Jachut

Sounds like yet another case of medical mismanagement and patient non compliance to me. All these sad non success stories seem to have the same factors - doctors who promise miracles and patients who simply do not understand that the band is nothing more than a tool, that they have to exercise, eat less, build up to restriction gradually and change the WAY they eat and the foods they choose. Yes, it takes work. Everything worthwhile does.

With the amount of weight you lose with a lap band, compared to what it is truly possible to build muscle wise, the scale will go down. Your result with dieting and curves is not an indication that you build lots and lots of muscle, more that the diet wasnt working and you didnt lose a lot of fat. It takes really hard work, heavy weights working to exhaustion and LOTS of it, not half an hour relatively light sessions such as Curves to build pounds and pounds of muscle. Curves is primarily an aerobic toning circuit not a bodybuilding one designed to add significant weight in muscle. You simply dont build 3lb of muscle in a week, that old "oh, it must be muscle since I just joined the gym" is a bit of a chestnut, its really not true. Overtime, if you get really fit and muscular and dont gain fat, you will probably weigh a LITTLE more, but its not that easy to pack on 12lb of muscle, particularly for a woman. What tends to happen early on is you retain a lot of Fluid due to the damage to your muscles which makes you weigh more. Overtime, burning more energy and improving your fat to muscle ratio cannot help but to make you lighter. There's no cons to exercise, only pros.

Normal, lol. Also, when I go to the physio to get my lower back worked on, I'm absolutely black and blue all over my front on the hips next day. Having someone pushing on your back when you have no padding on your front really does some damage, even lying on a massage table! And I get cold really easy. And I cant sleep on my side in bed anymore without a cushion between my knees. My knees are too bony and it hurts to lay them one on top of the other with no fat to pad them. I also cant get a spray tan even on my collar bones, lol. The hollows above and below my collar bones are really deep (I've got NO fat on my chest at all, that's one part of me that IS scrawny) and the spray tan doesnt get it in there. I have to top it up myself.

I'm 5ft 10 and 154lb and it is not too thin! I'm a perfectly healthy weight, right in the middle of the healthy weight range actually and its NOT that thin! People seem to have a really warped view of this, it drives me nuts - not that I'm offended, just mystified. Is it because although in Australia our obesity levels are similar to the US's, severe morbid obesity is quite rare, most people are just "a bit obese", so that normal weights dont look so small to people? You would describe me as tall, perhaps willowy, maybe elegant, but truly, you wouldnt say I was "skinny" or "slim". I'd need to lose another 20lb to be that. Its absolutely NOTHING like model thin, believe me. I really think there must be a basic perception difference between our two countries because people are always saying on here that normal healthy weights are "too skinny" or "scrawny" and I just honestly dont get it. It must just be a difference in norms and what we've grown to accept as normal between our two countries. So I truly dont see why you wouldnt go for the 100. And I really dont particularly see what business it is of the doctors to be telling you that you'll stop here or there or anywhere in betwen either. He may reasonably warn you that losing 100% of excess weight is challenging, but setting your goal weight FOR you, I just think that's weird but that's another thing that seems to happen all the time according to what people on here say. I set my own goal weight!

The portion control is a big thing for me, I was always a healthy eater for meals, with a big sweet tooth in between. My trouble was I would be "good" all day and then eat a healthy but ENORMOUS dinner because I thought I could afford the calories or if I did break out, I would eat tons. My eating still follows the same pattern, but the portion control is enforced somewhat. Oh, you can get round it. Eat a bit then eat a bit more later. You can eat Cookies all day. That's the hard bit, you have to work on that. And my band doesnt make me run! You know. The salmon analogy is a really good one, very true!

Both very common and totally normal. Many people cant really eat in the morning at all if they get their restriction right for night time. And getting tighter at period time is very normal.

Its hard isnt it? I dont complain a lot about it on here because I am afterall at a perfectly healthy BMI. But I'm currently 70kg, occasionally I dip as low as 68.5. My real true goal that I never really told anyone coz everyone always bangs on about being realistic and not getting "too skinny" medical professionals included, was 65kg. I just CANT get there. I've been slightly overfilled in an attempt, now I'm unfilled a bit and having to work quite hard to stay where I am at 70. I'm doing Lite N Easy for a few weeks - that's a 1200 calorie a day home delivered program. Its the only thing that always worked for me. At this point I need strict calorie control and whilst I'm a good, healthy eater, I absolutely suck at measuring, counting and weighing and depriving myself. To have it all sitting there, and that's what I eat and nothing else works brilliantly for me, even when I was fat (I just regained every time I went off it!). So this is my last ditch all out attempt to get to 65kg. If this doesnt work, I vow to accept my perfectly healthy 70kg for once and for all. I figure I'm unfilled enough now to actually eat all the food and if I find it hard to maintain the loss (if I lose any, lol) then I will have a teeny fill since 5kg or so will make a big difference on my body now, certainly enough to loosen me up substantially. What will probably happen is that I wont look any better, I'll just look saggier!

