gentylwind

Small portions. Protein first. Avoiding slider foods. Weigh often. Shop often (watch the sizes slip downward). GET YOUR FILLS. Enjoy life, keep the faith but recognize this is largely up to YOU.

One year as of this past Saturday. Down 62 pounds, wearing a size 14 petite in pants, a size 10 or 12 in dresses, look and feel fantastic and no regrets. It wasn't easy and still isn't. Girl loves to eat. :biggrin: But the band helps me keep it in perspective. Its been a slow loss, my skin is recovering nicely and I feel great. Getting married next month in a street size 12 wedding dress. My all time highest I was a size 28, so it feels pretty svelt to me. I am thankful I had my surgery. If I ever have complications from the band I will revise to a sleeve or RYGB, no question about it.

I have had a beer or two. Didn't hurt, didn't have any bad effects, but yes, I did have to drink it s-l-o-w.

Took me 7 fills to get good restriction. Its a whole different ballgame now both in terms of my satisfaction with my food and in terms of the change in my body. Its too too early for you to be ready to throw in the towel. The most important thing you can do now is continue your follow ups!

I do these approvals for a living for a local bariatric surgeon. From the time of submission of all of your data the insurance company is allowed 30 days to respond. The type of insurance you have may or may not have anything to do with how long it takes to get the approval back. Whether or not they are short handed, whether or not they got enough info, the qualify of the info they got and many other factors play in to how long it takes. If you are submitting in May you will likely have surgery in June. You will still need pre-op work up and your two week pre-surgery diet and of course the doctor's own surgery schedule will play a part as well in how soon you can get it done. Congratulations on coming so far!

Average rate of loss is 10% of your total body weight at the six month mark. Most of you are on target. I have had moments of struggling too since being banded. It was in my case completely due to my own poor choices. Are you drinking alcohol? Tracking what you eat? Cutting out refined foods? Exercising? If you can't honestly answer the above questions as they ought to be answered, then you have some work to do still. There ARE, however, people for whom the band is not effective. Everyone who feels discouraged by lack of loss needs to be talking to their surgeon.

I tell them I bought a tape worm on the Internet. That tends to shut them up.

Once you reach good restriction it all gets very different. I have trouble with stress eating too. My most recent fill last week (my sixth) finally put me to that point they talk about when I can only eat 4-6 oz of food at a sitting and that it keeps me satisfied for four or more hours if I don't drink for an hour afterward. I had started to doubt that would ever really happen for me, bouncing up and down the same five pounds. Keep going on your follow ups and pursuing support through group meetings, here if it helps and make sure to get in some exercise. Even a 20 minute walk per day will elevate your ability to deal with the stress and sorrow of your spouse being gone. You can do this. Follow ups and support are vital for you right now.

You so very rock! You should feel very proud of yourself. You have done so much in such a short amount of time. Good for you!

Are you drinking any alcohol at all around the times you get this pain, within a half hour to an hour before?

It would depend on the surgeon's reputation with the surgeries he did in the 10+ years prior to being trained on the Lap Band and on who did his training and what his record has been thus far. I would not rule him out, as he is not new to surgery, but I would look at him with a great deal of scrutiny prior to making my choice.

If it is pure liquid and your doctor said it is okay, then it is. Drinking from a straw, however, is not. I was on full liquids at your point postop and was not permitted to blend fruits or anything else. Those counted as mushies due to the fibrous nature of them. Even blended they make your belly work harder, which is what you want to avoid right now. You need your stomach to stay quiet so the sutures can heal and the band settle into place anchored by scar tissue.

I get full sooner. MUCH sooner. To the point that my perception of a serving size is beginning to change. What used to be a normal portion for me now looks like an unbelievably huge amount of food....three meals worth at least. It also feels tight...I have to take tiny bites if I want to enjoy my meal and not feel things going down "hard".

Just stay away from carbonated beverages and recognize that any alcohol you drink is going to slow down your loss for that period of time.

I waited three to four weeks before my first little glass of red wine I think.

Most people stall in weeks 3-10 postop to some degree. The loss only looks slow because you lost so much in such a fast chunk of time. Keep doing what you are doing. Your body is adjusting to a massive change and a massive shock. You'll get there! The scale WILL start to move again if you don't give up.

I am sorry you are frightened and frustrated. Remind yourself this is a marathon, not a sprint. This is the rest of your life. If you work the band correctly you will not fail. Hundreds of people before you have had to muscle through that postop time lasting several months where you relearn how to eat and you deal with hunger. You knew it before going in, yes? Keep your chin up. You can do it. So many others have, who have the exact same hopes and food issues as you do. You can do it. eta: I am three months postop and just now getting good restriction. That might sound like a long time, but look how much I have lost anyway as I get there....and its half the amount of time you named in your original post.

Hang in there. YOu'll feel this way on and off throughout the whole journey including once you reach goal. I lost 80 lbs not so long ago on Atkins and remember having the same feelings you are. Mine was triggered because as the weight came off, it revealed the incredible damage I have done to my once lovely, smooth, svelt physique. Stretch marks, stretched skin, saggy lower belly, saggy inner thighs, saggy breasts. This was not the body I remembered having nor the one I was striving to find! Its a lot of head work, getting good with ourselves, the way we are right now, in this moment. You are lovely. You were lovely before, you are lovely now. Hang in there and be tender with yourself. Think about how you'd react to your best friend having the same issue and do that for you.

I get full sooner and stay full longer.

Do I personally think it would be dishonest? No. We are all working hard to learn how to control our food intake. That being said, you better believe anyone else finding out about it would feel it was dishonest if you didn't disclose your surgery. Most people think WLS is an advantage. And honestly, it is. Just not as much of one as many seem to think.

www.diaperswappers.com Great forum for cloth diapering Moms (and other kinds of Moms too!).

My oldest child died of acute myeloid leukemia on 01/10/2007. He was 13 years old at the time of his death. His life was stolen from him and here I am wasting mine. Been researching the band for years. Once I got financially and emotionally stable, I moved forward on getting the band and getting healthy. If he could go through all he did with the kind of tenacity and courage he showed, I can get through this and live a life he will be proud to know about when I see him again.

This is not a surgery I would ask a family member to help me with. There are a lot of people who fail weight loss surgery and borrowing that kind of money and not getting the results the person loaning it would expect will create friction in the relationship. Even if you do well, there's no guarantee it will be enough to satisfy the person shelling out thousands of dollars. Frankly, I never consider borrowing from family to be an option. 90% of the time it goes poorly and strains or ruins the relationship. Particularly in these hard times it is unfair to ask someone else to put up that kind of money, even if by your perception they have plenty of it. There are institutions out there who will loan money for this with reasonable interest rates if your credit qualifies. If your credit is so poor that a loaning institution, who are in the business of assessing risk of default, will not loan you money, why should a family member assume that risk with money they may one day need for their own health or survival, particularly with what the economy is doing right now? I am sorry if that sounds harsh, but it doesn't negate the truth of it. A poor risk for a bank is a poor risk for anyone. If you insist on asking family for help with this, you need to seriously evaluate how you will feel toward that person and about yourself when/if they decline to loan it to you. If they agree to loan you money, you should have a plan for paying them back that starts IMMEDIATELY whether you lose weight or not. This plan needs to be put in writing and signed by both of you detailing how much the loan is for, what the terms of it are, how much you will pay them each month or week or whatever you agree to and state the fact that repayment is required regardless of progress or complications. Even if it is family, there needs to be no doubt on any party's side what the agreement was. You should realize too that if they loan you this money, they will very likely (rightly) feel it is their right to inquire about your loss, how you are doing, and to comment on your progress or lack thereof. You should also have a plan for what you will do when/if there are complications, which are not uncommon. A flipped port requires another surgery. Slippage. Erosion. Development of a hernia. Gallbladder surgery. How will you cover any of that if the coffers are now empty from the surgery itself? You must have a plan, not just pray all goes well. I strongly encourage you to find a way to do this yourself.

Follow the band rules. No drinking with meals, usually 1/2 hour before and up to an hour after. Protein first, then vegetables, then if you still have room, a VERY small amount of carbs. No soda. Avoid chocolate, ice cream, chips, crackers, high calorie liquids including juice and white carbs of most any kind including rice, mashed potatoes, cake, Cookies. Exercise daily or at least five times a week. Keep your calories under 1500 per day. It will be easier once you get restriction but it still won't be easy. A lot of the good choices you need to make can be practiced now before the band is tight. 5 cc is not much. You probably need another fill and to slow down, start coaching yourself to stop eating when you are no longer hungry, NOT when you are full or stuffed. Learning to tell the difference is half the battle. The band was never intended to be a physical block to eating. It is intended to give early and prolonged satiety from a smaller portion of food. There is a difference between the two. Its hard but keep in mind that "satiety" is not another word for "full" or "stuff". It simply means "enough". If you are honestly already doing all of this and STILL not losing anything, you need to see a doctor to find out why your body is not working the way a healthy body does. PCOS, diabetes and thyroid problems are all common barriers to weight loss. If you do not have one of those and you are still not losing, look hard at what you are (or are not) doing. Good luck and let us know how you are doing.

As far as I know the only way to tell is by X-ray.