Hi everyone! This is a support thread for bandsters who are approaching or maintaining their goal weight, whatever that may be. This thread will likely include monthly challenges for exercise and/or diet goals, which members can choose to join or not join at their leisure.

I read a book once called Passing For Thin, which was written by a woman who lost 150+ pounds through OA, yet never felt thin on the inside. That is one of the things thread is intended to discuss, as well as the other unique challenges and successes of a bandster who is now Passing For Thin. These issues could be related to food in the maintenance phase, upcoming exercise goals, self-esteem issues, relating to the opposite sex -- anything you confront in your new body.

Maybe in the course of discussing our issues, we will become thin on the inside as well as the outside.

Let the discussion begin!

She_Smiles, Don't give up hope with your skin. It's only been 7 months since your surgery and you haven't stabilized yet. They say that skin can take a couple of years to shrink to the full extent it's going to. I think there's hope for your stomach. For what it's worth, my Dad (who's a plastic surgeon) advised me to wear "spanx" type underwear as much as possible to help with the skin issues. He says the compression helps in the long run.

I think wondering "how did I let myself get that way" is part of our journey. I often feel sad for the old me. Sad that I missed out on so much during my 20s. Sad that my closest romantic relationships were in high school and early college. Sad that I need so much plastic surgery. Sad over so many things.

But that's only a small piece of what I feel. Mostly, I'm happy and proud of my accomplishments, as we all should be. I ran 5 miles today and it was no big deal at all. Last year this time, I couldn't run 5 feet.

Its sooooo good to focus on your athletic achievements. OK so running through my head is a fantasy that I actually look the way I feel when I run, but that feeling is real and its how YOU feel that counts, really, not how you look to others. As long as you feel great about yourself you could be green and spotty with nose hair, it just doesnt matter. I cant believe the self esteem I've gained from running.

But I wonder if spanx would help my saddlebags? Its worth a try since you actually look good while wearing them anyway!

SheSmiles, I don't think that is off-topic in any way. The sags and realization that we may have permanently damaged our largest organ (skin) is a huge reality for all of us. I am just doing everything in my power to improve the health of my other organs and soul!

The spanx gives great support! Julie talked me into trying it for the muffin top that was spilling out over my low rise jeans. I never understood that it could really help my skin. As far as the boobs go, I bind them up with three different kinds of bras when I run. (I just don't need any more damage!) While I fantasize over a TT, getting a lift might be harder for me. I'm scared that my boobs would be all perky and then I would just ruin them by running.

Recently I have been bruising on my legs. Could that be from running? I am kind of clumsy, but don't notice bumping into things. Hmmm...

Ran home from a party/fireworks show instead of riding in the car. It was a blast! Heading out now to get in a few more for the endurance work.

I'm scared that my boobs would be all perky and then I would just ruin them by running.

HA! I'm so glad you mentioned this! I've wondered the same thing.

People ask why I don't run outside, there is no way I could! I have to hold my boobs when I run! HAHA!!! It hurts if I don't. I haven't found a bra that is doable yet but I'm still working on it.

Julie... your Dad is a plastics guy, do you know about this specific issue? BTW, great idea for a thread!!

Brooks Running - Women's Apparel - Sport Tanks & Bras: Pro-Support Bra

This running bra changed my life. It comes in D and DD. It's expensive but I would have paid 5X the price, knowing what I know now. It made such a difference for me the first time I put it on.

Brooks Running - Women's Apparel - Sport Tanks & Bras: Pro-Fit Bra

This bra is what I use now that I'm a C. It's equally as good, but without the wire. It only fits B & C. Again, I'm a fan.

Not for one second wearing those bras have I ever thought I might be hurting my breast lift. My breasts really don't move in them. I'll ask my Dad the next time I talk to him, but I'm sure he'll say running is not a problem with the right bra.

Boo -- I used to double and triple bra to run as well. I don't know if the Brooks sizes fit you, but if they do, make the investment!

Yes, a good bra is all it takes, I'm an E cup and I can run without undue bounce. The good old Berlie Sports Bra suits me really really well, I cant find one to beat it. That brooks one looks good though!

