Dame J

I had a couple of scars from some misadventure and I just used Polysporn for scars and it worked really well. It took a while but you can't even see where the wounds were.

Yoda that is great about the de-fill I am crossing my fingers that that hits the spot for you. 13 inches is great. Congrats! :clap2:

That's awesome Cloe. I hate plateaus too. But hey you stuck with it and look at you go. :clap2:

Yasmina you sound like you are doing really well. congrats again!

Congrats Tres about your awesome surgery. I am crossing my fingers that I will be able to say the exact same thing as you my firiend. Glad you are doing so well. Keep it up!

Hey Becca I hear yah! Really I do. I have been so emotional from this. I get hungry, then cranky, then really upset cause I can't have what I want. People around me are eating great food and I feel so deprived. :think Honestly I have been the worst person to live with this past week and I take it out on everybody. I just keep counting the days. And no that doesn't lessen the hunger or my desire for real food but at least I know I am doing this right. I can't afford to screw this up. Hang in there Becca. Time will go faster than you think. Just keep busy and when in need chat it out. Everyone (well almost everyone) in this space is going through this or has.

Well after all that you have gone through enjoy the no restriction Neenagh... Well don't enjoy it too much.

Excellent Post! I like this idea. I will for sure have to make a list. Things that come to me first: When I reach goal weight I would like to buy a designer dress. Would like to go someplace hot and sunny and wear a bathingsuit would like to take more pictures with me in them and not try to hide behind people

Oh god Cloe you had to mention lying on the table. In my mind of the surgery day I had never got that far. Now seems all so sudden. I wonder what I am going to think of when looking up at the celling on that day. Probably something stupid like trying to remember if I fed the cats or something. Astrotoes good luck! Hope the surgery is a piece of cake and that you heal smoothly. Let us know how it goes. Good luck!!

Becca just try to stay strong. I know how hard it is. Yesterday was the superbowl and my parents made nachos and had all types of Snacks and things. Man oh man I was dying. I went upstrairs and wanted to cry... but I keep thinking ahead. Just think about how good and easy the liquid diet will be after this. Don't kick yourself for cheating cause what's done is done. Stay focused on the big picture whenever you want to cheat and remember that the outcome of this 2 week hell is well worth the struggle.

Yasmina it sounds like you are doing great and the surgery went well. I am so happy for you. Take care fo yourself and keep us posted.

Sorry Becca no milk or sugar in your coffee. totally bummed me out too. Had black coffee today at the hairdressers. Not too great. Anyway last night was great I did not cheat, was very tempted, but I resisted. Believe it or not one of my guests did notice but only cause she was trying to get me to eat something. Anyway I made a lame excuse and that was the end of it. I am glad I did that last night. That only means I have passed the worst in the pre-op phase and I can look forward to 6 more sleeps till my surgery. Who knew a liquid diet would seem so appealing.

Thanks Yoda no worries about the laughing. I am waiting for the day when I can turn around at laugh at this situation myself. I am such an evil girl lately. :bandit Tonight I am having friends over and I have to serve food. I am making sure that there is a big veggie plate so I can just munch on that without people noticing I am not eating the rest. give me strength I think I might need it tonight. I keep telling myself a handfull of popcorn wont hurt any. And although I am sure it probably wont I don't like the idea that I can't even stick to the rules for these couple weeks. Being hard on myself. but I think that is good cause I don't think I ever really have before.

Yes exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what I thought as well. OHIP should get with the times and start kicking in for the Lapband. I have no idea what they are waiting for. According to this article the band would cost less, produce the same results (not in the same time frame) but would also be safer and easier to perform. Very frustrating!

Anyone on the Pre-Op diet super cranky? Man oh man. I think it's because I am hungry but honestly I snap at everyone (even my Boss :omg: ) and the funny thing is that in my head I know I am acting like a B%tch but I just can't seem to stop myself. :speechles My energy is also waning a bit. Although I still have been able to walk 30 min a day I just find I am sort of sluggish. Just wondering if it's just me or if others are feeling that as well or have at least felt that way.

I can totally relate to her love of food.

