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Hello everyone, I've been reading ur posts for a while, my name is Cindy, and I live in Camdenton-near Lake of the Ozarks, so I'll just pipe n about the hair loss....i am a hairdresser and biotin is what i tell my clients to take for hair loss...also u can buy a hair/skin/nails combo. at wal-Mart or any drug store....Anyway I have been worrying about that issue myself...I have to say it does scare me alittle, I have VERY thick hair so I could afford to lose a little but dont want to.....So u guys think the key is protein??? Also I am being banded on April 8th in Mexico....Cindy

mnkbrly: Kim, that is. I'm sure you'll do just fine. The closer it gets the less nervous you'll probably become. Let us know how you're doing! Sharon: you didn't address your question to me, but I started losing hair a few weeks ago. The dietician said that I need more Protein. I haven't been religious about taking my Vitamins either. They also say that the surgery itself with the anesthetic, etc., can cause a loss of hair. But I don't know about that. My advice is to take your vitamins!! Be sure you get plenty of protein and don't worry! Even if you lose some hair, they promise that it will grow back. (My surgery was in September, like Green's)

Look what I found on another thread! From Physicology Today Article from the author of Passing for Thin Size and Sensibility Losing half her body weight was no picnic. But living thin—and expanding her sense of self—nearly made Frances Kuffle’s world blow up I had been summoned to The Show, the Holy Grail for authors and the fulfillment of all my mother’s dreams. In a harried day of phone calls from Chicago, at the tail end of a snowstorm, the producers of Oprah decided, with 90 minutes to catch the last shuttle out of LaGuardia, that they might want me. You’d think, on the eve of what could catapult my book to national attention, that I would be too nervous to eat. I am never too nervous to eat. As I grazed the basket of goodies in my expensive suite, I had two questions. First: Would Harpo Productions’ bean counters go over my hotel tab and ask, “Isn’t that the woman who lost all that weight? What are these charges for chocolate-covered almonds and honey peanuts doing here?” Second: Why am I eating all this stuff? I might be on TV tomorrow! What with Oprah replaying 24/7, everyone in America could count the bread crumbs on my velvet dress. So much for the can-do kid, who, after 42 years of obesity and missed opportunities, had lost 188 pounds and written a book about it. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self is an account of how I used my radical change in weight to turn a small, private worlds of eating and surviving into one as big as my former size 32 dresses. I climbed mountains! I swaddled myself in cashmere and had lovers; I went to Italy. I floated out of the gym after lifting weights, I sat in restaurant booths, wore bracelets, and crossed my legs and took the middle seat in airplanes. Then I used my weight loss to do the next impossible thing: I became and author. Being thin opened the doors to experience and intimacy. National exposure, however, was an intrusion I hadn’t considered. I am not a pundit or a role model. You’re going to be pilloried, Frances, I thought with the vehemence of a Sicilian curse. And yet, there I was gobbling Oprah’s $12 Cookies. I put on my pajamas and pulled back the comforter on the king-size bed. It was littered with wrappers. My cheeks were burning with shame and calories. Tomorrow, I promised myself solemnly. And when tomorrow came, I smiled and joked, and I was gracious when I wasn’t, after all, needed for the show. I ached not from disappointment but with the hangover of sugar in my muscles, the sour gas in my gut and the heartbreak of being a liar. After a failed romance and a change of jobs, I drifted into relapse in March 2003, a year before Oprah, I had time on my hands—and time, in my case, is the enemy. I filled it by studying where and how I went wrong, at the office, in the bedroom. Intellectually, I knew that the boyfriend was emotionally frozen and that my former employer was abusive and infantilizing, but I couldn’t shake my ingrained conviction that I was responsible for everything that went wrong. I stopped going to the gym: I started eating peanuts or rice cakes between meals. A little of this, a little of that, and one morning I announced to a friend that I saw no reason why I couldn’t eat blackberry pie and ice cream, get the craving out of my system and return to my abstinence by noon. I wasn’t talking about a slice of pie a la mode. I was talking about a whole pie and a pint of ice cream. A whole pie? That summer I was reminded at every turn that I needed to be thin to promote my book. “You don’t want those cookies, honey”, my mom said as I carried off a stack I’d grabbed from the cooling rack. “Remember: You’re going to be in Oprah’s Magazine.” She was wrong. I did want those cookies, and I didn’t need