<p>Julie, you did it again - pulled me back! This is why having this "sister bandits" support is like no other - pulled back into the positive. I've been in the dumpster for several weeks - I've been way too "tight", haven't been able to eat solids - got into mostly only liquids - then again tried solids and could not keep anything down.................went for an unfill and I can get solids down again..................I feel better physically and emotionally. A little frightening (everything goes down), but doable for a couple of weeks until I get back for a fill.</p> <p> </p> <p>Went to a 4th party at a friends house - they live on a beautiful lake - have a boat house where the party was held - down a million steep flights of stairs. Last year it took me about a half an hour to climb up....................I really felt like I'd have a heart attack.............this year I was winded, but put one foot in front of the other and made it up pretty fast (carrying things!). Got uuuu's and aaaaa's about how great I look.................................again, looking around the corner at my life today vs what it would have been without the help of my band and the effort of all those hours of good, clean, sweaty exercise - I've done good - come on "older age"..............I'm ready to tackle you!</p> <p> </p> <p>I'm going out to buy some spanx today! - I thought it would just push it out either on the top or bottom? Do they make it for "arm flappies"? We could feel like a mummy.</p>

I met a lady in support group the other night. she is 71 years old!!! she's lost 208 pounds in the last 3 years!! She is just precious. Brings her husband to group. she is going in for plastic surgery later this month to get rid of her skin and be sexy again. She was definately a hoot and an inspiration!!

I just had this horrific fight with my husband Alan - who is scared silly for me to have ps - he thinks I'm too old to take the chance of elective surgery. We didn't actually have a fight about ps (just sort of around it).......????? I'm about at the place where with all the hanging skin - and am starting to think I'll stay around her for goal - I don't want more hanging and am wearing a 12/14 from a 3x............and feel decent (I didn't say perfect - as you all well know from previous posts)...........I got yelled at for having a couple of drinks ("empty calories") last night.................he watches what I eat and it drives me crazy - I love him to pieces and we hardly ever argue - he's just afraid for me and thinks for health reasons I should weigh less (and I think he's still worried I will gain this back - like always before).......................so, as soon as I get on this puter, the first thread I read is that a 71 year old adorable lady (I'm 67) who has lost 200 + lbs is going to have ps to feel sexy again! ugh! I'm going out in the 85 deg plus weather to pull weeds and sweat!

Julie, this is a great topic. Whenever I've lost weight in the past, self image has been a real problem, always leading to regaining the weight. I won't even be banded until Augut 2, but I'll be looking for this thread when I start passing for thin.

Betty,

I know this is completely between you and Alan, but have you considered having a panniculectomy rather than a full tummy tuck, kind of as a compromise? I BELIEVE that procedure is only about 1.5 hours, as opposed to the 4 a TT can be. It would take off the excess skin but not do the "bikini perfect" muscle work. It doesn't involve moving the belly button or anything. It's the kind of thing my Dad would do in his office OR under a heavy local sedation, rather than in the hospital under general. I would think a heavy local sedation would make Alan feel much, much better, no? I really think it would be all you'd really want as well. In all candor, Alan doesn't understand what carrying around a pannus is like. It is SO LIBERATING to be without it and I want that for you, if you want it for yourself. If not -- for whatever reason --, that's ok too.

I don't expect to ever has a washboard stomach (and in fact think that a rounded womanly tummy is much more sexy), but even if it shrank back 25% I'd be happy.

I truly think that's quite realistic She_Smiles, and I bet you achieve at least that. Keep your Water intake up and moisturize where you feel you need it.

This is a great thread. I am now at 167 after all time high of 270 and it still surprises me that I can wear a size 12. I was going to have PS this year, even got the quote and everything, but decided to put it off until next year. I never saw myself as really big when I was big and now I'm having issues seeing myself as smaller. I know a huge part of it is my tummy, it's awful.

I always believed it would get easier, better once I lost the weight. But guess what life is not perfect no matter what you weigh. It's a struggle and will always be a struggle. I still do not like to exercise and will look for any excuse not to start but once I start it really does feel great.

Great topic.

Ana

Well this is a great thread! I had planned to lose another 20 pounds but have been at this weight for 1 year this month. Can't seem to lose a pound more. I am having issues with feeling alot of fatiuge and have a hard time exercising. I walk a mile 5 times a week and that is about all I can handle.

You guys are all so inspiring, I have tried many things to get past this plateau but it seems my body doesn't want to let go of any more weight. I still feel heavy, I wear a sixe 14. Would love some suggestions.

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