MacMadame

I've got pix in my blog, but I'm not at goal so my story is not yet written. :cursing:

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I post on OH too because I ended up not getting a band and I need to check in with my sleeve "peeps" but I love it here so much that I won't go away. :cursing: I hope you enjoy LBT too. Definitely the software is easier to navigate!

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I don't know how tall you are, but I'm about 5'1" and I was SHOCKED to find that some insurances didn't consider me "fat enough" for "long enough" to qualify for surgery. Anything over 200 is just way too much weight for me, no matter what that stupid BMI chart says! Anyway, it ended up that my insurance company had an exclusion, so I had to pay myself no matter what so I didn't have to do the BMI Dance after all.

A good rule of thumb is that the surgeon has done 250 or more of your procedure. There have been some studies showing that it takes that long to get proficient in bariatrics. Now, there are exceptions.... some surgeons are just brilliant and so you might want to take a chance on them. But in general you want experience.

Finding people can be hard on both of them, IMO, but MySpace drives me mad so I never go to it.

The logical side of me agrees with the rest of the world who sets the bar at a BMI of 30. :cursing: I mean if we are going to say that a BMI of 30 is obese and obese is unhealthy and that diets don't work for the obese, the same way they don't work for the morbidly obese, then how can we logical deny these people WLS? Either 30 is obese or it isn't.

He hasn't been for a year and a half. But I think I'm on his bad side now. Great.

I'm the pretentious intellectual. :cursing: Oh and I love this board so much, that I stayed even after I decided not to get a band!

I was probably indiscrete enough just sharing that. But it felt good getting it off my chest.

47 min, treadmill, ran most of it. 3.39 miles

There are a couple of bypassers in the "Other surgery section" but a lot of them had a band first. There are tons of WLS sites where bypassers rule though. :biggrin: ObesityHelp.com mentioned above is one and Living After Weight Loss Surgery is another. Here's our section: Other Weight Loss Surgeries including VBG, RNY, DS + - Lap Band Surgery and Lap Band Discussion Forum

I'm so excited for you! Now my news... ran for 30 min. today at 4.8 the entire time! Usually I bounce up to 4.8 for a few minutes, but spend most of the run between 4.7 and 4.6. I need to run for 30 min. two more times and then I can say I'm done with the program.

Oh and I forgot to say.... remember when I said that you'd never catch me running, Jachut? :biggrin:

I enter in the recipes into The Daily Plate as meals and then adjust the portion size to be how much of what I made I ate. Like tonight I made "Mexican Egg Bites" and I put in all the ingredients and, since I ate 2 out of 24, put in .08 for the serving. It works really well for me. For an iPhone app to help with exercise, I have RunTracker. They are giving away a free version (or were when I downloaded it). It keeps track of my time, distance, pace, etc. and plots out my route on a map. I use it for cycling mostly since I run on a treadmill or a track more than on the street. It has some glitches, but it was FREE! :biggrin:

These are good questions to ask again in the Pre-Op forum. One thing I would caution you about is taste-testing Protein powders. I have so many friends who found a powder they loved pre-op, bought a ton of it, and then couldn't *stand* it post-op. Our tastes change for some reason, at least temporarily. My other advice is to bring chapstick to the hospital! But not much else. You'll be in and out pretty fast, most likely.

I'm a very outgoing person and I'm old enough that guys wouldn't hitting on me too much. So I didn't really expect a big difference in how I was treated once I lost most of my weight. Man, was I wrong! People smile at me for no reason now, instead of me forcing them to make eye-contact and smile. People open doors more. People apologize when they bump into me instead of giving me the stink eye (even when it's my fault). No one is hitting on me though. So that part hasn't changed. :biggrin:

Welcome to LapBandTalk! This is a great place to learn about the lapband -- about what it's really like to live with a band.

That's awesome! I found out yesterday that my boss is a back-stabbing jerk.

My opinion is: listen to everything Jachut said. I never do stairmaster because when I watch others doing it, they always have horrible form and I wonder if they are possibly hurting themselves. In the gym, I do stationary bike and treadmill. I love to bike and I need to run. Eventually I'll add weights, but right now I'm doing Pilates, which I like better.

I did my first coached swim. I learned that when I breathe, I lift my head. This makes me sink in the Water. Interestingly enough, when I was MO, I never sank. Anyway, it lasted about 1 hour 15 min. give or take.

Hi back!

It's always fun to do things with a partner. I tried to convince dh to get surgery, but he wasn't biting.

Good luck! If you need some questions to ask, I used WASaBubbleButt's "How to research Mexican Surgeons" article to work up a questionnaire. It's good some good questions on it.

There are also some skeptics about it. I think they drive my surgeon a little crazy, to be honest. But that's bound to happen with any new surgery. When I read articles and published papers about it, I'd say most are positive with a between the lines feelings of excitement. They say things like it "may' replace bypass as the surgery of choice. And maybe 10-20% are skeptical. One of the cons of the procedure is that you have to be willing to take a chance on something that isn't nearly as proven as bypass. I was willing to do it because everything I read about the procedure was sound scientifically, but I totally understand that not everyone feels that way.

Oh shoot, why didn't they just say so. :-D Sometimes medical insurance won't pay for the shrink visit. But my company's EAP paid for it. Be sure to check that out. I was given a list of possible people to go to and I picked the one on our EAP plan.