reminding about Oprah. I sighed and took two more. When I asked myself what I needed, I was met with an unconsoling barrage of hungers. I needed to know I was not disposable. I needed a resting place. I needed to know I had enough stuff to carry off the rest of my life—enough talent, discipline, and intelligence—and enough sufficiency to protect myself from more heartbreak. I needed enough hope to find the friends and man I mourned the lack of. From August 1999 to August 2003, I’d gambled that losing weight would get me closer to all that, and I was told what to eat in those years. Now, after three years of maintaining my weight loss, I needed to be told what to feel when everyone but me has an opinion of who I am. I knew I—not just my body but my very self—was in trouble when I brushed aside a fleeting thought about how fat I looked with the answer “Never mind. You’ll like yourself when you get thin.” How does one live with self acceptance as a future and an always-conditional state of mind? More pragmatically, in lieu of my size 8 clothes, my career depended on self assurance. When asked, I admitted that I’d gained weight, adding that I never presented myself as the poster girl of thin. I said this with poise, which is not the same thing as confidence. Poise is teachable; confidence is one of the elements missing from the periodic table, three parts self respect to two parts experience. To get to confidence, I was going to have to listen to my self-accusations and sit with the rejections. Maybe shame had something to teach me. My next recovery period from food addiction would be based on therapy, heretofore more a matter of coaching than peeling back the layers of self. My psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices became the places I could air my feelings about myself and the hopes I could change my self-perception. “There’s no point in getting depressed just because I’m depressed” I told my psychiatrist, who increased my morning meds anyway. That October, on a blue-and-gold afternoon, I had Indian food with Lanie, a friend visiting from my hometown, Missoula, Montana. I described how depressed I was by my weight gain until she preempted me. “You’ve been very fat, Frances, and you’ve been very thin. Welcome to where the rest of us live.” I twiddled my fork in my plate of saag panir. I think of Lanie as being very tall and very thin, but a few months earlier I’d helped her pick out a dress. Her dress size was similar to what I was wearing that day. The event we shopped for had been a gathering of Montana writers, many of them old friends, all middle-aged. One had a rounder face than I remembered; another wore layers of a truly terrible print in the style that catalogs and store clerks describe as “flattering”. Someone else was still very thin but looked drawn and brittle as age caught up with her bone structure. These were woman I’d long envied for their pretty thinness, and yet I’d been less like them when I was a size 8 than I was now. At size 8, I had to admit, I was so self-conscious (and secretly, overweening proud of it) that often that was all I was. I could have programmed my answering machine to announce, “Hi, you’ve reached a size 8. Please leave a message and either the size 8 or Frances will get back to you.” None of the women at that party, or Lanie savoring her lamb jurma across from me, claimed their identities from their weights that night. They wanted to gossip, compare stories of their kids and discuss what they were writing, tell old jokes more cleverly than thy had at the last party, and sample the Desserts weighing down the potluck buffet. I was not unlike them. Smaller by a size than Lanie, larger by a size than Laura, a little fresher looking than Diane. Of the Americans who lose weight, 95 percent gain it back within five years. I had gained a third of it back. Not all of it. To some extent, I had beaten the odds. I was stronger than the echoes of the boyfriend and boss allowed me to hear. I was determined not to repeat the mistake of being, rather than having, a thin body. I’d lived through my size all of my life, so acutely aware and ashamed of my obesity that the likable things about me—my sense of humor, my intelligence, talent, friendliness, kindness—were as illusory to me as a magician’s stacked card deck. As long as I defined myself by my body size, I would not experience those qualities for myself. As fall turned to a snowy winter, I picked through the spiral of relationships that had unglued me the year before. I didn’t blame the boyfriend or my boss for my relapse. I had been half of the problem; healthier self esteem would not have collapsed under their judgments of me. In obesity, I had clamped my arms to my sides to keep from swinging as I walked. I craned my body over armrests in theaters and airplanes, stood in the back of group photos to minimize the space I took up. I got thin and continued to hide. Whatever reasons the boyfriend had come up with for not seeing me, I met with amicability and sympathy. Had I reacted honestly, even to myself, I might have ended the relationship. Instead I’d gambled all my sweetness only to find out I was disposable. Likewise, I had not pressed my boss for an agenda of responsibilities from the start, nor had I clarified with her that her work and recreation styles frustrated and frightened me. Slowly I began to find toeholds in the avalanche of food and doubt. I worried about how fat I looked to potential readers and what I could possible wear to flatter or disguise the 40 pounds I’d gained. At the same time, however, I had become the canvas of makeup artists, stylists, photographers and publicists. They weren’t looking at my stomach. “Give me a hundred-watt smile,” commanded a photographer whose censure I thought I’d seen when I walked in. I licked my teeth and flashed a grin only somewhat longer than her camera flare. “Wow.” She straightened up at the tripod. “That really is a hundred watts. These are gonna be great.”. When I saw myself in the magazine, my smile was, in fact, the focal point. When I began dating, at the age of 45, my smile was an attribute men commented on, but I hadn’t really seen it until it was emblazoned on glossy paper. It was bigger, it seemed, than my face itself. I’d been a size 8 in my author photo, taken as my food plan was wobbling but not yet in smithereens, in June 2003. I was surprised to see I still looked like….myself, apparently. The power of my smile fueled me through more publicity, giving me a sense of authentic attractiveness that allowed me to enjoy the process. When I had a couple of days in Santa Monica between readings, I had a chance to assess and absorb at my own pace. Walking along the Palisades, I admired the sea-twisted pines and pearly mist funneling out of Malibu Canyon. I felt as lucky as I had once felt by being hired, by being loved, and I felt worthy of my luck because I appreciated the prettiness of the place, the serendipity that brought me there and my particular grateful awareness that knitted the moment together. I’d tried to rob myself of that by punishing myself for the boss and the boyfriend. You should not have treated me that way, I thought. The emphasis was on “me”, and just then I knew who that was. I looked around carefully. There was a family reunion going on, or so I assumed until I got closer and realized it was cookout hosted for the park’s lost and unfound citizens. I smiled to myself. How…California. No gritty, iron-shuttered Salvation Army outposts here, no Soup and Jell-O punishment for being a bum. No siree Bob. In California, the homeless are just one more variant on the Beach Boys. I laughed out load. I’m here, I gloated. I like my own company. I was tired of the games—with food, with hiding what I looked like under big clothes and my big smile, with waiting until I was a size 8 again to like myself. I recommitted to chipping at my food addiction, but I let go of some of the rigidity I’d had in the first years of losing and maintaining my weight loss. “I want to be praised when I do things right, and I want to be forgiven when I mess up.” I told people closest to me. “And I want milk in my coffee.” It was a small list, but significant because it allowed me to fumble as I gained my momentum of eating sanely. Esteem, kindness, patience, forgiveness: By cloaking myself in these qualities, I could build a self that was not afraid of authority figures and charming men who have one eye on the door. Maybe these attributes will curb the millions of things that make me want to eat, starting with seeing my parents or returning to Montana. I turn into the kid whose mother had to make her school uniform, whose big tummy stretched the plaid into an Etcher cartoon; I became the sad, joking fat college student who was reading The Fairy Queene while her girlfriends were soaking up the half-naked wonder of being 20 years old. I think of my parents’ kitchens, and my mouth waters for gingerbread and well-buttered toast. I regress when I let people like Lanie, whose struggle is different, comment or take chare of what I eat. “That’s two Entrees, Francis,” Lanie pointed out when I said I wanted goat cheese salad and roast chicken for our first lunch together in Paris. “Oh, Well, then, I’ll have the salad I guess,” I settled, grumpily. That’s the way I eat, that’s how I lost 188 pounds; vegetables and Protein. I was allowing her to limit me to a smidgen of cheese, or insufficient vegetables, and allowing her supervision is how I got so mad--the fatal elixir of anger and crazed desire—that I bought all the chocolate in Charles De Gaulle for my untasting delectation. I am the kid who, when told not to put Beans up her nose, heads directly to the pantry. “I have got to learn to tell people to stay out of my food,” I reported to my therapist back in new York. Then again, perhaps this is an evolutionary process rather than a one-time miracle cure. In 2003, I denned up for two months in Montana and ate. In 2004, I struggled again in Montana but I also did a lot of hiking, alone with my dog and with my niece. My slow pace didn’t frustrate either of them. I went horseback riding and got a terrific tan while swimming every afternoon. My thighs did not chafe in the August heat along the Seine, and I was thrilled to cross the Appalachian Trail later that autumn. I had spells of disappointment and fear from the way I ate, but I was living in my body, on my body’s terms. It’s a small world I’ve pulled from the wrappers, boxes and crumbs in the past two years, but a very human one. I’ve seen my family, close friends and therapists hold on to the stubborn believe that I would come through this. They loved me enough to countenance my mistakes and let me start over. Each day, I venture a little farther from the safety of food, and my courage comes from understanding that I am a lot like a lot of people—a family member, a friend, a dog owner, a recidivist, a middle aged woman, a writer who got a good rhythm going and forgot to brush her hair. There is safety in numbers. Depression and relapse would have to wait for a different excuse than my size. I am ready to hope again. Frances Kuffel is the author of Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self (Broadway books, 2004). Her website is • Frances Kuffel • author of Passing For Thin - Home

I got detoured between rooms...lap top will only allow 1 line posts... Janet, I was sad reading about your tears today...we did miss you so much, and with some planning we can and will make another date for the 4 of us, or perhaps more if others are available... Thank you for sharing the verse; very special and appreciated...I hope your spirits are better this evening. I did deliver the hugs you asked me to! Also sad to read of Evan's grandmother...you are correct, she had a long and fully successful life. Those we love remain with us in spirit and in our hearts. Evan was fortunate to have the love of his grandparents...and it made it possible for him to be the man he is today. That is something special to Celebrate, even at this time of loss and sorrow. Terri could not have chosen a better spot for our lunch...and I have to say that the 3 women from our special group are three of the most caring and inspiring individuals one could ever hope to meet. I know I feel blessed to have you in my life! And Janet...thank you for continuing to keep Seth remembered in your prayers. Seth did his best to calm my anxiety...but mothers are programmed to worry. The best tidbit of information is that there has never been an Army pharmacist injured or killed in the line of duty. I asked Seth about the risks of flying via helicopter to the different sites he will supervise, and he said that " he was the guy that the soldiers with the big guns stuffed in the middle of the helicopter and protected". That, and prayers is what I have to tide me over through the next year... It was a very long day...a wonderful one! Diane, enjoy every morsel of your decadent dessert...and don't you dare get stuck on it! Terri, safe travels home. Dawn, thank you again for your caring words... Dee...we missed you, too! Michelle and Nicole, CA girls...I hope all is well with you! Not feeling too well...it's going to be an early night. Wish me luck...tomorrow I let my prospective new stylist touch my hair... Hugs all around...sweet dreams.

Hi all, I'm down 83 'pounds. I have also lost about 30% of my hair. At my age I am worried that it won't return! But I am loving the weight loss...

Hi Kim, I will look out for Regaine when I am next in Costcos. It is good to hear that that has helped you. My hair is ok at the moment but it will happen very soon I am sure and I am more than a little worried about that. If you are all losing yours now then it is only a matter of time for me too. I was wondering about Kerastase Densifique because I saw something on TV about it helping with hair loss but it is rather expensive. I have put in a question to the company to see if it is for this sort of hair loss though. Regaine might be a better bet all round. Thanks Kim Claire

I just wanted to update - I have had a few stalls but have passed my surgeon's goal and I am 1 pound from my original personal goal. I have lowered my personal goal and hope to reach that by September (9/10/13 will be my one year!). I am hoping to have plastic surgery late July-August. I hate to exercise and have not really started - I do walk to work everyday and only use the stairs while at work. I would like to start exercising but it seems like I never have enough motivation to actually do it. I don't drink protein shakes - I don't even count my protein anymore. I usually end up getting all of my protein but I don't worry about the protein as much as I focus on not eating too many carbs or calories. I do count calories religiously and I use MFP. Essentially I think I have changed the way I eat and have really adapted my habits. I have experienced minimal hair loss - and I notice the thinning but since I had very thick hair it is barely noticeable to others.

