leannel90

i feel a section on (want power) would help...
there is a difference in wanting something bad enough to do what it is you need to do in order for it to happen......very different from will power.
DEF recipes...(please include alot of grilling outside types) as i do alot of that

I think it's normal to have a freak out post surgery
It does get a lot better. I'm 3 months post surgery and I've lost 38lbs so far - the weights dropping off now. So don't worry about the post ops 'WTF's' - if is worth it and it does get better.

three days out for me and Im tired alot but I get up and walk around not really panicing about the band,Im still learning with it,im trying to get more Protein in and losts of Water

May 20. Tomorrow at 9:30am very excited.

Cat whisperer I'm sorry u had to go thru that. I'm happy you've gotten it taken care of. Thank u for sharing your story. Everyone has something different happen so its always good to have different variations of surgery. I wish u & us all a healthy speedy recovery.

May 15th just feel bloated otherwise ok

For me it was pasta...I ate it morning noon and night! Also soda and chocolate. I bought candy bars all the time. Since I was prediabetic I am very careful with any sweets.

Hi everyone, I haven't been on line in a while. Cat whisperer I'm sorry for all that you went through. Did you know that the surgeon had put Fluid in at surgery? I just assumed it was empty? I'm glad you are feeling better.
And to those of you that are less than 7 days out from your surgery, you will feel better...just be patient. I was not a happy camper. But, tomorrow it will be 14 days for me, and I am happy...a week ago, I wasn't liking this banded life.

thank you everyone... I'm glad you think it was ok to post this. I didn't want to be negative but at the same time, that is what happened and yes I hope it can help someone else!!
Leanne... that sounds pretty awful, what you are going through... I'm sorry to hear that. I hope that things improve... did you call the office? It might be worth checking into if you don't feel better soon. I've heard that at "that time of the month" things are tight and can cause problems... hopefully that's all it is.

Leannel!!! I know how you feel! I thought the same thing that it was too tight and the turkey feeling too! Lol but today is so much better, I had my first meal in 8 days, super mushy, and it gave a little indigestion but I was able to eat! (I think i was like 100 calories a day before because i just wanted to drink water, no even the shakes). Before I thought I was going to die because I wanted just water to avoid the "turkey feeling". I promise it will get better!

Cat Whisperer...I am so sorry that happened to you! I'm glad you are doing well now and you will feel great soon. I think we can all be honest on this thread so don't hesitate to let us know exactly how you are feeling anytime!

Awww, no, I'm sure you weren't being a baby!! Pain is very personal and real to you no matter what
Here's to all of us healing and feeling better soon!

Oh man...that sucks!! I thought about you a lot...and I'm so glad that they were able to fix everything Cat Whisperer!!
I'm feeling really weak...only Protein Shakes and Water will go down at this point. As it turns out my Aunt Flow came for a visit on day three post op and I feel like the band is so tight.
The best way to describe it would be like I just finished the biggest turkey dinner of all time...24 hours a day!! I know thing will get better but this is scary.I'm only taking in about 300 calories a day.
I'm still very excited and have a positive outlook...I'm just a little nervous.
Things will get better now...its getting there.
I'm so glad you're getting back to normal...I feel so bad that you had to come back in!! Hope you have a great rest of the weekend...think of next May long weekend and how we're going to feel and look!!
I can't wait my friend!

I had a tough time in the first week. Hang in there...I lost 14 lbs on the prep diet. It was so worth it!! The second week was much easier and I definitely didn't feel as hungry. You can do it!! I've lost 21 lbs already and was banded on tuesday.

Greetings from the otherside!!! I was banded this morning,,, biggest issue is sore throat from the breathing tube... But it's getting better already... FYI fro those who are not banded yet. I read on here that some have requested the nausea patch, but I forgot to.... But to my surprise, my doctor does it automatically!!! I have had no nausea what so ever yet... I definitely recommend asking for one!!!

