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Most docs will do them as frequently as every 4-6 weeks if needed. They should NOT be given sooner than 4 weeks. You don't need a fill every 4 weeks, though, only if you aren't losing and are doing all the things you are supposed to be doing, and are getting hungry in less than 4 hrs after a good bandster meal. As for the amount, that depends on your band, your doc, your restriction level, and your own anatomy. Your doc may give you a totally different fill than someone else, and the amount depends on a lot of different factors.

Shakes would take the guess work out, but the lap band doesn't work with liquid calories. A Protein Shake won't help your band work because it won't stay in the banded upper pouch of your stomach. So you might be getting the protein you want, but you'll still be hungry and may end up eating more calories. A better way would be to eat solid protein that stays in your pouch longer. Then you can keep the calories down, be satisfied, and get your protein. It doesn't have to be meat if that gives you trouble. There are lots of options. Fish is a good one, tofu and soy products, a lot of the vegetarian meat substitues are very good, and eggs (egg whites) are good lean protein. I would encourage you to try measuring what you eat for a few days. You may be surprised by the actual size of your portions. This of course affects how many calories you are eating and how much nutrition you are getting from them. Part of the banding journey is learning how to eat like "normal" people...but we have to learn, and the best way to learn is to train your eyes to recognize an appropriate portion. Don't forget, "normal" people aren't banded and they aren't as restricted in how much they can eat as we are now. You shouldn't have to measure forever, but it is important to do it so you learn what the right sizes are, and to periodically go back and "remind" ourselves when things aren't going the way it seems they should. I would also suggest increasing your exercise a lot more. 30 minutes a day is a good starting point, but as you continue on, your body gets used to that activity and it no longer stimulates your metabolism like it used to. Whenever the weight loss stops, it's time to shake something up so your body doesn't get stuck in its rut. Increase your speed, or try a different, more challenging exercise. Do some sprints, where you go as fast as you can for a minute and then walk your normal pace for a few minutes. Are you doing strength training? This will help a lot. Muscle is more active than fat and helps you burn more calories. The thing about exercise is that our bodies adapt to it very quickly, so we have to keep changing things and challenging ourselves to keep the scale moving the right direction, and keep getting healthier! Good luck, I hope things get moving for you again!

Okay, 30 lbs since November is a great accomplishment. It is frustrating when it stops for a long time...but that will happen all along the way. We would very much like for our bodies to follow a straight line DOWN when we are losing weight...steady 1-2lbs per week. But it doesn't really happen that way. We lose a chunk of weight, then the body settles for a while and tries to hang on to what it still has. After a time (plateaus can last even longer than 8 weeks, I'm afraid) your body will have no choice but to give up a bit more weight. It goes in bumps and starts like that the whole time, at least in my experience. One thing I notice is that I gain about 3 lbs of Water (sometimes more) the week of my period, and that goes away when it's all over. That can affect what you see on your scale over time. The best way to get through a plateau, in my experience, is to change something. If you aren't exercising, start. If you are, change it up--do a different cardio exercise or increase the intensity of your workout, or make some sort of change. Your body can get used to doing the same thing over and over. You can increase your Protein, decrease your carbs for a while (but not too much), or change your calories to try to shake things up. Making some kind of change often startles the body into losing again. I see you are in Portland--are you seeing Dr Emma Patterson? (She's the only female band surgeon I know of in Portland.) If so I'd call her back and explain what is going on to her. She's pretty understanding and I think she would at least see if you might not have gotten that fill, and maybe give you a boost if you need it. The process can be frustrating! But you are doing awesome. Try not to lose sight of how far you have come and just trust that if you keep doing the right things you will see success. Maybe if you aren't writing down everything you eat, you could do that for a few days and see if there is something that you aren't aware of that is keeping you at this weight. Just a thought. HTH!

We waited until I got home. Seriously, I felt fine the day I was discharged. I stayed overnight at the hospital and by the time I got home the next day was able to go for a walk and participate in "other" activities. Post op day 4 was the only day I really felt bad. Otherwise, if you are comfortable and don't get too "crazy", there are really no restrictions.

