven it can work, you want to hop on the bandwagon too. I should see her actions for what they are, and be able to hold my head higher, and I do to some degree. I know/understand what's going on. But I still can't help but feel really freaking ticked off about it. And happy. I'm a bad daughter.

I cannot do pills at all unless I crush them. One of my worst PBs was on something roughly 1/3 - 1/4 the size of a Tylenol. I've tried two other times, all very small pills, and just can't do it. A stuck pill feels just like a stuck anything else. Whether or not it will pass depends on - how quickly it dissolves, and really just the flip of a coin as to whether or not your body can get it through, whether or not Jupiter is aligned with Saturn, and how many dogs are out there living with cats.

Answers in blue. My name is Diane and I am going to be banded on Jan 15, 08 and I have lots of questions. What does feeling restrction mean. Some people say they feel more restriction in the morning than in the afternoon. And some people say the band helps control hunger, but most of us do not eat because of physical hunger, mostly just because food is there. So does it take away appetite? Feeling restriction means that you are getting full on a very small amount of food, that you can feel the pressure of the food sitting above the band, that you find you cannot pass certain foods, etc. + a host of other things people begin to experience when they reach restriction. Restriction itself is the state of having the band physically tightened around the organ walls enough that it is being partially closed off. Some people (me included) lose their appetite, some do not. Most everyone finds that, once they reach their ideal restriction, very small portions fill them up for long periods of time. And then the nutritionist said after the band I will be eating between 500-800 calories a day. So then how can you possibly not loose weight? 500 - 800 is a little low. Most people generically target 1000 - 1200, but really an ideal intake is different for everyone. As long as your range is falling between your BMR and AMR, you should see weightloss. There are periods where you will not, even if you follow the rules. And then she said I will only be able to eat 1-2 ounces at a time. That's not very much. I think most people find that 4 - 6 oz, or about a cup, is where they fall but this is completely different for each person. There's no way I could eat even a half a cup (unless it's hot soup) during the day, but might be able to wing more than a cup at dinner if I'm hungry. So, will I ever be "normal" again. As in can you go out with people socially. Well, I don't think many of us here would consider ourselves ABNORMAL. I think I'm normal (as far as eating, social life, etc.) goes. And do you throw up a lot or have bad pain? When you do something stupid like don't follow the rules, aren't paying attention, or maybe are just having one of those days, it's possible that what you've swallowed will not pass through the stoma. When this happend, usually the food has to come back up. It's not the same as what you're associating with throwing up - there's no stomach acid involved, no partially digested food, etc. It's just whatever got stuck, and maybe what you've swallowed since. Actually when I "PB" qas we tend to call it for some stupid reason, it's usually just really thick saliva, no food. For me, the time leading up to the PB - when my body is trying to clear whatever is stuck, is fairly painful. It's a long time of a noticeable pressure, followed by a relatively short time of some sharp cramping/spasms. The PBs themselves are not that bad, mostly because they mean the pain stops. And then how do you stop loosing weight so you don't end up looking like Star Jones? I don't really know about Star Jones, but I'm going to guess she had bypass or something like that, because bandsters don't lose weight uncontrollably. If you find you're losing too much weight, an unfill could help, but most likely you'd find that your metabloism would adjust to your daily caloric intake and you would reach equilibrium (maintenance). I asked the nutritionist these questions and she said well people eat all day long and stretch out their pouch. Here's a nutritionist who doesn't know what they're talking about. Nutritionists are not band experts, they are nutrition experts (and in some cases, that doesn't even seem to apply). You could eat all day and NEVER stretch your pouch, as long as you weren't eating more than what it could contain without needing to stretch. Does that make sense? Most stretching occurs when you eat more than the pouch can contain, causing it to have to stretch. Overeating, basically. (per my surgeon's info) But how can you do that if you can only eat 1 ounce at a time or you are in pain and throw up? Please help Like I said earlier, I don't know too many people who only eat 1 ounce at a time. Most of us eat until we're no longer hungry. By "us" I mean people who have lived with their bands a while, learned them, and developed their own sense of what they should be doing. If it's an ounce, it's an an ounce. If it's 5 ounces, it's 5 ounces. Being in pain and throwing up isn't something that happens all the time for no reason at all, and it isn't how we lose our weight. It's something that happens when, for whatever reason, something we've ingested cannot pass through the stoma, OR if we've piled too much in too quickly and filled beyond capacity faster than we can empty. I would GUESS that many cases of stretching the pouch (keep in mind we're still talking low rates) happen when it's SLIGHTLY overfilled over longer periods of time.

I lost my appetite about 2 days before surgery (liquid diet), and have never really gotten it back. It's very, very rare that I feel hungry. It's not unusual that I go all day and eat nothing, and come dinner time I'm still not hungry but eat something or have a Protein drink anyway. I'm not alone - a while back I started a thread on this, and more people than I would have anticipated reported the exact same thing.

This is making me want to ask all of the men I know if they think I flirt with them, because I do the same things you're (across the board) describing, and mean absolutely nothing by it. I just consider it being nice, joking around, whatever.