I'd get some out. DH was recently overfilled just a tad, spent a terrible night with heartburn and reflux, could barely eat and had some out the next day.. Felt immediately better, then over the last 3 weeks, his fill has really kicked in and tightened up, we were just thankful he had a bit out or he would really have been in trouble!

I've got a great lunchbox (Fit n Fresh brand) that has an iceblock thing that fits inside it, there's a space below and 2 smaller containers sit on top. I can take a sandwich (tuna, lettuce, and avocado for example) and some carrot sticks and dip, or a small salad, some yogurt and cut up strawberries, any sort of combo like that and it stays cold for hours and hours. I just eat it in the lectures or tutes. I also have a small thermos to take coffee in, I get sick of having to buy lattes and cappucinos, you cant just get normal brewed coffee anywhere these days. That does me, I usually throw an apple or something in my bag too.

I dont focus on Protein. That's purely an American thing, they never tell you to do that here in Australia, so I never have. Oh, I eat protein of course, but its not my only focus. I eat plenty of wholegrain carbs, two serves of fruit and probably three differnent vegetables every day. Protein foods I eat in moderation, smaller serves of meat, cheese, yogurt. I need carbs for the energy. I cant function on a low carb diet. I run an hour four or five times a week. I eat wholegrain bread, a serve of Cereal and probably some potato most days of the weak, if not bread,then wholegrain crackers etc. Sometimes have Pasta for dinner. In other words, I eat a pretty "normal" diet. It certainly hasnt stopped me losing weight, in fact I've been very successful at it.

Its up to you. I had .2 removed a month or two back and the difference it made is astounding. I wasnt "overfilled" but I was tighter than I was comfortable with and saw no need to be that tight for maintenance. I have had to work VERY hard to maintain my weight since then, I havent gained but if I went with my appetite I would regain some weight - not all of it, I still have restriction but I'm certainly thinking about putting .1 back in. I'm at 2.8 now, 2.9 felt just a little loose, but 3.0 was too much. I think I'll go back to 2.9. Maybe. Its down to you and your choices. I certainly think long term is healthier for you and the longevity of your band to be looser rather than tighter but its a fine line between what you can manage before you begin to gain. Even if I'm not gaining through sheer determination, I certainly couldnt lose anything at this level, I'd be way too hungry.

I dont blame you! How can a surgeon say "you will die on the table". Sheesh, I get the strong feeling from things people say on here that some of them need lapbands on their egos. Without doubt, a lot of these sad non success stories come with a strong undercurrent of medical negligence or mistreatment. I dont understand how you can vomit enough to ruin your teeth for a whole YEAR without something being done for example! Or how you can not have something like lupus picked up beforehand, what on earth is all the bloodwork you have done FOR? Its ridiculous. Then you hear people who say they were overfilled with huge fills first go, or that they were overfilled and then underfilled and had to wait months to go back becuase of the cost of the fills or their doctor simply wouldnt listen to them, etc. Lots of these sad stories simply come down to mismanagement of the band. Now I'm someone who would have been at the surgeon's door yelling my head off about it,but many wont take that path. I think the band would work for more people than it does if there werent so many doctors out there on the bandwagon so to speak for the money, who obviously dont really care much about the plight of the obese, and certainly dont want to put inthe personal effort to treat the mind as welll as the body. They want it to run to a formula, you put in THIS much fill at THIS date, you follow THIS diet, it works or I scrub you off my records. There's no care to counsel (oh, just refer you off to someone else, when its your DOCTOR you need the relationship with) or to guide! We have to remember a lot of these guys are surgeons, plain and simple and the surgery is the only bit they're interested in.

I didnt have any problems getting out of bed a few hours after surgery, but lifting myself with the thingie hanging down over the bed. But then I popped half my staples out after a caesar jumping around the room, lol, I was quite mobile after that too. But the lapband was MUCH less traumatic than a caesar- my ability to move after my caesar was more down to the copious amounts of pain meds they kept forcing on me, I couldnt feel a thing!.

You can drink alcohol in moderation too. Wine (particularly red) is actually good for you in small quantities. I eat whatever I fancy depending on what type of restaurant it is. I can pretty much guarantee I'll always avoid the bread and garlic bread though!

No problem - most of my runs are 40 minutes to an hour, so anywhere between 7 and 12kms or so, depending on the route I choose, and I do that four to five times a week.

Correct me if I'm wrong but when you're hypoglycaemic you need to keep your blood sugar stable and level as its prone to dropping. That means you need to eat regularly and to eat things that will keep your blood sugar level - Protein and low GI carbs. Eating something high GI or very sugary will give you the classic sugar high followed by crashing low, and you eat sugar when you are low to bring you back up. So proper eating should prevent bad hypoglycaemic episodes - and proper eating means avoiding sugar, yes? It means oats for Breakfast over fruit loops? Or am I completely wrong?

I would say that was true for my feet too - I would have had a wide fitting had they been available but they're just not common here in Australia. Now I can fit my feet into more dressy shoes than I could but they're still wide. And 5 year old Eliza's teeny little feet look like little squares too, they're just as wide and shapeless as mine. But I was a size 10 and am STILL a size 10, just can fit into more size 10's kind of thing.

