Alexandra

I agree!! I was just saying at a support group last night that if I were to get in this situation I'd go liquids for a WEEK to let things settle down. Allowing this cycle to continue could lead to real problems over time. Take it GENTLY and realize you have to heal before you can move forward.

MelAnne, I just want to echo what everyone else has said, and reassure you that you what you're thinking is something almost all of us go through as new bandsters, at least temporarily. Banding is a big step and it IS frustrating if we expect to see changes overnight. That's why it's SO IMPORTANT to understand how it works and have realistic expectations. Let's make a deal. Come back in 6 months and read this thread and let us know how you're feeling then. I'm willing to bet that you will look back and marvel, because all of these feelings will have passed by the wayside. The worst part of banding is the pre-fill stage, that's a common refrain. You're just confirming that once again. Please, please, please be good to yourself and do what you can to not get too hungry. It really does make a difference!!

Hi David, congratulations and welcome to LBT!! What you're feeling is very common immediately post-surgery. You're probably still on a liquid diet, for one thing, and for another you don't have any Fluid in your band and so are feeling no restriction. This is NORMAL. After your 6-week healing period your doctor will adjust your band by adding saline, and this will start to create the restriction you hear everyone talking about. Some people lose weight on the liquid diet, some don't, but that's unpredictable and NOT what banding is all about. It's about eating less in the LONG TERM, and the band can't really start helping you with that until after you've had at least one adjustment and feel restriction. Don't worry, you're going to lose weight with the band. It's pretty hard not to. It just doesn't happen overnight. Stick around, you'll get all your questions answered. Welcome to bandland!!

I yelled at Chuck Norris because I'm a ninja!!!

Glad to hear you're OK!!! :clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

Good luck with everything, NewSho! Try to get your mind around the goal of better health, that's really all that matters in the long run. Your belly will be there (or not) next year and you can take whatever steps you need/want to in the future. This is more important. (IMO, though, don't rule out having kids because of your weight! My lifelong weight problem had me worried big-time about children, but I had two totally normal pregnancies and now have two healthy, slender children. Statistics mean nothing.)

Vines, wow. Big hugs and strong healing thoughts to you!! I hope you get everything addressed quickly and cleanly. As for your mom, I had a very complicated relationship with my mother in the years before she died, and we just ignored mother's day. It doesn't matter in the end; what matters is that you are honest with yourself and her. Good luck and much peace to you and your family. :hug:

Oh Leener, keep us posted! I hope you're back and feeling 100% better by now. :hug:

Julie, wow, what a story! Thanks so much for sharing. You've articulated a lot of my fears about surgery; stories like this are one reason I am not at all leaning toward plastic surgery no matter how saggy my skin is. Big hugs and strong vibes for complete and total healing!! :hug:

You know, I've never heard of an employer having a restriction like that. Why would your employer want to decide which surgery you have? I'll bet that's a mistake, somewhere along the line. It may even be discriminatory or illegal. It's one thing for an insurer to have preferred treatments; presumably those decisions have been made by the doctors on the carrier's medical review board. But assuming your employer doesn't have a medical review board, it shouldn't be making those decisions. This just sounds wrong all the way around to me. Talk to your HR department, counselor, advisor, whatever. Make noises like you think this is a discriminatory rule and ask if you can appeal it. Let them know you might be seeking legal advice. That should get their attention.

I'm an addict, and happy to be one! I usually do go for the sugar-free kind, though, and fat-free if I can get it. Frozen yogurt is another good bet. And after so many months of this sort of strategy, the regular kind of ice cream now tastes too rich. Don't give it up, work it in is my strategy. I have it almost every day. If I have a frozen yogurt after work, though, I don't have any after dinner. If I don't go by TCBY, I'll have it for dessert. Like with any habit you want to break, though, it might be easier to go cold turkey at first. JUST SAY NO!

You don't even need to explain what it's for. This is YOUR money, and the only problem is that if you are taking it out of your retirement plan early there will be taxes and penalties to pay. If you're prepared to take that hit, it's no one's business what you plan to do with the the money you take out.

Hi Vic, Welcome to LBT! You've asked a lot of questions and you'll easily find answers to most of them just by poking around and reading a little here on the site. But I will answer your question about adjustments and whether that means more surgery. The answer is NO: adjustments are done by a surgeon or technician adding or removing Fluid in the band via the port, which is imbedded under the abdominal skin. It's accessed by a syringe, and only local anaesthetic is used (sometimes not even that). Painless and quick!!

I'm with Megan, it's very important to have realistic goals. I've been fat all my life and the smallest size I ever wore as an adult was an 18, for about three minutes after losing 75 lbs on Optifast. Well, now I've been wearing 14/16 for almost a year, so I'd say YES!! I've met and exceeded my weight loss goals, and this time I have no worries that these results are going to be temporary. But my weight loss goals may not be yours, so take this for what it's worth. Just having less than 50 lbs between me and my "ideal" weight has always been an impossible dream. Now it's a reality, and I often hear people say that I look "normal." HUH? That was never even one of my goals, because I couldn't imagine such a thing!!

