tere1985

Hi theresa! thanks for the welcome. i was shocked when he said i was 324. when i was in middle school i said id never be 200lbs...when i was a midteen age i said id never be 250. as a adult i said id never be 300. after the birth of my 2nd child in late april i had broke the 300...on my postpartum apt i was 286 but when we were still dealing with allergist and formula changes and hospital stays i lost track of caring about me and more about getting my baby girl healthy. ( she wouldnt poop and it was backing up inside ) now she is 4months and healthy healthy and moving around and just showing her true personality. my 3yr old is kinda in her own lil world phase where mommy doesnt have to be up her hind 24/7.
I want to change befor my girls can remember me like this. I dont want them remembering there mom being the fat mom at school conference and such. i get tired quickly too. i dont mind walking the neighborhood with the girls but in the south ga its humid and yucky! when my size 28 pants didnt fit anymore, i was so sad to have to look online for size 30, ive never been past a size 28. and i never ever seen a size 30 befor in the store like lane bryant. and i hate stretchy pants they are like a bitslap in the face to me "you are to fat to zip a zipper, have a stretchy waist band" sigh. please oh please let his behind be right and 10 weeks ( mid november ) comes fast! thanks for listening

thanks! my oldest brother did the surgery in nov of last year and has lost almost 100lbs. he is such a different person on the outside. he still has issues choaking on things. and i never see him eat personally ( we live in different states ) but when i do see him he usually has a kid in his arms and is taking small bites here and there. its def a lifestyle im curious to do. i dont have much choice. when i asked my doctor what my BMI meant. he put down his pen and said simply "60% of your body is fat. not good. for anyone. including a 5'1 27 old like yourself " i felt like crawling inside of myself and dying. i find allot of relief reading the posts from others from pre and op surgery. the feeling of losing 200lbs is actually laughable to me. but reading everyones posts and blogs it seems not to far away. thanks for the welcome.

Hi marybell my name is Theresa I am 27yrs old, I have been married for 8 years and I have 2 boys. I got banded may 25th 2012. This has been a challenge I'm not gonna lie but I believe it's been the best choice I have made in a very long time I had to do a 6 month diet before getting banded and I also had a physiological evaluation. I don't have any co-morbidity's other than my weight I started at 366 and on the day of surgery I was 347 and as of today I weigh 317 it might not seem like a lot but I feel great and none of my clothes fit anymore!!! Yay for me!! I know that if I exercise more I will lose more but it's so hard with all this weight on me (I get tired so quick) I love food myself but little by little I am learning to eat the right things and it's not that hard I'm really never hungry! The band is a new lifestyle you don't have to stop enjoying what you like. You will learn to do it with moderation (smaller portions) I recommend you do your research. I know that without the band I wouldn't have been able to lose the little weight that I've lost. My will power is not that great!! I wish you the best of luck with your journey!! If you have any questions of comments feel free to send me a message!! Good luck!!
Tere
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Hi marybell my name is Theresa I am 27yrs old, I have been married for 8 years and I have 2 boys. I got banded may 25th 2012. This has been a challenge I'm not gonna lie but I believe it's been the best choice I have made in a very long time I had to do a 6 month diet before getting banded and I also had a physiological evaluation. I don't have any co-morbidity's other than my weight I started at 366 and on the day of surgery I was 347 and as of today I weigh 317 it might not seem like a lot but I feel great and none of my clothes fit anymore!!! Yay for me!! I know that if I exercise more I will lose more but it's so hard with all this weight on me (I get tired so quick) I love food myself but little by little I am learning to eat the right things and it's not that hard I'm really never hungry! The band is a new lifestyle you don't have to stop enjoying what you like. You will learn to do it with moderation (smaller portions) I recommend you do your research. I know that without the band I wouldn't have been able to lose the little weight that I've lost. My will power is not that great!! I wish you the best of luck with your journey!! If you have any questions of comments feel free to send me a message!! Good luck!!
Tere
Sent from my iPhone using LapBandTalk

eating lunch and reading this........love my trollster friends...

I think you should try avoiding the scale for a while. I myself am batteling the scale temptation but i have noticed that when I weigh myself only once a week I see a drop in weight but when I weigh my self two or more times a week my weight fluctuates and that tends to discourage me! Good luck on your weight loss journey!
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I am 27 I started at 366, I'm 2 months post op and I am at 335 as of this morning. I'm losing slowly but I'm losing and to me that's all that matters. I too wish I would have done this at an earlier age but I'm happy I finally did something to take control. I cant wait to get out of the 300's!! Good luck with your journey. You will do great and remember slow and steady wins the race!!
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I just started my weight loss journey, but I would really like to reward myself by being able to enjoy an awesome roller coaster ride!! I remember I used to love them until I got to big and no longer fit in them! My excuse has always been I don't like to ride them or I'm afraid! But the truth is I'm to embarrassed to say I can't ride them because I'm too fat! But I know I will (hopefully soon) be able to ride them again!
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I just started my weight loss journey, but I would really like to reward myself by being able to enjoy an awesome roller coaster ride!! I remember I used to love them until I got to big and no longer fit in them! My excuse has always been I don't like to ride them or I'm afraid! But the truth is I'm to embarrassed to say I can't ride them because I'm too fat! But I know I will (hopefully soon) be able to ride them again!
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I was banded in January 2012, and within months of me, two of my real life friends had Gastric Bypass. One had it in October 2011 and the other February 2012. We all started out with over 200 pounds to lose. I was originally scheduled for Gastric Bypass, too. But, I canceled the surgery because I simply couldn't justify permanently rerouting my internal organs without trying something far less drastic first. So, I got the Lap-Band instead.
Like so many others on here, I heard endlessly how I was a fool for choosing the Lap-Band over Gastric Bypass. "Oh you'll be lucky to lose 50 pounds with Lap-Band"... "You should have Gastric Bypass, you'll dump a ton of weight much faster"... "why don't you stick with the sure thing, Gastric Bypass, rather than waste your time with Lap-Band?". Believe me, I heard it all, so much so I even began to doubt myself and my decision. What if they were right?
But I researched not only the Lap-Band but the Gastric Sleeve and Gastric Bypass thoroughly. I knew the pros and cons of each, I knew what the surgeries entailed, and I knew that regardless of which one I chose the work would be mine to do and I'd have to make diet changes for a lifetime. I knew Lap-Band was right for me, so despite the naysayers, I went through with it.
Fast forward to now, July 2012...

My friend who had Gastric Bypass in October 2011 has lost 64 pounds. She lost all that in the first 3 months and hasn't lost anything in the last 6 months. She never really changed her eating habits because she figured she didn't need to with the Gastric Bypass. She did cut back on portions in the beginning, but currently she admits that aside from vomiting occasionally from eating fatty foods or sweets, she eats pretty much like she did before surgery.
My friend who had Gastric Bypass in February 2012 has lost 14 pounds. She hasn't changed a single thing about her eating habits and is vomiting multiple times daily from trying to overeat.
I, who had Lap-Band in January 2012, have lost 121 pounds. I am far from perfect, I struggle with head hunger almost daily, and I definitely have times I eat unhealthy foods. But the majority of the time I eat very healthy and follow the portion and nutritional guidelines my nutritionist gave me.

My point isn't to gloat, or to say "See, Lap-Band is better!" My point is the fact that it doesn't matter which WLS you choose, you MUST DO THE WORK YOURSELF. I don't care if it's Gastric Bypass, the Sleeve, or Lap-Band. The surgeries are tools not magic pills. If you don't change your eating habits to healthy ones for a lifetime you simply will not get the results you desire. Period, no exceptions. I hear people say all the time "Oh I got the band because I don't want to diet". Of course, we all did, but guess what? You do have to eat healthy, not just for awhile like a diet, but for a lifetime.
Ultimately, no matter which WLS surgery you choose, your success or failure depends on you not the surgery itself.

So you cheated a little on your post-op diet. When you were supposed to be on liquids, you had a few spoons of mashed potatoes or a swallow of yogurt, both nice and soft. Maybe you ate a few Cheez Doodles, but what’s the big deal? They’re like eating flavored air, aren’t they? And the McNuggets you tried during the puree phase? You chewed them really well, and you could only eat three instead of your pre-op portion of six – isn’t that great?


No, it’s not great that you could only eat three McNuggets. And yes,cheating is a big deal, and I’m going to tell you why. You’re not going to get away with this one. Miss Jean has eyes in the back of her head. She sees the cookie crumbs on your face and the neon orange faux cheese film on your guilty fingers.
SOME DEFINITIONS OF CHEATING
The word “cheat” has two main connotations. One is cheating in the sense of lying and deceiving. It’s intentional dishonesty. You know what you’re doing is wrong, but you do it anyway. The other connotation of “cheat” is unfaithfulness. Unfaithful to a vow or promise you made to another person or to an organization.
When someone cheats you, do you just shrug and say, “Oh well, he was having a bad day”? Let’s say you bought a car that you thought was brand new, and later discovered that the dealer had fiddled with the odometer and charged you full sticker price for a car with 1200 miles on it. Would that be okay with you?
And what if your spouse, the person you trust with your life, cheated on you by sleeping with your best friend, would you be able to just shrug that off?
If your child got a B+ grade by cheating on a test by copying answers from the student at the next desk, would you be proud of him or her?
And what if you found out that a coworker betrayed you by using the great idea you confided to him or her and taking credit for it when it worked out splendidly? Would you still be eating lunch with that coworker?
Or what if you donated money to a political candidate who you admired, and he or she spent it on a vacation in the Bahamas instead of on re-election expenses. Would that be okay with you? Would you vote for that candidate ever again?
I’ll take a guess at your answers to these questions. In none of the situations I’ve described would you be happy or proud. In fact, you’d be disappointed and angry. So just how can you think it’s no big deal to cheat on your post-op diet?
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
I can hear grumbling in the room. I think I just heard someone saying, “I had to eat that mashed potato. I was so hungry and miserable and cranky from being on liquids for a week, I couldn’t stand it another minute.” I do understand very well how you felt, but in the big picture of world hunger, where babies die because their mothers eat so little that they don’t produce enough milk for nursing, your and my hungry misery is a big So What.
And someone else is whispering, “My best friend’s surgeon let her eat mashed potatoes on her third day post-op, so it must be okay for me to do that too, even though my surgeon told me to wait until my 15th day post-op. It’s not my fault that every surgeon has a different post-op eating protocol.”
While it’s true that surgeons’ eating instructions vary widely, you signed on with your surgeon, not your best friend’s. Presumably you chose your surgeon because you and/or your insurance company believe that he or she is well-qualified in laparascopic bariatric surgery. During your psych evaluation, you affirmed that you understand what the surgery involves and that you can and will follow instructions. You nodded when the shrink asked if you’re ready to make all the lifestyle changes needed for success. You nodded when the dietitian asked if you understood your pre- and post-op eating instructions. You scribbled your own name on a sheaf of release papers to indicate that you were informed about the risks involved and despite those risks, gave your surgeon permission to perform surgery on you.
In addition to all of that, you spent weeks or months jumping through hoops to prove your need for bariatric surgery. Perhaps you suffered through a six-month pre-op diet. You had lots of medical tests and evaluations, most of them not much fun, because you were so eager to get your weight loss show on the road. You had surgery, suffered some degree of discomfort from your incisions and gas, and finally heaved a sigh of relief because all the struggles are over now.
But then you discovered that there are still more struggles to survive because of that stupid post-op liquid diet. Yet despite jumping through all those hoops, in less than 60 seconds you blow it by popping a Cheez Doodle in your mouth, and justify that with the aforementioned misery excuse.
And man oh man, that must have been some really serious misery, because evidently it drove out of your mind all the very good reasons for faithfully following that post-op diet progression. You forgot that one of the most common causes of band slips is the patient’s failure to follow the post-op diet. You forgot that food can get stuck in the stoma or esophagus and cause an obstruction or vomiting. You forgot that vomiting can disturb the position of the band, especially when you’re a new post-op and your stomach is still healing from surgery. You forgot that in order to move mashed potatoes or Cheez Doodles through your digestive system, your esophagus and stomach must expand and contract, which can disturb the position of your band and cause it to slip. You forgot all the promises you made to your bariatric team and to yourself about healthy eating and weight loss success, because you were so miserable and just a few little cheat bites are no big deal.
I’ll try to give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you thought that being able to eat the Cheez Doodles without having any uncomfortable side effects or complications like a stuck episode, a PB, sliming, chest pain, esophageal dilation or spasms means that it’s okay to eat the Cheez Doodles. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a wrong assumption. Cheating eating can cause problems without you ever knowing it until it’s too late. Cheating eating is just plain foolish.
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
Now here’s the good news. You’re not alone. Nobody enjoys the post-op diet progression. If any of us were good at following diets, we might not need bariatric surgery in the first place. And only infants enjoy a liquid diet. But in a sense, as a new post-op you’re a bariatric infant who must consume liquids because your body isn’t ready yet to handle anything else. Cheating on your post-op diet is cheating your health in a major way.
If you already cheated once or twice or ten times, that’s not a good reason for continuing to cheat, so don’t do it again! I believe we should begin any project as we mean to go on. If you can’t follow your post-op diet, exactly when are you going to begin your healthy post-op lifestyle? Are you going to wait until after your first fill, or your second fill, or at some hazy time in the future? If so, don’t come running to me when your scale stays stuck on a number you hate. NOW is the time to begin your healthy lifestyle. NOW is the time to practice good band eating skills and making good food choices and controlling portion sizes. Doing that may not be easy, but it’s not impossible either. Losing a massive amount of weight is a big, tough project, but if you respect your band, it's going to be easier than any of your past weight loss attempts. Let me clarify that: it's going to be easier if you follow instructions.
In addition to that healthy lifestyle, there’s another very good reason to stick to your diet. At some point you’re going to have to face up to your past and acknowledge that food and eating have been a major problem for you. The fact that you’re struggling with your post-op diet is a symptom of that. There’s no shame attached to that struggle. As mentioned above, if we didn’t struggle with eating, we wouldn’t need bariatric surgery at all. So I suggest that you look at the post-op diet (and your pre-op diet too, for that matter) as a rite of passage. During this rite, you’ll be painfully aware of just how many food devils you possess, because without food to shut them up, they’re going to be jumping up and down and screaming for your attention. But their wish is no longer your command. You’re going to send them a clear signal: that you’re not going to submit to their demands any more. From now on, you’re going to follow your surgeon’s and dietitian’s eating instructions no matter how much commotion those devils make. You’re in charge now. As the saying goes, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Do yourself a favor, and make it a day without Cheez Doodles!

