lthueme

I would contact your doctor and also a dietician, together you can determine what your calorie intake should be. Record everything you eat and when. That way they can determine where you need to make changes. Where I had mine done they have a dietician on staff and we are encouraged to contact her with any questions.

Congratulations and welcome to your new way of life! Get your rest and let the nurses take care of you. Keep us posted on your recovery

Please PM me if you'd like to lead or co-lead this support group!

Love this data -- many thanks! So happy for my band. I feel very fortunate to have it.

I can personally attest to the above....I'm almost 11 years out with my LAP-BAND and at my lowest weight ever!

Studies Demonstrate Long-Term Weight Loss Outcomes for LAP-BAND® System
Studies Add to Data Supporting Use of Safe and Least Invasive Weight Loss Surgical Procedure

AUSTIN (April 4, 2014) —Two recent studies show the laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) procedure to be a safe and effective long-term obesity treatment. While most published studies on bariatric surgery show only short-term follow-up data of less than three years, two studies published in the Annals of Surgery provide long-term data. Both studies also addressed historical concerns with a high rate of reoperation after LAGB, showing that revision is safe and effective and does not impact long-term weight loss.
“Long-term effectiveness data for the LAP-BAND is important because it is the only surgical option available to the millions of people in the United States who are in the 30 to 34 range of the Body Mass Index (BMI*) scale, ” said George A. Fielding, M.D., associate professor of surgery, New York University School of Medicine. “The more data healthcare professionals have about the long-term performance of available treatment options for obesity the better.”
LAGB is the least invasive surgical option among bariatric weight loss procedures. LAP-BAND® Adjustable Gastric Banding System, the number one brand in the category, remains the only bariatric weight reduction surgical procedure approved by the U.S. food and Drug Administration (FDA) for people with a BMI of at least 30 with one or more obesity-related comorbid conditions. It also is indicated for people with a BMI of 40 and above with no comorbid conditions. LAP-BAND System® is approved for use only in adult patients who have failed more conservative weight reduction alternatives, such as supervised diet, exercise and behavior modification programs.
The most recently published study, a retrospective study published in Annals of Surgery, January 2014, shows that for certain complications, such as slip, prolapse or hiatal hernia, simply repositioning the band can have positive long-term efficacy outcomes. The study included approximately 400 patients who underwent LAGB between 2001 and 2009 and who had a subsequent reoperation for pouch-related problems three years after primary banding. At 24 months, patients whose band was repositioned still showed 49 percent excess weight loss. The study goes on to say that weight loss after reoperation was sustained and was comparable with weight loss with those without reoperation at a similar time point (four and five years after the initial procedure).
“Patients would be well advised to seek out centers that specialize in gastric banding if they wish to retain their bands,” Dr. Fielding said.

The other study, published in Annals of Surgery in January 2013, included long-term weight loss data following LAGB with 15-year follow-up. This prospective study followed more than 3,000 patients treated by LAGB placement at a single institution between 1994 and 2011. Of those who completed follow-up, patients lost half their excess weight within two years after the procedure and maintained the majority of the weight loss 15 years post procedure.

About Obesity
Approximately 80 million (one in three) adults in the United States are obese (BMI >30). Obesity causes an estimated 300,000 premature deaths in the United States each year, mostly from obesity-related medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, stroke and cancer.
Studies show that weight loss following gastric banding improved or resolved several serious obesity-related health conditions, including hypertension, asthma, diabetes, sleep apnea and GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) Many people living with these diseases who have lower BMI do not realize weight loss surgery may be an option.
About LAP-BAND System®
In an LAGB procedure, a band is placed around the upper part of the stomach. As the band inflates, it shrinks the size of the stomach. This helps individuals reduce the amount of food intake and slows emptying into the lower stomach. This helps individuals feel full sooner, stay full longer and reduce hunger urge.
The LAP-BAND System was acquired in late 2013 by Apollo Endosurgery, Inc. of Austin, Texas, from Allergan, Inc.
Warnings: The LAP-BAND System is a long-term implant. Explant and replacement surgery may be required. Patients who become pregnant or severely ill or who require more extensive nutrition may require deflation of their bands. Adverse Events: Placement of the LAP-BAND System is major surgery and, as with any surgery, death can occur. Possible complications include the risks associated with the medications and methods used during surgery, the risks associated with any surgical procedures, and the patient’s ability to tolerate a foreign object implanted in the body. Band slippage, erosion and deflation, reflux, obstruction of the stomach, dilation of the esophagus, infection, or nausea and vomiting may occur. Reoperation may be required. Rapid weight loss may result in complications that may require additional surgery. Deflation of the band may require additional surgery. Deflation of the band may alleviate excessively rapid weight loss or esophageal dilation.
*BMI is weight-to-height ratio, calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of one’s height in meters and used as an indicator of healthy weight.
###

Beitner, M., et al., Sustained Weight Loss after Gastric Banding Revision for Pouch-Related Problems. Annuals of Surgery. 2014.
[ii] O’Brien, P., Long-Term Outcomes After Bariatric Surgery, Fifteen-Year Follow-Op of Adjustable Gastric Banding and a Systematic Review of the Bariatric Surgical Literature. Annals of Surgery. Vol 257. Number 1. January 2013.
[iii] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prevalence of Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2011-2012. Accessed on March 17, 2014 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db131.pdf.
[iv] Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Health Effects of Obesity. Accessed on March 17, 2014 from http://stanfordhospital.org/clinicsmedServices/COE/surgicalServices/generalSurgery/bariatricsurgery/obesity/effects.html.
[v] Dixon John, Chapman Leon, O’Brien Paul. Marked Improvement in Asthma after LAP-BAND® Surgery for Morbid Obesity. Obesity Surgery. 1999.
[vi] Dixon John, O’Brien Paul. Health Outcomes of Severely Obese Type 2 Diabetic Subjects 1 Year After Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding. Diabetes Care. Vol 25. Number 2. February 2002.
[vii] Dixon John, Schachter Linda, O’Brien Paul. Sleep Disturbance and Obesity: Changes Following Surgically Induced Weight Loss. Arch Intern Med. Vol 161. January 8, 2001.
[viii] Dixon John, O’Brien Paul. Gastroesophageal Reflux in Obesity: The Effect of LAP-BAND® Placement. Obesity Surgery. 1999.

Congratulations and welcome to your new way of life! Get your rest and let the nurses take care of you. Keep us posted on your recovery

Great article! I am going to share with my non-Bariatric patient friend who was just asking me today about a diet plan she saw at costco. I advised her to just focus on eating healthy and track everything. This will be good coming from another source

Congratulations and welcome to your new way of life! Get your rest and let the nurses take care of you. Keep us posted on your recovery

Congratulations and welcome to your new way of life! Get your rest and let the nurses take care of you. Keep us posted on your recovery

Great article! I am going to share with my non-Bariatric patient friend who was just asking me today about a diet plan she saw at costco. I advised her to just focus on eating healthy and track everything. This will be good coming from another source

Great article! I am going to share with my non-Bariatric patient friend who was just asking me today about a diet plan she saw at costco. I advised her to just focus on eating healthy and track everything. This will be good coming from another source

Got my band at about 8:00 this morning. So far I have a little pain, hospital all is giving me IV meds for that. My dr requires an overnight stay, so I will rest comfortably here tonight
I lost 15 pounds in my pre-op, and I'm excited to get started in my new life!

Do you fear the word “diet”?
Then why are we required to see “diet-icians”? I’ll tell you why, because the true definition of diet is a personal style of eating. Either you have a good diet, or you have a bad diet – but most think of it as being on a diet, as in eating horrible, boring food for a set period of time, only to go back to one’s old way of eating which sadly is usually not healthy.


The dietician teaches us a healthy – guess what word I’m going to use next – diet. It includes all of the basic food groups, Proteins, fruits & vegetables, carbohydrates that are high in Fiber and other nutrients our bodies need to survive, dairies, fats and let’s not forget Water. There are other groups but are usually lumped into one of the major groups, such as legumes are considered either proteins or sometimes good carbs. Anyhow, you get what I’m saying I hope – that our diet is just that – our means of eating to survive.
Good diets… what can we do to avoid using the word diet without causing a panic? We should set our diet in a healthy way. Why? Because to see the word diet and understand that it is a lifestyle change to make our bodies healthy and happy is the only way. It’s for life, not in the temporary sense.
Choose meals with as close to clean and basic as possible. Lean proteins, keeping colorful and fresh fruits and vegetables around, carbohydrates that are high in fiber, dairies that are low in fat, and fats that are high in the Omegas and low in saturation.
Look on the internet or ask friends for good healthy recipes! This helps to keep the stigma of boring out of your vocabulary. I’ve had a fish meal in about a hundred different ways, and many different types of fish so I never get bored! It doesn’t always have to be baked and bland. Explore seasonings that are low in sodium and dress it up with some cook-able fruits and vegetables. You will be pleasantly surprised at how tasty a “boring diet” can be. It’s definitely something you can continue on forever and have a healthy diet.
Keep a log of what you are eating and if you notice that you are eating something too often, change it up. Keep it off your “To Cook” list for a few weeks. Boring diets can become a problem and make you crave foods that are not healthy for you. You don’t have to eat chicken breasts every day to be considered a good bariatric patient. There are many cuts of Protein that you can make in a healthier way.
Which brings me to the next bullet point – you can basically eat any cut of meat you prefer. They all have B-12 which our bodies LOVE obviously. Not only that, beef is very high in Iron, pork is considered the other white meat (just be sure to trim the fat!) and best of all most bariatric folks get fuller faster and stay satiated for a longer time on these cuts. Ensure you are chewing very well with these cuts and are far out enough from surgery to not get “stuck”. Not only that but eat slowly and judge each bite to recognize your full signal.
Always choose all different kinds of fruits and vegetables and get a minimum of 5 servings per day. A serving of fruit is one half of a medium sized fruit. Get plenty of vegetables of all varieties. Yes greens are awesome, but many other vegetables get ignored simply because they are of a different color, but yet they are packed full of Vitamins that are hard for us to get otherwise. We will forever be bound to the supplement, but we shouldn’t ignore this group because we get it in a pill. They are very tasty too, some are sweeter and some are full of vigor but any will dress up a meal!
Drink plenty of water. I don’t think this is a shock to anyone! Water will make you feel energized and alive during the weight loss process. It does also constantly flush your body of toxins, sodium and water weight (I know it seems like it would be opposite but it’s not) which shows up nicely on the scale. As bariatric patients we no longer are able to get our H2O from foods we eat, because we simply don’t eat enough. I’m telling you that 64 Oz per day should be anyone’s goal. If you can get in more great, if you’re not getting that in – time yourself. 8 Oz every hour for 8 hours, or for myself I do one 16.9 Oz bottle every 2 hours.

Now for the evil bad diets…
Just don’t do it.
If you must have a snack that is not healthy, limit yourself. You never need more than one serving of anything bad. Bad is considered high in saturated fat, refined sugar, added sugar, high in sodium, and high in calories that might put you over your daily limit.
When partaking in eating non-nutritive foods, enjoy it! Sit in a quiet spot and truly taste your food you have chosen.
Do not mindlessly eat it; you will just keep going back for more to try to fulfill the desire. Sad to say it usually never registers.
Think about what you just ate, and judge it. Was it as delicious as you envisioned it in your mind? If so, what was good about it? If not, why did you eat it? Will you eat it again?
Do not allow non-nutritive foods become a regular part of your diet. They should be a treat, once in a while. Remember our stomachs can only hold so much nutrient dense food, but non-nutritive foods usually come without capacity. The further out from surgery we get the more “bad diet” we can fit in and if you don’t teach yourself limits this WILL become a problem.

When you hear someone say, I don’t diet – I am doing a lifestyle change, that’s really great. But all they are really saying and doing is changing their bad diet to a good one, permanently.

Fitbit is pretty accurate on what I should be consuming. As calories are added during the day due to activity I choose to ignore so that I am still around 1000 calories for the day. The longer you use Fitbit it will begin to adjust to your calories in/out and if you set up your rate of weight loss all will be calculated. I think that just tracking my food has been very helpful.
Good luck!

Does anybody know if the calories burned or accurate? I have my fitbit set to a deficit of 750 calories a day. I am pretty active but I am still skeptical when it tells me to eat 16 or 1700 because I was told(like most others) that after surgery I should eat 1200 to maintain. I am 5'11 and 152 pounds. I would like to get to 146 but it not a huge priority. Can I trust the fitbit?

All people meet it at some point in their weight loss journey. It might come after you experience complications from surgery, or when you travel for vacation, or when you are unusually stressed at work. It might even come when you least expect it, when your diet and weight loss have been going smoothly for months. “It” is the dreaded plateau.


How Do You Know When You Hit a Plateau?
Simply enough, a plateau is when you stop losing weight even though you want to. It’s not just a day or two without weight loss. It’s a period of a few weeks or more when you keep trying to lose weight, but the scale does not budge. You think you are doing everything you can and should be doing to lose weight, but still you do not see results. That is a plateau. It can be frustrating and discouraging and seem to be unfair.
Stay Positive
Plateaus can be maddening, but the absolute worst thing you can do during a plateau is to give up. If you decide that your diet is not worth the effort, you are almost certainly going to gain weight. Going back to your old, pre-surgery diet habits, taking oversized portions, and eating high-fat, high-sugary foods will not just make you gain weight. These bad habits can erase your health gains. Worse, they could cause some of the weight loss surgery complications that you already know about, such as the following:
Stretching of the sleeve in vertical sleeve gastrectomy
Dumping syndrome in gastric bypass
Esophagitis with the adjustable gastric band (lap-band)
Feeling nauseous or having diarrhea

Another reason to stay positive is to keep up your motivation to continue all of the other healthy behaviors in your lifestyle. Don’t fall into the trap of “all-or-nothing,” in which you decide to give up all of your healthy efforts just because your weight loss isn’t quite what you want it to be. These include:
Taking your daily Vitamin and mineral supplements
Getting enough Protein and fluids each day
Following your regularly exercise routine

It Could Be Worse
And it will be worse if you give up. It may sound strange, but you can stay positive by thinking about how much better your weight is now than where it could be if you gave up trying. If your careful diet is not leading to the weight loss you had hoped for, it is still preventing weight gain. If you give up, you will gain weight, and probably be pretty disappointed in yourself.
Measure Success in Other Ways
Another way to stay positive is to stop focusing on the scale. Find other ways to measure your progress. Tracking your body measurements, for example, can let you know that you are shrinking and building muscle even if your total weight is not decreasing right now.
Tracking behaviors instead of measurements is another strategy. For example, you assess your success according to whether you eat well, such as hitting your protein goals or sticking to your planned menu. Other successful behaviors to be proud of yourself for are planning and preparing meals ahead of time and making sure you drink enough fluids at times other than meal times.
Be Honest and Go Back to the Basics
“Why me?”
That’s a natural question when you hit a plateau, but most people don’t ask it seriously. However, if you think seriously about what is causing the plateau and how you can fix it, this question can actually help you break through the barrier and get back to losing weight.
In many cases, you can figure out “why me” by asking yourself these questions.
“Am I logging every single bite that goes into my mouth?”
“Am I following the meal plan my nutritionist or surgeon gave me?”
“Am I measuring – not eyeballing – all of the foods I eat?”
“Am I exercising as much as I am supposed to be?”
“Am I getting in my protein each day?”
“Have I been too busy or preoccupied to plan my meals and Snacks in advance?”

If you answer these questions honestly, you might discover that you have slipped up and are not keeping up your good habits quite as well as you thought you had. Go back to the basics of meal planning and nutritious eating, and you are almost sure to see the scale move again within weeks.
You’re in Charge!
Plateaus are frustrating and nobody wants to experience them at some point, but almost everyone does. These steps can help you when you notice that you are in a plateau.
Stay positive and keep up your healthy behaviors.
Focus on other measures of success besides the scale.
Assess your diet honestly.
Make any necessary changes.

You can get over your plateau, and you will be stronger for it! Just be patient and do what you know is right for your health.

for those I don't choose to tell personal details, "Clean living and righteous thoughts" remains VERY effective.

I don't tell folks that I don't want to know that I had the lap band...I tell them I have done what I had to do to get healthy and leave it at that. its funny how some people do react when you tell them the truth I had a person who had this surgery and lost alot of weight told me she'd be here for me, but is no longer...so even some that have had the surgery and have gotten to their goals forget about the struggle. hang in there rigonj...you sound like you have it together and your right not everyone does need to knowabout the surgery...that's your business. glad to have read your post...thanks!!!

Now that the weather is breaking, I have been running into more people that I haven't seen in a while. When they comment on my weight loss, I just thank them and say I have been learning to eat better and am careful about what I eat. I have only told a few family members and very close friends. I feel that this is a private matter and it really doesn't matter how I lose the weight, only that I am becoming a more healthy person. No one has really pressed me on any other details.

You are awesome! What a great attitude, you CAN do it!!!! Keep us posted on your success

Me personally, if someone asked, I'll tell them I had lapband surgery. If they have a problem with that, it's their problem. I just know how much better I feel and can and want to do so much more now:) 60 lbs gone in 6 months and 49 to go. Feeling blessed!

A year in... And I haven't told a single person outside of my boyfriend and best friend. And that's what I wanted. Im not lying when I say that I lost weight with less calories and more exercise. You aren't obligated to tell anyone you don't want. It's your body... Your health... And your life.

you are merely changing what you eat (to also eat less) and exercising and getting well/healthy....no lying....only truth

Hello Ithueme, I am 10 days out and I live in Sterling Hts, MI and I would be more than happy to participate.