Very common, Tidge, during the liquid diet. At this point your body is still processing the anaesthesia, and you have no solids in your system either. It's not at all uncommon to have diarrhea during this time. It will pass, probably as soon as you start on mushy foods if not sooner. Congratulations on your banding and welcome to LBT!!

Linda, congtratulations on your banding! You really can't "overeat" with liquids, so don't worry that you're taking in too much at one time. Fluids flow right through the band, and if your swelling is resolved it's very unlikely that you're going to feel any discomfort. The fact that you're satisfied is GREAT, so enjoy that feeling for as long as it lasts. Then move to mushies, and just remember to take it slow. There are no absolutes in how this feels. It's going to feel the way it feels, and you just have to be attentive to it and take it slow. Then you can't go wrong. Welcome to bandland!!

Pepsi, I can relate totally to eating out of boredom. That is my most intense eating cue, has always been. The band DEFINITELY helped with that, no question. It FORCES you to think about what you're eating, and makes it much easier to stop when you've had enough. It's not a magic cureall for boredom, though, and the challenge is to find something else to fill the time. Now, perhaps finding something else to fill the time would help with overeating even without the surgery, but for me it took the physical brakes the band puts on me to get control over the mindless munching.

East Coast tastes may be different, I guess. I've seen it at A & P, Shop Rite, Pathmark, any of the big ones around here carry it.

Roger, I agree, that is a VERY odd thing to have been told. Does the nurse practitioner even know what he or she is doing? It's utterly absurd to say no fills for the first year. Yes, it's true that rushing to get fills too early is not good, and in fact my surgeon's office is saying now that delaying fills may work out better in the long run for most people, but when they say "delay" they're talking about three months, not 12 months. What you were told is just odd, and is counter to the way the band is designed to be used. I'd ask for clarification from the surgeon. That makes no sense. And I can't imagine what their motivation for saying something like that would be, anyway. They'd lose all their patients as they went seeking followup elsewhere! (Maybe that's the idea?)

Brilliant, Brad. Congratulations on your bandiversary, and may there be many, many, MANY more!! :biggrin1:

Bandayed, this was just bumped by the spammer. Jonathan didn't bump it.

I had an interesting experience there about two months ago, actually. Now, I'm an avowed ice cream addict and have refused to give it up, though I do normally go for whatever fat-free or sugar-free options may be available. But when the mood strikes, I'll go for the real thing. The last time I was at Cold Stone, I ordered something with chocolate, Peanut Butter, whatever. And it actually made me slightly ill! It was sooooo rich I could only eat a small part of my portion before having to chuck the rest. I haven't been back there since. Amazing!!

J, please feel free to get in touch with me directly. You sound EXACTLY like I did, worries and all, before surgery. Please know that we have all been where you are, and if you have a realistic understanding of what the band can do, and realistic goals, your life can be changed by it. You ask: "Is it hard after the surgery to follow the fdiet if you didn't totally follow it pre op? " It's EASIER after the surgery, because you will have a TOOL that will help you say no after you've eaten enough. I won't kid you, it's not all kittens and lollipops, but physically it takes less food to fill us up. And it doesn't happen immediately, so there's time to ease into it. Nothing bad happens if you can't follow the "program" immediately after banding. You just won't lose weight as fast as you might have otherwise. But once you get a decent amount of restriction, you will be shocked at how easy it becomes to put down that extra whatever-it-is you might want to eat. And that's how we lose weight. Banding leaves us normal, functioning, healthy people, who have a smaller stomach capacity than we did before. If we learn to use it correctly we will lose weight. It's really simple!

Are you sure you don't have something else going on? After my second child weaned, the unrelenting tiredness I had been chalking up to nursing didn't go away. So I went to the doctor and was lo and behold diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. Treatment of that condition helped immensely, even a year before being banded. Having two small children is exhausting (believe me, I KNOW!), but it sounds like you may have something else happening, too. As for energy post-banding, Losing weight certainly helped my stamina--I can keep going long after I would have wanted to quit doing (whatever it might be) before. But I can't say I got any huge ADDITION in energy level, except occasional short-term boosts due to good spirits. As I say, far more relevant to relieving my exhaustion was getting my underactive thyroid treated. It also sounds like you're being very hard on yourself with regard to your house. Hell, girl, with a 3 y.o. and a baby you'd have to be doing NOTHING ELSE EVER besides cleaning for your house to always look good! You have way more important things on your plate. The house can wait. :biggrin1:

Poodles, erosion is a potential complication for ANY sort of medical implant. There is nothing people do that causes it, or can prevent it. There is just an unknown element at play. Of course, it seems intuitively obvious that being too tight for too long would add to the risk of erosion, but there are lots of people who go that route and don't erode. So who knows? Slippage might be more easily attributed to user "error," as you put it. Being rough on the stomach early on, overdoing the eating later on, these things can cause vomiting or other internal disturbance which, again, COULD add to the risk for slippage. But still, there's no absolute guarantee that even if you stick to liquids for two months postop and never eat more than a tablespoon at a time, you won't still experience a slip. There is just no way to be sure. Overall, the chance that you will "lose your band" is in the low single digits no matter what you do. Your personal chances can be influenced by your behavior, but the biggest contributor is just luck.