my3sons75

Hi Ladies, Great to read your updates! :-) I haven't been on here for a couple weeks now and I've been feeling so bad about my progress I needed to come on and see how everyone is doing and see if it gives me a litle hope. I'm a little relieved to see I'm not the only one struggling, but you all seem to be doing so great! When I had my surgery on 4-26 I was 229 lbs. (pre surgery diet and preop lost over 30 pounds) The doctor said she put about 4 cc's at the time of surgery. I went in for my first fill on 5-24 and weighed 225 lbs, so only 4 pounds lost in a month!!! She added 1.5 cc's bringing me up to about 5.5. For the first 2 weeks things went well and I dropped down to about 219, then the next week down to 218 where I have stayed since. I know what some of my problems are: I'm eating a tiny bit more than I'm supposed to, I'm eating sweets once in a while (usually a mini ice cream cone that has about 150 calories), and I'm eating more often than I'm supposed to because I'm only satisfied for about 3 hours. My days go from about 8am to 2am, so that's a long time to only eat 3 meals...hence snacking or a 4th and sometimes 5th meal. Excercising - my doctor wants me to walk every day for about 40 minutes, which I love to do and am happy to have energy to excersise, but I've not been good about doing it every day. It's been more like 2-3 times a week, but sometimes I'm walking/running for up to 1 1/2 hours. My doc wants me to come in once a month regardless if I need a fill or not so they can check in with me. It's time for my next fill and I'm hesitant. I know logically it makes sense since I'm having these issues with being hungry and snacking, but I don't get stuck right now and I can pretty much eat anything I want (I stay away from bread just because I don't want to start that again) but I do get full quickly and can't hold much...it just doesn't last long. If I get another fill I'm worried I'll start getting stuck and having pains and not being able to eat salad and such. If you compare what I was eating for a meal (or the whole day) from 6 months ago to now, it's crazy how different it is. I feel like I'm eating 20-30% (calories and portion size) of what I used to....so why am I not losing? I know my doc will ask about what kinds of foods I'm eating, and I've been fairly good about trying to mostly eat lean proteins, but I don't want to feel like I'm "dieting"....I just want to have restriction so I'm not eating too much and not too often. This is the kind of stuff other people without the band don't think about. They think it's just get the surgery and poof you're skinny. LOL I overheard someone in a dressing room the other day saying to someone else that she had lost 70 pounds. The other person said "wow! How'd you do that?"...the first lady says "I had surgery". It was silent for a second and the other person goes "ohhhh". That was it...no questions, no congratulations on the hard work, no nothing. They don't realize how much this is about choices and will power and hard work. Congrats to all of you for keeping up the hard work!!!! I was supposed to call the doctors office this week to set up my next appointment and I put it off, so now I have to wait until next week to call. Hopefully they can get me in soon so I'm not in trouble. LOL

I am in the same boat. I lost 4-5 pounds the first week, now nothing. No food has gotten stuck, except lettuce feels kind of funny, and I don't really feel any restriction from the band. I have 4 cc's in my band from surgery day and the first 2 weeks went fine, but now I feel I can eat as much as I was eating during my 3 month diet prior to surgery. Cannot wait for my next appointment in 10 days too!!!!

My doc said to consider the "mushies" as anything you can smash with a fork, but she wants me to stay away from carbs like mashed potatoes. I've been having cottage cheese, yogurt, scrambled eggs (which I normally don't like) but I cook a little mexican chorizo and add to my eggs - yummy!, tuna/chicken, and salmon. I made some yummy salmon in the oven and it was easy. I don't normally like it much but used some lemon and light butter spray...it was pretty good. I found some at walmart in the fish section, there have bags of 4 frozen salmon fillets for only about 5 dollars, which isn't too bad. My mushie stage is only a week, so I don't have to do it too long. I really like to use Mio in Water. It's drops you squeeze into your water for flavor - like Crystal Light - but liquid. My fav is the berry pomegranate but they have lots of flavors. I'm not a huge water drinker either, and it really helps me to get my water in.

