Lindsay

Ribs are a poor food choice anyways I've found the band reminds me that the foods that hurt going down (& and up coming back up) are typically crap food choices anyways. Hard reminder for us!

I'm just curious as to why you feel a 2 year check up is needed? I had never thought of this. Are you getting fills done elsewhere?

soooooooo happy for you, and love the update. I was wondering where you had gone!

For the majority of us, we don't feel the port until we've lost a significant amount of weight. For me, it shows, but I could care less. I also know now not to move my body, so it doesn't rub against my ribs. And I sleep with a pillow under my side where my port is. With that being said, i've lost a lot of weight & fat to get to this point.

I wouldn't feel silly returning! I think you walking away, is a good judgment call - i can see where you're coming from! It's also very proactive of you, to come to a place to get other people's opinions and feedback. If you're still not confident with that specific place, just keep looking around for another fill place - I haven't good vibes off of a few different fill centres in the USA .. which is why I opted to do them here in Toronto, and pay a fortune for each fill.

Yes, this could be right. If they're doing blind fills, you'll be returning every 6-8 weeks, as they have no way of determining how much to put in. Even under flouro, I could understand why they'd want to do it in small baby steps - which is the responsible way to go. They don't know anything about you, your band placement, or your eating habits. All of these things can effect the way a fill goes .. I'm actually really surprised they said yes to touching your 'Mexican band' - i know this is a big issues for a lot of fill facilities, as they don't want to touch us. The liability is very very touchy. Did you think you'd just need one fill? and you'd be done? ..just want to make sure I understand your scenario. You should be happy they didn't just stuff your band full, and then send you on your way. It sounds like follow-up care is a priority (& not just a money-grab), esp when you're not there patient!

If it's true, how do you explain the excellent muscular definition and the very chiselled abdominal wall of bodybuilders, athletes and fitness enthusiasts whose diets are very similar - even though there are some differences - with most of them using the high protein and low carbohydrate regimen for achieving muscular definition? Furthermore, how so you explain the high muscular quality induced by a high protein diet, independently from caloric intake? Here it's obvious that arithmetic is not clear at all, because the evidence of the facts don't support the theory of the over-simplified mathematic count as the determinant factor that influence body composition (Body composition is the result of Fat Free Mass to Fat Mass ratio). This is explained by the fact that our organism is much more sensible to an "hormonal and biochemical mathematic" rather then the merely algebraic mathematic. Here is important to assert, and it's even evident, that the single individual cannot be considered like a calorimetric bomb (for which 1 gram of carbohydrate is not different from a gram of protein since they do have the same caloric output: 4kcal per gram) since it -the calorimetric bomb- goes far beyond from any endocrine and biochemical consideration. So, in other words, without getting into more specific details of the biochemistry of fatty acids, this is not a true statement.

yes, the broth alone is fine - but you'll probably get killer acid reflex if it's at all spicy.

whoohhoo!!! thanks for this post!!!

I know I was really nauseous after surgery, which was caused by dehydration.

hmm .... a few months, after my 2nd blind fill.

I had a shower, a day after my surgery. I wouldn't soak it persa, for a couple of weeks, though. Plus the bacteria in a pool .. just wait until your tiny little incisions look like they're well on there way to healing. For me, that was only a few days. Prior to a few fills, I could pretty much eat anything. Not much restriction .. But after my 6th or so, blind fill, my no food list to date is: Bread Pasta Hamburgers (way too dense) And I'm sure there are a lot of other things, that I just don't notice anymore. I can't snack anymore, as that just fills me up for a real valuable meal, which should consist mostly of protein.

You can't 'tone' - so ... it's really just concentration on fat loss through DIET. It really sucks (I'll tell ya, from experience!) but it's the ONLY way.

I've always struggled ... i was over weight as I child, and was brought up with the mentality that i ate too much, and was seeing a dietition at the age of 8 years old for weekly weigh-in's. In my opinion, this only made things worse for me as an adult.

