green

Crispy, it is normal to second guess yourself prior to surgery, especially expensive elective surgery. I had the lapband installed last Sept when I was 57 years old. My recovery time was 3 days in bed and then I was good to go. As for those three days, well, they were kinda relaxing thanks to the meds and having a lot of reading material on hand. I read, I napped, and the cat kept me company. I am now at goal. At my last weigh-in I weighed 147.5 lbs and had a BMI of 23.8. It is true that I was one of the ones with a lower BMI to start with but we are the ones who usually lose more slowly, and older women lose more slowly than younger women do. I found that losing weight with the band to be easy to do. My problem was portion control and the band simply will not allow you to eat a lot of food: it is a physical barrier. At the same time it seems to press against the I'm hungry nerve and so you will not feel hungry after eating your tiny snack. Your only role in this process is to make a point of eating wisely - protein first, then vegies/fruit, followed by your healthy kind of carbs (whole wheat) - and chew, chew, chewing every bite before you swallow. Speaking personally, I am very, very happy with my band. It really has changed my life.

How about 2 tables of 12? We can still get up and mingle with each other.

The band is often at its very tightest first thing in the morning. Slowly sipping a warm drink - tea or coffee - will loosen it up and by dinner time it should be relatively easy to eat your small meal provided that you take small bites and chew, chew, chew. The fill folks often recommend that during the first 24 hours following a fill you go easy on the band by only having soups and other liquids. I note that you, like me, are a TLBC graduate. Congratulations on your fabulous weight loss.

She sounds like a real bitch to me. What an unpleasant experience for you that must have been! You have my sympathy.

With a coffee maker, a small fridge, an armload of books, and a portapotty, you could hide out in your bedroom for days...or hours at a time. :heh: Just a small suggestion from Green who does have a bookcase in her bedroom and a reading lamp over her bed. :eyebrows: The toilet is down the hall....:straight

Oh, I so agree! :confused: And Jessica and Ashlee Simpson and Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all the other self-absorbed, meaningless, banal bimbos.... :help:

:faint: :heh:

This does rather odd to me. I think that you should phone your bariatric surgeon's office and ask about this. Once you find out what is going on, please post the info here. I am very curious. Good luck to you, grrl.

Yah! The same old double standard!!!

It is a great idea. You could write a letter to the local malls and newspapers recommending this. If you belong to a local organisation - a church, PTA, or political group - you could ask them to back you on this.

It sure is nice hearing from you, Edie. It is always great hearing from the oldtimers and successful maintainers. This is why it is great hearing from you, too, Chickie. And where are those other voices of reason - Carlene and Wheets???? :confused::confused:

Congratulations on your fabulous weight loss! Where is your port situated?

I have never had kids but I am cool with this concept. I believe that the handicapped and pregnant women or parents with a clutch of small children do need handicapped-style parking. The truth is that small kids and the paraphenalia needed to handle their physical needs will place the adult in pretty much the same category as the handicapped individual. I am healthy and child free; I have no problems with the notion of walking. I think that this is a gift.

Oooh! That's an evil, evil comment but it is kinda witty. Nevertheless, I sure do hope that he blows up into a state of chubby. :heh: Bodies sure are interesting. Until I was banded I was a fatty grrl and many of my middle-aged pals are suffering from the same severe and tragic post-menopausal weight gain. I was never a curvy grrl when I was thin and I sure was not a curvy fattie. One of my friends was ultra curvy and although she was undeniably fat she could wear clothes which looked lousy on me. This was because she had big tits, a smallish waist and big hips and belly. She looked like a fertility figure and I looked like a Hummer with spider legs and arms. The best clothes for me were those which constructed like boxes. She looked fab in clothes which showed off her shape. Now that I have lost a bunch of weight I still wear cloth boxes, smaller ones is all. hah hah :faint:

Hello DianaSC from Green. I am really pleased that you have discovered this site and have found this thread. LBT is a very valuable resource for all of us because we can share practical info and provide each other with emotional support as well. (LBT has become my hobby and my life support system over this past year since I was banded and I don't know whether I would have fared anywhere near as well without it.) As you obviously know, the lapband is the least invasive WLS which you can undertake to have. This is one of the reasons why we bandsters tend to think that it is the best. It is a reversible, not permanent surgery, for many of us it is so uncomplicated as to be only day surgery, and the band itself is adjustible. The fact that the band is adjustible is a wonderful thing; as we lose weight our interior organs lose weight, too, and the band can be tweaked to accomodate this loss. This is very, very cool technology, I think. I also like your attitude towards weight loss. I believe that the healthiest way to lose weight is to lose it slowly. This allows your body, your internal organs and your skin, to adjust and this is very important to your health. I also suspect that a slower weight loss permits your metabolism to reset itself. From all that I have read about fast weight loss, yo-yo dieting and that kind of thing, it seems that this sort of extreme messing around with your body can be far more risky that simply being overweight. You are undoubtedly aware that the band blocks you from eating large portions of food. It also seems to press upon the I'm hungry nerve and thus you will feel full after eating your tiny snack. Your own role in this weight loss procedure is to follow the bandster rules. Because you will be unable to eat very much it will be up to you to learn how to eat healthily in order that you don't rob yourself of your daily nutritional needs. You will need to learn that you must eat protein first and then follow this up with vegies/fruits. You are going to have to cut out sodas and other forms of empty calories and you will have to get into the habit of chew, chew, chewing before swallowing a mouthful of food. Speed eating is no longer an option for the banded one. Pukage/PB will follow ASAP. This is because the band constricts the amount of food which can pass through the G.I. tract. All of this is part of the learning curve of course. You will quickly pick up this info. I know that I did. As for the slow weight loss...those of us who start with a higher BMI usually do experience much faster weight loss results than the lower BMI gang. Welcome aboard and all the best from Green. :kiss2: And don't even worry about the exercise thing at the moment. You can get into that later on. I was low BMI and had a torn rotator cuff when I started my weight loss journey. Now I have a BMI of 23.8. :eyebrows:

I am reminded of my very good friend who was also my boss. When she wanted two pastries she would always buy herself two coffees; she didn't want the donut clerk to know that she intended to eat them both, you see. She felt ashamed of herself, and this seemed awfully sad to me at the time. (I was very young then and didn't yet have my own weight problem and my own sense of shame.)

From what I heard on the news last night about the state of permanent ice in the Arctic waters it looks like Canada will be plenty warm soon enough. It seems that the mass of permanent polar ice is disappearing far more rapidly than was projected in the early years of this century. A chunk which is twice the size of England vanished last week and a third of the total size of the pack has gone since the year 2000. The disappearance of this ice will further speed up global warming; the heat of the sun's rays had traditionally been bounced off the Arctic ice. Now the sun is able to easily heat up the open waters. The Northwest Passage is becoming a reality and Russia has already put in her bid for this polar real estate by sinking a flag at the bottom of the continental shelf. The other three concerned parties are Canada, Denmark (who owns Greenland), and the U.S. via Alaska. As for where I live, Toronto, it sure is much, much warmer here than when I was a kid. The housing prices are crazy, though, and I have heard that this is true of Calgary (still a coldish city but one with a booming oil economy), Halifax, Vancouver, Victoria, and Montreal. Condos are more affordable and many retirees choose to live in smaller towns. I myself don't have this option; I was raised big city and am used to big city life and I never did learn how to drive. I never had to. I am also one of the lucky ones; I bought into the local housing market with old money and rode the inflation train. But you are right, Bitter, for a new-comer to enter the local housing market he or she would have to have kind of deepish pockets. This is why the condo market is booming. It does permit more folks at all financial levels to live within the city.

Congratulations on your new mattress. There is nothing like the pleasure of a really fine mattress. We need one. My mate complains of a sore back and he has now taken to sleeping with his head at the foot of the bed and his feet up near my face. This has got the nasty orange cat flustered. She's a creature of habit and the foot is her territory. She like to lie there, bite his feet, and pull the fur out of the deerskin which we have hung over the foot of the bed with her teeth. She's very oral. Just like her owner, Green, who is having troubles giving up cigarettes. Congratulations on your thunder storm, too. We have had an extraordinarily dry summer here in southern Ontario, the driest on record since one in the 1930s. They say that the health of a lot of our city trees will be seriously compromised by this, that tree limbs are dying and that many trees may be dead by next spring. The ground is so dry and hard that watering doesn't help at this point. The water is wicked away from the trees and in the case of a sudden tropical rain much of the water would simply bounce off the now concrete-like soil. This city will be much uglier, dirtier, and hotter without its pavillion of trees, that is for sure. :think

I actually find big schnozzes really attractive. I think that I must have been imprinted by them as an infant when I saw my big schnozzed-family cooing at me while I howled in my crib. :rolleyes (I was, it seemed, a foul-tempered baby which must have been rough on them since they had been working on having a baby for 5 long years before I showed up.) I simply can't take a guy who has a button nose seriously as an object of lust. And it is nice to know that they will do as a Viagra substitute in a pinch. So much cheaper.... I wish I had thought of that (but I sure am glad that someone did. She sounds like she would be a fun friend for Green. Does she like scotch?) :eyebrows: As for the treatment which I will be getting for my rosacea. I think it might have to do with light or lasars or something but I am not sure. I am trying quite hard to leave all the details of my face work in the shape of a blurr because I am such a squeamish individual. :phanvan I did the same thing with the mechanics of the band, you know. I only troubled to find out where the equipment is actually, um, situated after I was eating solids again.

A glass of merlot before you go to bed sounds like a lovely, civilized pleasure to me. It certainly doesn't fall into the same destructive category as a bucket of icecream or half a pizza as a midnight snack, and it is this kind of behaviour - that of eating large quantities of the wrong kind of foods - which has caused us to become fat. The band is designed to stop us from eating large portions. The band rules are all about getting us to eat the right foods, healthy proteins and vegetables/fruit. If you follow the way of the band you will lose weight. Why not keep your small civilized pleasure and enjoy your glass of merlot? I can't think of a nicer way to unwind. :bounce:Small pleasures should be a part of one's life, I think.

Mmm, merlot.

Wow! Big changes and I am sure that all of them will be positive. :bounce:

Yep, just an option. In your earlier posts you didn't seem like you were in this space. I am pleased for you.

My face lift dude is gonna take care of my rosacea. I wouldn't want it to land on my already fairly impressive schnozz - it is shapely but it is large! Large noses on both sides of the family, eh..... Haha! I remember those 1950s style cone tits. You could put an eye out with one of those bras. I think I want to get and wear one just for the fun of it.

Thanks for the advice, Newgirl. I have just bought some and plan to start my new regime today. I also find it interesting about your sister and sports bras since these are the only kind of bras I wear. Maybe these are the cause of my bacne, eh? The thing is that I hate wearing bras and sports bras are the least uncomfortable. They minimize my size C boobs and make 'em look like a speed bump. :heh: I find this very funny for some greenish kind of reason....:bounce: