ElfiePoo

I'm going through carb withdrawal today and as a result have these rather odd thoughts. Has anyone seen the movie 'Christmas Story' where the kid sticks his tongue to the flag pole and starts screaming "Stuck...stuck..."? Well everytime I get 'stuck' that visual pops into my head only it's me yelling "stuck...stuck...?" Ok...off to start dinner. .

Wanna bet? Seriously...I think sometimes we have this spot in our brain that blocks out these memories of pain for awhile (probably the only reason women have more than one child) because we repeat these things until we 'learn'. I've only had restriction for a week and a half, but think I've finally learned to take small bites, chew well and put my fork down between bites and take my time. I've also recently learned that I can't pick up a food and just take a bite off it (like a chili dog or chicken wing) because it's too hard to monitor the size of that bite...resulting in a stuck episode. It's less painful if I just eat the chili dog with a knife and fork and pull the meat off the wings and eat them with a fork.

ROFL...lately you've been providing me with quite a few laughs. .

You are a stronger person than I am. My doctor only made me do each phase of the diet for 2-3 days each and I still thought I was going to die.

It's always nice when our sister makes us feel better. :frown: Mine has a muscle disease called Thompson's Disease (my dad and two brothers have it as well). Basically, her muscles are firing even when at rest so she's building muscle even when she's sleeping. She looks like she works out without lifting a finger. Despite that, she's still my best friend...but that's because she's capable of pounding me into the dirt if she wanted.

Send me your address and I'll send you one for free. I got this bright idea (pre-afghans) to do a cross stitch called "Ugly Duckling". It made me smile. Three cute little ducklings and a frog sitting in a row. I managed to get the eyes in and a few cross stitches before I figured out I was going to go blind before I finished it. Now it sits forlorn without hope of ever being finished. The waste just kills me. .

Congratulations on the 130 lbs lost! That is so awesome! As for the family members...hard to believe they still aren't supportive when it's obvious that this has worked for you but it sounds like your head is in the right place. We don't (or shouldn't be) doing this for anyone's approval. This is about *us* and for *us*. I'm going to print out your list of "RESPONSIBLE's" and tack it to my fridge as a reminder for my own self-accountability. .

A good article but I disagree with his 3 meals a day. Then again, I'm a diabetic and have a difficult time keeping my blood sugar levels from taking a nose dive if I wait too long between meals. My mid-meal mini-meals are always Protein. In the past they were a hard boiled egg, an ounce of hard cheese or something similar. Now I just drink a low carb/low cal Protein shake. It works as well and is training me not to 'eat' between meals while still giving me the protein I need for my blood sugar. The other thing I disagree with is the idea of skipping meals. They've proven that breakfast is the most important meal since it helps to stimulate the metabolism. People who eat breakfast lose weight better than those who don't...or so says the research. Otherwise, he's right on...ok, except for missing the part about the water.

I wouldn't worry about a stretched pouch too much. According to my doc you would have to seriously overeat for a long time in order to stretch the pouch. As someone who took that one bite too much the other day, I can tell you that kind of pain is not something I'm going to repeat often enough to have any kind of worry about a stretched pouch. I was wishing they made a throat plunger because I truly felt 'stopped up'. .I don't know about a slipped band. .

I don't know about that...I'll let you know when I step on the scale on Monday. That 7 lb loss last week may be history. But onward and upward...or is that downward? I've kept myself busy today and am pretty pleased that it's 4:30 p.m. and I'm still on track. I'm going through the whole carb withdrawal thing (massive cravings) big time right now but I can do this. Fortunately, my evenings are spent crocheting a couple of baby afghans and that keeps my hands busy and less tempted to walk them out to the kitchen. It's difficult to eat with a crochet needle in your hand. If you forget which hand is doing what, you could poke your eye out! :frown: .

Even though you're stopping when you're full and making good choices, you're still most likely eating more than you did prior to eating real meals. So it's normal to have a bit of a gain when you go back to eating. Hang in there. Also, just a heads up on watching what 'full' means. Prior to restriction, if I ate until I was 'full', I'd put away enough food for 3 adults. One thing I found helpful in controlling the amount of food I took (since I didn't weigh and measure) was to eat off a small dessert plate. It's pretty hard to overdo it on a 6" plate. .

I keep reminding myself of that. Two car accidents in the space of a week and we walked away from both. The car did not fare so well. .

Thanks, Denise...now...can y'all move closer so we can do this in person? .

I never turn away prayers and I'll put you and your family in mine as well. I'm sorry to hear about your mil. You know, we know we're going to lose our parents (usually) first but it's still hard when it hits us that we will never again be able to pick up that phone or walk across the yard and hear their voice or see their face. .

Jessica, A stall simply means that the amount of calories you're taking in equals the amount of calories you are expending. Assuming you have no medical problems (e.g. hypothyroid), you've either decreased your activity since Dec. 10th...or you are eating more calories. You may not be overeating in terms of 'quantity' but you may be in terms of calories. If you've been working out this entire time, it's possible that you've been building muscle. Muscle is denser than fat so while the scale may not be moving, your body composition is changing and becoming healthier. You should be seeing a drastic change in how your clothes fit and how your body looks. If not, then I'd start writing down what you're eating and journal your activities through the day to find out what you need to change. .

Great post and advice! .

You all are my support group, so bear with me if I 'open up' here every so often. Ever since Thanksgiving, I have been having a serious problem with sweets which, unfortunately, are not the least bit impacted by restriction. I haven't been binging on them, but I have been eating them more than I usually do...and enough to stall my weight loss despite the fact that I'm eating a fraction of the calories I used to. Unfortunately, these 'sweet' calories lead me to more carb cravings which led to OD'ing on carbs at the theater the other day. I've been asking myself what led to this path and I realized that it all started two days before Thanksgiving when a woman ran a stop sign and my 17 year old son plowed headlong into the side of her car. Fortunately, despite the fact that he was only 10 feet from the intersection when she entered it, he was only doing 30 mph so he wasn't hurt but we spent the next week rearranging schedules in order to get everyone where they needed to be. Then on the evening before Thanksgiving Day, my 86 year old father-in-law passed away after a two year battle with leukemia. We still didn't have our car back from the shop but we live a 1/4 mile walk across the field from the in-laws so we were able to get there and back over the next week without problems. Just as life started returning to some sort of routine, on Christmas Eve morning I was hit head on by a drunk driver. Again, thankfully no injuries but same car, different driver. This time the car was totalled. So we spent Christmas week looking for a new car and New Year's Eve signing papers...and looking at another 5 years of car payments when this one was almost paid off. It didn't help that somewhere in there I started my menstrual cycle for the first time in 18 years and was dealing with the usual PMS cravings which only compounded the problem. I think perhaps the sweets were a way of dealing with the stress that I haven't been acknowledging. Eating sweets acts a bit like a sedative on me. My blood sugar goes up and I get a bit brain foggy...less alert...caring less about what is going on around me. I'm not a zombie. I still function, but at a slower speed which means I also don't accomplish as much during the day. The only way I can rid myself of these cravings is to get the carbs out of my system and the only way to do that is to avoid all carbs except those found in low carb green vegies (broccoli, spinach, etc.). So it is a new day and with a renewed frame of mind, I've recommitted myself to working with Hilda (my band). Now, since I definitely am craving carbs and I'm still an hour away from lunch, I think I'll go clean the snow off my car, even though I'm not going anywhere today, and shovel the small walk from the drive to the door. If I can't shut off the cravings, I can freeze 'em out! .

Tori, If you go to User CP at the top of the screen and click it, you'll have some options to edit on the left. One is for your Signature. Click that and then scroll down. All you need to do is cut and paste the tickerfactory's code (I think it's the HTML code) into that space. If you hit preview, it will pull up what it will look like at the top of the screen. If it's just code and not your ticker, then it's the other code (IMG code) that you need. Then save. That's all there is to it.

Exactly! It's still hard work, but the band was the motivation we needed...just as WW or JC is the motivation others needed. That's why I just want to smack people who are stupid enough to tell me I 'took the easy way out' by getting the band. Easy...right. .

Ditto on what btrieger said. Keep in mind that even when you do reach restriction, it is still up to you do follow the rules. In the back of my mind I kept thinking "once I reach restriction, everything will be ok and I'll start losing." Nerk. Even after you have restriction, some foods just slide down well. At one point I was so tight that I could only drink protein shakes for a week, but the cookies went down with no problem (this was between Christmas and New Year's). If you want, you can graze all day. Restriction won't stop that. If you want, you can drink with your meals and help your food slide through. Restriction won't stop that. It is still up to us to follow the rules of the band... Don't drink with meals. Limit meals to 1 cup (or whatever your doctor told you) and don't eat between meals (or eat something high protein mid-meals to keep blood sugar stable -- hard boiled egg, an ounce of cheese, a low carb/low cal protein drink, etc.). Finish your meals in 20-30 minutes and then step away from the plate. Make good food choices...proteins first, then vegies and then carbs if you still have room. Drink 64 oz of water every day. If we do that, we'll lose weight. If we don't, and depending on how much we don't, we will lose slowly or not at all. We can even continue to gain weight. .

Ditto! This post needed an encore! .

Because you found the right tool that works *for you*. Some people will get the band and they won't lose weight...because it was the wrong tool for them. Some people lose on Atkins and keep it off. Some on WW...some on JC...etc. There is no one tool for everyone. We just need to find the one that is right for us...and when we do, the results may seem magical because we're able to work with it and be successful. My aunt thinks WW is her successful tool. She's gone on it and lost over 100 pounds...three times. Some would say it's not a successful tool...but the fault did not lie with the tool. If she had obeyed the rules of the tool, she would have kept the weight off. Same with the band. We have to obey the rules, or a year after we're banded, we won't be any lighter on our feet than we were the day we were banded. By the way, HB, congrats on the weight loss! .

They may 'want' you fully healed but if they have 'light duty' you may want to check with your personnel dept to find out what their written policies are. Check with unemployment as well. My cousin is an RN and went in for some elective surgery and was not allowed back to work until she was fully healed. She was able to collect unemployment for that period because she had no vacation or sick time to use. I don't know exactly what she filed, but I know it was through unemployment...even though she had a job she was going back to after her doctor released her to full duty. One thing I've found in working for companies is they rarely tell you anything that gives the advantage to the employee...unless they have to.

Another thread got me to thinking last night about how people view the band. Their posts seem to indicate (but I could be wrong) that they believe the band does the work...not the person. Just insert and voila! instant willpower and self-control. I have to admit that as much as I researched this band and went into this with eyes wide open, there was still a small part of me that must have looked at this in the same way. I kept waiting for restriction figuring that once I had *it*, all my problems were over and I was on the highway to skinnyville. A little over a week ago I reached restriction and, over the past week, any delusions I may have had about the band doing the work? Well, they're gone. The band is just a tool. If I don't take small bites and chew slowly, I will get stuck. It tells me when I'm 'full' and if I'm stupid enough to take another bite, it will remind me with pain that I'm 'full'. Someone else may choose Jenny Craig as a tool. The meal is already measured and weighed and when they get to the end of that meal, it is their 'reminder' that they are done. Either of us can keep on eating because (yes I was deliberately testing the limits of my band) if I drink Water with my meal, chew well and slowly and take small bites, well I can wash that meal right on through my band and keep eating...if I choose. I already know that Cookies don't care if you have restriction or even if you're so tight you can't eat anything but Protein shakes. I can eat sweets nonstop...if I choose. I can graze all day...if I choose. In other words...the band is just a tool...just like Jenny Craig, WW, a fitness membership or anything else that we find useful in our battle with our weight. Each of us has to find the right tool, but it's still up to us to find the self-control, motivation and will power to use that tool...or tools...properly. As we all know, the band does not work for everyone. You have to want it to work. Kind of reminds me of those diet ads on tv that say if you take this little pill 3 times a day you can lose 5 pounds in a week. Then scrolling across the screen in smaller print it says "when combined with a 1000 calorie diet and exercise". The band should come with that same warning, only in BIG print. "Get a band and you can lose this excess weight...*IF* you follow all of the rules." In other words, use the tool properly or it's just a useless piece of plastic. .

I disagree. I'm sure those in charge of this competition know all about WLS and if it was important to them, it would be in their rules...and it may very well be. The OP should not have to go public about her WLS unless she is comfortable doing so. Remember, we are talking about people who aren't even telling their spouses they're getting the band. Here's the thing...if they didn't exclude WLS patients in their rules, they have no legal grounds for excluding them...and I'm sure their lawyers have considered all angles. Again, the band is not an 'advantage'. If it was we would not be seeing people who only lost 25 pounds over the last year, or who gained back 100 pounds after losing it the year before or who still struggle with making bad food choices or grazing. It is a 'tool'. If the band is an advantage, then belonging to WW, Jenny Craig or Nutrisystems would be an advantage. We each choose the tool that we can work with...but the tool does not do the work for us. I see nothing morally wrong with the OP participating because bottom line is that *she*, not the band, will be doing all the work. .