Are you afraid of an unhappy outcome of your weight loss surgery? You're not alone. Use your fear to conquer obstacles rather than letting it conquer you


For most of us starting a WLS journey, bariatric surgery is vast, uncharted territory, full of unknowns. We long for a happy outcome – maximum weight loss with minimum problems. We listen to stories told by other patients with a combination of hope (to be as successful as they’ve been) and fear (that we won’t experience the side effects or complications they talk about).
No one wants to be haunted by the specter of anxiety and dread, but I think a little bit of fear is a good thing. I don’t want fear to dominate my life, but without it, I’m likely to become complacent about my weight loss success and/or revert to the old, all-too-comfortable ways that made me obese in the first place. In small doses, fear keeps me on my toes.
Like pain tolerance, fear tolerance varies from one person to the next. Perhaps I’m able to tolerate and use fear because my childhood and adolescence were so full of fear-provoking experiences. By the time I was in my late 20’s, I actually got a little thrill out of fear, possibly because it stimulates adrenalin production. There’s nothing quite like a knife coming at you to activate your fight-or-flight system, causing a perverse fear “rush”.
At the same time, prolonged exposure to fear has also taught me to respect it. I don’t play with fear the way daredevils like Evel Knievel did, risking life and limb for the brief thrill of jumping 14 buses at a time with his motorcycle. But I do like the way fear can clear my mental field, forcing me to draw a line between important and unimportant. When the choice is survival or surrender, I’d rather choose survival. I’m not a quitter. When challenged, I’m going to fight back, especially if something precious like my health is at stake.
If fear tends to paralyze rather than mobilize you, you may have to use your own compass to navigate a problem, or play follow-the-leader (provided you have a trustworthy leader) instead. Whatever you do, don’t give in. Giving in turns you into a victim (click here to read an article about victim mentality: http://www.lapbandta...-of-obesity-r79), which is not a position of strength in any battle worth fighting. And your health is worth fighting for, isn’t it?
So, how can you make fear a working partner in your WLS journey? Let’s take a closer look at two of the more common faces of fear.
FEAR OF FAILURE
Somewhere between my first, mandatory pre-op educational seminar and my pre-op liver shrink diet, I became uncomfortably aware of a shadow that followed me everywhere. It was dark and scary, and even bigger than I was. It was my fear of failure. After decades of struggle – diets, weight loss, weight gain – I felt that WLS was my absolute last chance to be healthy. And after slogging through all those pre-op tests, evaluations, consults and procedures, I danged well was not going to fail this time.
Since I had to admit that my weight management skills were sadly lacking back then (as amply proven by the number on the scale and the numbers in my medical files), the only option available to me was to become the most compliant patient my surgeon ever had (click here to read an article about patient compliance: http://www.lapbandta...g-deal-abo-r112). I had to believe that he and his staff knew what they were doing and would guide me well. I’m a very curious and often mouthy person, so I asked a lot of questions and did my best to understand what was going on in me and around me, but I spent very little time trying to second-guess the instructions I was given. That approach freed up a lot of time and energy that I was then able to devote to changing my eating and other behaviors in ways that helped my weight loss.
FEAR OF COMPLICATIONS
Compliance served me well I this area also. I can’t claim that I was never tempted to cheat on my pre or post-op diets or to test my band’s limits. I can’t claim that I believed I’d be forever exempt from the side effects and complications I heard about from other WLS patients. But when my dietitian told me (for example) that I’d be mighty sorry if I accidentally swallowed a wad of chewing gum and had to have it scraped out of my stoma, I quickly lost my interest in chewing gum. When I observed that many bandsters experienced certain types of side effects and complications after engaging in certain types of risky behaviors, I resolved not to follow them down the road of no return.
Eventually I discovered that life after WLS can deliver some unpleasant surprises, just as in every other aspect of life. I had to learn some things the hard way, like: If you swallow a large antibiotic capsule that can’t pass through your stoma and slowly dissolves into a corrosive mess, you will end up in the ER thinking you’re having a heart attack (and end up with a big unfill). And no, liquid antibiotics don’t taste good, but they taste a lot better than the weight I regained after that unfill.
Most of the mistakes I made were the result of impatience or carelessness, but I did my best to learn from those mistakes and keep moving on. A handful of mistakes was about all it took for me to decide not to challenge the validity of my surgeon’s and dietitian’s instructions, and that kept me trudging along the bandwagon trail, getting ever closer to my weight goal. And once I reached that wonderful place, I was determined to stay there!

Many people who struggle with morbid obesity find themselves virtually ”invisible”, feeling like or choosing to stay an anonymous person in the crowd as opposed to being an individual and standing out.


