Jachut

You dont become a new person after surgery, one who can suddenly stick to a diet and exercise regime and have "willpower". Unfortunately, you'll wake up the same person you were the day before. However, there's a few points to consider. The first is that if you're putting yourself through weight loss surgery, one would assume that you're committed like you've been committed no other time. I think its important to have the attitude "right, lets have a crack at this one more time and this time lets do it RIGHT". I think going under the knife in desperation hoping that THIS will work is not guaranteed to fail but that you're going to have to face up to a few realisations and a steep learning curve when at first you dont get the results you expected. If you're not committed like you've never been before, then think carefully about how you can become that way. Secondly, it really IS easier to stick to a plan when you're not hungry. Which can be immediately or can take several months of fills (until you get restriction). And some people would disagree, but I find that the band DOES stop true diet breaking for me. I'm not an icecream, milkshake or chocolate eater - my vices are Cookies, muffins, cakes and the band does restrict those quite significantly for me. Especially since I always loved to eat those foods with a good cup of coffee - drinking coffee and eating cake together is hard to do in anything other than the most ladylike nibbles. And if I actually DO pig out in the afternoon, with a band, I just cant eat dinner. Not particularly healthy or functional eatibng but it keeps the calories in check. There's lots of automatic checks and balanaces with the band - for example, I just cant get down two big pieces of buttery toast and jam in the morning (my previous Breakfast of choice, with big cup of coffee!). I can do half a cup of Cereal with a few peaches on top and a dash of skim milk though. The calorie difference in those two choices is quite large. There's all sortsof things like that - I'm no low carber, but the band DOES tend to restrict those carby foods like lots of bread, rice and Pasta and not eating a lot of those foods DOES make a difference to your weight. Exercise wise, well no band will make you exercise. You have to grow up, suck it up and do what you need to do there. But even there, its SO much easier and more rewarding when you are actually seeing weight loss for your efforts. And that's the biggest factor, for me personally. I couldnt stick to diets and exercise plans before. But now I'm a runner, a dedicated one. Because for the first time in my life, I managed to do both together for a couple of weeks, saw a phenomenal result and was hooked! Once you realise it does work, its much easier to do.

Oh, lol, well, no maybe you havent turned back the clock quite that much, tee hee.

I would not eat steak in public for all the tea in china! I dont get stuck often, but steak is a high risk food for me. I dont eat out an awful lot, so when I do, my main focus is just something easy. I will go for the pasta/risotto/caesar salad every time. I dont eat the whole meal, its only once in a while I eat out, so I dont really care about the best nutritional choice, I just dont want an episode. I eat less of my meal than I would eat at home, stopping well before any possible overeating stuck episode can occur and enjoy a nice glass of wine instead. Dare I say it, Desserts are easier so I might even only have a bite of a starter, and have dessert instead.

I agree - even if its true that you store more fat from what you eat, more easily, if you eat late then go to bed, well if you're eating to make up for what you DIDNT eat during the daytime, you've also burned fat to meet your energy needs. As long as overall calories ingested are less than overall calories expended it doesnt matter when you eat. You still need to eat well, and make sure its not just boredem late night eating of course. For those that eat well during the day and get in their daytime calories, you either need to just shut up shop once dinners done and have a rule of no more or you need to plan a little late night pleasure into your daily calories. personally, I think weight loss is ALL about what works for you. Realistically,that's what you can sustain!

I think that's great for everyone, not only bandsters! I like to know what I'm eating. I will eat things that are not on anyone's diet plan occasionally, but I always like to know what I'm ingesting. I dont count calories per se, but I do keep a rough tote in my head most days, its a lifetime habit. I hate hate hate eating a meal that looks as if it might be only 300 calories, but knowing that in reality, it might be 1000.! I have a pretty good idea of the calorie count of most things, but restaurant meals are impossible to guage.

Well, I wouldnt donate a kidney even if I DIDNT have a lapband. But thank god there are people that will.

Not giving a fig about Protein makes it easy, lol. I have no idea how much protein I ingest in a day. I just eat what I feel like eating. So I never worry about it personally. I just try to make each meal include a protein source so as to keep the overall glycaemic index of my meal lower. I eat carbs like bread, rice and Pasta but try to do it as part of a balanced diet, not as my staple foods.

That's what I'd do too, call in your lap band doc. I had a huge sugery last November, but it was to remove my rectum and part of my colon and create an ileostomy, so it wasnt quite so close to the band as the kidneys are. But surely, they'd take your right kidney, not your left? As far away from your band as possible? Its all in the skill of the surgeon, I was just amazingly lucky that a) I got into to see probably the most respected colorectal surgeon in Melbourne and that he'd spent the earlier part of his career working with Prof. O'Brien doing lapbands. He understood what he was dealing with, but he told me there were no guarantees, that the tubing can be troublesome, it can be almost anywhere in the abdomen and adhered to things. Nonetheless, my surgery was laparascopic. I was instructed to unfill my band prior, which I did. I spent the next six months with it unfilled and at various times it still reminded me it was there. I started refilling and just last week, I had my ileostomy reversed, with fill in place. I've been maybe marginally tighter for this past week or two whilst my tummy is a bit bloated, but nothing major. Its been absolutely fine. Truthfully, if you're 25lb from goal then you're going to be easy to operate on (my colorectal surgeon never shut up about how glad he was to have someone thin to work on for a change). This should be able to be done laparascopically barring major complications or oddities with your band. Surgeons actually do have clearer vision and better access in a thinner body and your condition will increase your likelihood of not having to be opened up. By the way, you're amazing.

my doc just advised caution and not to eat any of my problem foods. She sort of leaves it up to the patient. I've never had any need for liquids, I can eat straight away after a fill.

I so love to see these posts, rather than the "did you eat everything not nailed down before your surgery" posts! This is the right attitude! You'e made the decision, you may not have had the surgery but you've started your journey and its great to start it on a positive note. Ok, so you dont have a band yet, dont put the pressure on yourself to eat tiny, or to be that successful at eating slow (that is SO hard!). But what I did was try to eat three meals a day, I wasnt trying to lose weight but I tried to eat three healthy meals a day and stop the binging. I tried to chew well and eat slowly. I started some regular exercise to introduce that habit. I didnt have a carbonation habit so I didnt have to worry about that. But I did wean myself off caffeinated coffee, onto decaf because I knew that with my post op tiny stomach in those first few weeks, drinking a cup of coffee (aka lifeblood) would fill my stomach and take up the room for something nourishing. I also knew that bad caffeine headaches ensue for me after an anaesthetic when its a day or so before I'm given one, lol. that was all, I just wanted to be healthy, no heavier and in a place to heal well and quickly - but above all, it made me feel positive and proud of my efforts, a great place from which to start. I didnt to feel that I was a fat pig punished with a life of stomach restriction, I wanted to make myself feel like my banding was one step in a positive journey.

What makes you so sure there's any "correct" way to lose weight? There's really only the way that suits you personally. Even our docs cant agree, so I would never take their recommendation as gospel, if something didnt suit me, I'd change it. I eat 3 meals a day - they're small, but not tiny. I eat carbs. I never drink Protein shakes. I run a lot and only do Body Pump for strength training - and we all know what any weight lifting enthusiast will say about body pump or lots of cardio. I lost 120lb and have kept it off for over four years now. I have the body that I personally wasnt, meaning that it's lean, long and slender and only lightly muscled. I can maintain my 135 lb on about 1800 to 2000 calories a day. I'm happy so I couldnt give a flying you know what if someone thinks I've done it the "wrong" way. My metabolism appears to be just fine! I reckon stuff the experts, stuff current opinion and fashion, stuff what the studies say. I know what works for me!

Weirdly, I had no gas pain after banding, but in the last nine months I've had two operations where my intestines ahve been actually opened up and WOWSERS. It hurts! After my bowel resection, I looked nine months pregnant, my belly was huge and rock hard, it took about two weeks for that to normalise and the pain to stop, but the last one last week, where they reversed my ileostomy was terrible - that gas pain was huge and I really needed six hourly morphine to cope with it, probably because my bowel was also inactive for about three days before it woke up, so I wasnt passing that gas. They told me to do what you already know - walking walking walking. Hot baths/showers/compresses. Bending and stretching to force it out. And when it wants to come out, let it rip!

In my opinion, there's only two real dangers associated with getting drunk with a band First is if you get so drunk that you vomit - vomiting can be dangerous and damage your band. Its best to stop drinking before you get to this stage, but I dont know many people who get that drunk on purpose so you ahve to be a bit more wary than before. But you can definitely get the buzz going. Secondly, if you're anything like me, with a skinful, you may suddenly fancy a 2 am kebab or similar. With a band you need to eat slowly and carefuly, when you're drunk you tend to eat like a sabre toothed tiger. Not a good thing to do with a lapband.

Its not beyond the realms of possibility. However, if it worries you, get it checked out! Its never worth ignoring things like unexplained bleeding. However, if you've simply improved your heatlh so much by a few simple changes, then that's FANTASTIC. Knowing that will give you a huge boost at the start of your journey.

Yikes, having gotten the health fund statements detailing all my cancer treatment, your fills cost MORE than my radiation treatments for rectal cancer - in a specialised radiation centre, overseen by a radiation oncologist, administered by two qualified staff using one of only several machines available in the entire state of Victoria (Australia). Something stinks, lol. Either your doctor is a crook or someone's made a typo. I mean it works the same here pretty much, there's a scheduled fee for a doctors service (for my colorectal surgeon its $68). He charges more like $150. Surgeons and doctors always charge more than what the cost to you is here, our Medicare scheme refunds the scheduled fee and we pay the difference out of our pocket, our health funds are more for hospital costs and extras like dental. But I find it very very hard to see how someone can charge that for a fill compared to something like radiation treatments. I'd be leaving the country before the entire health care system collapses!

I didnt struggle at all, for a good10 weeks I had the most superb restriction the likes of which I have never managed to replicate. The weight absolutely fell off me. I was not only full from small quantities, I had a complete absence of any particular appetite or interest in food, it was the one brief window in my life where I would "forget" to eat. It was fantastic, I milked it for all it was worth and lost about half of the weight I technically needed to lose. I dont often say that because everyone else seems to struggle so badly in this period. There was absolutely no bandster hell for me. But I was banded in 2005 and I have a 4cc band - I know they've changed the design of the band to reduce erosion and slippage occurrences, but in my opinion, the 4cc band was FAR superior to current bands in terms of providing immediate restriction. I also have never had that frustrating Quest for the "sweet spot". Every single fill in my band took me to the spot that was right to me at that particular point of time. The only thing that changed is that the more fill I had in it, the longer that fill would "hold" before I began to feel the need for another, until eventually, I went like 2 years. I recently had to unfill it totally for 6 months due to other surgical requirements and refilling it has been the same experience. NO waiting for restriction. I love my old fashioned 4cc band. but before you cyber axe murder me, restriction to me is a pretty poor cousin to what a lot of people describe. Once my body "recovered" I have never had that lack of interest in food again, I have always been able to eat quite a lot, I can eat every food, I have really had to work my band quite hard - no way for instance could I survive on a Protein Shake for Breakfast. It would go right through, Id finish it and think "right, now where's the food". I am always interested in food, my appetite is exactly the same as it was pre banding, I have just learned that I dont have to pander to it all day every day.

Yeah but as a woman, you would most likely a) have smaller organs and have much more of your fat distrubuted under your skin rather than within your abdomen, no matter whether you are pear or apple shaped. Males have much more intra abdominal fat as a general rule. So with a slightly bigger stomach and liver and more fat packed tightely around and within those organs means you absolutely cant compare one person to another. To the OP, it will be SO worth still banding if you've "only" got 150lb to lose. This band will help you get ALL of the weight off and it will help you to KEEP it off. I think it does more for me maintenance wise than it did losing to be honest. Stick it out, you can get there. And if you didnt do a liquid diet, I'd be making sure you did one this time, get that liver smaller and out of the way.

That stuff that Spivak used was called Omnipac and I've over the years seen many of his patients discuss it. Now, the harsh bit. I think you need to pull on your big girl boots and get real about this. First and foremost if you can find another doc, then do so. But if you have to stick with this guy, I would personally look at it this way :No relationship with the doc? So what? You dont need to piss in his pocket, you have the resources to do this, you need a service from him - that being a fill, or as many as it takes. Who cares if you cant stand him? If he's what's available, then put your feelings aside and use him. Secondly $150 a visit? Does this deter you because its expensive (and thus tiresome) or because you genuinely cannot afford it? If you truly cant afford it, then my heart goes out to you but I really wouldnt know what you can do about that. Its really rough that your doc retired, and it really does suck, but this is what's available and you can either pay for it or you cant. If you cant, end of story, if you can but just find it annoying, well, thats a choice you're making isnt it? If it were me, I'd perhaps be going back, saying I cant afford to visit every week for these tiny fills and trying to maybe compromise on a slightly larger one, whilst still being cautious that to be unfilled will cost you money too. You havent failed, honestly, we all need these bands filled for them to work, aftercare is vitally important. Support and compassion from our medical practitioners is invaluable, but at the end of the day, you're a pro at this, you know what to do and all you need from this guy is a medical service, not a soul mate. You also dont need to beat yourself up for not being happy with what you'd achieved,50lb is wonderful, its not small achievement, but I'm a chronic high achiever too and I personally would have been pissed off majorly to only get halfway to my goal, but I dont thnk it helps to look at what you secretely feel is a half arsed result and say perhaps I should have just settled - you're worth more than that and you got that far, you CAN go the whole way. But you need to suck up the rough situation and make it work for you. Getting back on track is always hard and its always about blunt truths like this. They're not that great to face, but if you want the outcome, you'll put yourself through the pain. If you can possibly find a more compassionate and cheaper doctor, then obviously that's what you'd do, but if not, then I'd just be hard nosed about it, take what I need from the situation and seek moral support elsewhere.

Body composition is a very interesting thing, but muscle gain takes time, like if you've gained 2lb in a week, eaten perfectly and worked out like crazy, you arent really correct in saying you've gained muscle. Virtually no woman can gain like that. But over time, you can definitely change your composition, look better, get fitter and be more muscular/less fat - you'll lose inches perhaps and it wont necessarily show on the scales.

I have never been motivated by extrinsic rewards no matter how much it may be something,i want. For me the behaviour itself needs to be its own reward, so if we're talking losing weight, saving money,exercising, or keeping on top of the house, its got to be about becoming the type of person I want to be. Satisfaction and respect for myself are the most important things to me. We're all different and respond to different stimuli but to me, shoes, holidays, clothes are not a reward. They're pleasures that I can and do have when i can afford to have them, and I dont withhold them because I'm "bad" (ie. fat). There's been plenty of times in my life when I've tried this approach and it never works for me. My biggest achievements have always been when I've had the real inner desire to achieve something and when you have that, I dont think you need reward. Of course, that's not to say you shouldnt treat yourself when you get there, there's absolutely nothing wrong with shoes or a new wardrobe or a holiday that, lets face it, you will particularly enjoy if you believe you've "earned" it. But they dont take the place of intrinsic motivation, that real inner drive. I believe you need to make that distinction to yourself, view it as an act of treationg yourself rather than really believing that that reward will truly motivate you, because by believing that, I think you're really indicating you have very little faith in yourself to achieve it. Does that make sense, I know what I'm trying to say, but I'm not sure I'm getting it across, lol.

As a teacher, so an on my feet job, a mum of three, so coming home from work and on my feet for another couple of hours running round doing stuff, spending my weekends at kids sport, a dedicated runner (five times a week, 4 to 6 miles), attending body pump a couple of times a week AND finding time for a nice long weekend 6 mile walk with hubby finished with a nice coffee somewhere, and being five foot ten tall, I lost absolutely easily on 1500 to 1800 calories a day. I never needed to go anywhere near 1000 to 1200. We are absolutely all different and you need to find what suits you and your activity levels. The range is going to be somewhere between 1000 and 1500 most probably for the average build, averagely active woman.

Injuries are very frustrating and as someone who was out running ten days after a very large bowel surgery, I'm in no position to tell anyone to rest, lol. That was really rather a dangerous and silly thing for me to do, it turned out absolutely fine, but I should have been more patient. If you've hurt your back, you need to rest it BUT mobilisation is always your friend. It is never good to simply stop moving. I'd suggest the pool or a recumbent bike - but not vigorously, just gentle mobilisation to move your muscles and prevent stiffness. The thing is, gentle movement will help you heal more quickly, vigorous movement might increase inflammation again each time you do it and turn your injury into a chronic problem. Do a bit of stretching too if you can figure which stretches get to the muscles. You get very tight after an injury and that makes you even more susceptible to further injury or chronic pain.

I dont fast for religious reasons and I've never gone without any Water for 24 hours but I have fasted for 2 days at a time several times in the last year for surgical reasons as well as doing bowel preps at the same time. I dont find fasting that hard when there's a reason to do it. Its not like you'll never eat again. But you can feel a bit lousy if you get dehydrated, which bowel preps do tend to do to you. My biggest tip is not for the actual fast, I mean, what's to do, just not eat, right? There's no rocket science to that. But with a band be VERY gentle with your band for several days after the fast. I find I'm much tighter afterwards and cannot manage a big post fast meal. I'd gone almost two days with no food, done a very aggressive bowel prep for a colonoscopy and all I could manage was 1/4 of a sandwich and half the cup of tea they gave me in recovery. Slide back into eating as if you're on a diet, three very small meals a day kind of thing. I find over about a week, my band normalises again. Due to its tightness, i dont find this difficult, I'm really not interested in food that much for several days after a big clean out.

Hi Wheetsin, so sorry to hear your troubles and issues. I think I agree with you, you just hear so many problems with revised bands, its like once you've had a problem you're going to continue to have more, whether they fix your band or put in a new one. My view of the band was ALWAYS that it was unlikely to be forever and Prof O Brien himself said to me that 20 years was an ambitious goal, certainly very possible but that forever just couldnt be guaranteed given current knowledge (this was six years ago, but still applies). I am thankful each day for my healthy functioning band. Having had my own cancer battle over the past 12 months, I've really had to assess what my band, my health and my new body mean to me and to be honest, my weight and maintaining my achievements was right up there, right alongside surviving the rectal cancer. It means that much to me. For me personally "ectomy" doesnt frighten me anymore. I'm sitting here five days post op from having an ileostomy reversed, with my new plumbing adapting every day to once more having to function. I dont have a rectum, I have my colon (a third of which is gone) directly joined to the outside. But malabsorption does frighten me, reason being, I went through hell and back deciding whether to reverse this ileostomy. To my surgeon, it was a nobrainer, I was young, fit, active and attractive (his words, not mine, lol), so to him, it was automatic that I wouldnt want to have a bag to slow me down. To me though, I was thinking, I'm young, fit, active and attractive and I have a bag, I dont want to be living on a restricted diet, needing the toilet up to fifteen times a day, perhaps incontinent, passing foul smelling gas without control and suffering chronic sore but from the constant diarrhoea. Ok, so none of that has happened to me in a severe or unmanageable way so far but boy it was and is a scary prospect. What's a bag compared to that? But you probably remember WasaBubbleButts poking fun at the RnYers and Bypassers on the Obesity Help forum, oh boy, what hilarity over charcoal underpants and Just a Drop toilet deodorisers. What derision towards people who considered THAT a trade off for weight loss. Doesnt seem all that funny for me now, but you know, it definitely IS a possibly result of such surgeries. In the face of that "ectomy" doesnt scare me at all. I might have to also have my uterus and ovaries removed pending some genetic testing, meh, not using them anyway anymore. I really wouldnt hesitate to lose part of my stomach, truly. And if THAT didnt work for weight loss, truth is, nothing is really going to long term. Its a fact. All of these surgeries should work maybe to a lesser degree than you might like, but like you know, nine times out of ten, complications aside, when they dont work its the patient, not the surgery. Having had a taste of living life with a dysfunctional, uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing bowel situation quite similar to what can happen after malabsorptive surgeries, I'd go the sleeve in a heartbeat if I was going to revise to another surgery. Just my 2c. Everyone feels differently and is more or less tolerant about certain things than others but that's the way I'd look at it.

I wasnt banded when pregnant but all mine were different. I never had a serious weight problem but was always heavy, sitting at about 175 to 180 at five feet ten, so id always considered myself fat. First baby at 28 i gained the then recommended 12 kg, so 30 lb maybe, evenly through tha las half of the pregnancy. Got induced due to high blood pressure at 38 weeks, lost all that weight and maybe 8 lb more within six weeks. Second pregnancy at 30, my weight was sitting at the 185lb end by then,breastfeeding and being at home are not my friends. Had morning sickness, ate constantly as a result but had a false confidence as i had lost it easily the first time. Piled on 40 lb, lost, seriously, only the 9lb my baby weighed, plus about 10 more over the next eight weeks. That was the start of my serious weight problem. Gained up tp about 220 just breastfeeding, being at home, not exercising and goung on and off diets over the next five years. Fell pregnant at 35 and was seriously concerned now, my ob said to me that a baby needs nutrients, not fat and that simply by improving my diet i could halve calories yet provide better for my baby, he suggested weight watchers. Followd the points program entire pregnancy, about 28 points a day. No preclampsia this time as i gained NO weight at all, heald steady. Left hospital five days after delivery 30 lb lightervthan when i'd conceived, had to buy new clothes. Thats my best ever weight loss attemt prior to banding. Stacked it all back on plus 20 over the next two years, by now had a bmi of 36, fat,bloated, unattractive, tired and miserable. This is when i got banded. Hope that epic helps, truly, for me it was more the way i let myself go in that year or two after pregnancy than pregnancy itself that made me fat.