Sip your water CONSTANTLY! Don’t allow yourself to get dehydrated. If you do, (I did) then call your doctor and they’ll arrange for you to get some IV fluids. Don’t worry so much about hitting your protein goals for the first few days. Just keep drinking. Start incorporating some bone broth and protein waters. (My fave is the blue Protein2O.) Walk some to get the gas they fill you with to move! Take chewable GasX. After about two weeks start your chewable vitamins (I take Barimelts. Multivitamin with iron, B12, Biotin, and Probiotic.) Add in Zinc along with your Biotin to avoid hair loss. Take Senekot to help with constipation. I’m trying to think of anything else I do….. I hope this helps!! 😁👍🏻

Hi Everyone, I have been keeping up with all of your news but life has been a bit hectic so I haven't been posting much anywhere. Welcome Back Sarahjp, I hope 'Dr Grumpy' is as happy with your loss as you are? Congratulations on your determination to make this surgery work for you. I am still seeing him and I actually got a hug and a smile out of him at my last visit, when I showed him the pictures of me on the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which I climbed on 5th October. Sueoco, I have never liked exercise and at 7 months post op, I still can't/don't want to make it part of my life. So, well done on joining the Gym. Merry, I know that lots of people lose their hair post op, however, I am 7 months post op and my hair is healthier, thicker and looking better than ever. So don't count on losing your hair because it may not happen. Misty, I am sorry that you are unwell after your surgery and I hope that the antibiotics do the trick before you travel back to India. I have now lost 30 kgs and have done something very impulsive, which I would never have done 7 months ago. I have booked myself a very quick trip to Sydney for the Sydney 500 V8 Supercars Final Round which is on over the weekend of 6,7,8 December. My favourite driver Craig Lowndes has a chance of winning the 2013 Championship and I have a Grandstand ticket at the finish line to see him win. I just a bit excited *in case you didn't already get that,lol*. I am a little anxious that I won't fit in the airplane seat, but I'll worry about that when I'm on the plane on Thursday. lol If there are any Sydneysiders who would like to get together for coffee or dinner over the weekend, I'd love to catch up. I'm staying in Parramatta and I won't have a car but I can do taxi's if necessary. Keep up the great work everyone and have a wonderful Thursday. Michele

Love this - wish I could've seen it and wish more would!!! People have NO manners anymore. luluc - how in God's name can a child break a window - much less two!?! I haven't seen anyone say but is the mother not worried about her child + broken glass? Is the mother on the drugs or something? I am shocked at this whole story - gah! HOLLA! A co-worker friend did the whole "treat your child like a friend" business and is living to rue (sp) the day. Her son is 16 and she has been through hell with that child for the last two years. I'm seeing jail time for the neighbor's DD! Jillian, LOL. Pls add my name to the finicky band list. My story is too long to type out (but it does include telling a doctor off-snaps)!!! A lot of folks don't believe in chiropractic care but my experience this year has been top notch. I jacked up my back for the first time ever and was in excruciating pain. Not no mo! :smile: I also stretch before I get out of bed and did the ice therapy when it first happened. As I have said ad nauseum, that ice ROCKED!!! I clicked multi-quote on this but really have nothing to say but HUH!?! I know your man would love to hear that, haha.:drool: Hey, yer the one that continually mentions "happy endings" so I'm thinkin' maybe you did get one...or twelve!!! Bow chicka bow bow! Stay strong, sistah! The lady that sits next to me at work is always bringing in candy and I wanna strangle her! Not only is it sitting there all.the.time. but people come by to tell her of her the temptation and I can hear it. GRR!!! Anddddd I'm the only big person in our dept of 12 and they always describe people by their size. I also wanna strangle them for that. Our VP has recently lost a good bit of weight (her DH is obese) so she's like a reformed smoker/drinker....all 'holier than thou'. I guess my weight issues are showing in this post, huh? Hee! After numerous band issues and my laziness(!), I'm finally back on the program, so to speak. A couple of people have noticed the additional weight loss so I'm happy. My big thing right now is learning to STOP TALKING while I'm eating. I start shoveling like I used to and get stuck. Ouch!!!!! Oh and just because it made me laugh so, I got hit on at Sonic today by a customer. (shut up, lulu!) I worked from home today which means I had the hair in a ponytail, no makeup, and blah clothes. He actually said the words, "well I think you look good." I said, "aren't you sweet!" and kept on going! This has been an interesting year.... Have a great rest of your weeks!