In our complex and busy lives, we all belong to a system of people, places and things that connect us to others who, in turn, impact our lives in a variety of ways. Many people who struggle with morbid obesity find themselves virtually ”invisible”, feeling like or choosing to stay an anonymous person in the crowd as opposed to being an individual and standing out. Conversely, many bariatric patients maintain busy and interactive lifestyles regardless of body size or physical impediments. Human nature is strange; we often cannot decide how we would like to be perceived by others. In the area of bariatric support services, we are often reminded that both the internal (your own) response to your comprehensive changes and the external (everyone else) response are both quite evident as a patient begins, and continues on, the journey of recovery from morbid obesity. Either way, bariatric surgery will somehow spotlight your changing physical and psychological selves due to a dramatic change in body appearance and personal presentation.
In attempting to assess how a pre-operative or new post-operative patient is filtering feedback from those around them, it is often helpful to ask a few pertinent questions to focus in on potentially difficult areas:
Do you feel that people in your support system are fully aware of your needs as a pre-operative/new post-operative bariatric surgery patient? Have the people in your life system received adequate information/education regarding the basics of bariatric surgery and the importance of a supportive and behaviorally appropriate environment?
Do you perceive friends or family members unable to relate to you/isolate from you due to the newness of bariatric surgery? Are support people feeling unsure as to how your relationship will be affected by your bariatric surgery in the future?
Are there feelings of resentment or frustration apparent to you around old eating habits or the appearance of new ones?

As support service facilitators, we are keenly aware of the possibilities of external (outside) reactions to bariatric patients and how it may impact the internal (sense of self) reactions patients are experiencing at an already heightened rate. When a patient decides to undergo surgery, that decision can be an alarming, even threatening event, for people in their life system, be it family, friends, co-workers or intimate partners. A change in a relationship between two people may possibly shift the focus of eating behaviors from one to another, possibly putting the spotlight on someone else and their less than perfect lives. We all, to some degree, experience scrutiny around our behaviors but as we all know, body image and self-worth are very susceptible to criticisms from those in our life system.
Expectations of what bariatric surgery will change also affects the patients issues about their own acceptance in a mirror image sort of way. Patients often wonder:
Will I be accepted by my old crowd of friends even though I may not eat the same way or for the same reasons after my surgery
Will I be able to enjoy socializing, holidays and celebrations following bariatric surgery?
What if my feelings towards some people in my life change and I decide to minimize certain relationships because they do not support my new style of life?

Most people want to be accepted for who they are in a holistic sense, not just what they look like. The adjustment needs for both patient and support persons are often the same: that the newness of the situation will pass and interaction between people will become less uncomfortable. Often, patients report having to reinforce the importance of certain relationships with others just as patients need to receive the
same “validation” from others. Patience, tolerance and acceptance are three areas that everyone could benefit from as patients and support people learn from each other that the most valuable teaching tool is life experience. Bariatric surgery begins a journey toward a healthier, improved quality of life the patient will pursue in their physical and emotional recovery from the devastating affects of morbid obesity.

Excellent article. Losing weight has so many ups and downs and a new set of problems around every corner. I feel one of the most important steps in successful weight loss is continued follow up with your surgeon, nutritionist and psychologist. So many try to do this on their own and fail to under stand why they fail. After all the did have WLS and why is it not working. I wish the medical community would stress the needed follow up for their patients. The emotional side of this journey is extremely hard and requires a lot of behavior modification. Relationships do change afte weight loss no matter how hard you try to keep them the same. I am a different person now after losing 112 lbs. I look at food differently and I chose not to place myself in situations with people that continue to not eat healthy. Now I can't a avoid my family or family events but I can always chose to bring healthy alternatives and show my family that Healthy Food does taste good. I think in the beginning I really believed that I would not change but I have and I really like me better now than I did before. I like my choice to live healthy, eat healthy and exercise. I feel very passionate about what an opportunity WLS has given me, it has given me my life back.

Does the reward & punishment approach really help your weight loss?