Very normal, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose. For the first few weeks, you can guesstimate that roughly 30 - 50 percent of the weight you lose is fat, while the rest is going to be Fluid. I lost about 30 - 35 lbs in my first week. enjoy it while it lasts, because eventually you're probably going to slow waaay down.

I MAY have access to do this, never had to try before. If you want to PM me with your desired name I can give it a try, and if I can't do it I can post it to the other mods to see if they can.

I don't believe in free will so it's all good.

(Writing this after the fact - wow, I really went on a rave here). We have a corner lot. And we're the first residential intersection coming off of a road that borders open land/wooded area on one side. Kids like to come down that road, turn into the residential area, and "doughnut" in our intersection. Not only does this wake us up very rudely at 3am, but usually the doughnut fails and we end up having deep tire/wheel ruts in the strip between street and sidewalk (which we're responsible for), and on into our yard. I'm going to estimate 6 - 8 times per year we have to go out there and full the ruts with soil & reseed because we're responsible for it if (I can just imagine someone turning their ankle stepping into the rut). And because we like our yard to look nice. We have no topsoil, it's 100% clay under our grass, so it gets VERY soft and squishy when it's wet, and then dries VERY hard. Needless to say, it can be a good bit of work/expense to fix this. Also, for a long time, we've had a large patch of grass that would die almost as soon as it started growing. We've tried fungicides, insecticides, fertilizers - all with the same results. Since taking a job where I can work from home, I've learned that our front yard is the hang out spot for parents and children waiting for the bus. Oh no, they can't be bothered to actually wait on the sidewalk, they loiter in our yard, sit on our retaining wall, etc. And kill our grass. We have landscape edging done with "edge stones" (interlocking bricks that can be angled to form curves) and the kids like to walk that like it's a balance beam, which causes them to shift and we have to re-set them. And we have three trees on the strip between the sidewalk and street, and the trees have edgestone borders around the bases with river rock inside, and they like to take the river rock (which we paid for, hauled, and put in place) and chuck it into the street, or even down the sewer drain. One time I went to run an errand and caught about 4 kids scooping up the river rock and throwing it into the sewer, so I pulled my car over and asked them to please stop doing that. I didn't yell, lose my temper, curse, etc. I just said "Please stop throwing our rocks into the sewer." One of their moms apparently lives 2 houses down because she came running over like I had just cut her kid's head off and asked what was going on. When I told her that we have a problem with kids throwing the rock into the sewer, she loked at me like I had a second head and was like "They're KIDS, what do you expect?" When I said "Enough quality supervision that they can't vandalize my property or my possessions" she just huffed off. No apology, no visible discipline. The last few snows have been very revealing, because they show where, exactly, people walk. And I'll tell you -- I really have to wonder WHY people need to walk the whole length of our street-side within 3 fee4t of our house (not on the sidewalk, but close enough to our house that they could touch it), or why they need to walk up to our windows (we keep blinds drawn on all ground level windows, so there's nothing to see). I'm starting to wish we could just fence in our entire property because people truly have NO respect for others' property -- this goes for children, adults, and everything in between. I have stood at my window and watched people walking their dogs along the sidewalk bordering our property, letting their dogs walk into our yard and take a crap. And then I raise the window, and ask these people, "Please don't let your dog crap in our yard" they say "It doesn't hurt anything" and keep walking, no picking it up or anything. Or more often they say nothing, and just let the dog continue. So then when my husband goes to mow the grass, he ends up tracking dog shit into the garage and I have to go scrub the conrete floor to get rid of it. The neighbors behind us have a cat that roams, and always wants to roam into our yard. We have a fenced yard and a dog that is very protective of his property. He freaks out if there's a strange animal in our yard, and he freaks out when he sees a cat, period. But that's why we have a 4 ft fence and a 13lb dog. This cat wanders into our yard all the time and shits in the grass and pees on my bushes and kills them. We've asked our neighbor countless times to keep his cat out of our yard and he just says "That's what cats do, you need to get over it." This summer the cat was in our yard - we didn't see it and let the dog out (yes, we can't even let our own ddog out into your own fenced-in yard without first checking for the cat), the dog took off after it, crashed into the fence, and we walked away with a $3k bill for the surgery it took to repair his leg. I SWEAR that I'm going to get an animal trap, trap the cat, and take it to a shelter 3 hours away so the neighbor can never reclaim it. When I see the cat in our yard, I will turn the hose on it, but I have to 1) see it, 2) get to the hose before it runs out of the yard. We've tried putting up "keep off the yard please" signs, and little signs that have a picture of a dog pooping with a "no" sign through it... we've tried staking off the problem grass area with wooden stakes and rope so people won't trod there until we can get the grass nicely rooted... but we just come home to find them torn up, or completely disregarded. I have literally driven down the street and seen ADULTS holding their childrens' hands, stepping over the ropes and walking right through the area. In the middle fo our freaking front yard!! For crying out loud people! The sidewalk doesn't go at an angle through our yard, it wraps around the corner. And you're out here walking and exercising, so can't you just take the 20 or so extra steps to actually walk around the corner on the flipping sidewalk? And we live in a "nice" neighborhood full of apparently ill-behaved children and apathetic yuppy parents. Wish I had a good solution for this one, because annually we have to put about $600 and our labor into fixing problems that are a direct result of this loitering.

