MacMadame

With really young kids, their concept of time is not like ours and I think it's best to wait until right before the surgery and then keep it really simple. My kids are 9 and 16 and the 16 year old doesn't really care about anything but his own life right now, but is supportive -- he's attitude is that if I want it, then he should want it for me. My 9 year old did freak out a bit about it. She said I'm not fat (ha!) and I think she's just afraid of change. So we went through the Before and After pictures on this site and that was reassuring to her. She could see that I wasn't going to turn into Twiggie or not look anything like myself. The big convincer for her was when I said I needed the operation to make sure I was around for a long time.

But calling someone a dumb ass is also against the rules.... which is probably why you haven't seen people be that harsh. :cry_smile:

"Plenty of water" isn't "exactly 64 oz". Everyone's water needs are different and they vary throughout the day and the week. The idea that everyone needs to drink 8 - 8 oz glasses of water a day -- and that it MUST be water, other liquids don't count -- is just crazy. Personally, I feel good with about 40-50 oz. of Fluid. Any more than that and I'm peeing every 2 seconds and feel kind of bloated and my stomach gets that "Thanksgiving" feeling where you know you put too much in it.

As long as we're bitching... a new pet peeve -- people who have fallen for the "you must drink 64 oz. of water" myth. :party: It bugs because there is no study that supports the recommendation and several that show that everyone's water needs are different and that many don't need that much.

And (some) atheists take insults that are specifically directed towards atheists personally because they are emotionally invested in the topic. See the nice parallelism there. :party: It's what they call white people. It's supposed to just be "slang" and not a racial slur, but they only used it when the white person in question had something "lessor" about them. So really it mean "silly/nerdy/weird/stupid white person". Hence why it annoyed me. Not that it has anything to do with atheism... but it does speak to intent and I think that relates to what we are discussing now. Which is how we are discussing the topic... how meta. :smile: My approach here, by the way, is that this is the Rants and Raves section and not a support section. Therefore, I don't have to spend hours crafting my messages so that they say exactly what I mean and don't accidentally offend anyone. If people can't take it, they can get out of the kitchen. No one needs this section of the site to help them with their bands. That's not to say that I would deliberately be a bitch about my POV, but it does mean that I might not temper my sarcasm. It depends on what you think God is. You are presenting him like a Being and some people believe that. Others think he's just a Force -- like Gravity -- in which case all the Omnipotent and All-Knowing stuff goes out the window and prayer is just about manipulating the force.

I also doubt you have a basis to sue. But I think the woman needs some sort of disciplinary action at work. Someone who would do that really shouldn't be working in a doctor's office. Not to mention, if she did it to you, she's probably done it to others.

My experiences in the past with losing weight when co-workers know you are doing something have lead me to not tell them about this. It isn't that they weren't supportive. It's that they were in my business when I didn't need them to be. Like if I was in the kitchen having a snack, they'd say "should you be eating that?" And they were asking me how much weight I'd lost all the time to the point where it got annoying. Then when I got near my goal weight, I started to get the "now don't lose too much weight" comments. It was FREAKING ANNOYING after a while. This time, I'm not going to talk about it so much and hopefully that cause people to keep all their comments to themselves.

Why are those the only two choices? You are really overinterpreting what I said. There is nothing in what I said that can be boiled down into "the day I grew up, I stopped believing in God". I describe a gradual process with a series of revelations that cummulated in not believing. What age I was when each happens isn't relevant -- though if it makes you feel better, I still believed in God when I was 25. :thumbup: Also, you need to stop interpreting everything said about not believing in God as being a slam on Christianity. Marx said "religion is the opiate of the masses". Is that a slam against Christianity? No, it's a slam against all religions.

