♥LovetheNewMe♥

http://www.weightlosssurgerychannel.com/breaking-wls-news/wls-success-separating-head-hunger-from-physical-hunger.html/#more-6768

It is best to follow the advice of your WLS, I take the forum for what it can give me which is support. For medical advice and true guidance about my band, what to eat and so on. I always go back to my MD. All docs give different advice based on their outcomes with there patients. The only consisitant thing I notice is chew your food and those that seem to follow the rules what ever those rules are seem to be the most successful.

Yes, can you drink water and other liquids easily? After my first fill, I felt fullness in the back of my thoart. It does feel different after a fill, like starting out all over again everytime I get one.

I do weights 3 times a week and cardio 5-6 times a week. When I first started the weight training I had to adjust my diet. My trainer told me I was not eating enough protein and I was losing muscle mass and I needed more lean protein to build muscle. So I used to eat between 60-70 gms of protein a day and now I eat between 90-120 gms perday but same calorie count. I try to stay between 1000-1200 calories but sometimes I don't hit that I am ususally under in calories. I eat 3 meals a day and have two protein shakes aday. I do the shakes between breakfast and lunch and another between lunch and dinner. Basically I eat a weight training diet, oatmeal with egg whites for breakfast, lean meat and veggies for lunch and dinner and two protein shakes a day. Boring but it has been working for me. I did gain two pounds when I first started working out but I think that was my body adjusting to the new diet but lost it and 3 more the first month. I dropped 3% body fat the first month. Excited to get measured this week because I know I have lost more inches. Just excited to see what my % body fat is now. I can see a difference in my arms and abdomen mainly, the thighs are coming but they are slower. Good luck and have fun and enjoy. Just remember to give your body time to rest between workouts, i alterante days and muscle groups. 30 minutes is a good work out. Enjoy and have fun!

I do both cardio and weight training. I started the weight training 2 months .I lost 9 inches the first month and am due to be measured this week. I lost 5 lbs first month and as of today I have lost another 4.6 lbs on my scales. I work out under the supervion of a trainer, he alternates between my arms and lower body and I do abs (crunches every time I go) To date I have lost about 103 lbs. I am 19 months post op.

lol, you just reminded me of something funny that happened to my friend at work. She had gastric bypass a month after me and has also lost over 100 lbs. Last winter she was walking up the hill to the hosptial from the parking lot with her husband and by the time she reached the front door her thigh high stockings had rolled downed to her ankles, She looked at her husband and said now what. I guess I will have to pin them to my underware. Her husband smiled, chuckled and said, Honey please don;t do that because than your underware will be around your ankles. I still laugh evertime I think of this. I love buying underware these days!

Congratulations on 1 year and cheers to your continued success!

Glad your doing well, just a word of caution for going back to work. Remember to take your food and remember you will get tired becasue your not eating that many calories yet. I went back day 5 after surgery, and I felt fine but tired quickly. I took a business trip on day 7 and did ok, I carried my protein powder and snacks with me. Good luck you have a good attitude and this is very important and following the rules is also important. I wish you great success.

Great, glad your doing so well. Wishing you much continued success!

@ Darci, thought about that girl...........................believe me!

Wishing you success!

Well Diane is having her own personal pity party. Go figure. I got my feelings hurt yesterday probably not the first time nor will it be the last but this time I am really having trouble shaking it. So who was the wonderful person who decided to be so honest with me my "loving husband", I type that with much sarcasm and anger at this moment. As all of you on this site know I have lost a lot of weight over the past 19 months, 103 lbs to be exact. I am very proud of the fact that I have been able to be successful with lapband and it has not been without ups and downs and struggles along the way. So what did the "jerk" say that hurt so much. Well here it goes, we were working outside trying to get the pool open and I had to get in the pool to srub the sides and bottom so I went to put on a swim suit. OMG, as I am sure all of you are aware of is that when you lose a lot of weight your skin does not always snap right back into place. Go figure, right! Well Mr. Brilliant says to me, "Honey, you know you are damn sexy looking except for one thing." WHAT? He repeats himself, now knowing he has crossed the path of no return. EXCEPT for WHAT??? Well I am not sure you know it or not but your THIGHS really look just AWFUL. Oh yeah, he did say it. I think I turned into let me see a TIGER, no may be a RATTLESNAKE, or may be it was SCORPION. So WTF?? Does he not think I look in the mirror everyday and see what I look like without my cloths on? Why does he think I am literal working my ASS off at a gym 3 times a week and doing cardio 6-7 days a week. So have you figured out I am just a little touchy about how I look? I have been struggling for months with my body image, I still saw the fat me for months when I looked into the mirror it was not until just the past month that I was starting to accept the new me. Starting to notice that working out was paying off, I even felt my thighs were looking better, not perfect. But for real, I used to weigh 252 lbs on 5'1' frame what do you expect. I am just hurt, pissed, mad and just can't believe he said it. So what did I do last night, I binged. I reverted back to an old behavior. Well of course binging these days is much different than before, but still I hate the fact that I allowed what someone said to cause me to go back to an old coping behavior. So today I feel hurt, guilty and just totally like a failure. I have tried all day to make this into a positive but I am struggling, I am trying to be a big girl and realize that everyone has an opinion but I guess my feeling is that because he said it, it is how he really feels. So to him, I look awful. I looked awful fat and I look awful thin, so what now. Well I guess I could continue to feel sorry for myself and give into bad past behaviors or I can just put this into prospective. I know I have lose skin, that is a given. I know I have worked to do to try and tighten up, that is also a given and why I hired a personal trainer and am working my butt off. I spent my afternoon reading the forums for other posts that could help me and this is one I read that really hoped me put into prospective what I feel: "Don't listen to the inner dialogs that continues to put you down despite your success. Because it won't suddenly start happening once you get plastic surgery. Choose to celebrate your achievements now." To take the above statement a little further I will not allow others to sabotage what I have worked so hard to achieve. I could chose to have plastic surgery to rid my self of the lose skin I have but I have chosen to try and tighten up with exercise, it takes longer may not be perfect but I do not want the scars that come with plastic surgery. I will not go back to being that person, the person who used cheeseburgers, chips and Fry's to comfort her. I don't want to be that person, I will not be that person and further more I am not that person anymore. So there hubby take that, maybe you have your own issues you need to work out to deal with the fact that "YOUR" wife looks "HOT" OK maybe that's a little much but you get the point. So first I am forgiving myself for failing myself and not using what I have learned for the past year and a half and than I am going to forgive the "jerk" I am married to for hurting my feelings. I may not tell him for a few days because I think he needs to realize just what a "HUGH" mistake he made. Because you see I have another character flaw, I may forgive but I never forget...........................

Quote: You are your own worst critic. Don't listen to the inner dialogue that continues to put you down despite your success. Because it won't suddenly start happening once you get plastic surgery. Choose to celebrate your achievements now. Well said!

No offense taken. My choice to have the lap band was because I did not want to alter my internal organs, meaning I did not want the gastric bypass because I did not want to by pass my stomach and I did not want the sleeve because I did not want to loss 2/3 of my stomach. That being said, my MD wanted me to have the sleeve because I had bad knees due to joint issues with my weight and he was afraid I would not be able to exercise. I wanted the band and there was no talking me out of it, I told my MD, you give me the tool and I will be successful. I was not able to exercise during my first 60lb loss and I have injured myself at about the one year mark and had to have knee surgery. I do not regret my choice it has been the right choice for me. I have lost 103 lbs and have only 17 left to loss. My results are not typical and the web sites will tell you that surgeons consider you successful if you loss 60% of the weight. That number was not good enough for me, I want to lose 90% or more of my weight. As you see I am very determined and have remained focused during this past 19 months. It is a personal choice and you and only you can make the decision. Look at all the pros and cons of all the surgery's and know with lap band you are going to lose the weight slower than with gastric bypass. I am 19 months post op and not at goal yet and I did sit at 175 lbs from July last summer until I had a fill this Jan 2012 and started losing again. Good luck in which ever choice you make.

Agree with both posts your surgeon is your best bet for which will work for you. There is also a third option you did not mention, Gastric Sleeve. I strongly suggest you attend a WL Seminar in your area so you can make an informed decision. Meeting and talking to experts can help you make the right decision for your personal weight loss journey. This is a life changing decision and you need to make it with your doctor. Good luck to you.

Large amounts of sugar free substitutes can give some people diarrhea. Everyone's GI tract reacts differently to sugar free.

Giving up Coke was difficult for me but I did it and have not had one since July 2010. I tried it flat, yuck, I tried to drink one, too much gas. I drink a lot of flavored waters, plain water and ice tea with splenda. Small price to pay I guess for the band. I know a lot of people who do still drink soda but for me it was just to uncomfortable.

Agree, usually gas and it just has to pass. I think this probably the worst part of the postop portion of the surgery. You can try Gas-x, I lived on this for the first month. Everything gave me gas.

@ Cindy's Mom, sometimes a fill is not the answer to losing, sometimes you have to burn more than your body needs. The closer we get to goal the harder it is to lose and another fill is not the answer. I am 17 lbs from ideal body weight and I am working my butt off by doing some basic old fashion exercise. I sometimes wish I had started exercise sooner but bad knees prevented this early in this process. As far as the slider discussion, I rarely eat sliders, I know my triggers, and chips and salsa is one of them, and I try to stay as far from them as I can. I switched to popcorn for a while but realized I was just substituting popcorn for chips. I do not believe in depriving myself of anything if I truly want it but the longer I am banded the less I want it. I have come to far to sabotage myself with sliders because I know me, once I head down that road it will be hard for me to get back on track.

You do look different and you are losing but I do agree with Rob_SoCal's comments. I have lost 103 lbs and it was not until the last few weeks that I was actually able to see what others were seeing. I know I was heavy, 5' 1' at 252 but I don't think I saw myself as fat as I really was. When I hit 178 last summer I still felt fat and when I would look in the mirror or see pictures of myself I still saw the same person I was at 252lbs, As an example, we have elevators at work and they are mirrored on the outside, I used to stand in from of them and think, man you are still fat. Last week I was standing in front of those same elevators and I looked at my reflection and thought to myself, Who is that? I also finally noticed this week that my knees were no longer as big as they were 2 months ago. I guess my mind finally allowed me to see myself for the first time as a thinner me, I still don't see myself as thin, not sure I ever will but I definitely do not look like I did in 2008. It takes time to feel comfortable in our new bodies, most of us have been heavy a good part of our lives and the words thin were never in our vocabulary. Your looking great and I do suggest you take measurements, because there have been plenty of months I have stayed the same weight but dropped a size due to exercise. Good luck to you.

Glad your doing well. You are correct on everyone is different. Some people lose immediately and some do not start losing until after a fill and some struggle with losing all together. You are also correct in trying to stay positive, if you follow the rules your chances of being successful with lap band are increased. Unlike gastric bypass we do not have dumping and we truly are what we eat. You have to learn early what a slider is, ice cream, milk shakes, chips, junk food. Unfortunately, these foods will seem to always go down when we struggle with healthy foods. But if you think about it, when you chew chips and pretzels they pretty much dissolve in your mouth and do not need the stomach to break it down, protein is another story, you chew and chew and chew to make sure it can pass through the band. Take what you can from everyones posts, we all get frustrated from time to time and this is our one sounding board that someone can identify with our frustrations. Good luck to you and remember to take pictures of your self now, and also measurements. These will save as reminders of where you started and how far you have come. Good luck to you.

Congratulations and yes a lot of people do not understand this is now a way of life for us. It is not longer about the next fad diet it is about living and eating healthy and it is a commitment and there are plenty of sabotaging people and obstacles that others will throw our way. My favorite is, oh I forgot your dieting you can't eat that, and I have to say no, I can eat that but I prefer not to. It really drives people crazy when you no longer want to take part in there office parties, grazing all day long or eating endless empty calories. I made a choice, a life altering choice, I was tired of being fat and tired of diets. I love my band, I am off that crazy rollacoaster of diet hell. Is this journey always easy NO, but who ever said life was easy and you did not have to work hard for what you wanted. Stick to your convictions and beliefs and you will be successful.

Hair loss happens, call it an unfortunate side effect. It will grow back. Hair is protein, when you are losing large amounts of weight in the beginning or your protein intake is not up to what it should be something will suffer and unfortunately it is your hair. You do not always see this as much with lapband as you do the other WLS procedures but it does happen. I took this for about a year after surgery and started taking at about 6 months and it made a big difference that even my hair dresser noticed. I liked the chewable biotin from GNC. Zinc is another mineral that can help. My best advice is talk to your doctor and ask him for some assistance, on things to try, I strongly believe in keeping in touch with my WLS surgeon he has been a great resource for me and has helped me stay focused.

Here are some basic guidelines from the lapband.com web site. This site is full of valuable information for new bandsters. In the early months of my journey I lived on this web site and have read pretty much all the articles. I wanted to be as informed as I could be so I could be successful in my journey and work through the frustrations. So far this has worked well for me, I am 19 months post surgery and 103 lbs lost with 17 to go to goal. Good luck to you and I hope this helps. http://www.lapbandta...l-instrucitons/

http://www.lapbandforlife.com/postsurgerydiet.htm