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Originally Posted by Claudine1975  My question is when in the "I can eat real food stage" - how much do you eat and are you really not hungry between meals once you get good restriction. Do you stay in a calorie range to lose weight? How do you know you are in starvation mode or do you ever go into that mode since there is a lot of padding on our bodies  .
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It's going to be a very personal thing for you. I have good days and bad days. A good day is a day when I will have to remind myself to eat. It's important that I do. Going for too long without food will slow down my metabolism and probably make me hungrier when I do take the time to have a meal. I won't feel hungry, but I'll eat to keep my metabolism going and to get the nutrition/vitamins/protein I need daily.
A bad day is a day when I want to eat anything that's not nailed down. Not because I'm hungry, but just because I want to eat. Being physically restricted with the band doesn't translate well to my brain. Old habits die hard and there are days when I just want to sink my teeth into a foot long sandwich from Subway. The problem with this is, I can't. My body no longer tolerates bread. So no matter how much my head tells me I
need it, my body will reject it and I'll feel extremely uncomfortable if I attempt even a single bite.
I'm not a calorie counter. Many swear by it but I'm just too lazy to write down everything I put in my mouth and calculate the calories I still need or the ones I've overdone. I just eat a whole lot less now. I've had a difficult experience with an over-fill; meaning I got too much fluid put in during a fill. It was fine the day of the fill but things seemed to tighten up 2 or 3 days later to the point where I couldn't even get water to go down. The weight was just dropping off, but I was miserable because I couldn't put anything in my mouth. So had to go and get some of my fill taken out. It was the best thing to do and slowed down my weight loss, but I was a much happier person because of it.
I'm not sure what you mean by starvation mode. If you're talking about the days where you just can't seem to eat enough to satisfy your hunger..... well for me I discovered that 99% of the time that hunger was all in my head. I made discoveries of what triggers that hunger. Sometimes I'll be in a bad mood, or tired and that will have me reaching for food. Comfort food. Bad food. The other 1% can probably be down to hormones or the fact that I've made a wrong decision about what I've eaten. Usually junk. So I'm still hungry.
I discovered there are "slider" foods. Foods that will slip through my band really quickly and I can eat plenty of them. Unfortunately many of these sliders are bad. Like cookies or potato chips. It takes a lot of will power to reach for something else during these times of weakness when it's just so much easier to satisfy my head hunger. I'm not physically hungry, my head just tells me I am. So I avoid having these foods in my home now. I really can't be trusted to stay away from them.
Like I said, old habits die hard. I spent decades eating badly and it's difficult to adjust to the newer, healthier style of eating. But it's not impossible. I won't kid you, it will take a lot of hard work and probably plenty of tears of frustration. But even knowing how hard it can be, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone else out there. It really has been my saving grace.
I hope this helps answer your question.
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