My band is called The MacMadames. Oh wait, we aren't talking about playing Rock Band? :thumbup:

But she didn't dis all Christians. She dissed people who believe that Adam lived at the time of the dinosaurs. So, really, she only dissed you. I don't know about her, but I do not respect anyone who can't reason logically and who believes things that are clearly contradicted by reason and science. It really doesn't matter what religion they have or if they have any at all. I don't think ignorance is worthy of respect. I don't think willful blindness to reality is worthy of respect. It requires a combination of those things to believe in a Young Earth. Hence, that belief is not worthy of respect. Note that I didn't say that believing in God wasn't worthy of respect. It's possible to believe in God and still be a rational person who understands science and accepts it. Of course, those with faulty reasoning and/or willful blindness may have other areas of their lives where I might be able to respect them. Maybe they are good parents or really good at their hobbies. Maybe they have done a fantastic job of being banded. But we aren't talking about those things right now. How can you continue to insist that you feel the insults more personally because you are a Christian when people are telling you that they feel them deeply too? You are telling other people what they feel. That is incredibly rude. Your thoughts on this particular subject remind me of a conversation I had when I lived in Hawaii and so was a minority. Japanese Woman: You don't mind being called Haole, do you? Me: Actually I do. Japanese Woman: Oh no, you don't. We don't mean anything by it. You can't mind. This is what you are doing... we couldn't possibly feel it more than you because your beliefs are more important is pretty much what you are saying. But how dare we say we don't think your beliefs are logical. That's insulting! Of course, everyone has faith. Every belief system requires a leap of faith at the beginning, an acceptance of a certain premise that can't be proven. You can't prove that the world will always obey the laws of physics that we have worked out, just like you can't prove there is a God. Whether or not the belief system is logical depends on whether or not those things that are the first premise are things that we know not to be true and/or whether or not the premises and conclusions that follow afterwards are logical. But that first premise -- in my case that the world obeys certain natural laws and always will -- is always something that can't be proven. I do actually think you are taking things said in this thread more personally than some. But it has nothing to do with being a Christian because some of the people you are taking it more personally than are Christians. This has nothing to do with people insulting your God either. I've seen atheist do the exact same thing -- take things personally. It's just your own personal style. You need to own it instead of trying to claim it's somehow more justified than when non-Christians do it.

It depends on your insurance. Some just want you to have been "overweight" for 5 years. Some want you to have been "obese" for 5 years. Some want you to be "morbidly obese" for 5 years (which I think is ridiculous). Of course, some only require 2 years or no years of history, but it sounds like yours isn't one of those.

Bless your heart.

When I was younger, I was full of wonder and a lot of the world seemed magical. Surely that couldn't have happened without a creator?! But as I grew up, I began to learn more about how the world works and realized that I was just being naive. My wonder came from lack of knowledge. Which is not to say I don't have wonder any more, but it's a different kind and not one that leads me to "feel" the presence of a Higher Power. Then I decided that even if there is a God, you have to do good for goodness sake and not because you want to please him or because you fear him. Also, whether is a God or not, I see no convincing evidence that there is an afterlife. I think when you die, you die. Once I realized it didn't matter if there was a God or not because believing had no impact on my behavior, I began to see the world more clearly and realize that the very idea of a Creator is flawed. It was all based on feelings and not on logic. If you can't get a system without a creator, then you can't have a Creator without a Creator. There can be final Creator --it's like looking at yourself in a mirror with a mirror behind you -- each mirror reflects the image in the mirror into infinity. All people's beliefs define their lives. How could a person's beliefs not define them? For many people, insulting their beliefs is saying they are stupid. Calling people stupid is an insult and it's not an impersonal one. Hence, they take that personally. To me this whole "when you insult Christianity you insult my very core but when I insult atheism, it's no big deal because it's not personal" discussion reminds me of the previous "you can't be moral because you don't believe in God" discussion. It's equally annoying and misguided.

If you can switch from one group plan to another, that is awesome. Group plans can't deny you (with certain limited exceptions). I thought you were talking about buying private insurance. That's a whole 'nother ball of wax! UHC does not require 5 years of morbid obesity according to their Bariatric Surgery Medical Bulletin. Have you considered an appeal?

I know change is possible because I used to believe in God... then I grew up. :tongue2:

Speaking of things that doctors do that annoy me when I read about it here.... What is the deal suddenly with all these people whose doctors tell them to eat solid food as soon as possible? When I was in my intensive research phase, I constantly saw recommendations that would have you at the mushy stage at the 4-6 week period. Not one of the doctors who made my short list recommends doing it any fast. But now I see all these posts where people are completely skipping the mushy phase and are on solid food as early as the 1st week and it's their doctor's recommendation! Did some new research I'm not aware of come out saying that eating food early doesn't cause slippage or erosion or are these doctors just pandering and selling their clients up the river when it comes to the long-term life of the band?