Angie, sounds like you've found what you are looking for. Anyone else who is looking for more sports bra options, Title 9 has a huge selection of tried and tested sports bras, with ratings for how much shape and how much motion they can handle. Title Nine - Women's athletic apparel, sports bras, shoes and accessories They rate their bras from 1-5 barbells. They have one 5 barbell bra, for up to DDD. It doesn't help those of you who are more endowed than that (I used to be before breast reduction years ago) but apparently it is the cast Iron sports bra for the DDD set, which as we know is hard to find. The prices aren't terrible--I think most are in the $40 range, up to $60. I haven't used them since my breast reduction (LOVE LOVE LOVE) but I like their other products a lot. And they go up to about 44DDD but they would probably be best for those midway through weight loss, down in size but pre-plastics and wanting to control some of the "flopping". LOL. Anyway, thought that might help someone out there. I like Title 9's activewear products in general.

I've been trying, I can run about 1 1/2 minutes on my treadmill, or when I walk at the indoor ice rink, I can usually run 3/4 of the way around..How did you build up your stamina? My problem is I can't get enough oxygen and i'm huffing & puffing. I have short legs and 4.3 mph on the treadmill is running for me. Well, first I walked for a long time. I kept trying to go faster and faster (over about a year) on the treadmill, at an incline, until finally I sort of felt like running, like I would get the urge to start running when I was walking at a brisk pace. So eventually I got up the courage to start running, when I was alone in the gym. LOL. I could only run for about 3 minutes at a time at first. I did that in intervals--run 3 minutes, then walk for 5, then run again, etc. I did a total of 45 minutes but only about 10 minutes was running at first. I worked that up to about 15 minutes of running before I read this article: How To Start a Running Program about how to do this. It told me that I was basically training too hard, because my heart rate would get up to about 172! (that's not as crazy for me as it sounds, but it is too hard) So I slowed down, got a heart rate monitor, and figured out my training zone, which is a HR range of 145-165. Now I stop when I get higher than 166 or so, and over the past month that time has improved greatly so I can actually run 20 minutes straight on a good day. (Today I could only do 11 minutes straight, though. ) The HRM has been a huge help. BTW, because my resting heart rate is relatively high, I used a method for figuring out my training heart rate zone that takes resting heart rate into account. Here's a good article that describes it: How to Calculate Your Target Heart Rate - wikiHow Hope this helps! I used to HATE to run until I figured out that I needed to slow down. Yep, I am a slow runner, but I can actually do it and I don't want to die--I actually look forward to it! Amazing. Good luck! :embaressed_smile:

WTG, everyone! Jeni and Juli--wow, welcome to Onderland! Woo hoo! :Dancing_shocked: ThickChick, how did your mammo go today? :thumbup: Mine was interesting, what I thought was a big cyst is really a GIANT calcified thing, most likely fat necrosis that calcified from either my breast reduction several years ago or from more recent trauma (not that I can think of any). It is HIGHLY unlikely that it is cancer, but I will be referred to a breast surgeon for any further recommendations. It's about the size of a golf ball so if it's not cancer I'm not sure I want it removed. It will leave a huge hole. Anyway, that is the latest update there. I hope it went well for you in Texas! On a better note, I hit the 170s yesterday, at 178.8. Nice! And I was able to run for 20 minutes without stopping on the treadmill. When I started running a month ago, I could only do 5 minutes at a time. I'm way excited about that. Glad to hear people's scales are moving and things are going well!

Your Protein requirements depend on your (ideal) body size. Mine was calculated by my nutritionist at 45-52 g/day. Be sure to use whatever number your nut or surgeon tells you to use. BTW, Liquid Protein (like protein shakes) shouldn't be depended upon for daily protein intake, only for the initial (liquid) stages post op and when on liquids for fills or other times your doc recommends. The band only works with solid food, and we should be able to get in all of our protein requirements with solid Proteins, which helps us stay full and not take in too many calories.

Welcome! This is a great place for support and to share experiences and ideas. A lot of us had the similar experiences of working so hard to lose weight and either being unable to lose it or gaining it back quickly. Working out is still a big part of it: I work out 5 days a week, 1.5-2 hrs per session. But the band helps you stop eating so you aren't so hungry all the time. It's so hard to make good healthy choices and go work out when you are hungry all the time. I'm assuming you haven't had surgery yet? Banding definitely isn't easy. There is a lot to learn and you'll find there are things you won't be able to eat anymore, and you have to learn new ways to cope with stress if you have emotional eating issues, like 99% of us here! And you have to choose good foods, avoid bad ones, and exercise. But the band helps keep the portions small and keep you from getting hungry soon after a meal. Like you said, there's nothing to be ashamed of in getting this surgery. It's done to help us save our lives and our health! You want to be around to raise your baby. :tt2: A lot of folks worry over other people saying it's the "easy way out" but those people who think that just don't know any better. Welcome to the board and hope to hear more from you! If you haven't been banded yet, when you get a surgery date there is an area where you can connect with other people who were banded the same month. I find that really helpful to follow up with the same group of folks who are at the same stage of banding life as me. It's in the support area, pretty easy to find. Best of luck to you!

