general_antiope

I've been there. I would get angry when men would notice me, I'd pick up 16s or 18s and be completely baffled when they didn't fit in the fitting room. Holding up a pair of 14's looked like a magic trick.

It took months for my self perception to catch up with reality. It's very normal.

A tip: Buy yourself a few wardrobe basics in the size that fits you. That helps make the transition...Love yourself, don't withhold well fitting clothes til you hit your goal. Target has great inexpensive things...and Kohls. Pants, tailored shirt. You'll feel great. Even if it's jeans and a T shirt!

I know exactly how you feel. I've been struggling with this since I got the band 3.5 years ago. The more I question myself, the more my weight loss stalls, the more I understand.

There's nothing wrong with you sweetie. This is part of the process. The band just limits hunger, but it does nothing about habits, emotional attachment, etc. You are perfectly fine! You are smart enough and strong enough to figure it out and beat it. It's not going to happen overnight.

You want it, you can have it. Just be kind to yourself about it! If you fall down, get up. I just blogged about this very thing :tt2: PM me if you need to blab.

I want to be a size 10 more than anything, but I keep sabotaging myself. Obviously before I get the diploma, I have to do more work than others seem to. That's OK with me. Nobody else can take the credit for my size 10 but me in the end :thumbup:

I have a 4 CC band that's been at 4.4 and I was still able to eat. Here's what I finally noticed.

1. I was drinking with my meal. Seriously. Do not drink 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after.

2. Do not eat more than 15 minutes. I was eating an hour at a time, getting pizza, bread, chicken down. I can eat anything I want. When I stop at 15 minutes, I am full. Period!

3. Sugar of any kind will spark your hunger. White flour, potatoes will also do that. 4 ounces of chicken and vegetables should more than fill you.

4. Finally, chew. Very. Slowly.

if you're doing all these, and not snacking, and not eating ice cream/liquid calories, you might have stretched your pouch. Fortunately, going back to this regimen will shrink it again. Hang in there! You can always start back over!! Check out my blog, I just came out of a 4 week food eat-o-rama which has been non existent for me since I got the band 3.5 years ago!

I've been saying for several weeks now that the food bender is over. It wasn't, but I believe that if you say it enough, it becomes true. I meant it every time. And finally, it is TRUE! I am officially back on track, my loves.

I read this LBT Mag article about guidelines for the band, and boy I really have been flinging myself off the band-wagon. I've been drinking while I ate. I'd eat too long. I'd eat emotionally. I'd tell myself I need the calories but then eat too much of it. But it's all good. The positive in this situation is:

a. I never stopped trying

b. I was honest with myself when I fell flat on my face. I think I just enjoyed eating for a while.

c. I never blamed the band, or anyone. I knew it was my issue.

d. The band actually saved me from gaining any weight.

I'm pretty happy with how I handled the last month. Pre-banding, I could never have gotten through it without self loathing, disappointment in myself, and maybe blaming my band for being "broken." Again, I will say it a million times, I am so thankful for this little silicone belt of love on my belleh. :thumbup: It is a welcome friend. It's doing it's job, so I will do mine...by always being willing to look to see how I'm contributing to the problem.

Interestingly enough, the first time my weight loss stalled for 6 months, it was indeed the band's fault...I'd gotten unfilled accidentally. We thought there was a leak, turns out there's no leak in my band, but for 6 months I was completely empty and didn't realize it. It was over a year after I'd gotten the surgery so I wasn't going for monthly visits. I survived. And I'm alive to tell the tale, and I've still lost weight after it.

I'm beginning to think that I'm experiencing all these setbacks, extra-long-shortcuts and such just so when i get to the end, I can really help new bandees (something that gives me complete joy) with all kinds of setbacks. Look, this isn't your only shot. It isn't the answer to all your problems. This is a hell of a leg up, though.

I think in order to be successful with the band, you just have to surrender. Surrender your ego with whether you have willpower or not, surrender your guilt with food, your shame of your body, surrender your expectations of "when" you will have your new life to lead. Your new life started when you made the decision. It's gonna take years to deprogram yourself. So why beat yourself up if you eat a damn cookie? You're just prolonging weight loss. Maybe you should ask why you went for the cookie. I have, many times...and I am slowly understanding myself. If I fall down again, I will get right back up.

Cause I ain't ever going back to where I came from, and that fact alone is enough to make me weep with joy.

So the bender. It has actually resolved now. Here I am, not drinking with my lunchtime meal and I've gotten about 4 cherries and 1 whole pecan down. And here I sit and wait, for the food is experiencing a traffic jam in my neck. I want to drink. I realized just now that all this time I have been drinking. Even small sips of water to "mush up" the food is making it go down faster. It crept up on me...maybe a sip here and there if I'm eating bread (oh yeah, she eats bread, she loooooves food) and now it's insinuated itself without me knowing. And we go back to "conscious eating" again. It's the damned unconscious eating that seems to get me time and time again. The only thing to do is just keep going back to the basics.

My band is also still too tight. I will give this a month or two, because every band has a cycle of restriction when in the body. If I am following all band rules and am eating this little, I'm getting an unfill. I'm at 4.1 in a 4.0 band, and I was previously at 4.4. yes, I've been overfilled. Didn't know that!

As a side note, it's a weird feeling to be full at the top of my stomach, and be uninterested in eating another cherry, and then feel my lower stomach growl, even though it's faint.

Seriously, I still love my band :tt2: Where else can you get this ability to make the right choice? I am losing the weight. The band's just taking the crazy voices away in my head who want Peanut Butter Kandykake ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner :thumbup:

Which, by the way, if you want to fling yourself off the band-wagon once in a while, is a COMPLETELY satisfying way to do it.

Not that I'm endorsing it :sneaky:

but I enjoyed it. And that time is now over.

189, here I come!!!

I stand in front of a mirror in a small exam room around 3:00 pm, nude under a cotton robe. This place has to be fancy, I think to myself; Normally I was handed a stiff tissue paper smock. Even the floor here is carpeted, and not the cold linoleum of so many doctor's offices. It took three hours to get here because I got horridly lost trying to make the other surgeon's appointment, which needed to be canceled. I am a little road weary and feel ridiculously comforted by these small details.

I look at myself, holding the robe closed. I see a girl with a thin neck and angular face, who sort of resembles me. She has a neat sunny, lemony bob haircut, blown straight until it's soft and shiny and moves with a turn of the head. I've seen this girl a lot the past few years, but am always startled that it's actually me. With the June humidity, I can see evidence of natural curls trying to reform by one temple, as if trying to remind the world that it had been there 100 lbs ago, and will not be forgotten and denied like the plus sized shirts I once had to sport. This has been a long journey; longer than most.

Plastic surgery signals the end of this road. Three and a half years after surgery I am still dragging on and somehow prolonging the end, for no reason I can figure out. But I will put one foot in front of the other, and continue to try to decipher the internal love language between my body and emotions that produce food cravings as their child. I will never stop trying to intercept their messages. I believe this will occupy me the rest of my life. Fortunately, it has become a background murmur, and is manageable.

This search for a plastic surgeon to tie up the loose ends, as it were, feels as much surreal as it does mechanical. I'm going through motions. I'm going through emotions. But I don't feel present. It's as if someone else is pulling me along, lifting my hand to pick up the phone to make an appointment, tearing off my clothes in rarely expressed comfort, with more faith in a surgeon I'd just met than men I take to my bed.

I'd been to three plastic surgeons in the past year, looking for someone who would inspire me as both an artist and a surgical genius. So far, no dice. But the goal of a tummy tuck and a breast lift seems to be the last piece for lasting peace. Once I have this, I tell myself, I can't keep holding off on dating, waiting, ignoring I'm 32 and alive under this two-sizes-too-big skin that kept me alive during a slow and imminent suicide attempt. I can't keep hiding from life, or being angry when I'm hit on, or being sad when I'm alone, or continue to justify food as an acceptable source of intimacy. Once this surgery is done, I must live with it; it's me. There is no more fantasizing about how I could look. I'd look the way I would continue to look well into my elderly years.

Kind of frightening for someone who spent her life since age 12 writing romance fantasies where she was a slim, normal bodied girl with no scars. I'm well aware of this body image issue, and I'm becoming aware that I'm keeping myself from the end so I don't have to face an unknown and possibly different future than the one I'd obsessed over and wrote about in as many incarnations as I had inches of unnecessary skin.

Here I am at the last office I plan on being in for a while. Plastic surgeon #4.

And I'm looking at my naked body, imagining what he will tell me that I haven't already heard before from the last 3 surgeons. I wonder if he will treat me like a self-indulgent headcase, or a low intelligence moneybag, or condescend when I play dumb and ask him the same basic questions I ask all my surgeons, like I haven't already done all my research.

A funny thing is happening. I open my robe and stare at the body that I like more than I used to, a body I actually look at more than I used to. I see myself differently today, and I'm not sure why. I look at my large breasts, showing the effects of being a D cup and sagging more than I'd like, but relatively youthful and full. My belly actually has deep grooves in the abdomen of a 4 pack I have been building through core exercises, but which is muffled by the layer of belly fat I still need to lose. I poke at the indentations where my skin is attached to my muscle, amazed at the slightly distorted evidence of my health bursting through. I do work out; I finally noticed it shows. Perhaps it shows like an overstuffed favorite loveseat who has lost its buttons but still holds the pillowed indentations, but it shows.

For the first time in my life, I think, "Wow. Not bad." I'm not looking at my flaws, like the dimpled orange peel flesh of my abdomen, or the way the flesh pulls out like silly putty from being stretched beyond saving. I'm looking at the beauty of me just as I am. It's comforting and weird.

I turn to the side and am shocked to see that the normally flat butt I complain about and lack of lumbar curvature that lends one a perky bottom are actually acceptable, passable, and rather curvy. Totally no J Lo, but not a wan Kate Hudson either -- or the back of Jessica Simpson. Maybe slightly Julia Roberts, or a younger Diane Keaton. I lift the robe. Are you kidding me? Really? Is this what I look like? This isn't horrible at all. Certainly I need the post weight-loss nip/tuck but what the hell have I been---

Dr. Capella asks if I ready, voice distant through the door.

"Come on in," I said loudly.

He sits down on his rolling stool and we get right down to it. I open the robe. He does not fall off his stool, crying out in horror, clawing at his bleeding eyes. This is a great start. I feel something a little foreign wrap around me. Body confidence. I am in front of a huge mirror that covers the wall, fluorescent lighting and a man I just met is not only looking at my nude body, but touching it and seeing possibility that I would never even entertain.

"This," Dr. Capella said, tracing a light line over a good handful of my midsection. "Is all coming out. You probably have about 15 lbs of skin on you, actually."

Fifteen? Fifteen? I start doing calculations. I'm technically 15 lbs lighter and without the skin would probably be in a 12, not a 14. Holy crap!

He goes on to tell me, " You're young, and you're going to not only heal well, but fast. You're a perfect candidate for the body lift and mastopexy."

"Can I stay a D cup, do you think?" I ask nervously. Some doctors recommended I get a reduction and implants.

He actually snorts like an amused horse. "Your breasts are gorgeous. Look. Here's what they'll look like. The skin is great." He proceeds to manipulate my breast and shows me the plump, round, perky profile I've been fantasizing about since I was 10 and got my first underwire bra.

He goes on to look at my behind, flanks, back, and commented several times on the good condition of my fair skin (I believe it's because I turned vampire and simply never set foot in the sun). He shows me how when he pulls up the back of me, how it will dissolve the annoying roll under my bra, how contouring the top of my hips will accentuate my womanly curves just sitting there waiting to be unearthed.

