TheGh0st

Don't be so hard on yourself. You are losing OVER 1/2 pound per day! I'm not sure how that could warrant the need to "start doing better". You should be proud of what you have accomplished in so short a time. Even more so as you have not yet had your first fill. Many people find until they have had several fills they are losing weight almost solely on "will-power" as opposed to with the assistance of "band-power". Either way I repeat you should be proud of your weightloss to date. Congratulations:clap2:

Great Job Nume. It is so good to watch people like yourself who have been active and posting since before they were banded succeeding on this band-journey. I am so happy for how much you have accomplished in such a short time. Am I allowed to be jealous? No? OK, how about inspired to get my own head back into the game?

I believe that being able to pull your pants down without undoing them constitues absolutely necessary . Go, Shop, Enjoy! I can't begin to tell you how much more fun it is to shop for clothes when you are losing weight instead of gaining.

Sorry no advice as I live in the US now but still wanted to wish you all the luck.

Try to keep in mind this phase is not really a "DIET" as much as it is a necessary evil to help give your body the best opportunity to recover smoothly from surgery. This might not help much but it did help me a little. It was always so easy to cheat on myself when it was just pounds but when I reminded myself that this was for my recovery it made it just slightly more bearable. You are already half way thru the clear liquid stage. YOU CAN DO THIS!! You won't believe just how good mushies taste after 2 weeks of liquids. Is your doc allowing Jello or sugar free (SF) popsicles on the clear liquid phase? If the doc is allowing jello there are a variety of things you can do with it to change things up a bit. One is to run it thru a blender after it has started to get thick but is not yet set. Gives it more of a mousse like texture.

Amazing!! They are going to be SO SWEET once youv'e healed up. Do I see a little black dress in the future?

FSC YOU'RE BACK!!! WOOH HOO! Give us an update. How are you doing? Life treating you OK? My stats are very similar to yours. 5'2" 170ish. I'm only 7 weeks out from PS and thinking that once the swelling goes down I'm going to call whatever my weight then is goal. I'm curious despite your stats I think you look 10 times better than me and still dream of looking as good as you some day. Don't know if it is all in my head and others would say I'm closer to that reality or what. But my question is, are you happy with how you are looking and satisfied with this being goal for you? Or is your mind playing tricks on you as well?

Amazing! I am so HAPPY For you! Those drains were a real pain coming out for me on my TT but at least it is over quickly. (Small comfort I know) How long will you have to wear the compression garments? And when will we be seing some unwrapped pics?

Congratulations Mimin I'm so excited for you. I can't wait to see your after pics.

ousooner started a thread recently on the beginning of his PS journey. It's called "Next step in finding the real me"

Breathe Karey, Breathe :girl_hug: Isn't it crazy? I think I was more nervous about the PS than the band as well. (OK I'm assuming you're more nervous/anxious/excited about the PS from the tone of your message) It's like it was finally hitting me this might really be it. The big IT! Where I'm finally someone society would call "Normal". It is SCARY, my brain just hadn't caught up with that idea pre-PS (heck, even now I keep staring at myself in the mirror trying to size myself up) I was and still am to a lesser degree trying to wrap my head around the whole idea that this weight loss can be permanent and that some proverbial piano isn't going to come crashing down on my head (slippage, personal stupidity, etc..) causing me to gain it all back. OK down to your questions. Am I happy I did it before I got to my goal weight. Heck yes! I know there are people out there who say you shouldn't do it until you reach your goal. But I trusted my doc when he said that looking at my skin and distribution of fat that after the surgery I would be able to lose another 30+ pounds if I chose to without it negatively affecting the appearance of the tummy tuck. My arms & legs that weren't operated yet will be a different story I'm sure but it was the tummy tuck I really wanted now to look more like the size 10 without the clothes that I was with them on. I'm no longer in any kind of pain or discomfort, if you don't count my love/hate relationship with the Spanx binder they want me to wear 24 hours a day for the next 2 months. The swelling is still there. In fact I should probably call the doc on Monday but am one of those people that aren't always good about calling. My stomach isn't swollen much and I don't see any seromas (Fluid pockets) but a few years ago when I had my son I developed pitting edema in my legs. If you don't know what that is, it is swelling in the lower legs that when you press on it your legs look like they are made of memory foam as the dent just stays there for 10-15 minutes. My pitting edema didn't go away until I had lost around 50 pounds post band. But after my PS it has come back though not as bad. Some days I haven't noticed it but other days I can make 1/2-3/4" dents in my legs. I've been cleared for full activities and would say my energy levels are back to 90 if not 100%, but my legs swelling are probably a sign I'm doing too much.

Billie is back - That is GREAT News! I will have to try to get in to say hi before the holidays.

I don't know who's going to win. And I tell you even though I realize it is all just a game I just hope that it isn't Neil. I'd love to see one of the girls win.

Don't know about anyone elses but I went back and checked my notes. My arms were 17" the night before I got the band. Then 15-1/2" when I started the massage efforts. The left arm got down to 12-3/4". I apologize but I guess I over-exagerated when I said I had lost 3-4" just from the massaging, it was more like 2-3". I wrote that without looking at my notes. Still if you think about it thats pretty impressive. 2 years and 90 pounds down, my arms had only lost 1-1/2" then within a month of rubbing my arms they lost another 2+". I've heard that your skin can take up to a year to "shrink" as much as it might after weight loss so the rubbing may not have given me any improvements I wouldn't have eventually gotten to with patience. But then again I'm not very patient. Change of subject. I have to give a shout out to Holly if she is reading this. I just got my hair cut by her last night for the first time. I heard of her through a contact at work who knew we both had been banded. I have never had so much fun getting a hair cut! We chatted, drank wine, exchanged band stories and compared stomachs. Oh and my hair is also pretty darn cute if I do say so myself. I'll have to post an updated avatar as soon as I can get a pic. If any of you other KC gals are reading this out there I HIGHLY recommend her. I hate my arms but honestly they could be much worse even without the rubbing. So unless I win the lottery I highly doubt I will ever seriously consider having P.S. on them. But it is fun to dream.

You go girl! Never stop Raving!!!

I got the idea from a show on TV as well. It was called "Ten Years Younger" Not the weekly 1/2 or maybe 1 hour series but a 10-week mini-documentary that followed the journey of a group of people in Miami Florida trying to look 10-years younger. One of the women had some thin, loose skin albiet nothing like mine on her stomach. After 8 weeks of aggressive massages the stomach looked completely flat. They didn't explain how frequently or how long the massage sessions lasted only that it spanned 8 weeks and was intense enough to almost be painful at times. I still thought it looked a bit too good to be true so I only did one arm to start hoping to make it easier to see a difference. within a month the arm I was working was 3-4" smaller than the other arm. I say that shows some effectiveness. The next question I have which I have no answer for is do I need to keep this up now for the rest of my life to maintain the tone? or now that I've regained some tone is it here to stay?

Hey Angela or anyone else know where Billie is now? I was thinking of sending her a Christmas card. I really mis her.

I hope you are in bed by now and trying to get at least a couple hours sleep before your surgery. I'll be saying a prayer for you. Bring us updates as soon as your up to it.

Good Grief Steph that's terrible! Keep an eye on her. (as if you aren't already) The last job I was at where I was the only female before they hired a second. Within 6 months of her being hired she had successfully worked her way into the owner's trousers and me out of my job. Supposedly she had convinced the owner that my position was redundant and no longer needed but low and behold within 2 weeks of my being "laid off" she convinced him she made a mistake and he hired her daughter.

Good Luck on your consult. Ask Questions, Questions, Questions like Julie says. Good Luck on your arms. Can't wait to hear how it goes.

Me too!! I'm currently working as a bookkeeper for a construction equipment business with 7 guys, but they are bringing on a female salesperson starting the first of the year and all I can think about is how I wish they hadn't hired a woman. I'm totally freaked that she is going to try to walk all over me and treat me like someone "beneath" her that she can order and push around. What's wrong with us? We should be able to stick together and support each other but it has only worked that way for me in a workplace setting once in 20 years.

PB - "Productive Burp" No worries I think it took me nearly a year to figure out what the initials actually stood for even though I had figured out the gist of what it was referring to.

Amen Sister - There has been WAY!!!! Too much of that going around here lately, wether it be by newbies, oldies, tweenies, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Both in and out of the Rants and Rave area which this isn't by the way despite the tone of many of the posts. And NO I am NOT being passive aggressive by not listing the names of those who are behaving more like this is RNR than the Feedback & Suggestions forum, I am only being too lazy to look for and list everyone (including myself after this post) but if anyone chooses to claim that I am I promise I will start screaming so loud my co-workers will be thinking its time for the nice little white men to visit me. Good grief the people making the passive aggressive accusations frequently come off looking even more passive aggressive than the person who they are responding to. I can't wait for the holidays to get over and for the members of this board to start behaving a bit better. ARGHHHHHH!!!!!

Argot - My heart and prayers go out to you as well. I wish I had some wonderful words of wisdom for you but alas I do not. Still I wanted to thankyou for sharing what you are going through with us and applaud you sticking by your wife these past 25+ years. I can't presume to know what you or your wife are going through but I also suffer from some issues of abandonment and know it is hard on my husband at times. I feel my case is fairly mild and has definitely improved over the last two years since I was banded. (Not necessarily because I lost weight but because of the other changes that have occured during this weight loss proceess). The fears I battle have caused me to second guess and misinterpret even some of the most innocent comments (or lack thereof) at times and has definitely had an impact on our intimacy in the past. Strange I know, if I'm afraid he will leave me why would I withhold intimacy, but on my bad days it was like I was afraid that by being intimate I would be too exposed to him, allowing him to see the flaws in myself that I see, which would only speed that "inevitable" day when he decided to leave me. I never went so far as to cheat on him after we were married but these same issues lead me to problems with "faithfulness" in my pre-marriage relationships. Again the idea was if this one is only going to leave me too why not start looking for a new one now. I use to joke that my theme song was "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with". Warped I realize now but at the time I couldn't break the pattern. If I were to hazard a guess into her thought process right now it would be something along the lines of "yeah, he's stuck by me, and tells me he loves me, he didn't even leave after I cheated each time BUT that's only because of the kids (if you have any), or because of money issues, or because he hasn't found anything better, or , or , or..." And not one of those or's would be because you really love her, at least in her mind. After all how can she possibly convince herself you are staying because you love her if she doesn't love herself? I know I definitely had that problem. I would think, Sure he says he loves me, he even thinks he loves me, but that's only because he doesn't really know the real me. Once he figures that out he'll be gone for sure. And like you said your losing weight would play into that fear that you might leave her if you found something better. And by losing wieght she will think it will be easier for you to find someone else or for them to find you. Again I wish I could tell you how to "fix" her but unfortunately she is really the only one that can do that. You sticking by her though does help more than you realize. After 25 years its hard to say it will get better, but I do think given some time for her to get use the new "banded" you things will hopefully calm back down to a new norm if not a better one.

I should also ask is it coming back up because you get nauseous (sp?) or because you feel too tight in the band? If it is the tightness then try the warm fluids and call your doc to explain what is happening. If it nausea than you should still call your doc but also ask him about getting you a prescription called in to help with the nausea. My doc gave me a prescription for a tablet that dissolved almost instantly in your mouth. It was much better than trying to swallow and keep down a tablet when I was already sick.