I have a similar problem. I think part of it might be that when your breasts get a little less dense with weight loss, the cysts are easier to detect. I would think the hormonal shifts with weight loss would be a factor too. Just a thought.

Wow, really? Cool!!

LOL! Isn't it amazing what a little perspective does? Maybe if she knew you'd lost 70 lbs in the past year already her perspective would have shifted from judging to encouraging. Who knows? I thought about that when I got a new PCP this month after moving away from my old one. I got on the scale and just hoped that I wouldn't get any grief about still having a BMI in the obese catagory...I'm doing the best I can!! I know what you mean, totally. Fortunately, the NP saw in my history that I had had surgery and was supportive of my success so far.

From what I hear, it depends on a lot of things, like how much weight you are losing, your age (sad but true), and your genetics--basically, how elastic your skin still is and how stretched it was to start with. I don't think the speed of the weight loss makes a huge difference, but some. I know that's not very official. A PS would be the ideal person to ask this question of. (Any PS out there? LOL)

I've never heard any medical professional suggest caffeine dilates the esophagus. That doesn't make any sense to me, but I Googled it and it turns out coffee itself increases lower esophageal sphincter pressure (makes your esophagus tighter at the opening to the stomach) but caffeine itself DECREASES the pressure. They recommend not drinking coffee for people with reflux for this reason, but it seems the coffee and the caffeine in the coffee might cancel each other out, which is why so few doctors make this recommendation to bandsters. I don't know the whole story (but Google says so, so it must be true! LOL :tt2:) I learn something new every day. That said, my doc didn't tell me to stop drinking coffee. I did eliminate the Starbucks, though, except for very occasionally. I don't need the calories.

This is funny. I had the same dilemma. My doc didn't come out and tell me how to "work it" but they did round my height "down" to 5'3" (I am 5'3.75" and usually it gets rounded up). I asked what would happen if I lost any weight before surgery, since I was right on the line of 40 when I had my last appt before surgery. He said they base the approval on the letter he wrote with all my insurance paperwork, and it wouldn't matter. He also said, "Just don't lose much weight before then," which I thought was funny since that was why I was there!! But I was afraid that if my BMI was too low when they weighed me on the day of surgery, my insurance would change their mind! I have no idea if that would have happened or not, but I was pretty paranoid. The BMI game is so dumb, anyway. Why am I so much healthier at 39.9 that I no longer require WLS, when at 40 I am MO and need surgery? Doesn't make sense. Anyway, in the months between my first appointment and my surgery (about 2 1/2 months) I just ate without regard for losing weight. I did gain weight, and my insurance paid for my surgery. It's so silly to me because it doesn't change our need for the surgery. How the weight fluctuates in the month before surgery isn't a reflection on what has gone on for the past several years. But still, they make us play the game.

This is a gastric bypass thing. They can't change the size of their pouch like we can by adjusting the band. We can stretch our pouches too with overeating, but that often can be reversed with an unfill and rest, then we are back to our old pouch.

ThickChick, I will be thinking of you. My doc found a really large lump recently and I am having a mammogram this week too. I'm not super worried about it because I'm pretty sure it is a (huge) cyst. But it does nag at the back of my mind. But the thing I wanted to tell you is, I think after losing weight it was a lot easier to find this lump than before. You know, the "girls" are still there, but they aren't quite as firm and full as they were before...and it's a lot easier to feel lumps now than before. That might be true for you too. So...I guess what I am saying is, IF (and this WON'T be the case) but IF this lump is something to worry about, just think if you hadn't lost so much weight (have you lost 71 lbs?!?!? WOW!!) they might not have felt it at all. It's another way this band is helping us be healthy, this time by finding out about stuff before it gets a chance to really take over your life. I hope that helps a little bit. It is very scary. But the chances are good that you have less fat in your breasts now, and these may be normal "lumps". And if not, you are in a much better position to get healthy if, god forbid, you were sick, than you were a year ago. Keep your chin up, and we will all be praying for the best for you!!!

I think it is very individual. I have not had one single day, since being banded, that I could not eat whatever I wanted if I chose to. I get full, but if I want I can push it to eat more than I should. And I can eat bread, Pasta, anything that people get "stuck", goes down fine for me. My "restriction" is fine because when I eat the proper amount of food, it keeps me full for 3-4 hours. So it's really my choice, each and every time I eat. Some--a lot--of people use the band for restriction: they get adjusted as tight as possible without actually being closed off, so they are forced to stop eating quickly. But I am afraid if I did that, I would endanger my stomach in the long run, and end up having to have my band removed, which would be a tragedy. So I get by with as little fill as possible, as long as I'm still losing weight. It hasn't been the "easy way" for me (or for most people I talk to) but it IS easier than without the band. There's no shame in that. I needed help, that's why I had surgery. The band helps, and it's up to me to make it work. That's how I see it.

Honestly, I find that people don't notice what I eat as much as I thought they would. Especially if you don't call attention to it, it hasn't been a problem for me.

:thumbup: Yer killin me!

Actually, the action of chewing gum decreases hunger. Works the same way that chew chew chewing your food helps you get full faster...the more you chew, the less hungry you get. The artificial sweetener thing...that's a theory, and if you are finding that chewing sugar free gum makes you more hungry, I guess you can just stop doing it! As for getting stuck in your stoma, my doc said gum is fine as long as you don't swallow it. LOL. It could happen inadvertently, but I haven't swallowed a piece of gum since I was a kid, so I chance it. :thumbup: I'm not that tight anyway, so I doubt it would really get stuck in me, but if you are pretty tight it sure could. Chewing gum helps me avoid snacking. So does getting some exercise, drinking tea or Water, or getting engrossed in a book or magazine. When I'm not as busy as I have been lately, I find crafts that use my hands, too, like knitting or beadwork or sewing. But I haven't had much time for it since I started school. Oh yeah, and brushing my teeth usually works too.

Wow, Tammyj! You look amazing, and only 11 lbs to goal!!! Congrats and happy bandiversary! :biggrin:

You look fabulous! Congrats on the size 12, doesn't that feel great?

I think the specific transfer to alcoholism is more common in surgeries like RnY and DS because they can get drunk VERY quickly with their rearranged anatomy...I'm SURE it happens with bandsters too, but there isn't quite as much physiologic incentive. I don't really know how I feel about the idea of food addiction itself, but I know that a lot of people are compulsive overeaters and they do have to deal with the root cause of that or they are at high risk of either continuing and not losing weight (totally possible with the band) or transferring addiction to something else. I am pretty compulsive about working out now, but I don't think it's really unhealthy, it doesn't interfere with the rest of my life. just the size of my butt, heh heh. I do love to shop, and that can be a problem since it is soooo gratifying to buy cute clothes in smaller sizes when you lose weight. I have to be very careful with that one and I try to only shop when I need something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's great that you have a year of counselling preapproved! I don't think a lot of insurance companies have that much foresight. I'd definitely take advantage of that! The popular saying is that they put the band on your stomach, not your head...emotional eating and compulsive eating are NOT prevented by the band. But, the desire is diminished somewhat, and when you have weight loss happening, it reinforces your good behavior and helps you stay on track somewhat. Good luck. These are very good questions to be dealing with before you have surgery.

One of my instructors recently repeated some old wise wisdom to our class: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results! That's why (in a nutshell) a lot of us end up going this route. The old way wasn't working. It works for some people and that's great, but the statistics do show that 95% of people who lose a significant amount of weight regain it all. In the end I just didn't have the energy to do it anymore, and I didn't want the toll it would take on my body to keep that up any longer. But, all that said, there are some common reasons that spouses seem unsupportive or even angry over our WLS. The most common one, I think, is that they are scared that something will happen to us in surgery. Others include: afraid you will leave them after you lose weight they have their own weight (or other) problems that they might have to face they enjoyed eating together the way you always have, and don't want that to change they didn't know what to say to be supportive they don't want you to think they didn't love you when you were fat they don't know what will change about your future life together they don't want the surgery to fail and see you disappointed I'm sure there are lots of others, but those are the ones I've seen the most. My husband went through most of them too. Once I got through surgery without any problems, he was great. And he's been extremely supportive, especially since he's seen how my life and my health have improved so much since I've lost weight. There is a lot of insecurity and fear. The only thing to do is talk to him and try to make him see why you are doing this (for yourself and for those you love) and just wait it out. He'll come around when he sees you are healthier and you are still there. It's hard, though. Good luck, keep coming here for support in the meanwhile, and try to help him through this. He's going through the surgery as much as you are, it will affect him almost as much, so just remember that. And if it's something that would benefit him too, later, maybe he'll make that choice when he sees it work for you!