"I am interested in looking good in tailored clothes," I say, continuing to look at my body. "I've long given up on looking gorgeous naked, but I want to be smooth and lean and proportionate in clothes." I'm turning this way and that, sucking in my belly and marveling at the cut of my ribs showing for the first time in my life. Marveling that none of the bone-crushing shame at looking at myself, much less with another person there, was choking me.

He gives a strange, rueful little laugh, shaking his head a fraction, and then catches himself. As if he knows I don't yet see what he sees. "You're going to be gorgeous. You've got relatively minimal sag, and you're young. I can give you a flat, contoured belly, smooth buttocks and thighs, and your breasts are going to look fantastic. You have the raw materials already here. And," he adds, gesturing to my face. "You're beautiful. Just...believe me. Total package. You are going to love the results."

You're beautiful.

I stared at him for a long moment. I expected a little bit of ego stroking. After all, for $15 - 20k for the procedures I wanted, I anticipate a bit of salesmanship. But there I was, flat-haired from driving in the humidity, purple circles under my eyes that my hastily applied concealer didn't actually conceal due to my late rise that morning. And I had to be one of thousands of women who walked through there. And why even bring my face into it? We're talking about my body. He's only getting paid from the neck down on me.

I look back at the mirror.

I believe him.

The first person, really, I believe. I feel like, for the first time, I am being truly seen under the loose skin and the belly pouch and the arms that totally need a lift down the line. Someone actually sees me and I don't have to scream, or be funny, or be "life of the party", or overly intelligent, or anything else to get noticed. He isn't stroking my ego; I feel like a piece of clay out of which he sees the swan, and he knows exactly how to mold the clay to get the result. And he's humble enough not to slap my face off my skull for being dense about it.

I dress and we reconvene in his office, looking at pictures again. "Now that I know what you look like before," he says. "Here's what you'll look like after." He proceeds to fill my eyes with round, perky, natural looking D cup breasts. Flat bellies that would allow me to wear hip huggers, belly shirts, hell, even a belt. Natural looking waists, not the "tube" effect of some body lifts. Scars in proportion to pubic hair line and belly button. Picture after picture after picture. Very few asymmetries. I think there was one out of the bunch.

I found my surgeon.

I might have found something else, too.

My realignment is just about done, and I'm so glad. This weird penchant for losing control and letting my bad choices rule me is getting old, fast.

I have fill scheduled for Friday and I'm going to go, regardless of how my band feels. My liquid diet didn't work out yesterday, because I was tired and lazy and didn't do a damned thing around the house. I finished feeling sorry for myself and fairly bounced out of the bed this morning.

It always makes me smile when I'm doing my menu for the week. It takes so very little to nourish me, and I can't believe I'm picking veggie burgers and protein shakes. And looking forward to it! The band is truly amazing.

My trigger this time was an abandonment/rejection. Someone I cared for has basically disappeared from my life. I said goodbye to him out loud this morning, and it's like a weight was lifted off me.

This week-and-a-half-long food bender is finally over. Thank GOD. I ripped ff my pyjamas this morning and said "OK, we're done wallowing, let's deal with what we did this week and make a plan."

One pound.

I only gained one pound??

I even had Taco Bell last night! Good God! And I bet it's the salt that's keeping me at 194.

My body keeps giving me gifts. The band is really amazing. Had I done this kind of bender before the band, I'd easily gain 5 - 10 lbs.

So I have one day left in May. I started at 199.5, I'm now 194.5, and I am fasting for a physical and may stay on liquids the rest of the day. I wanted to get to 191 with how fast I had dropped the weight the first week in May, but I'm QUITE happy with 5 lbs lost.

Let's see if I can get to 194.0 tomorrow, and then be on a solid band diet through next Friday, for my fill with Dr. Ren.