REWARD & PUNISHMENT
Yummy food rewards for good behavior, and severe punishment or deprivation for bad behavior, go back a long way in my psyche. With every good intention, my mom trained me using the classic reward-punishment technique from the time I was a very small girl. As soon as I was old enough to think for myself – at age 40 or so (just kidding!) – I applied the same technique to managing (or should I say mismanaging) my weight. Even a tiny infraction of whatever diet plan I was following at the moment was punished severely with hours, days, or weeks of self-loathing and recrimination which would be followed by much bigger eating crimes (I’m a hopeless screw-up because I ate a donut yesterday, so I’m going to eat a dozen donuts today) or by extreme deprivation (I ate a donut yesterday, so I’m going to eat nothing at all today, and if I’m a very, very good girl, I’ll earn half a carrot stick as my reward tomorrow).
I learned a bit about behavioral science in college, and goodness knows I’ve read enough self-help books and articles to have picked up a thin smattering of knowledge about it, but none of it meant very much to me until the past five or six years. As I moved towards my weight loss surgery decision, I had to admit that the good girl, bad girl system had not been working very well for me. I just couldn’t seem to responsibly give myself one “cheat” a week as recommended in women’s magazines. The authors of these magazine articles claimed that one serving of cheesecake on Sunday would keep me from bingeing out of desperate deprivation for the rest of the week, but one serving was never enough for me. I guess I’m an all-or-nothing kind of gal, and for me, the only alternative to eating an entire cheesecake was to (mentally) beat myself with heavy chains and a medicine ball covered with spikes. Neither approach yielded the results I wanted, but what other way is there to live as a responsible, law-abiding adult? Without laws and law enforcement, don’t we suffer the chaos and degradation of anarchy?
POSITIVE & NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
Sad to say, I’ve learned more about reward and punishment from living with dogs than from living with myself. I can plainly see that screeching at them for bad behavior is more likely to get them cranked up than to get them to behave. They have taught me that a positive or negative response to a behavior, be it good or bad, reinforces the behavior. We humans are not doing ourselves any favors by punishing our own “bad”, negative, or counter-productive behavior with more negative behavior. All that does is reinforce the bad stuff and use up all the extra energy we really need for the good stuff. When all we hear is an internal voice crying, “bad girl!” (or “bad boy!”), eventually we become resigned to being a bad girl (or boy, as the case may be), and the bad stuff goes on and on.
Nor are we doing ourselves any favors by molly-coddling ourselves after an eating infraction. You say you don’t do that? Well, I sure do. I eat five Cookies off the plate on the break room table at work, sigh, and grab a sixth cookie while thinking, “It’s just too hard to resist those cookies, you’ve had such a trying day, you deserve a treat, you poor thing.” That kind of response also reinforces the very behavior that’s can keep me from maintaining my hard-won weight loss goal.
The reward-punishment cycle is hard to stop when it’s so deeply ingrained in us, but it is possible to end or at least reduce the occurrence of the negative stuff. One of the things that’s helped me regain control over my eating behavior (on many levels) is keeping a food log.
Entering my food intake (including time of day, amounts, the eating environment, my physical hunger, any eating problems, and how I felt emotionally before, during, and after eating) has forced me to put on my scientist hat. I’ve always thought of myself as an intuitive, creative person, not a scientific one, but sometimes when I act a part, I become a part. When I’ve written down all this data about my eating, it’s easier for me to see it with an objective eye. Patterns that are invisible to me when I’m in the middle of a situation become clear when I’ve backed far enough away from it. Things that I didn’t understand when they happened to me yesterday have new meaning when I study them today.
Things that I don’t really want to understand also become clearer to me when I see them in my food log. For example, after my weight loss surgery it became increasingly difficult for me to eat when sharing a meal with my elderly mother. Twenty years earlier, eating with her was a joy because we both loved food and the conversation that surrounds a meal. As she grew older, fussier, more confused, more demanding, the joy drained away and I found myself in the middle of painful stuck episodes every single time we ate together. A few hours after each incident, I would find myself seeking comfort in food, like stopping at Baskin-Robbin’s for a 670-calorie Cappuccino Blast after leaving Mom in the capable hands of her assisted living facility staff.
I loved my mom, I loved our old ritual of enjoying meals together, but it just wasn’t working any more. Time to make a change, Jean! After that realization, when it was time for a family meal, I spent the time fussing over Mom instead of trying to eat my own meal. I ate my meal later, when Mom was safely tucked in bed.
The take-home message here is this. Try to avoid the extremes of “good girl, bad girl” thinking, not just in your eating but in your exercise, work, parenting, and anything else you undertake. Sometimes a little bit good can be good enough, and a little bit bad doesn’t necessarily signify the collapse of western civilization. Try to be a kind, tolerant, but firm parent to yourself. Instead of screaming, “Bad girl!” when you fall off the bandwagon, give yourself a boost back up onto the wagon by saying, “That wasn’t good, but I know you can do better, so go prove it.”

