jojolpn

I really appreciate what you have shared here. I have a food addiction too...my insurance wouldnt cover the band a year ago or now...but I saved up and paid out of pocket. I had my surgery May 18th...and although I have lost almost 15lbs since pre-op diet...I wonder everyday if I wasted my money...if this is really going to work for me. I was also exactly 247 on the date of my surgery. I already find myself thinking of ways to cheat the band....why do I do this??? On the positive side...I don't really have the money anymore to indulge in my fast food vice.
Any way thanks again for sharing...I hope to be an inspiration to someone else in time.

I am one month in. I lost alot the first week. Then nothing and then I put the scale away last week. I am measuring my food, tracking cals, getting water, and working out. I cannot beleive I cannot lose anything.
I also had a big mouth. I usually am an open book but now every day everyone askes, so "how much are you down now', "how do you feel", "are you happy", can you eat that?......
I feel like I have to get a report to everyone every day and I see alot of people. I wish I could take it back and not tell anyone. It is not like me to be quite but being accountable to an entire office and having to act like it is going great when I have so much doubt is really hard. My mom called me two weeks before surgery and said "why dont you get the sleeve instead". Now that is all I keep hearing in my head. "I would have done better with the sleeve".....
Very difficult! I feel you pain! I hate failure and especially public failure. I am hoping green zone will help but I already am following a strict caloric intake. Ugh!

I bet you Jim that your wife is the President of your Fan Club and wants to know if you're having problems. As for the rest lets break this down:
You could have gotten bypass but remind yourself..why didn't you? Did you not want someone mucking about in your insides playing with your intestines, cause that is a big turn off for me...ewww. One giant reason that I don't want the bypass.
Next have you done a mental inventory of everything you are eating and drinking..everything. Even if you just took a bite of something cooking on the stove, a cracker you picked up and popped in your mouth without thinking. Is your sodium up..cause if your sodium is up but your not compensated with fluid then you will not move a scale. This is worse for women but it can seriously derail a scale for guys too.
Next...tell them (not literally) to bite you! All those people, and I have found some of this out already BEFORE being banded, feel like they have some stake in your weight loss, some of them are jealous, some of them may be tuly rooting for you. You have to figure out which and prioritize them. The people in your corner keep em, the ones that are jealous or just like drama you can use as motivation. So after you get unstuck and loose more weight you can say...yeah Ive lost such and such, lap band is slower than many other surgeries so you don't have digestive problems and loose skin, etc.
And you can always come here and rant and we will all mentally tell those people to bite us too!

I was scared of failing too. I thought, if anyone is going to fail this band, I bet it's me.
But then I pulled myself up and thought, stuff this, I am so NOT going to fail this. I just need some help, a little push, to control the hunger, and I'll be fine. And I was.
I recently sprung a leak and I have no restriction and I can tell you now, fighting with hunger again is no picnic. The band took away my hunger, and with some readjustments to the way I thought, I tackled the head hunger while the band tackled the physical hunger. It IS easier to work on the head hunger when the physical hunger isn't derailing you.
So make the decision - you are NOT going to fail this. Set yourself mini goals that you'd like to achieve. Remind yourself of the prize that awaits you. You can make up your mind to do this. You just have to believe it.
And no, I didn't fail. I lost all the weight plus some. And even now, with no restriction, I'm maintaining my weight on my own. If I can do this, someone who was overweight all my adult life, so can you. I'm not special, trust me. So make the decision.

I'm like Cfalbro, wait when did I right this.? It's easy to think this because all our lives we have failed and failed to lose weight the way society dicates we do, and some of us have people in our lives that don't let us forget that we should lose weight and that in itsself is another failure that people can't see us for who we are but look at the weight first.
To make the lapband work, you do need to follow the regime set by dr, at least for the first few months and then afterwards, you can start experimenting foods, to learn what you can and cannot tolerate.
Sweets is a big addiction. Be careful, be honest and let your nutritionist know so they can help with alternatives. I didn't know this , but it was a big eye opener. Last night my hubby spoke to a co-worker who he knew had the lapband and she knew I had mine. She's had her for 3 years, and recently said on Facebook , lapband failure, all I lost was 20 lbs. Well she didn't mention , that she ate candies all the time, drank shakes, sliders as they call them. She even had her 10cc band filled to 9ccs in effort to lose weight and all she could get down were shakes, not the protein kind, but the cool whip on the top kind , with ice cream. And now she is diagnoised with diabetes and with poor leg circulation because of it.
Its not you wanting that stuff its your body. Its not a craving that's gonna be turned off overnight, but its one you have to learn to control. I'm the biggest whiner/baby because I can't eat something anymore, But if I look at the scale my body is following along, its my mind that is kicking and screaming. And I do indulge myself in a bite of pasta here or bread there, but I've gotten to where that's enough.
You will be ok, we are rocks in all areas, but sometimes we don't see it because we have been told we were.
I wish you the best!