PoohBear22

I'm a side sleeper so I had to figure it out. The first night I had to sleep on my right side but by night 3 I was able to lay on my left side too. I had to be gentle when getting into and out of that position but its working. Now I have to deal with this liquid diet. It feels like it will be FOREVER before I make it to mushy foods. All I want is some mashed sweet potatoes or something. That sounds kinda sad huh. A week and a half left till mushies.......and I'm starving!!

A friend who got banded 6 months after me found out she was pregnant just one month after she was banded too. She has PCOS and hadn't had a period in years until her pre-op diet, so it was a wee bit of a surprise, suffice to say! She'd had one fill so they removed it and she had an uneventful pregnancy, had a bouncing baby boy, and after she'd finished breastfeeding, they recommenced her fills and she lost all her excess weight.
Talk to your lapband surgeon and talk to your obgyn. I don't think you have anything to be stressed about. And congratulations!

No regrets at all... I find maintenance VERY easy. I can eat ANYTHING except rice, apple skins and no carbonated beverages.
What keeps me in focused is my monthly weigh-in with my family doctor and the support groups meetings I host.
Tom, Toronto
Banded July 6 06
Wt. Loss: 160 lbs

Easiest thing I could have ever done....has met all my pre-op expectations.....the only hard part, and extremely frustrating, was the first few months, bandster hell, where I had to go through all the adjustments, put up with all the stuck episodes, days where nothing would stay down, finding out the hard way what foods where riskier than others and stay away from, and in spite of everything I was taught, I still had to learn the hard way how to eat the way a skinny person dos, and not the fat glutton I was before....
But once I got trough all that frustration..and finally settled into that "Green Zone", it has been absolutely unbelievable...could not be any better than this.....there is nothing I need to do but go live a normal life, with all the weight naturally coming off and returning to a normal state ....to say I have a new life is a understatement...
Hunger and portion sizes under control by the band, not me....
Like I said, it was hard and a struggle, but only for a short time...and I am glad I persevered and was determined to get through it and break out the other side.....

Greetings.
I know this post will be contradictory to everything you just read. So bare with me...
Here in the US, the band is typical for BMI 40 and higher (35 w/ comorbidities) However, this can be circumvented if you are self pay as there are no insurance hoops to jump through. Our peers in other countries (Europe and Australia specifically) have been doing this much longer and many of their participants are lower in BMI. I would be assumptive to believe their average 'obese' person in their population is not the same as ours. I am not sure at what your height is, but for me 195-200 would be a BMI of 30 for me. And for me, that is obese an unacceptable standard. And despite differing opinions, if you were to ask bandsters if they would find it acceptable to remove the band at BMI 30 because they are not fat enough anymore, they would all balk.
I get peeved when I hear others state whom they feel is an appropriate candidate for the procedure. It is likened to family and friends discouraging someone from the band because they deem it drastic. Because hey, all you have to do is eat less right? But in reality, you are suffering like the rest of us. You can mask it with all the positives you want, but in reality, you are out of control and struggle with maintenance like the rest of us. We just managed to gain more. I am certain you can find others here who have the same habits (ie binging etc) and ended up in the yo-yo effect you are living out. Whether you are 300, 250 or 200 the lifestyle, the habits are the same. The negative effects you are having on your body are not mitigated by the 'healthy cholesterol and low sugar' bit. Your playing havoc on your metabolism, wasting muscle weight with fat and setting yourself up for easier weight gain each and every time you reattempt to lose. This is the bodies natural response to this kind of loss-gain-loss-gain cycle.
So let's talk mental for a minute. You avoid life as a consequence of being overweight. You feel devalued at work. You feed the emotions etc. This is more of a burden than the weight itself wouldn't you agree? It's the impact fat has on your life, your decisions and your relationships that create this vicious cycle. If all your efforts are unsuccessful, or temporary, you need another solution. We all sat at this intersection and had to determine if the band was that solution. Sure you and I have different circumstances, but our needs are the same.
Being vegan you should already be savvy on how to achieve minimum Protein levels through your current diet. I personally find vegan Proteins (ie tofu, Beans etc) much easier to digest than meat Proteins so, in reality, you may have a head start on us. Can you achieve 80g min of healthy Protein daily in your current diet? Recognize you will be limited to about 1c of food per serving. If so, than you'll be like the rest of us calculating protein levels and finding creative solutions to achieve those numbers.
As for the longevity/success of the band. If you want a guarantee, you won't get one...that's true for any diet or wls procedure. However, the band is designed to be placed once and for the life of the patient. True, some need revisions, repairs, replacements or removals for various reasons. But this is still the minority statistic. Much of the success is up to the patient to be compliant.
But side note, specific to maintenance.
I too was easy at losing weight initally. My issue was always maintenance as I reverted back to old habits. And this is where the band saved me personally. After getting banded I lost 50 lbs easy. THan got pregnant, than had a bad accident that put me into rehab for ovr 8 months. That's 18 months of not dieting. But unlike my 1st pregnancy where I gained 50 lbs, I only gained 20 w/ the band which I readily lost after the pregnancy. And because I am horrible stress eater, I ate poorly the entire 8 months I was in rehab. I would equate it to preop eating but the trick was..I couldnt eat as much. Would you believe I didnt gain weight?!?!?! And in January when symptoms got better I decided it was time to start again and I lost another 50 lbs. There is no way I could have done it w/out the band. Even today, I have a +3lb rule. Where when I go easy on myself and eat more freely, I will go back to strict eating if I gain more than 3 lbs to maintain. It's harder to gain 3+ lbs as it was before and thus I find maintenance to be a cinch. This is how the band can help someone like you. I know that if I did not have the band, not only would I gain weight back readily, but I would find maintenance an impossibility long term. And that's how the band serves me.
Just my personal take on it.

OMG....Musica73, those shake recipes sound delicious. My surgery date is tomorrow the 15th and I'm so over these Optifast shakes my Dr had me on. Once I'm on full liquids I'm sooooooo making your shake recipes.
I keep going back and forth. The closer I get to surgery the more I'm like, Am I really doing the right thing? But then I look in the mirror and remember that I don't want to be this way any longer. I'm so thankful for everyone's comments on here, it makes me feel like I really can do this. Thanks everyone!!!