Want to know what no one else will tell you about life with the band?


The NITTY GRITTY of WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY
Nobody can predict the course or outcome of your weight loss surgery, but I’m going to try anyway, starting with a simile that most of us can understand.
WLS is like a marriage, with your band as your lifetime partner. At times you’ll thank your lucky stars you found each other. At other times you’ll wish you’d never met, never mind married. You’ll never walk alone again, but you alone will be captain of your ship. You will lose weight and gain a new lifestyle, but some of your losses and gains will be bittersweet. You’ll wonder what on earth you got yourself into, as well as why on earth you didn’t do this a long time ago.
Most of all, you’ll scratch your head and say, “Why didn’t anyone tell me how much work this would take?”
I’m not telling you all this to scare you. A little fear is fine if it makes you a compliant patient, but I don’t want fear to rule you. I just want to remind you that like every other human endeavor, the WLS journey has ups and downs. I believe that my band surgery saved my life and I’ve never regretted my decision to do it, but I can’t claim that every moment of my journey has been sunny and carefree. If you don’t want to hear about the tough stuff, that’s fine. You have my permission to move on to another article (preferably one by me). But if you want to hear about some of the things I wish I’d known at the start of my journey, read on. Knowing these things in advance wouldn’t have changed my WLS decision, but it sure would have helped me stick it out more easily when my weight goal seemed a million miles away.
1. The band is not magic. There is nothing in it that – hey, presto! - will make you lose weight. Changing your eating behavior and lifestyle, plus dozens of other factors that vary from one person to the next, will make you lose weight.
2. Your band won’t do all of the work. If you don’t (metaphorically) grab hold of it and use it as a tool, it will be about as useful as a cordless drill without a battery.
3. For most people, the band doesn’t start working right away. As a new post-op, surgical swelling and/or a small “primer” fill may or may not kill your appetite (desire to eat) and physical hunger (physical need to eat), but most bandsters need several fills to get the weight loss going, and more fills after that to keep it going.
4. If you don’t eat carefully, will you will suffer temporary, extremely uncomfortable side effects that can, if ignored, turn into permanent, expensive, and unhappy complications.
5. Once you achieve an optimal fill and restriction level (which will last for 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 30 hours, but probably not for 30 years), your restriction is very likely going to vary, for reasons too numerous to explain here. In this area you must remember that the human body is alive and always changing, whereas the adjustable gastric band is inert and changes only with the addition or subtraction of Fluid. One day you can hardly eat, the next day you can eat anything and everything, and the day after that, you can eat just the right amount (remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears?).
6. Restriction may also vary according to the time of day (or time of month, if you’re of the female persuasion). Morning “tightness” is very common, and it may limit your morning food choices. That is not, however, a good excuse for skipping Breakfast and thereby depriving your body of the fuel it needs, and doing so can set you up for a monster binge when hunger suddenly hits you at 11:38 a.m. So you will have to be willing to stay flexible, try new foods, and practice patience (which is something I have to practice every day in every way anyway).
7. You will have to deal with restriction even when you wish you had none at all, when you’re at a party or on vacation or sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at Mom’s overloaded dining table. At times you will want to go on eating because the food tastes so good, but you’ll have to stop because you physically can’t eat more, and because eating more would cause uncomfortable and undesirable side effects (to say nothing of weight loss plateaus or regain). That experience of food “deprivation” has been very frustrating for me. Not every day, not at every meal, but often enough to remind me again and again that my upper GI tract is no longer the free and easy party girl it once was. That reminder is often a good thing, but sometimes it makes me want to put my fingers in my ears and chant, “I can’t hear you, Stomach!”
8. This next piece of WLS Nitty Gritty is such a big, important one that I left it for last so that it will (I hope) stay burned into your brain a good, long time. NO WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY OF ANY DESCRIPTION WILL KILL THE EATING DEMONS IN YOUR HEAD. Vanquishing, subduing or managing those demons is something you’ll have to do yourself, possibly with the help of a counselor or support group, with daily practice for the rest of your life. But that’s OK, because you are worth all that effort.

Its so exciting Creekwood! I'm so happy for you! This is it...life changing...healthy...long lives!
Congratulations...