Never Become a Victimized Perpetrator, Hurting People Because You were Hurt!!
When you loose the weight or as you continue to loose the weight you will remember the people who broke your heart and made you feel less then a person because you were fat or undersirable!!
But I just want to Beg you to please please never hurt people because some hurt you!! Love more now that you are healthy and loosing the weight!! The positive Glow on your soul will shine beyond any insult or hurt that you ever could have felt!!! Never Give Up!!
Especially on yourself!! Love All of You!!!!!!!

If you've never considered the band then why are you on a forum specifically for people that have or are considering the Lap-Band?

I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the lapband.
If I were you, I'd get my vagina to a Dr. - quick!

Hello! I haven't been on lately, but I wanted to stop by and post on my progress. I am 6 months out from surgery as of today (11/21/11). As of today, I have lost 79 pounds. 14 of those pounds were on the pre op diet, so since surgery, I have lost 65 pounds. I have soo happy and my life has already changed so much! I began at 259 and now weigh 180. My doctor looks at me in amazement every time I go in. He said I should be a trainer or how to lose weight with the lapband lol. Honestly though, I am super duper strict. I eat really well, count my calories, and go to the gym 5 times a week. I also jog 3 times a week. I now only have to see my doctor every other month (which saves me money). I know most people go this route because they don't want to feel like they are on a diet. However, the band has taught me how to choose the right foods for my body and I no longer want the junk (although I do splurge on occasion). I no longer have pain in my legs when I get up from my desk either. I'm also one of the lucky ones whose hair has not fallen out. I make sure to keep my protein between 50 to 90 grams a day, and I believe that's why. I also try to keep my carbs below 100. This is a complete lifestyle change for me and I'm so excited. The one thing I have laxed on is the vitamins, which I have to start back up. I ran out and just haven't bought more. I still try to take my calcium when I remember. My main piece of advice for anyone thinking about this surgery, is to please make sure that you are ready mentally for the change. If you are not, you will not succeed. I still have 40 more pounds I'd like to lose. I know my weightloss will start to slow down, but I would love to be at my goal weight by time my 1 year anniversary comes along. If you have any questions, please let me know! That's the reason I'm posting. I am so thankful for those who were around to help answer MY questions. So consider me at your disposal! I've uploaded a pic of me from last week. I was getting ready for an interview. Please ignore the hair! lol. Unfortunately, I don't have any "before" pictures because like most of you I'm sure, I avoided the camera like the plague.