Personal Health - Weight Index Doesn’t Tell the Whole Truth New York Times A frequent question among people of a certain age, including yours truly, is “Why, when I weigh the same as or less than I did when I was younger, does my waist keep getting bigger?” Phrased another way, the question could be “Why, when my body mass index has not changed, am I fatter than I used to be?” The simple answer is that the index, usually called B.M.I. for short, is a crude measure of fatness in individuals. Calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of one’s height in meters, it doesn’t differentiate between fatty and lean tissue. “The B.M.I. tables are excellent for identifying obesity and body fat in large populations, but they are far less reliable for determining fatness in individuals,” explained Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist at the Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans. Fat Tissue, Lean Tissue Fat takes up about four times the space of muscle tissue, for example, so it is quite possible to look and feel fatter even if your height and weight remain the same. This is particularly common among women past 50 and men past 60, and the results are likely to show around the middle. For children and the elderly, body mass values can be especially misleading because the relationship of lean body mass to height changes as they get older. B.M.I. charts pop up all over the place, in popular publications, exercise facilities and doctors’ offices. The charts are widely used by doctors to determine if their patients are underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. Thus, a body mass of less than 18.5 is considered underweight; 18.5 to 24.9 is considered a healthy weight; 25 to 29.9 is overweight; 30 to 39.9 is obese; and 40 or more is morbidly obese. If you fall into the “healthy weight” or “underweight” range, you can easily be lulled into a false sense of security. But thinness is not necessarily healthy — recall the 97-pound weakling from the Charles Atlas ads of yore. A low B.M.I. could be indicative of malnutrition, anorexia, cancer or a wasting disease. On the other hand, if you are an athlete or body builder, your B.M.I. could mistakenly put you in the range for overweight or obese. Degree of body fatness is a better way than body mass to classify individuals. Both the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health define obesity as more than 25 percent body fat in men and more than 35 percent body fat in women. So “a woman who is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 120 to 125 pounds could be quite fat,” Dr. Lavie told me, “even though her weight and B.M.I. seem O.K.” Among Americans in general, he said, “a six-foot, 250-pound man will be obese, but if he were an N.F.L. lineman of 6-foot-3 weighing 280 pounds, he might be solid muscle with only 2 percent body fat.” The Obesity Paradox Of course, most Americans with a body mass index in the overweight or obese range carry around too much fat in relation to muscle. And a study that followed 527,265 American men and women ages 50 to 71 in 1995-96 found that those rated overweight based on a body mass reading of 25 to 29.9 were 20 to 40 percent more likely to die within 10 years, and those rated obese, at 30 or higher, were two to three times as likely to die within a decade as those who had a lower reading in midlife. In an editorial in the July issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Dr. Lavie and colleagues discussed what has been termed the “obesity paradox” among patients with heart failure. The paradox refers to the repeated finding that while overweight people are more prone to heart failure, patients with heart failure have lower mortality rates if they are obese. The reason for this paradox is far from clear, though Dr. Lavie suggested that one explanation could be that once people become ill, having more bodily “reserve” could be to their advantage. The editorial was prepared in response to a report in the same journal by Antigone Oreopoulos of the University of Alberta and her colleagues. The authors compared the B.M.I. of 140 heart failure patients with a more accurate, though more involved, measure of fat and lean body mass using a DEXA scan (DEXA stands for dual energy X-ray absorptiometry). They found that B.M.I. value alone misclassified the degree of body fatness in 41 percent of the patients. Their conclusion: Having more lean tissue and less fat may more accurately predict a patient’s survival chances. Thus, among patients with heart failure, these authors stated, “body mass index may not be a good indicator of adiposity.” Dr. Lavie and coauthors wrote, “Although B.M.I. is the most common method to define overweightness and obesity in both epidemiological studies and major clinical trials, clearly this method does not necessarily reflect true body fatness, and B.M.I./body fatness may differ considerably among people of different age, race and sex.” What to Measure A more reliable, but still relatively simple, assessment of fatness would rely on a skin-fold score based on measurements taken with a caliper at several areas (in men, the thigh, midchest and abdomen, and in women, the thigh, triceps and area above the hip bone) that reflects the amount of fat under the skin. Or, since abdominal fat is more hazardous, simply take a tape measure around the widest part of the abdomen and another at the hips and calculate the waist-to-hip ratio. For men it should be no higher than 0.90, and for women no higher than 0.83. An oversize abdomen is symptomatic of too much metabolically active visceral fat, which increases the risk of heart attack and premature death. If just waist measurements are used, Dr. Lavie said, a man’s waist should be less than 40 inches and a woman’s less than 35. Exercise is the best way to minimize an age-related rise in body fat, the doctor said. Aerobic exercise, though important at all ages, is not enough. You must also do weight training to build and maintain muscle. And since the body’s production of testosterone, the hormone that favors muscle-building, diminishes with age in both men and women, you may have to increase the amount of strengthening exercises as you get older just to stay in place.

I personally wouldn't use anything precooked, or any type of sausage. These are the 'ingredients' - Pork, Water, Seasoining (Salt, Dextrose, Spices, Bht, Citric Acid), Sodium Phosphates. *Bht, Citric Acid Added to Protect Flavor* It's not a real food. But then again, in Canada, we don't even have these sorts of products.

Original poster said she was following The Atkins, and another poster chimed in about the Instinct Diet. My post was trying to clarify what original poster was really asking ... Which I'm not sure anyone understood.

Hey there! Are you working out? It sounds like you need a refocus and shift it to something else. Food is crucial, but why not focus on working out for a week or 2, and see how it goes If anything, it will kick start your motivation

IMHO, having fats all throughout the day is the only way you'll be able to maintain energy, esp once you're calories drop due to restriction. I would find out the background (very specifically) of your 'personal trainer', including her history/background in NUTRITION. Most 'trainers' are no highly educated in nutrition, and give out poor or misguided advise. This is a huge investment, hiring a trainer, and you need to trust this person, 100%. IMHO

I would lose the word 'diet' from your vocabulary. That's the reason most of us have been yo-yo dieting - losing & gaining weight our entire lives. The band is a LIFESTYLE change. Eating properly - proteins/carbs/fruits/veggie's is something your body will need, when you're on so FEW calories. Those in the forum, who go for trends in dieting & fad's are the ones that are never successful. You'll figure that our after watching this forum for a couple of years!