Betsyjane

Why did my signature lines just become partly black and partly teal? There are 7 Golden Retrievers, a 100 pound lab, and 2 standard poodles asleep around my feet. Life is good.

Yeah. Did Dr. Speigel give you a hard time, or have you educated him well enough by now? I'm game for whatever..... If we don't change our day, I'd sure recommend going over there to eat sometime individually.....as I sit here eating my bland tuna and...oops....working at the computer at the same time.

My husband hovers over me when I eat. It's annoying, but I know he's trying to be helpful. Remember that you have no restriction yet so you may be able to eat anything and everything. The fact that you aren't, and that you are losing, is great. But you're still just practicing being a bandster until you have restriction. It will happen in time. In the meantime, you keep practivccing and keep thinking about what you want your new healthy eating lifestyle to be like, and head that way. I'm not one who believes in moderation alone...I want to become a total health nut,.... You ahve to decide how you want this thing to work.

How's everybody doing with exercise? just when I think it's become a habit, I hide out again. It's strange. I'm always glad when I go, but I sure can talk myself out of going!

I'm a nut for Thai cooking, so here's more than you'd ever want to know. Thai is about fresh fresh food. It's mostly light and breezy... and doesn't include the weird foods or uncooked fish that Japanese and Chinese cooking does. Mostly fresh fruits, veges, and meats. And layers! Southeast Asian (both Thai and Vietnamese) cooking is about layers of flavors. You'll often taste sweet, sour, savory, and spicy hot in the same dish, but they stay distinct flavors. The Thai people never ate with chopsticks in their history: They've always used spoons, just using a fork to push stuff onto a spoon. In traditional Thai eating, putting a fork in your mouth is like us putting our knives in our mouths. It's impolite. Thai people eat little bites of lots of things for a meal...just one or two bites of each. Eating a bite of a lot of things, you feel full from the amazing little bursts of flavor and the variety. There is no set time for breakfast lunch or dinner (except to cater to Westerners). It's more about taking a bite from a street vendor whenever you feel like something...or having a meal because it's a chance to get together with friends and family. The street vendors line all the shopping streets and so do the massage therapists. So you shop, snack, and get a massage as you go through your shopping day. You might have a tiny bite of fresh fruit with fresh mint and herbs on it...walk a bit and then have a delicate bite size puff pastry with a quarter of a teaspoon of homemade lychee nut ice cream in it....and then a single bite of BBQ pork wrapped in kaffir lime...and later an asparagus spear sprinkled with lemongrass and ginger. The two best known Thai dishes in this country are Pad Thai (Pad mean stir fry), mostly rice noodles covered in a sweetish sauce made from tamarind and garlic, with some meat and veges thrown in, and Panang, a coconut curry (red or green) meat dish that is hot spicy and creamy, with Thai curry that doesn't taste like Indian curry, but more like Mexican hot sauce made creamy. Ok. I'll quit now.

Amazing. When you swell up, you really swell! Suzanne...you OK with Thai? Nara Thai 18455 West Lake Houston Parkway 281-812-0291 Here's the kind of stuff they have.... I used to love Pad Thai (Pad=stir fry)...I'm guessing rice noodles won't work anymore, though. Panang is my favorite....meat in hot red curry. Curry in Thai is not like Indian curry. It's a Thai version of creamy hot sauce with your choice of meat. It is so unbelievably good. They also have a wonderful shrimp lemongrass Soup, if you can eat shrimp and Tom Kha Kai soup, which is chicken, coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, mushroom soup. Then they have lettuce wraps, salads. We might do well ordering Panang to share, and Soups... Oh wait a minute...Never mind. They are closed Mondays!.

Wow! Glad you're getting better. Do you have any warning so you can go on liquids and get the swelling down, or does it just happen? Let's get some more votes in, but I'd love to go next time to the Thai place.

Will do. Gladly!

