MacMadame

There is only one challenge left ... maybe we need to start another one. I'm near my goal, but I think I won't lose this week. Sigh.

47 min on treadmill. Spent a lot of it calibrating my new Nike+ and then rest running.

Mine sometimes smells like ammonia. My surgeon says this is a sign I'm not drinking enough fluids. I think the sweat smell might be related to being in ketosis though.

I decided to run again today even though I ran yesterday. I had to miss my swim workout for my support meeting. But then the scheduled topic didn't happen so I was annoyed. I'd rather swim!

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Even if you don't feel hungry, you may still need a fill. What does your surgeon say?

MacBoy is so conservative. He won't even drink wine at Thanksgiving when I say it's okay.

I agree completely! At this point, I don't care what the scale says. I want to be a real size 8 or maybe even a size 6 and to have 22% body fat (or lower). If I never lose another pounds again but I lose the body fat and go to a smaller size, then I'll be happy.

If you eat 1 oz of Protein at breakfast, 2 at lunch, and 3 at dinner, and each oz has around 7 g of protein (which is a typical average), then you are only eating 42 oz. of protein with your meals. That means you have to eat a lot of protein in your Snacks to catch up. Not only that, but half of your protein is being consumed in the evening when it won't be available to give you energy to support your daily activities instead of consuming protein throughout the day when you need it. If you eat at minimum of 3 oz. of protein at every meal, you'll average around 63 g of protein and it will be evenly spread throughout the day. Even better is to make breakfast or lunch your biggest meal of the day and spread out your protein consumption so that 2/3 of your protein is consumed by about your halfway point in the day.

I have seen no clinical data that supports the idea that the Realize band has slower weight loss. Both bands perform around the same, so it's a matter of personal preference.

I try to do it about half an hour before. Too soon and I am bloated. But I just go by how I feel, not by any expert recommendation.

I ran 4 miles today! There were two rest breaks in there, but still... it took about an hour.

I'm so excited to see you guys so excited about Couch-to-5K! Today we did a trail run instead of a track run. So some hills. The whole thing was 4 miles, with rests, so now I've done 4 miles for the first time. I am hopeful for my tri next month. I wasn't sure I could do 4 miles by then.

Mr. Mac is playing Rock Band. Come out and Play by The Offspring.

Go to Lane Bryant. They think all fat people are Amazons.

Once a month is pretty aggressive, actually. The conservative docs only do it once every 6 weeks.

There is no one cheaper who isn't a butcher. Well, there may be people who aren't butchers who are a hundred or two cheaper or more expensive. But if you see a sleeve being offered for, say, $7000, there is always a catch.

Yes, you do. Anything involving the band, the insurance company makes you pay for. If your complication is more general -- like getting a blood clot, then it's harder for them to deny paying for it. After all, anyone can get a blood clot at any time -- they can't prove 100% it was the surgery that caused it. Some some will pay and some will not for those kinds of complications. The lap-band is touted as being so much less invasive, but I don't agree. It puts scar tissue on your stomach and can cause all sorts of problems which may or may not go away when its taken out. How is that not invasive? If you get permanent scars, that is permanent. I think all WLS is permanent and should be approached that way. If you take out the band, you gain back the weight. So if you want to solve your weight problem permanently, you need to think of this as a permanent solution. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand where you are coming from because I was once there. WLS seemed so scary because I'd heard all these horror stories about RnY. So the lap-band seemed "safe" and, if something went horribly wrong, I could get it taken out. But after being on this site for a while, I realized that all the stuff that goes horribly wrong with the band are caused by the band itself. And that I had to be willing to commit to permanent, if I wanted this to work, whether I got a lap-band or not. Once I was willing to commit to surgery and permanent, losing the part of my stomach that was causing me so much trouble didn't seem quite so extreme as it did when I first started my journey. As for cost, my surgeon charges about 14,000 for the band and 17,000 for the sleeve both including a certain amount of aftercare. But once that time is up, the after-care for the sleeve is just annual labs. After care for the band is forever. To make it work right, you need to get fills when you start to get hungry again and that can happen at any time. So when you add in the cost of fills, the band and sleeve are very comparible in price. The band has a higher risk in the first 3 months after surgery but after that the risks are much less than with a band. New studies have come out showing that anywhere from 25 to 40% of bandsters end up with complications requiring a resurgery -- including removing the band and revising to another surgery -- within 5 to 10 years after it being placed. Those stats were a deal-breaker for me.

http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f5/lapbandtalk-com-moving-89797/index2.html#post1174194 I also just got a 500 server error thread trying to get some threads to come up.

I was using Safari. :lunch: But it just happened right now at work with Windows and IE 6.0

I'm having issues. Pages act like they loaded but when I go to them, they are blank. I refresh and sometimes the page shows up and sometimes it's still blank.

I recommend vitalady.com for ordering samples. You may still like what you like now, but sometimes the surgery changes our tastes at first. I don't know if it's the same for a revision. Maybe WASa can weigh in since she's been there. I just liked having samples around so All "unflavored" does have a taste but some of them are pretty mild and the food you put them in does hide it for the most part. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the same of my favorite so now I can't find it again! I am going through everything I ordered and ordering another sample so I can figure it out.

Yes, I was kidding a little. But I know people who do Centuries and a friend of mine is training for the Death March Something or Other so sometimes I do feel like a biking baby, too.

If your company had a weight loss exclusion, that means they didn't pay for the coverage. There is nothing to fight then. It would be like fighting to get your house fixed after a flood when you didn't buy flood insurance. OTOH, if they do cover WLS but are just saying you aren't eligible, then it's worth fighting.

But I'm already having problems with the new servers.

I went to the gym and did 13.33 miles on the stationary bike. I moved up to Level 11, too.