I am 5' 2 1/2" ( I usually round up to 5'3 ) At the beginning of this year before I started dieting and losing weight, pre-band, I weighed 260 and wore size 24 pants, 2x or 3x shirts. I am now at 225, wearing a 22. Not much changed in size yet. My goal is about 135-145...giving myself a nice 10 pound cushion. I haven't been 135 since I was 17 years old (now mid 30's), so I'm pretty sure that will be low enough for me. I want to still have some substance to me, not be too skinny (never thought I'd say THAT! ). But once I get to that point I may want to change it. But I would love to be able to wear a size 8 or 10. Just be normal again.

I found mybodyproject.com, but it says membership is by invitation only. Is that the right website? How did you get in?

Hmmm...I wonder if you could take some of the beans, some of the juice, and blend it (I use a little bullet blender that works great). Then it would still be the right consistency and be more filling.

That is exactly what my husband does too! He always says "if you want to lose weight you just have to eat less and exercise more and don't eat the junk food", but then he turns around and will have a bowl of ice cream and ask me if I want some too - knowing I am dieting and trying to stay OUT of the kitchen. Or if I dish a small plate of dinner and only eat what I'm supposed to (before LP), he says "that's ALL you're having? You should have a little more, that's such a tiny amount!" At least now with the band I can actually say "no I can't have any more" and mean it. The hardest part now - knowing that I can eat a little piece of chocolate or something sweet and it won't "fill me up". Unfortunately the band doesn't help me too much with that struggle, but my will power has gotten soooo much better since beginning this.

My doctor said they sewed the "4 corners" (it's round) to the muscle to keep it from moving or flipping over. The pinching and pulling is the muscle being moved and still being sore from being stitched to the port. That is the only pain I'm feeling now, and it's diminishing day by day. :-)

I was STARVING from day 1 too. I felt like no matter what I drank it didn't go into my "stomach", which it really was in there but it didn't feel like it. I was swollen so it was taking a long time for any of it to get into my system, so I was actually nauseaus because I felt like I hadn't eaten/drank anything for hours. I kept hearing that I was probably not going to be hungry and wouldn't want to eat anyways, but even at the surgery center I was telling my husband that I wanted to eat, just AFTER the surgery. :-( Days 3-5 were horrible, I felt like I had made a mistake or I was doing something wrong. Day 5 I started blending a can of soup and eating that instead of just the broth and I felt much better. I'm at day 8 and started mushies, and feeling almost back to normal. Good luck to you....it will feel like forever, but you'll make it thru to the other side. :-)

Jen (I'm guessing?? LOL) - one thing I did that was a little different and my doctor didn't have a problem with, was I took a can of soup, like vegetable beef, and I put it in the blender (I have a little bullet one that works great). It made the soup the consistency that I needed for the liquid phase but gave me more of a creamy texture without eating a cream-based soup. It really helped on keeping me fuller longer and feeling like I got something to eat. Of course I could only eat about 1/2 - 1 cup at a time, but I only heated up the part I was eating at the time and refrigerated the rest. Good luck, my post op days 3-5 were the worst, and now I'm at 8 and feel awesome!!!

..protein shake....trying to get used to posting with my phone while my laptop us being serviced.

I'm not at the mushie stage yet, but before the band I was told chicken is something that can be hard to get down unless it's very moist, and even then it can be hard to get it down right. Before the band we ate it probably 3-4 X's a week, so i'm going to have to adjust. Maybe try the same dinner again, but instead of eating the chicken maybe have some protein share along with the other things, just while getting used to it. Good luck :-)

I was banned on April 26th, haven't really had any problems as far as pain or naseau, but i'm having one issue that I haven't seen anyone else have. first day home from being banded I was STARVING! I have been hungry every single day, and liquids fill up the top part if my stomach where my band is, but I still 'feel' hungry, sometimes even feel nauseous because i'm so hungry. I finally gave in the other day and had a chocolate shake from McD's (oh so bad for me!) And finally felt a little better. I drink one to two protein shakes a day, V8 splash, jello, juice, yogurt, thin soup, and always do fine with them, but never seem to get rid of that hunger. :-( Anyone else hungry???