On a good birthday note, I just got back from driving my 90 year old mother to Missouri for her best friend's 90th birthday party! They ahve been best friends for 80 years. Can you imagine???? AND at the party were 4 other classmates of theirs from high school, all born in 1916. And all looking great, like they just stepped out of a Dove pro-age commercial. Amazing. You can't make better memories than that.

Cooked stringy spinach when I'm very restricted due to illness!

New rule: Never eat stringy cooked spinach when you are super restricted from illness. Oy.

I can gain 4 pounds in a single day, depending when I eliminate what I've eaten and drank.

Anybody want to go to the Thai restaurant just past Walgreens in Atascocita...on the way to Summerwood. It's Nara Thai and it's my favorite restaurant. I love love love their Panang, but I understand if it's not everybody's taste.

Thanks, Suzanne. Missed you guys too! Rule #11: Never eat stringy cooked spinach when you are super restricted from illness, no matter how good it looks.

OK. I have to know. I've seen that Kevin Trudeau infomercial on the 100% permanent weight loss cure book. If anybody bought it, tell me...what's the secret? I won't spend the money on what I know won't work, but I'm sooo curious.

I only scanned these posts so I may be off base, but have you guys considered less of a fill? If it's too hard to eat the right/difficult foods, and only the easy stuff goes down, you'll certainly eat the easy stuff rather than starve to death! How about a fresh start with a bit less fill and a new resolve?

I found that I started losing intermittently. I'd plateau and then drop. Plateau and then drop. I figure my body is taking time to adjust...or it's waiting for my skin to catch up and shrink. :-) Who knows. I know it's hard not to sweat it, but don't sweat it! Weight loss won't be steadily steady! :-)

I'm going through some grazing now too. Yours may be becasue you don't have enough of a fill yet...don't know. Mine feels more like it's the old issues coming back. Eating when triggered by TV mostly, and mostly in the afternoon. I'm going to be doing my exercise in the afternoon and see if I can break the pattern. I swore when I got banded I'd never do appetite suppressants again! My experience is that the OTC ones don't work, and the prescription ones work great and then stop working and the weight comes back. Overall, I'm doing well, but this recurrence of grazing is pretty annoying!

Hi Everybody. I just read through all this stuff and went to ObesityHelp.com to see if they had a different outlook. The forum there seems to reflect the same wide range of opinions as are presented here. Not sure what all the fuss is about. But Dyslexi's last post says it all. Why give attention to disparaging comments? It only encourages the instigator. And puts you at her level. Let's be helpful to each other instead and let negative posts die of neglect.

I felt very little restriction until fill #3, and then I could truly live the bandster life.

Thanks, Lana. I'm on the mend. Will see how today goes. I don't want to infect anyone, so at this point it's a toss up whether I'll be there tonight. I'm improving well. I think it has to do with finishing my taxes yesterday.

There's a college kids' thread here that talks forever about how to get drunk easily with the band. It bothers me "a lot". I responded with my opinion once, read the responses, and then left it. Seems like the thing to do and then get on with life. Just depends how you want to spend your time. I do think the debate between portion control and dieting will always be ther with the band. For me, I do both at home, sticking with a whole food/raw food healthy diet, and then when I'm out to eat, I order whatever I want and eat a bit of it. Works for me......

I understand. I just think that even if we think we're ready...we've been ready and dedicated in the past, and failed. We might kick the Dr., but I'm not tready to kick anyone who fails at weight loss....

That seems like you might need a fill. 3/4 of a sandwich seems like a lot. Or maybe htere's a bit of pouch dilation (been there). I think I could eat bread if I went slowly. I just don't do carbs. a lot of bandsters have trouble with bread becasue it gets gummy and plugs the port, which is uncomfortable. I doubt if I could handle a cheap white bread, but I could probably do whole wheat....Everybody's different.

I didn't watch the video becasue my audio isn't working, but who are we to criticize someone who fails at weight loss???? These comments sound like ones I've heard all my life. Good grief. I'm sad for people who don't succeed with the band, and I know some folks have more of a struggle with eating disorders than others. Sad....not critical.