As for why I went on the food binge, (because I always want to know why and understand, I never accept "I don't know" as the final answer) I think it relates directly to a sense of abandonment. Someone I cared for very much has left me abruptly. The eating began after the first two weeks of not hearing from him - as if he disappeared.

It's always been juuust at the edge of my consciousness, feeling rejected, feeling unworthy, and turning to food to comfort me. I have decided to get over that now. It ran its little course, and I am now back at the helm.

Amazing, though, that the band really deflected the kind of damage I could have done. One pound. LOL. I love it!

I LOVE MY BAND!!!!!

It's funny. When I first decided/was approved for the band, I couldn't contain myself. I wanted the new life immediately, I wanted it now now now and I could not stop thinking about what life would be like 2, 4 years from having the band inserted.

Looking back at my journey, I can see the whole bigger lesson in patience. It happened in its own time, my wishing and obsessing did nothing to hurry it, only making it seem longer.

Now I'm facing plastic surgery....facing it eagerly, I should say, and I just figured out that it will take me longer to comfortably afford it. I wanted it done by December, for my 33rd birthday, but what's another 3 months? The same kind of panicky there-has-to-be-a-way-I-can-have-what-I-want feeling that plagued me as a morbidly obese woman tried to grab me again with money and charging / financing this surgery before I was really ready to. I can't believe I'm so zen about it.

I guess the patience lesson is finally being learned :thumbup:

Oh my god I'm gonna have Plastic Surgery in the spring!! :tt2: What a killer summer I'm going to have!!

Ah i'm having the same issue with body dysmorphia. I swear to god when I pull out the size 14 jeans there is just NO way my belly will let that snap! no way in h....hey wait it fits. Weird. I feel like I live in an MC Escher world :thumbs_up:

When i got banded, I left my ex husband, I lost almost all of my friends (couple friends of course), he began to immediately date one of our friends...I was very much alone. I decided I was on a journey and to HELL with him.

I legally changed my name to Kate Eryn - kept his last name....to HELL with him...its mine now...lol...and changed my career. I also have a great personality and I felt free to just - figure it out. I did stuff I'll never do again (namely...some ... gentlemen...) and eat things I'll never eat again (namely...apple cider vinegar shots and half cooked broccoli) and spent way too much on salon hair for over a year.

I'm settling down now, and I think the real me is emerging. I just honor it as a process. One day, I will not be so conscious of my belly. I hope that happens after PS. lol. One day, I will not think I'm beautiful in the mirror and ugly in any picture, but beautiful both places.

I figure it took a long time to form this way; it's gonna be a while to come out of the rafters of loving and accepting myself.

And girl, you are effing STUNNING up top there! That's exactly the kind of end result I'm going for. Keepin the boobs. Keeping the boobs, the ex husband's last name, and dropping the rest of it

LMAO!

When I picture myself at goal weight, I'm dressed as Coyote Ugly but am a rock musician on stage :thumbs_up:

Honey -

The best way to get back on track is to help yourself! We can't do it for ya, sweetie. First thing I would do if I were you would be to scour the boards, first of all, and understand the lap band back and forth. if you don't want to/don't have time, then call your doctor and become a pain in the ass until you are properly educated.

If he will not fill you, find another fill doctor. Or keep calling back. This is not only your right, it's your duty. You didn't get the lap band only to go sit in a corner alone and NOT lose weight, did you?

This is your life - be active in it, not passive!

Give the fill some time - sometimes my band gets sooo ridiculously tight during PMS, it's like I was freshly filled, even if it'd been months.

Also, your legs could be different sizes if you tend to put weight on one leg versus another, cross one leg over another (the support leg stays bigger) or sleep on one side. My right leg takes all the abuse!

WOOO HOOOOOOOOO CONGRATS!!! Oh my god that is so exciting!! I am thrilled for you :thumbs_up:

What's one thing you're not gonna miss about Life Before The Band?