I'm so much better at managing stress (my running helps a lot) but after 3 weeks of working three jobs with DH away, and 4 units ongoing at uni, my eating habits did get worse and worse and did involve one evening of take away, ice cream and Cookies, wine too! Those foods really DO soothe you when you're completely overwrougth, and I still have a tendency to fall back on them. I try to take each and every time as it comes though and more often than not I dont fall back into old habits. Day to day stresses I certainly dont respond to with a box of cookies anymore. But three weeks of sustained pressure was enough to crack me.

There's no foods I can never eat, but somethings give me trouble sometimes. Althought I doubt I will EVER eat calamari again, my worst ever, most public, most humiliating and painful PB involving public streets, a public bathroom, a railway station and a park (oh the shame!) before making it back to our holiday house for a spectacular head spinning around exorcist style explosion in the front garden. So yeah, probably wouldnt choose it off a menu again.

I think its perhaps the biggest drawback of the band, and one which is not really recognised or spoken about but past a certain level of restriction (different for everyone obviously) the band can actually change your eating habits for the worse. Some lucky people can get tight restriction and still eat meat, vegetables and fruit, but I suspect there's at least half who, past a certain fill level start to rely on slider foods. I know I caught myself out at that and the proof is in the pudding, I had fill out, my food intake has DOUBLED to the point where looking around me in the staffroom, my intake is about the same as other normal weight women now, but I havent gained weight. So even on double the amount of food, I've not increased calories -because I've been able to go back to loads of fruit, vegetables, wholegrain bread - all the foods which work to keep my full for hours, instead of yogurt, cheese, crackers, Cookies, chocolate - saturated fat and white sugar products which go down easily but add up to mega calories! Unfortunately for a few that cut off point comes way too early so that they can not seem to get the restrictive effect of the band without the bad side effects of overtightness. I'm sorry that its worked out that way for you. If that were me, I probably still would have thought another surgery too extreme for my BMI of 36, but I dont think I would have mucked around with a band for too long - I wouldnt want to risk my long term health with a very poor diet of barely tolerable foods.

I dont have a very sugary diet, but I do occasionally like a bit of chocolate or something. I do still have a tendency to overeat those foods when I eat them, but it isnt very often and doesnt have any effect on my weight. I do eat a carb based diet - although I eat the wholegrain, non sugary carbs, not the white processed ones apart from an occasional treat. Low carb doesnt work for me, I feel awful, I look awful, my running ability suffers majorly (no energy at all) and I always always end up having major binges due to deprivation and sheer need of energy. I dont use any SF products, if I'm going to have something sweet, I have the sugar and account for it. I do have a glass of wine a few times a week which is sugar too I guess.

I voted no but I'm full for longer on a smaller amount of food. My brain has been retrained to view a healthy, moderate plateful of food as enough, its taken a LONG time but at almost 3 years out, I dont panic that I dont have enough food on my plate. I can view an apple as a decent snack, whereas before it wouldnt have touched the sides. But I get hungry every bit as much as I used to. In fact true hunger - stomach growling, feeling hollow, I get that more. The cravings and head hunger, about the same.

You have to allow yourself time to work those doubts out. It took me MONTHS, almost a year of toing and froing. Coming on here was good and bad in terms of making progress there. When I read the type of diets people were eating, I decided it wasnt for me. I know people will take this in the manner its meant but I totally and utterly do not believe the Protein first/lowish carb approach is the healthiest one, probably simply because that type of diet has never taken off in Australia the way it has there and I'm simply not conditioned to view it as "normal". The thought of eating that way long term put me off majorly. Also in America, it tends to be so rules focussed, you will eat this, you will eat that many calories, you will drink Protein shakes, you will only get a fill when you fill x, y and z criteria, you will do liquids after a fill, etc etc etc. It sounded like a prison sentence, not a lifestyle to me (and it still does). It was only when I sought out Australian info, talked to other Australian bandsters that I realised different approaches were possible and equally as effective. The idea of what the band does appealed to me enormously, the typical lifestyle afterwards did not. People report on it in such a black and white manner, my surgeon says this therefore it is right kind of thing. Once I realised that many people do their own thing, work it their own way, eat what I consider a "normal" diet and lose weight, I felt confident to go ahead. This board is a very valuable and supportive resource but it can definitely function as a very negative and scary picture of a lapband lifestyle as well.

Yeah She, I saw them at Price Attack at Fountain Gate (yes, of Kath n Kim fame). The trouble is my hair has such a frizzy fuzzy texture, that even though I straighten it to look decent enough, it just would NEVER blend with smooth hair extensions curly or straight. I would always have a big demarcation with my hair.

It can not only help, when you're close to good restriction it can tip you over the edge. I've had .2 taken out recently, I wasnt really overfilled but tighter than I wanted to be for maintenence. I would guess my food intake has easily DOUBLED from that small adjustment. Strangely, my weight is holding, I'm driving myself frantic with worry over how much I eat but I notice its still less than other people around me and I'm not gaining. But it can make a HUGE difference! I had quite a few .1 fills towards the end there.