parisshel

I'll play! Most recent face only selfie on left; compared with face shot on right (from 2010, was not even at my highest weight there). Excuse the too-dark and witchlike eyebrows; I'd just had them done. I don't look that scary IRL. I hope.

This makes perfect sense to me and is an excellent question. Please don't feel discouraged and it's normal to feel confused. My surgeon says it takes a good nine months to learn one's band. Getting stuck is independent from the idea of satiety. I could get stuck on shrimp, have to stop eating, and still be very hungry. For me, getting stuck means I took a way too big bite, or ate too rapidly, or, in the case of shrimp, ate something whose texture my band doesn't tolerate. (Add to shrimp: bread, Pasta, anything sticky like Peanut Butter, rice, couscous or anything that can "pile up" in my stoma). It may be that you aren't yet at optimal fill. (Getting stuck is not an indicator of optimal fill, nor should it be. I could be way overfilled but never get stuck if I chose slider foods.) It may be that you want to have a look at the types of foods you are eating. For me, I would never fill full if I didn't favor Proteins before all other food groups. And in fact, if I bring in "appetite-inducing" carbs (in the form of chips or Cookies or something that slides easily through the band), my hunger seems to really crank up. Other bandsters can eat "just a little bit" of these foods and their band kicks in so they don't overeat them, but my band doesn't work that way. I could eat those things all day long. Sadly. But give me a meal with Protein and veg and some fat (like butter on the veg, or dressing on my salad) and I'll have good satiety on a small plate. So your question is a good one and the answer may be in 1) your level of fill or 2) the types of foods you are eating or 3)both. Or even 4)....something I haven't thought of here but someone else might!

Yeah yeah yeah. Tell me how you love Florida in July and August!

@B-52. Merina is a birth control method and it sounds like the hormonal component of it deregulated the original poster's system.

For any meds I have to take with a meal, I take them with a gulp of Water. One gulp is not going to destroy my band or fill me up so I can't eat. For my Vitamin D, I take that in a liquid form so this issue doesn't present itself.

Great thread. "How you do one thing is how you do everything."

Haven't seen the commercials, but I have to wonder how ingesting fake, soy-packed products translates to "the right way."

THIS! The best proof of the Medifast fail is reading any Medifast blog. There's not one out there where the Medifaster kept the weight off longterm. In fact, several Medifast bloggers deregulated their metabolisms definitively by following this plan.

I didn't cut my hair but a month after I was banded, I did semi-permanent makeup for my eyebrows, which had lost a lot of their "pop" with age. Best beauty thing I've ever done. I love my eyebrows now, and I never have to fill them in. I look like I'm wearing makeup even when I'm not. I find I take much better care of my exterior self now that I'm banded. When I was so fat, I just figured it wasn't worth it...why bother. And now I'm all about the hair and makeup, creams and lotions. I'm a marketer's dream, unfortunately.

i cannot eat shrimp at all. Tried it several times, at different meals, and this is one of my foods that just will never be band friendly. Oh well. I can live without shrimp.

I've been a bit down because my loss has slowed due to inactivity. Last month I sustained a stress fracture which had me on crutches for three weeks and, just as that was getting better, I slipped a disk in my back. Oh the pain! Even getting from the bed to the living room is more of a shuffle than a walk. But! These pics make me happy. And I know once my disk slides back into place, I'll be back to pushing my FitBit to the sky. Keep moving, everyone!

Thanks, Bandista, for this link. I've never heard of this technique, but the reviews of the book on Amazon were quite impressive and laudatory. I put in my order! I knew that the old advice to just stay flat and inactive for the first days was no longer recommended, and in fact, walking around makes my back feel better, at least temporarily. Thanks for the nice words, everyone! Love you all!

Happy bandiversary and a huge thank you for being such an active, sane and frank-talking participant on this platform. Add to to the long list of other grateful bandsters who rely on you for clear and honest posts. Here's to you and a long, healthy banded life!

