parisshel

Thanks for checking in and letting us celebrate your bandiversary with you! You look fantastic (I love the grey dress you are wearing in the middle photo). Well done on getting to and staying at your healthy goal weight. Thank you for inspiring us.

What about homemade cereal/granola bars, with added Protein powder to make them more protein dense? I'm going to make some this weekend...I've been searching for something portable I can bring in and eat at work since I can't down anything solid at a normal breakfast time but my NUT is strict about banded patients eating at designated times.

I couldn't eat it alone, but I can have it smeared on an apple slice or on a cracker. PB2, while far from being Peanut Butter, is a better option for me because I can thin it out. This is what I use to dip my apple slices in. It kind of tastes like peanut butter, but isn't a trigger food for me 'cause it's not that good.

I believe it was Blaise Pascal who said "Had I had more time, this letter would have been shorter."

I fly internationally quite a bit, but I've never flown to India so I can't comment on how to eat WLS-friendly there. I take my own food for the airports and the flights since I've never found airport food nor airline food to be friendly to my particular WLS (lapband). I take Protein bars (this is the only time I eat them as usually I find them disgusting and never eat them outside of flying), nuts, fruit or fruit compote in little squeeze pouches, raisins, and, if I'm returning from the USA towards Europe, Peanut Butter in individual packets. (Just because these are so cute!) For Water, I always take through security an empty 1-litre bottle which I then fill from a post-security airport bathroom, or I just wait until I'm on the plane and I have the stewards fill it for me. (Or I ask for one of their bottles but sometimes--depending on the carrier --cough cough Air France--cough cough they aren't nice and won't give me one of their bottles. British Airways is very good about giving me a whole bottle of water, contrary to the French carrier.) I carry my lapband ID card, and I also travel with my latest xray showing my fill level and lapband position. (I know this doesn't apply to you but should another lapbander be reading this....). I also take anti-nausea and anti-diarrehea meds, especially when traveling to a 2nd or 3rd world country. Have a wonderful trip!

Man I so understand this. No one talks to me about what I'm going through, with the exception of my BF (but he HAS to listen to me). I wish it were different, because I have a lot I'd like to share about my lapband experience. My friends? No one says a thing. The most astounding thing to me is two of my closest friends, who practically walked beside me the day I went in for my surgery..in other words, they saw me at my highest weight...have seen me three times since my surgery and have not said ONE WORD to me. In fact, the last time they saw me, I said "don't I look like I'm losing weight?" and they are all, "Uh-huh." That's it. Not one more word of support or even a question about how I'm doing/feeling. What's up with that? Is it that they've seen me lose weight so many times they fear supporting this iteration of my weight loss? Am I still so fat it makes no difference that I've lost 53 pounds? Or do they just think this is a private subject and don't want to mention it? In any case, it really makes me mad, and I can understand your feelings because I share them.

I don't use any artificial sweeteners as I figure the 15 cal in my sugar cube (for my decaf) is not really going to show up on the scale.

Timely topic for me and I'm anxious to read everybody's answers. I went through an extremely stressful time last August when my BF went to consult for some chest pain he had been experiencing and ended up that day on the table getting an emergency quintuple bypass. While I handled the stress OK (I thought) at the time (I was six months post op then) I find today I am having some kickback related to the incident. I won't bore the boards with the details, but I sense my current stress and anxiety is centered around this trauma and my BF's recovery and changes this has had on our relationship. I'm implementing some self-care to help with this chronic situation. For me this means some yoga and some more "peaceful" types of body movement (outside of my more energetic exercise plan), more alone time when I feel the need, and more calming self-talk. I'm also ramping up doing more social activities on my own, just to have a different focus and allowing my mind to go to other places outside of my BF's health and recovery. I'm not always perfect with this, sadly, and I get very critical of myself when I see myself resorting to my old ways of self-comfort (food or too many passive ways of spending my leisure time). I've printed out some reminders of more positive ways to care for myself which I carry on me when I feel myself too stressed out and slipping towards the danger zone.

Halibut, salmon, tuna, endive (because I can cut it up small and my band tolerates it better than lettuce leaves), yogurt, apple slices or mandarin orange slices, almonds or other nuts, coffee with soy milk (morning), melba toast (morning). My go-to Protein is chicken, and I eat so much of it I'm soon to be sprouting feathers.

Good question. While my food budget no longer goes towards Snacks or Desserts, I buy more quality Protein, vegetables and cheeses so my small plates pack big flavor. I would say, however, that I spend less overall on my own food but it's hard to tell since I also feed two teenagers who go through food like...well, like teenagers.

I miss cheap white sheet cake--birthday, or wedding variety. My nemesis! (And to think I live in a land of the best pastries available...and still, my favorite sweet is that cheap cake from Safeway.)

Jim: It's always good to know the lot number of any material you have inside you in case of a recall. The hospital would be able to contact all the patients affected by a recall, but just in case of screw up, it's best to have the identifying material/serial numbers of your personal material for whatever reason...hospital loses files, goes bankrupt, has a fire....whatever.

I love this post, go walking. Enjoy each and every one of the fruits of your efforts. "Normal" is the new black, and you rock it!

I had a last few meals, over the course of the months leading up to my surgery. Yes, I'm an idiot. But hey, it was Christmastime and it was the first holiday season I've gone through as an adult where I ate absolutely GUILT FREE because I knew my surgery was coming up. But yeah. It was dumb. Because I had to go and lose those 11 pounds which I added to my already high weight. Now I know that being banded is nothing like planning to go on a diet "next Monday/January 1st, etc etc". Because I just went through another Christmas season guilt free due to the wonderful presence of my lapband.

My surgeon gave me my allegan card. Your surgeon should also have your card because it is part of the "kit" the surgeon gets--the actual lapband and the ID card with the lot number of the band, etc. They are packaged together.

Addiction transfer is very common among WLS patients, and something to watch for according to the psych who did my eval. I haven't developed any alternate addictions that I'm aware of, but I have noticed that cleaning up my food issues has made me more fanatic about cleaning in general. Seriously...my house is spotless now! (Maybe because it's a way to stay out of the kitchen?) It's quite a change from my old ways in any case.

Hey! How come we can no longer add friends on this site? I'm logged in, but each time I try to add a new friend, I get a message that says "Sorry, you don't have permission to do that. Please log in."

You've got this! Night and day from the old way of battling your sense of deprivation/trying to work it into your "points", right? Well done, Bandista.

Those were great to see! How fun! Who knew Alex was so hot? OK Paris-bound bandsters...all roads lead here, you know. When's our meetup?

You can make a really low-fat/no-fat hummus easily...just swirl (mix, blend, food process) garbanzo beans, lemon juice, 1 clove raw garlic, salt, 1 tbsp olive oil and nonfat plain yogurt. You can add one tbsp tahini, or, lacking that, peanut butter. Seriously, peanut butter will taste like the tahini.

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.