Is the honeymoon over? Okay folks, I need your help in dealing with this one... Things with the new BF are getting really really serious, he is wonderful, sexy and georgeous. He also really slim and fit and currently getting worried about putting on weight because he has crept over 155lb :cool2:. He is 5'8" and I am 5'3", which I thought was a pretty good match, however, all of his previous girlfriends/partners have been tiny slim women, he considers me tall! He has paid me some fabulous compliments, all of which have made me feel really good about myself - things such as "you have the sexiest mind of any woman I've met", "I love your eyes/smile/hair", "You are my every wet dream come true"... the one thing he hadn't ever said, however, was the basic "you're pretty/beautiful/etc". Foolishly, I was fishing for compliments last weekend and asked him flat out "Do you think I'm pretty?" erk... I should have known that I would get a totally honest answer... I got the dreaded "You have a very pretty face". Now as fatties, we all know what that means, don't we? What's more, it was followed up a while later with comments along the lines of "I'm really coming to realise that I've focussed way too much on the physical in the past and that what is really important to me is someone's mind, spirit, loving heart, that we are so compatible, etc, etc.." Double erk... Jeez, why didn't he just say "you have a great personality", which we all know is also code for "you're a big fatty". :cursing: Feeling sexy is such a matter of confidence. In the past, as a big fatty, I have made a point of going for men who specifically state that they are attracted to bigger women. With that knowledge, I'm usually happy to flaunt my curves and not too paranoid about the rolls. Now, however, even though I'm 80lb lighter, I'm getting paranoid about the sags and bags :tt2:. How do I deal with this? It is not his "fault" that he finds slim, fit women more physically attractive. Let's face it - they ARE. If they weren't, why would we so desperately want to be one of those women? I'm bisexual and I don't find my body physically attractive either, so why would he? He is wonderfully supportive about the weight loss and says he is happy to be patient about it, that what he cares about is that I am actively working to improve myself. He says he loves f***ing me - and we have the most amazingly mindblowing sex. However, I am less confident now about getting naked in front of him than I was before I so foolishly opened this can of worms. I love this man, I know he loves me, but my self-confidence took a beating with his honesty and I don't know how to recover it. Help!

Yes my dear chewing is very important!!! If you are just getting some frothy saliva, it sounds like it was mild, and now you have a reminder! Before banding I thought of myself as one whole unit. Not so anymore. I now think of my stomach, and the eating and digersting processes as a separate function. Capable of thought, and reasoning on its own! Actually I think of my entire body, outside of my head, as a separate part of me now!!! I do NOT think about food, or what I can eat, or any of that anymore. Eating smaller amounts, and deciding what to eat is once again second nature. But I still find myself separating my body!!! All of yours as well!!! I tell you that your band is telling you to slow down....or that your stomach is trying to help you pass that fruity yogurt by producing extra saliva----slime. Did I develop multiple personality disorder when I got banded???? Mdrai, another reason you read more stories on here about problems both large and small, is for the same reason you come here for support. Some DH's, or SO's are against it, waiting for a problem....so even the minor discomforts come here. We do tend to obssess about our bands! My friend called me like 4 days after I got home from being banded, she was almost a year out, and she was crying, thought she had eroded, and was hurting and sick. Had been trying to hide it from her DH who is also banded. She didn't want to lose hers, and go back up in weight, while his stayed down. They neither one are interested nor have time (in their opinion) to come to an online support group---their loss!!! Anyway, eventually the pain did send her to the ER---where 2 hours later, they removed her appendix! I kept telling her that her pain would be higher with the band, but her port is realllllllly low....so she was convinced it was band related. Pre banding, we all ate something occasionally that did not agree with us, but now, we always blame the band! I agree, that was an awesome thing to do, showing her how supportive she is for everyone but her. I remember so well the day you were denied, I felt so badly for you! Now off you go, the liquid diet is more than half over!!! Now for myself. I do not have a cup next to my bed for spitting in! I did for a couple of weeks keep some crackers next to the bed, I was having issues with reflux again----but that has eased. I eat whenever I want to eat. I do have to eat smaller amounts. That is what has helped me lose over 90 pounds. I have not done it as fast as some. But I do not count calories, or points, I eat the same things I did before being banded...just less of them. I was happy with my pre band life, except for the weight. So I pretty much live the same life, and share a meal with my Grandkids now----no big deal! If I have to order a full meal, I have leftovers---not going to stop me from going. I would have gone pre band, and ate it all, and paid for it, so I go now, and ask for a to go box!!! In the last 13 months, I have PB'd twice. Both times, I knew it was happening, it was not sudden and in public---I just fell into old eating habits, and had not chewed well. I eat small amounts of most anything. I will admit, after throwing up (PB'ing...whatever) what seemed like no less than a dozen donuts, after eating only 2 bites...I have no real desire to eat another so I avoid glazed donuts completely. Those 2 bites expanded in my stomach like I cannot tell you!!! I eat small amounts of bread, no problem. I know none of us are exactly alike, and I would never expect you to make your choices based on my experiences. But I can tell you I am so fully happy with my banding choice, that if it become necessary, I would suggest it to, and accompany, my own Mom or daughter, to be banded. I have recommended it to friends who have ask, and 2 have actually had it done, and are doing well. I am lucky in the way that everyone around me here was and continues to be supportive---but while they support---they do not understand---in the same way someone who has been there does. My LBT-ers do. Back when I was banded, I complained to my DH that my incision hurt because it wasn't healing well, my boob laid right on it, kept it from getting air, and healing. He looked at me like "....and you want me to fix it how???" I come on here, complained, and had numerous people tell me how they dealt with it, and just knowing they were healed, and had the same problem, relaxed me, and sure enough a week later it was fine. When I had my chemo treatments, some of the people complained about having to go to the oncologists office for the infusion. I welcomed it, I saw others going through similar things, I saw people in the office who were re growing their hair...it gave me hope----it gave me the affirmation that I could do it if they could!!! We will all be here for you. On another thread I am active on, I have a friend who has chatted with us for over a year, closer to 18 months, as she battled with insurance to get banded, she has been there for all of us. Insurance failed her. She finally managed a self pay, and is almost a week out from surgery now. She feels where you are at!! Come here and vent, worry, ask for support----whatever you need whenever you need it. These people in this room, are so great---you will never lack for understanding...or a kick in the pants if you need it! Hang in there!!! Well I will catch the rest of you later---I need to get going, I am meeting Rick in town to get his blood work taken care of. BBL Kat

Hello, I am 57, turning 58 in a few days, and I am in the process leading up to surgery, I would like to talk with someone who is about where I am, I have had my appt. with the surgeon and my appt. is scheduled with the therapist, I figure surgery will be in june sometime. I am not worried about the surgery itself, I worry about the long term effects of the band being in my body for years, I am not to concerned about the Hair Loss, I have my pretty wig in place , just in case I should need it. I am excited , nervous and scared , I am hoping I don't back out. My son-in-law had the banding feb 28 , and it hasn't been all smooth sailing. The after surgery depression also scares me. I am on wellbutrin and have been for a long time, and once in a while I have to take anxiety medicine, but not every day. I hope to hear from anyone . Good luck to everyone.