Interesting article in the Toronto Star today. BATTLING OBESITY TheStar.com - Health - `Only way' to freedom `Only way' to freedom After desperate bids to lose weight, at nearly 400 pounds Barrie mom took life-saving step Feb 02, 2007 04:30 AM Karen Bridson-Boyczuk Special to The Star Rating her pain level at an eight out of 10 between morphine shots, Barrie resident Rachel Buttery sits in her Michigan hospital bed and says she doesn't miss food yet. A day after undergoing gastric bypass surgery, the 33-year-old, 393-pound mother of two says she's just thrilled that she will, no doubt, finally be able to keep her New Year's weight-loss resolution this year. Ontario's provincial health insurance paid the $24,000 (U.S.) cost of her surgery because of long waiting lists here and the deteriorating state of her health. Buttery's surgery, on Jan. 3, involved creating a tiny pouch out of the top of her stomach and attaching it to her large intestine, completely bypassing the rest of her stomach and her small intestine. "They keep bringing me different kinds of broth and Jell-O, but I'm partial to the ice chips," says Buttery, who admits it was her addiction to food that led her down the road to morbid obesity. "I'm sure I will miss food eventually. But there's nothing I can eat that would be better than doing what I'll be able to do when I lose weight." At five-feet nine-inches tall, Buttery's Body Mass Index is off the charts at 61. A normal body mass index is between 18.5 and 24.9. A person who has a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese. Buttery has a degenerating left hip and must undertake more than an hour of walking in the morning to become fully mobile. Her blood sugar levels are at the high normal range – not diabetic, yet, her doctors say, but getting toward Type II diabetes. She has an enlarged spleen and an enlarged and fatty liver and she suffers from sleep apnea, a condition where her airway becomes obstructed when she sleeps, cutting off air flow and periodically choking her. Surprisingly, her blood pressure and cholesterol levels remain fine. But as her husband Paul Buttery says, that's for now. "She's fairly healthy, but how long will that last?" he says. Her surgeon, Dr. Tallal Zeni, says Buttery's excessive weight is life-threatening. "If she doesn't lose weight, there's a high risk of other medical problems all coming together to shorten her lifespan." A person with a BMI of 40, where morbid obesity starts, is more than two and a half times more likely to die than someone with a healthy BMI. Obesity has been linked to various cancers, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and depression. Buttery's fight with weight began in childhood and, after the birth of her first daughter 11 years ago, it slowly climbed, hitting its peak of 399 pounds this September. Since then, her life has increasingly been affected by her weight. "If you go to a friend's house, you think, `Okay, what can I sit on that won't break?' You worry about fitting through the turnstiles in stores. At restaurants, you can't sit in a booth. When you get into somebody's car, you pray to God the seatbelt is going to fit." No longer able to fit into airline seatbelts, even with the belt extension, Buttery turned to bus travel with her family a few years ago. But even that proved uncomfortable. Buttery spent hours unable to urinate on a 13-hour trip to Cincinnati in 2003 because she couldn't fit into the bathroom at the back of the bus. One option was surgery to reduce her stomach to a pouch that holds just under an ounce of food. But the decision wasn't made easily. First, she says, she worked very hard to lose the weight on her own. In the past five years alone, Buttery has joined the Weight Watchers program on four occasions and lost varying amounts each time. With the help of a personal trainer, with whom she worked for a year, Buttery managed to lose 32 pounds. Lifting weights, walking on the treadmill, counting her points, Buttery was moving in the right direction, says GoodLife Fitness trainer Shelly McNamee. "But her emotional attachment to food and the extreme stress that she was under in her life kept sending things out of whack," McNamee says. She was upset to hear Buttery had gained back the weight she'd lost, plus another 30-odd pounds since they stopped working together a year ago. Gaining back the lost weight, and then some, is typical for most dieters and often a key factor in how people manage to sink further into obesity, says Zeni, who performed Buttery's three-hour surgery at St. Mary Mercy Hospital. "With traditional medical weight loss, we see successful, long-term weight loss in just 1 to 2 per cent of patients," he says. "But with this surgery, we have an 80 per cent success rate five to 10 years out." But there are risks. The laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass – the kind of stomach-reducing surgery recommended for Buttery – has a fatality rate of one in 200, the risk of bowel leakage and potentially fatal blood clots, and a six-week recovery time. "It's not a surgery one should go into lightly," Zeni says. "But for people who are trying to lose weight and have other medical problems, it's the only way to get the weight off and keep it off." Zeni stresses it is not a magic bullet. "You've got to be committed to it for the long-term," he says. "Everybody is going to lose weight for the first year and a half (on average, 70 per cent of the excess weight is lost by this point), but you want it to be successful over a lifetime." For many, Zeni says, dieting and exercise alone just can't get people to where they want to be. "Once you get to a level of morbid obesity, for whatever reasons – genetics, metabolic rate, appetite – maintaining the weight loss is just unsustainable." That was Buttery's story. Now recovering at home from her operation, she says she saw surgery as her only way out. After having no trouble sticking to her diet and exercise plans for weeks and sometimes months on end, Buttery would find something in her life would go wrong and her fitness regimen would begin to unwind. "Any time I get stressed, that's what I do. I eat," she says. "And nine times out of 10, I don't even realize I'm doing it. I'd just go to the fridge and I'd just start grazing." It also hasn't helped having a husband who is a professional chef and loved to "love her with food," and thinks she looks no different than the day he met her when she was 17, Buttery says. Food produces a euphoric haze for her, like a drug, she says. "But food is the one thing you can't take away. You don't need alcohol to live, or drugs or cigarettes. But you can't not eat." Meanwhile, some people in Buttery's life feel she's taking the "easy way out." They point to such high-profile gastric bypass patients, like singer Carnie Wilson, who have gained back a surprising amount of weight given the medically reduced size of their stomachs. Zeni says this can be a result of the stomach being stretched out again by food, by the connection between the stomach pouch and intestines stretching out to accommodate more food or because of other unknown factors. "Some people are eating 1,000 calories a day after the surgery and they are still not losing, even when the pouch has not stretched," he says. "So there's more to it than we know at this time." Ten per cent of patients will gain back about one-third of the weight they initially lost, while another 10 per cent will gain back more than that, Zeni says. "It's not 100 per cent. But compared to traditional medical weight loss, it's really excellent. Ultimately, those who are successful still maintain less than 1,400 calories a day and (continue to) exercise." According to a 2004 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, gastric bypass surgery cures diabetes in 77 per cent of cases, cures or improves high blood pressure in 78 per cent of patients and ends sleep apnea for 86 per cent of patients, Zeni says. Buttery approached the Ontario health ministry last fall to get it to pay for her to have the surgery in the United States. Waiting lists to have the surgery in Canada are, for certain surgeries, several years long. Ultimately, Buttery's stomach will be able to hold about two to three ounces of food at time. But she says she's not worried about how she will cope when life gets difficult and she simply can't eat a whole box of chocolates, as she had in the past. "I've been reading a book on food addiction and I've got a support group I can go to in Barrie," she says. Between that, the four hours of nutritional counselling she received through Zeni's office and the help of her husband, who has vowed to cook up healthy foods from now on, Buttery says she's got the support she needs. She removed some serious stressors in her life, she says. Worry that she's set a bad example for her daughters has also fuelled her drive to make this work, Buttery says. "I've got to stop the cycle." For now, she's focused on how much fun she'll have with her family. "I'll be able to go horseback riding and swimming," she says. "I've got pages of stuff I've not been able to do in years. I haven't been able to go on a roller-coaster ride in years. I used to be a real roller-coaster junkie."

Yasmina so excited for you. Can't wait to hear all about it. I will be getting my surgery a week today so I will be waiting eagerly to hear all about your experience. Good Luck!! As for the Belly dancing I will be taking an 8 week course with a couple of my friends that was set up by our town recreation department. I don't know anything about the program but my friends really wanted to give it a try so why not. I have heard how fun it is so I am looking forward to it.

Good Luck Tomorrow! I am sure you will do great. Let us know how it goes. :rose: P.S. My a couple of my friends and I are signing up for Bellydancing in the Spring. Should be fun.

Good Luck Tres. All the best :rose:

benefiber is to give you some fiber and "roughage" as my dad would say. While you are on your Optifast diet you wont be intaking any fiber so this is to balance you out. I put it in with my optifast in the morning and then I also take a bottle of water to work with it in it. The powder really doesn't taste bad. Well you are not supposed to taste it at all but the first time I had benefiber in my water I thought it tasted a little like there were cracker crumbs in my water. Made we want to eat crackers I tell ya! :biggrin1:

Hey Becca my Dr. didn't charge me for the forms and she also took my blood so I would not have to go to the Lab. Phew saved me a trip there. Anyway she was great but I have to admit I thought that I was going to get charged because I noticed that she has charges for people that come in for physicals for their work, sports teams, etc. I guess her thought is that surgery (no matter if is cosmetic or not) is still surgery so why charge. Anyway your Dr. sounds like he/she needs an attitude adjustment.

I felt the same way yesterday. Mind over matter my friend. I was so worried about being sick for Surgery. I felt better throughout the day but last night I used a humidifier/steamer and I put eucalyptus oil in it. Man oh man did that clear me up. Also I have been drinking green tea as I was told that helps. I am still drinking green tea and I plan on just telling myself that I am going to be great for my surgery. I did not take any Vitamins cause my Dr. pre-op list said not to take any herbal medicines and things so I don't want to put into my body that might effect things. Honest though I really do feel better. No more runny nose or sneezing. Throat is fine too. I was told that some Dr.'s will still do the surgery with a cold but not a fever. Best to call your own Dr and see what their rules on the subject are. Good Luck.

Hey Andrew look at your Dancing Girl Go! way to go man. :clap2: Astro no worries about loosing the Water weight as far weight goes a loss is a loss is a loss. When I weigh myself on Friday I know I will just have to scream with Joy who cares if it is a drop in a bucket and who cares if it is just water. Oh Optifast how I hate thee.. an yet my body is probably thanking thee. :biggrin1:

Thanks gang for the response. I think I might have been a little too worried yesterday about a couple sneezes. I was fine yesterday afternoon and I am still feeling good now. Cross your fingers that it stays this way. I have already had my blood work and Dr.s Pre-Op appointment and there were no concerns there. *Phew* So I guess I will just pray for the best till surgery. I might just get some cold stuff just in case and I will continue to drink my green tea and sniff warm eucalyptus.