Not from what I've read. With humans you have both the issue of consent -- which is why when adults have sex with children it's always called rape even if the adult gets the child to say yes and there isn't physical force. You don't get that with animals. Plus there is the purpose of the behavior. Fighting with another dog over who is going to be alpha dog is a lot different than raping a woman to get a cheap thrill. Or if it's a male animal and they are going after a female in heat, the purpose really is to procreate. I don't know any human rapists who do it in order to get a baby. So first of all, many types of animals are pack animals and they have a wide spectrum of behavior. You've got the dog/wolf packs, the prides of lions, the schools of fish and the whatever of whales or dolphins. Yes, they are all traveling in packs and there is some similarity, but there are often way more differences. Humans share more DNA with chimpanzese so if you are going to compare them to a pack animal, that would make more sense than to dogs. Second, animals aren't going around raping and killing each other all the time. Most of the time this is considered very aberrant behavior and very rare. The most common killing of the same species is about who gets to be Alpha animal in the pack. The young'uns challenge the alpha periodically and when the pack leader gets old and feeble, one of the stronger young ones kills him. This is actually good for the pack in the long run. There is stability as long as the leader is strong and when he's not, he gets killed and the pack isn't handicapped by him. Another type of intra-species killing is when one pack goes after another. Sometimes this is about survival but sometimes it's maladaptive behavior that really does hurt the species. But Darwin-ism doesn't say that all animals always act in order to preserve either their own life or their species. It say that behavior that helps with survival is rewarded and behavior that doesn't help get punished so that bad behavior is less likely to happen (the individual or species doesn't survive) and good behavior is more likely to happen (the individual or species procreates and makes more of the fitter version). I think you've proven you are overly sensitive. There is no way that telling people they are an idiot is not personal and many people take it personally when you ridicule their beliefs. To convince yourself that somehow it's worse when people ridicule your beliefs than other's beliefs is being too sensitive by definition no matter how you try to rationalize it.

And atheism. I don't think it's clear that what animals do would fit the human definition of rape. Because we aren't dogs? :smile2: Why would we do things that help dogs survive if we aren't dogs and they don't help us survive? I guess I don't get this question.

I didn't answer the child rape and killing question because I thought was boring.... But I'll have a go. Killing is sometimes wrong and sometimes not depending on the circumstances. If you believe in self-defense, euthensia or eat meat, you agree with me. :smile2: Therefore, I can not answer why "killing is wrong" because the answer would takes hours of typing. Child rape is wrong for at least one reason -- because rape is wrong. Rape is wrong because it is violence for violence's sake. It's not violence that benefits the species. In the system we call life, one human being is not valued over another so one person's will should not be allowed to overcome another person's without their consent. Now, I know the next question will be "how do you know this?" This is how I know it: The universe is a system. (In fact, it's a system of systems.) All systems have algorithms which you may call rules or laws if you prefer. These rules govern the behavior of objects within the system. That includes human beings and it includes all our behavior, not just the physical -- such as taking in 3500 calories less than you expend will cause you to lose a pound -- but also how we treat each other. The way I see it, the main difference between an atheist and a theist is that a theist believes this system was constructed by something/someone, the Creator. If that is true, then the Creator designed the Rules Engine. An antheist, OTOH, doesn't believe the system has a Creator. But that doesn't mean the system doesn't have a Rules Engine. All systems have them.

Yes, he was: Hitler's religious beliefs and fanaticism

I think, unfortunately, the images of fat people in movies are more accurate than we realize. For example, the fat people always have bits of food on them when they eat and they gobble down their food. I would tell myself "fat people don't eat like that!" Except I do gobble down my food. Plus I always end up with crumbs on my chest and I carry around stain wipes because inevitably I end up with a dab of food on my shirt. So the pictures in the movies aren't 100% accurate -- they are an exaggeration for effect -- but it's an exaggeration of something you see in real life but we don't always notice about ourselves.

