It's sometimes hard to know if each of us are really eating right. The band does a great job of controlling portions, but sometimes, don't you wonder if you are really maintaining the correct caloric intake and mix of protein/fats/carbs in order to lose weight? Since I wonder all the time, this is my first try at creating a poll. I would like to know how you, my fellow bandsters actually eat. Perhaps we can all get an idea of how we can do better ourselves!

Here are my poll questions - In order to normalize the data, it would be mathematically easier to understand if answered only by people that have been banded over 30 days; answers should be based on daily values, and it should use your estimates for the last 90 days average. This will help people anticipating getting banded have an idea of what to expect. If this makes sense, we could do some other ones for the rest of our peers in their various stages!

THANK YOU!

I did a quick check on yesterday and I had 2500 calories easy.. no wonder I dont lose..

BUT I ate 4000 easy BEFORE.. this just isnt fair

I posted too quickly. I only put in 1200-1500 without reading that I was also supposed to put in how much weight I'm losing weekly. Sorry, I messed you up! I am losing 1-2 lbs a week consecutively except during Christmas. For 3 weeks I didn't gain or lose anything!! (I was THRILLED!)

I had got off track with my eating, but am back to 1000 to 1100 calories..but so far the scale hasn't budged. I picked back up with my daily exercise and I feel good about that. I took my measurements yesterday and have lost 7 inches since my last fill and over 50 inches since my banding in Sept.

Hi All, thanks for your added narrative updates. It helps make sense of the data. But realistically, since the poll only accomodates one criteria, it gets REALLY unscientific, really fast. Nonetheless, it is possible to peruse the data, compare it to the results, and make some correlations. Once this poll closes, I will put it in excel and play around with it and see if we can derive anything meaningful from it. There are some definite trends, though.

Also, I have noticed that my weight will often plateau for up to two weeks, then when I am totally down in the dumps over it, something will shift (like maybe extra exercise or less salt... or who knows?) and all of a sudden, my weight will drop 5 pounds in about 3 days, never to return.

I would appreciate any comments that add some context to the poll results, along with any comments that shed light on the above phenomenon, so we can determine if its common, and what causes it. Anyone else plateau, then drop a bunch?

Cheers!!

Heh, I don't plateau then drop a bunch, heh, but I have seen this behaviour reported.

I guess if Iwas going to design this, I would have included a bunch of dependent variables, since we know that men lose weight faster and differently than women. I would also look at age, to see if those were dependent or independent factor. I would also want to see how excersize affects loss for here at LBT.

I'm thinking this would be chi square, yes? or were you going to use something else to look at it, like the dependent vs indepented (calories vs fat consumed?).

That happens to me Brad...I will play around in the same weight range for a couple of weeks and bam...I lose a couple of pounds...I am due for a drop!

Hi Banded for Life! - since you have the same experience as I do, perhaps the following will be interesting. Do you have any favorite "healthy treats" like I did, which might be causing this?

I realized that sometimes when I go up or plateau for two or three days it may be related to salt. There is this excellent canned Soup by Progresso, where you can eat the whole contents of say, chicken noodle soup, and only get 200 calories total. Its quick, and very filling for something fast, and if you have to snack, it seemed like a good choice. However, last week, I read the salt content. It was shocking! 80% of the RDA of salt in that one little can. So I am thinking that perhaps the reason we have bad scale days and then sudden weight loss is that it takes about 3-4 days for all that salt to fall out of our blood serum.

Result - that soup is off my list!

Vines - I don't even know what a chi-square is! You sound waaaay more analytical than I am. If you want to try to do some regression analysis on this, please do and share it with us! Trying to quickly post this poll was an exercise in frustation, since it was extremely limited. I figure they are good for our general interest, and also for non-scientific assessments. Other than that, this site doesn't have good enough tools, and no one's paying us enough to design a really good poll. But the new smiley library is pretty awesome. :flypig: