Fanny Adams

While you don't have a lot of restriction, use this time to learn the different sensations of "feeling full" compared to "feeling not hungry". They are quite different. Try to make your calorie intake up from foods with a lot of bulk and fibre, like meat and vegetables, and avoid foods that give a high calorie count in a small volume. For example, choose a large bowl of raw salad veges (carrots, tomatoes, celery, sweet peppers, etc, etc) with 2 ounces of lean Protein for lunch and munch and crunch your way through them for 20 minutes, eating as much as you want. After 20 minutes, stop and put whatever is left in the bowl in the fridge and tell yourself "I can finish that later if I need to". Listen to your body. You probably won't be feeling "full" but you probably won't be feeling "hungry" still either. Go off and distract yourself by doing something - housework, office work, go for a walk, anything. After an hour, stop and listen to your body again. If you are really feeling HUNGRY, have some more of your lunch, eating for up to 20 minutes. If you aren't hungry (forget feeling "full"), see if you can go another hour before you really want to eat the rest. Repeat that throughout the day, till dinner time and do it again with dinner (i.e. chew for 20 minutes, stop and put it away, come back in an hour and see if you "need" the rest). You'll find that you can eat several bowls of salad veges if necessary without going over your calorie limit and the bulky food will stop you feeling hungry. Come dinner time, make healthy choices but include a balanced diet that will give you some bulk with your calories. The idea is to take advantage of whatever little restriction you have. If you are wide open and can eat anything, you need to fill yourself up, so that you don't have the Hunger Demon raging at you and tempting you to make bad choices. Don't worry about quantities at this stage and don't try to get by on liquids and Protein shakes or aim for 1/4 or 1/2 cup meals. They won't stay in your pouch and you will feel hungry all the time. You need solid foods that will work with the band to help make you feel satisfied, until restriction kicks in.

I pay the same as TeaganRheana for fills (I'm also in Perth, Western Australia). I was self-pay on the lapband and the followup fill visits cost $150 with our Medicare system rebating $113 of that, so total personal cost is $37. $500 for a 10 minute visit and a quick needle is INSANELY expensive!

That's not a problem, Loulou!! That's the name of the game! My surgeon says to take full advantage of those times - if you don't feel hungry, DON'T EAT!! It rarely lasts very long that you don't want to eat at all and the reality is that most of us could safely live for days at a time without food - that's what our fat reserves are for! So if you don't feel like breakfast, don't force yourself to eat it just because you think you "should". Wait until you are hungry and then make the good choices. Stop eating when you are no longer hungry - don't wait for the "full" feeling, as it feels different now and you probably won't get there. Just try not to eat unless you are actually physically hungry and the weight loss will come easily... Good luck with it all!

I work away on the mines and I eat salad just about every single day for lunch, as it is one of the only good choices I have available (mine food is generally very stodgy and fatty). This is what I would eat: Take a plastic food container measuring 5" x 2.5" x 1.5" and stuff it as full as I can of the following chopped/sliced veges: tomato carrot celery cucumber sweet red bell pepper fresh mushrooms bean sprouts beetroot drained canned pineapple lettuce (only a half to whole leaf or so) or baby spinach leaves (half dozen leaves?) To that I would add any TWO of the following Protein options: 1 slice lean fresh ham 1 hard boiled egg 1 oz cheese (soft camembert or hard cheddars) 1 oz drained tuna in springwater 1 oz mixed nuts (walnuts, almonds, pecans) This makes a large meal that makes me feel full all afternoon, I never get stuck on it and it is less than 300 calories (almost all in the 2 protein options).

Toh-may-toe, toh-mah-toe, eh Jachut? I never get used to the idea that US people will talk about a "salad" and then you discover they meant "lettuce and dressing". That just doesn't cut the mustard for a salad here! To me, a "real" salad has a heap of veges in it and the dressing is incidental/optional (and mostly I don't bother). "Real" salads, with their carrots, cucumber, celery, capsicum, etc, etc, are really filling and SO good for you! :eek:

Hi Angela! Well done on the 25kg in less than 6 months!! That's an AMAZING result!! Congrats!

I used the nicotine Patches for a couple of weeks prior to and after my banding surgery and found that they really helped. I have always had a problem distinguishing between craving a cigarette and feeling hungry, so I found that the patches helped me stick to the pre-op diet and the banding helped me not smoke afterwards. I did go back to smoking after the 2 weeks post-op period was up but I had cut my intake by half (i.e. down to about 8 cigs a day) and it never went back up again. Then, 12 months ago (which was 12 months post-op), I met my non-smoking boyfriend and that was the motivation I needed to give up fully. I haven't smoked in 12 months now and have been surprised at how easy it has been. I did the full 10 week course of patches to give up and haven't looked back. I'm sure the band actually helped, because I wasn't mistaking hunger pangs for cigarette cravings or vice versa, as I used to on previous quitting attempts.

I think you'll find that you are reacting to that slice of deli chicken. It might have gone down easily at the time, but you now have restriction and it's not going through the band easily now. My surgeon (and most surgeons that I have heard about) says to do liquids only for the rest of the day of a fill (creamed Soups are good - nutritious and filling and tastier than Protein drinks), do mushies on the next day and back to solid foods on Day 3. On the first couple of fills, when you don't really have much restriction yet, you might not have seen the necessity for this and so may have forgotten that advice but this time round, the restriction has kicked in and that's what you're feeling. If you've been getting stuck and PBing since the fill, give yourself 2 days on liquids then a day on mushies. If you can't go back to solids on day 4, get 0.25 taken out.

Good luck Stevee, you can do it girl!! Now if you find that the first fill doesn't give what feels like good restriction, here's what I would do... suggestions only but it's how I would tackle it. Find a calorie counter web site like www.fitday.com, record everything and be HONEST. Aim to eat between 1000 and 1200 calories a day and make them consist of "bulky" foods, ie, meat and vegetables, etc which have a lot of fibre and will fill you up. This way, you will be able to get some use out of the band, even though it's not cutting your portions down to tiny sizes - you will still feel satisfied on relatively small portions of good solid foods. Use this time to learn the difference between the body sensation of "feeling full" and "not feeling hungry". They are quite different. If you chase that "full" sensation all the time, you can still overeat when restriction is low, but if you seek "not hungry", you will find that you can live quite happily with smaller portions even when restriction hasn't really kicked in. Try this trick: Serve yourself a good healthy Breakfast, e.g. a poached egg with 1-2 oz of baked Beans. Lots of Protein and fibre in that, will satisfy the hunger craving but probably won't make you feel "full" - and only 150-200 calories! Serve yourself a lunch of whatever your favourite "diet food" is, aiming for "high bulk/low calorie". Time yourself while eating. Chew very thoroughly and slowly, taking 30 seconds between each bite and then STOP after 20 minutes. Put anything left on your plate into the fridge and tell yourself "that's fine, I can go finish that later if I'm really hungry, I'm not wasting it..." Listen to your body. You should find that while you don't feel full, you don't feel ravenously hungry either. You could finish the plate if you want to but it shouldn't be hard to just leave it for a while... Then go do something else to distract yourself (go for a walk, do some housework, go back to work, whatever). After an hour or so, listen to your body again. Are you HUNGRY? If you really are, eat the rest of your lunch (for 20 mins again). If you're not really craving the food, leave it and tell yourself you can always finish it later. Do the same with dinner... Eat for 20 minutes, chewing slowly and thoroughly and then STOP. The aim of this game is to get your body to recognise what it is like to "not feel hungry". Forget trying to "feel full", we're aiming for the band to give us self-control, not shut down hunger altogether. It is perfectly normal for you to feel hungry just before you eat your dinner. But stop and reassess after 20 minutes, and then again after an hour. If you are craving "bad" choices, make a promise to yourself that you will wait until AFTER you've eaten everything else on your meal plan for the day, in the 20 minute timings. If by the end of the night, you have eaten everything and really can't stop yourself, allow yourself a small taste but try not to go overboard. You should find it much easier to resist the temptation to overindulge if you've played this "game" with timing throughout the day. When your body learns to recognise "I'm not hungry" and you can apply that to not eating food you don't really need, it is a wonderful feeling of freedom from the Hunger Demon who has been ruling our lives up until that point. Good luck!

Laurie, once you have started to PB on any given day, stop all food/fluid intake for a couple of hours and then stick to liquids ONLY for the rest of the day (Soups are good - nutritious and low fat). Your stomach swells every time you throw up and it needs time to heal. If you keep trying to force food down, it will get worse and worse over time. If you have done this but when you try to go back to solid food the next day you are still having problems no matter how finely you chew your food, then you are actually too tight and it will only get worse if you get more fills. The band works to curb your appetite, it will never reduce it to zero. When you get so tight that you have trouble with most solid foods, you tend to switch to easy "slider" foods that go right through it. They don't make you throw up but they don't stick in the pouch either, so you get hungry again quickly and can eat a lot of them. They also tend to be creamy/fatty foods (icecream and chocolates are classics) and you won't lose weight when that is what you are eating. Get a small amount of fill taken out - 0.25mm - and try to eat more solid foods. You'll find that if you can eat lean meat and vegetables without getting stuck or throwing up, those foods will satisfy the hunger cravings far more and you will be able to resist the temptation to eat high calorie junk. If you can't eat the good food, your body doesn't get the nutrients it needs and it will keep sending out "feed me!! feed me!!" sensations even when your stomach can't tolerate anything more than liquids. That's a terrible place to be in - frustrating and dangerous for your health. Try the liquids only for 24 hours and then see how you go with solid food. If you can't tolerate it, get a small amount of fill out! You will feel SO much better when you can eat properly and will feel much less hungry.

I guess we can all have different definitions for things. To me, a "slider" food is one that dissolves to liquid and slides through the band, eg chocolate and icecream. Lettuce is composed of mostly water with a little fibre. When chewed, the water is released and will go through but the fibre is left behind and fills the pouch. To me, that means it is not a "slider". It just takes a LOT of lettuce to create enough fibre to get a sensation of fullness - hence why you can eat a lot of it. I would also have a different definition of "salad". Lettuce and dressing simply don't qualify in my mind. If you say "salad", my mental image is of a proper garden salad with a variety of veges, as mentioned previously. Hence, if you ask "is lettuce a slider food", I might say "technically not really, but I can see why people might think so" but if you were to ask "is salad a slider food", I will answer "no, it's not".

salad is not generally a slider food and is one of the best choices you can make, if you choose a "good" salad with a variety of vegetables. To me, chopped lettuce with dressing isn't a salad, although that seems to fit the definition for a lot of takeaway places. A good garden salad with cucumber, carrots, sweet bell peppers, celery, tomatoes, etc, in with the lettuce is usually easy to eat, because you can chew it up really finely, won't glug together in your tummy and get stuck like processed flours/breads, and will keep you feeling full for ages. I usually find I can eat quite a lot of salad, as it crunches down to be quite small when you chew it, and it is low in calories and fat and high in fibre to help you feel full - go for it! Mind you, a Wendy's chilli, lettuce and cheese dish isn't what I'd call a salad...

Your fears are natural and you do need to have a realistic assessment of what you are in for and make a strong commitment to working with this tool, not expecting it to do the work for you. Elcee's post was spot on and you should take that to heart. Speaking as a 2 year bandster (today is literally my 2 year bandiversary), I have not regretted this decision for a minute. It hasn't always been easy but it has undoubtedly been the best decision I ever made for myself. It is particularly easy to say that, given that I am currently posting from my hospital bed, where I am recovering from the plastic surgery I had 3 days ago (torso lift and boob job). I am utterly thrilled with my results. As for advice: Research, research and research some more. The more you know about the band and how it works, the better you will be able to use the tool. This is something I wrote for a friend in a PM a couple of days ago, that might help you also: "In all the reading I've done in this forum, and the years that I have been banded, I have come to the realisation that the best way to approach the band is SLOWLY and STEADILY. Don't think of it as something that will STOP your hunger. It never will. It is only a tool that will help CONTROL your hunger and make it manageable. If you try to get the fill so tight that you don't feel the hunger at all, you will be too tight, will have all sorts of troubles with PBing and getting stuck and will INEVITABLY switch to slider foods (icecream and chocolate mostly) because this will be all you can tolerate eating. That is a terrible place to be in. I know, because I've had two incidents now when I've overshot the "sweetspot" and been too tight. When that happens, you find you are still hungry because you are not eating real food and your body is craving nutrients. It keeps sending "feed me! feed me!" signals, which you can't satisfy because real food makes you sick. Instead, you desperately find yourself eating the wrong kinds of foods, because the hunger is strong, and not losing any weight because living on chocolate and icecream is no way to diet, even if the quantities are small... For me, the secret has been to keep the band quite loose. Forget all the talk you hear about people eating only 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup at a meal. That's a ridiculous way to try to live. Get the band to where you can comfortably eat at least a cup of food or even 1.5 cups and have no troubles with meat and vegetables. Forget all that business about "protein" too - our Aussie doctors tell us that this is a fad and they've been dealing with the band for many years longer than the US doctors. Aim for a balanced diet of meat, vegetables and wholegrains... you know, that old fashioned "sensible diet" thing that we've hated being told about our whole lives. If you fill up on lean meats, vegetables, fruit and wholegrains, you will find that the band will help to CURB your hunger, so that you are satisfied with small portions of these. The nutrients in them will help to curb your body's craving for good food and you will find that you can actually "stick to the diet". Don't try to kid yourself that you don't need to diet with the band. There are no short cut ways to lose weight in a healthy way - diet and exercise are what works. The band just helps us to STICK to the diet, whereas without it, the Hunger Demon that rages inside us all will defeat us sooner or later. " Good luck with whatever decision you make.

I'm doing great!! Can't get over how well I feel only 3 days out from surgery and I love my new boobs and flat tummy!

It was fabulous to meet you today, Lellow! Thank you so much for coming in and comparing notes with me I am amazed at how well I feel and how little pain there has been. You're right - Dr Allbrook is a genius! I am absolutely thrilled with my new boobs and flat tummy. I love what it has done for my thighs and bum too - couldn't be happier!

Starting to feel it a bit now... oh well, I knew it was coming. I'm a tough old girl, so will manage :thumbup:

Hi Mimi. I had 4 drains but they took 3 of them out this morning, so they were only in there overnight. I think they changed the sheets partly because they were a bit mucky from when they took the drains out but mostly as an excuse to have me stand up. I only just managed it but hoping it will be easier tomorrow. However, as the anaesthetic is starting to wear off, I think it will actually be worse tomorrow. In all the ops I've had over the years (and there have been many!), Day 3 is usually the worst, as the anaesthetic is fully flushed from your system, they drop the drug dosages but the pain is still there and comes through finally... Oh well... it's been an easy run so far, here's to hoping it continues :thumbup:

Hi everyone. I made it through ok and not in any pain as yet, except when I had to get out of bed for thm to change the sheets. Standing up hurt!! Lellow, I'd love a visitor, but I'm in Hollywood Private Hospital, on Monash Avenue, just behind Charlie Gardiner Hosp. I am amazed at how flat my tummy is and I think the boobs will turn out great too.. Allie Morris - they sent you home that night???? OMG!!! I could NOT cope with that!

On my way to the hospital. Will check in with you guys in a couple of days... Good luck to you too, Kate!

On my way to the hospital. Will check in with you guys in a couple of days...

Can you believe it's been TWO years now? How is everyone doing? I'm doing great - heading in for plastic surgery tomorrow (almost 2 years to the day from the band!) and couldn't be happier about the results I've had so far. Cheers to the Merry Losers!

To all the December 2009 Bandits, from a December 2007 Bandit: Congratulations on making what will turn out to be the best decision of your life! Be proud of yourselves for having the courage to choose to regain your life. Good luck with everything in the future and welcome to the start of a healthier life! Best regards Fanny PS: If anyone wants to ask questions, etc, feel free to PM me.

LOL! Yes, it was Dr Bowater that made the comment about the BMI range, not Stephen Watson. I've had a couple of run-ins with him already over various things - don't like him! I'm kind of pissed off that Watson has handed over the "mundane" task of fills and general visits to other doctors in his practice. I saw a woman there once, who was pretty good, but each time I get Bowater, I come out really angry at him. I'm just going to ignore him and go with what Dr Allbrook (plastic surgeon, for our other readers) has said and he agrees that I'm a little off goal still but will reach it after the surgery settles in. I'm hoping to follow in your footsteps, Lellow, and lose the last little bit after surgery and hope that the skin doesn't loosen up too much with it. You mentioned once that doing it that way actually helped make it more comfortable for you - cross fingers that happens for me too.

At that level of fill (7cc in a 10cc band), you are probably best off going for 0.25cc changes up or down, rather than 0.5. It doesn't sound like much but it can make a WORLD of difference. It is really important too, to do the liquids for at least a day after the fill and for the remainder of any day in which you get stuck and PB. If you don't, you'll just find yourself getting stuck and PBing more and more often during the day, as your stomach swells in irritation after each episode. If you've just gone up 0.5cc and haven't let the PB/getting stuck go on for very long, ask them to take 0.25cc out. While you would probably get immediate relief from having the whole 0.5cc taken out, once the swelling goes down, you'll be back where you started and wanting restriction again. However, if you've tried to struggle through for a couple of days, the chances are that you are already so swollen inside that you need to get the whole 0.5 out to get the relief that you need. You can always go back after a couple of weeks when the swelling has gone and you are wanting more restriction, and get them to put it back 0.25cc (or less!) at a time. When you are honing in on that sweet spot, the adjustments need to get smaller and smaller to make sure you don't overshoot the mark and get too tight.

I think the larger you are up top, to begin with, the more you will notice the sag when the weight goes. I carried a LOT of my weight in my boobs - got up to a G-H cup (and probably should have been bigger if I had been fitted properly and bought the right bras). I'm almost at goal now and they have deflated to probably a D cup (not sure - still wearing my E cup bras coz they're new but they are baggy as anything). That might sound as though they're still big but sadly it's all empty skin flapping in the breeze :tongue2: I'm going in for the torso lift and boob job with implants on Monday because I really want my boobs back. I was an E cup before I gained the weight though, so I think that makes a difference - my whole self image has "big boobs" stamped all over it. The lift/reconstruction would have taken me down to a C - the implants will bring me back up to a DD-E, which is where I was when I was young and hot, hehehe. Now I can't be young and hot again, but I'm gonna have my boobs back!!