Diarrhea could be a result of your new diet. Diarrhea could also be that you have diarrhea, and you were banded. There isn't necessarily any correlation. If you normally have stomach noises when you have diarrhea, and you've ever had diarrhea, then it's probably normal.

I'm much the same Green. DH asked me to marry him for about 6 weeks before I clued in to the fact that he wasn't just joking around. Maybe it's an issue of humble roots, I'm not sure. I would never be so presumptuous to assume that someone looking at me = interested, because for one, it's me and for two, I look at people all the time, and don't mean anything by it, so why would they. Not that anyone who makes that assumption is overly vain/isn't humble. I mean - maybe someone looks at me "like that"... how do I know they aren't just thinking about something, and happen to be looking at me? How do I know I'm not misreading? How the hell could I for sure differentiate "like that" from "constipated"?

Wow, it's not typical to receive a fill at surgery, and this is part of why. It's the sole reason my surgeon states for not doing it -- that being, you don't know how much swelling, and restriction from swelling, someone will have post-op -- hence you can't know how much to fill them until the swelling subsides (typically the first fill is around 6 - 8 weeks post-op). DO you have pain all the time, or just when you try to eat/drink? As a general guideline, if you cannot comfotrably get Water down, and have no other way to account for it (e.g. you drank too soon after a meal), you should call and potentialy seek an unfill.

One year our holiday decorations were stolen/vandalized. We had done a "candy house" type of theme. We had cutout and painted plywood gingerbread men and lined the edge of the yard with them. I made some of the regular outdoor lights up to look like strings of candies. We made big "lollipops" and "kisses" and put them in the yard and on the steps. Wrapped our front door to look like a stick of chewing gum, etc. Not that long after we had set everything up we received an "anonymous" note (signed "the neighborhood") telling us how inappropriate our decorations were because they were reminiscent of Hansel & Gretel, and how that was a horrible pagan story, etc. The note essentially demanded that we take down our decrations and either put of Christian ("reason for the season") decorations, or opt out of the holidays and do nothing. We knew the note came from the people directly across the street from us, who were some kind of big-wigs with the local baptist supermegawerehouse church. We ignored the note, and left our decorations up. Then one day someone had broken the heads off of our gingerbread men, torn down our lights and thrown them in the gutter, pulled our lollipops out of the ground and tossed them around our yard, etc. So... we picked up the broken pieces, but left the broken headless gingerbread men out, lining the yard. We didn't take them down until July. For Valentine's Day they got little hearts. In April we dressed them in little yellow slickers and rubber duckies. In June they got swim trunks. In July we painted them red, white and blue. These horrible neighbors decided to sell their house, and tried to put up "for sale" signs on our property, in front of each gingerbread man. I would go out every evening, pull them out of our yard, and place them neatly by their front door. Every morning, they would be back in our yard, so I started pitching them. It must have gotten expensive enough that they have up.

So I'll tell a little story first. A coworker and I went out shopping today at lunch. We were standing there looking at something, and she went a few steps away to look at something else. Peripherally I noticed someone off to the side, and I had the "sense" that this person was starting at me, but without being completely aware of it. Hard to explain. After a few seconds I DID become aware of it, and normally I would ignore it, but what went through my head was "Maybe it's someone who thinks they know you, and they keeping looking at you trying to figure out if it's "you" or not" (at this point I didn't even know if the person was male or female). So I looked up at them to see who it was, and some guy is standing there completely staring at me, and I don't know who it is. I had completely assumed it would be so I was caught off guard and just kind of turned around and went the other way because it creeped me out. I would never, ever in a million years assume that someone looking/staring at me, or even up coming to talk to me, etc. was flirting. I would assume they were just nice, just weird, thought I was someone else, etc. After I had gone the other way my friend found me and was talking about the guy that was "totally checking me out", how he had leaned to watch me as I walked around the corner, etc. And I suddenly realized - wow, she and I have very different ideas of what's flirting, and what isn't. So then I started wondering, are there things I do with NO meaning behind them, that are perceived by others as flirting? So if you want to flirt with someone, what do you do? And likewise, what does someone else do that makes you believe they're flirting?

One year I bought my father (very proud of his alumni status) a brick in his school's new construction wing. I have bought my husband a star. Ridiculous idea, but he's an astronomy/psychics/general science nerd and he loved the idea. This year we are funding a trip for us and both sets of parents for a week including villa, meals, entertainment, etc. We told everyone early on that would be their anniversay/xmas for the year. I also got my mother a 5-yr subscription to her two favorite magazines, and dad got a year's worth of golf cart rentals. That's not so outside the box, but it beats a tie or sweater.

I've never met a bandster who had the same "look" as some of the patients of other WLS types. Losing weight quickly can contribute, but so can things like deficiences, and body reactions.

Nothing is wrong with the situation, and there's no reason to think anything is wrong with you, other than a little impatience. Sounds like what you're experiecing is 100% normal to me.