I tried to get private insurance 3 years ago when I got laid off and I was denied for being overweight. So was my husband even though his BMI is below 40 so he's only obese, not morbidly obese. It's going to be very hard to find private insurance that will take you, let alone pay for WLS.

There are really very few dietary restrictions. Some people want to be tight enough that they can't eat certain things but some people choose to be looser and can eat everything they ate before, just in smaller portions. That's the great thing about the band, it's adjustable so you can make your own choices about how you want to handle life as a banded person. So then ... he lied? Because studies show that bypass patients lose more weight at first but at the 3 year point, they have no more weight loss than banded patients on average. If his patients are doing better with bypass than with the band on average, I would blame his program, not the band.

You said Hitler. Therefore, I am calling in Godwin's Law ... which is that the first person to bring in Hitler loses the argument. :thumbup: Of course, I never made an argument for moral relativism. You are deciding what I think again and then explaining why what you've decided I believe is wrong. It's very hard to have a discussion when people do that. Anyway, it's fairly clear that everyone thinks that a) things have worth and most people (all?) think that :eek: not everything has equal worth. If you didn't think that not everything has equal worth, you would be a fruititarian, for example. (A fruititarian is someone who only eats the by-products of plants so that the actual plants don't die -- so only fruits and nuts.) I'm suspecting you aren't a fruititarian. In fact, I am guessing you eat meat. So apparently your life is worth more than a cow's in your moral code. Or, if you don't eat meat, more than a carrot's. As I said... everyone assigns relative worth to the things around them. What isn't clear is what the relative value of each thing is. Some people believe humans have more worth than some other things because God made them in his image. Other people might think that humans are worth the most because they are at the top of the food chain. I.e., they've earned their place. Still others don't think humans are worth the most. We don't really know which of these views is right and we can't really know. We make educated guesses based on our collective understanding of the world at the time. That understanding changes. So at one time we thought slavery was okay because slaves weren't worth as much as free people. Now we don't think that. That doesn't mean there isn't an absolute truth. It just means our understanding of it is relative. There doesn't have to be a God for there to be absolute truth. I know that 2+2 always equals 4, for example. This is an absolute truth. I believe there are other absolute truths, such as why you should do good or how much people are worth relative to animals, but we aren't capable of knowing them absolutely at this time (and maybe never). Let's put it this way, in the slavery example, we changed our mind about the relative value of certain groups of people compared to each other. But the truth didn't change. The relative value of people is what it is and whether we have a good understanding or a poor understanding of that doesn't change it. Just like if someone believes that 2+2=5 and manages to convince everyone else in the universe that this is true so that it even gets taught that way to school children, it doesn't make it true. I see in addition to not understanding my point of view, you don't understand Darwinism, either. But again, I never said there wasn't an objective truth. It isn't really. Darwinism is about survival of the species, not the individual. Altruism helps the species survive even though sometimes it's at the expense of the individual. Wow, what a lot of assumptions that don't logically follow. You are assuming that material wealth and comfort is the natural pick and that "toiling in anonymity" is foreign and so we need God to tell us to do that. I don't make that assumption at all. It seems to me that you think people are innately selfish (original sin?) and they need a Higher Power to force them to be good. I don't think people are innately selfish at all. I think they are programmed to be good, in fact. The reason they do bad things is that their programming gets screwed up.

You don't understand it at all. Or you wouldn't keep telling me that I must believe things that don't logically follow, even from your flawed premises of what you think I must believe. First of all, you seem to think only your God makes people have worth. I believe they have worth just because all things have worth. They don't have to be created by some supreme being to have worth. Secondly, you seem to think that altruism must come from believing in God as well. I actually took a class on altruism in college, back when I was a religion major, and studied the psychology of it. It appears that human beings are programmed to be altruistic. When they act that way, chemicals are released that make them feel good, among other things. They can be trained out of it, but the basic instinct is there and is often acted upon. If you believe that God created human beings, then He had to have done that. Therefore, God created a species that can't act selflessly because they are being altruistic because it's programmed into them and they get an inherent reward. At least, that is your logic -- that it's not true altruism because it's not selfless. I don't buy that, myself. I have seen people make great personal sacrifices to do the right thing and I don't think you can wave away that sacrifice just because it comes with some endorphins.