Hee hee...hog it up all you want! Everybody deserves bragging rights! OK here's my most recent: Earlier this week I went to a restaurant I hadn't been to since my surgery, and I noticed how absolutely comfortable I was not only squeezing between all the tightly-pushed together tables to get to our seats, but just in general during the entire (long) meal. I remember the last time I was there (I was at my highest weight), and how I was just too big to sit comfortably...shifting on the small hard chair during the whole meal...couldn't wait to get up and out of there. And of course, when I was that large, making my way between the tables meant fellow dinners had to hang on to their wine glasses so my big old coat didn't knock them over! I never take this for granted--this getting-smaller-body--and hope I never will. I remember how dreadful I felt moving through the world at 260+ pounds, and how much space I took up.

Well done! You've really lost in/toned up your hip region, which, after having kids, is no small feat! Lovely and thanks for the motivational pics.

Well, if you are gon be hungry, it's better to be at work where you can't eat! My Memorable Pre-Op moment was the idiot guy pushing my gurney down to the OR. "What surgery are you getting?" he asked me. "The Lapband," I replied. "What a mistake. You'll fail. Shoulda got a bypass. Bypass is the only one that works." he says. Of course I reported him both to the surgeon and the hospital, not that they'd do anything with this information.

Do you typically retain Water after a flight? Are your ankles swollen for days after flying? Maybe you do retain water and maybe your stuck episode is related to that but 2 days later? That sounds odd, given that any swelling that was flight related would have gone down by then. I fly longhaul flights frequently. I also have 6.0 in a 10cc band. My flights average 12-14 hours and I never feel any effects on my band from the flight. I walk the plane at least once an hour so I keep my blood circulating and I drink loads of water in flight. Maybe that makes a difference? (I also pack my own food for the airports and the flight. I never trust an airline to serve band-friendly food.) Sorry you got stuck.

Everyone has said such great things on this thread. All so true! The other day I was talking about my lapband to someone who asked me why I just didn't eat smaller amounts...like I do with the lapband...without the surgery? And I told him that it just wasn't realistic for me to do so, because of the HUNGER. I think this is WLS's strongest line of defense. When you dim the appetite, you greatly reduce the chances of food abuse. (Let's set aside eating for reasons other than appetite in this discussion.) I was a volume eater, not an emotional one, so the lapband has helped me in ways a traditional diet never could longterm. Everything you are feeling right now as a pre-op most of us have felt. I did a lot of blog writing up to the date of my surgery, and one of the posts I wrote talks about how I refused to give in to my urge to do Weight Watchers "just one more time." I'd done WW a billion times, with always the same (failing) endgame. So to delay my surgery to see if I could go the non-surgical route "just one more time?" So glad I didn't chicken out. I'm already regretting I didn't do WLS earlier...I can only imagine if I had delayed this a year more or so...yikes. I'd surely be fatter than ever right now, instead of down 53 pounds since last March. (I'm a slow loser compared with many on here but I'm fine with that.)

Has anyone else had issues editing their signature? Ever since the site migrated to this new platform, I am unable to save the edits I make to mine. The update/change doesn't hold, despite me following the correct procedure (I don't write over 15 lines of text and I don't return to previous page from the saved changes.) I've submitted a ticket to ask why this is happening but never received an answer from the IT folks. Is this a site-specific problem, or am I just not understanding something?

Thanks, Alex. I should have checked the html code; I would have been able to "see" the additional lines.

Sending many wishes for a smooth operation and speedy recovery. If I were getting this done, I'd have my band emptied just so I wouldn't have any issue with postop meds. I wouldn't want to be worried about getting those stuck. I'd then return and get my band refilled once I was off the meds.

I'd wait this out...the fill may not have settled in yet. Post-fill I'm always quite restricted and I can never assess the true nature of a fill for a couple of weeks. I had been at 6.5 with my last fill and it was def. too tight. (I could not have eaten what you just described eating.) I waited two weeks and it still did not allow me to eat most solids, so I got .5 taken out. 6.0 is my sweet spot right now; I've got good, lasting fullness on the right amount of Protein and vegetables.

I think you could meet your Protein needs following WW, certainly. And because their plan is so flexible, you could certainly use it and still adhere to bandrules. If I were to go back to WW today, I'd just eliminate all the white carbs from the plan (the breads, rice, Pasta, grains, popcorn etc) since I don't eat those foods, and base my days around protein, veg, good fats and fruit. That would be lapband-compliant for my way of eating.