Jean McMillan

Work harder on your band eating skills, use moist cooking methods, have tiny amounts of some kind of sauce with dense proteins, and avoid anything breaded. I found early on that anything breaded was lethal. Like it got gunked up in my stoma. Blech.

You can see before & after pix on my profile.

What is the secret to being a weight loss surgery success? The answer may surprise you! HOW TO BE A WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY SUCCESS When aspiring writers ask me, “How can I become a writer?” my answer is invariably, “Write.” So, want to know how to be a successful WLS patient? The answer is: “Be one.” What does that mean? It means that I write every day. Other than finding or making the time to do it, it’s not hard, because I love to write. So to be a writer, I practice the art of writing every day. What I write varies, just as what you eat varies, depending on how much time I have and what I’m in the mood for. Within 15-30 minutes of getting up each morning, I write something. I write e-mails to my accountability partners, telling them about my eating, exercise, and perhaps some funny, or infuriating, or interesting stories about my daily life. I write down the thoughts I have about newsletter articles. I write lists of things to do and things to think about. At some point during each day, I write sentences or paragraphs or chapters of articles, essays, stories and books. I write journal entries that help me muddle through puzzling situations and relationships. I also love being slim and healthy, so I practice the art of being slim and healthy every day. This too varies, but within 15-30 minutes of getting up each morning, I practice my healthy lifestyle. I update my food log and report my food plan and eating behavior to my accountability partners. I get dressed in workout gear and spend 45 minutes at an exercise class, 5 days a week. I write a weekly menu plan and I write my grocery list. Even when I’m doing something that isn’t directly related to weight and health, I’m practicing. I see a plate of home-baked cookies on the break room table at work and think about whether I want to eat one or if I’ll regret doing that. In a short 15 minute break, I practice good eating skills as carefully as I can despite feeling hurried. When I get in my car to go home and notice I’m thinking wistfully of Chicken McNuggets or Dulce de Leche ice cream, I take a deep breath and ask myself if I really need those things or just want them as a quick fix. I try to see myself driving home and preparing the healthy meal I’ve planned. I try to remember how good I felt when I did that the day before. I think about how happy my dogs will be if I get home on time (anybody who claims dogs can’t tell time has clearly never lived with a dog). The key words in the two paragraphs above are “love” and “practice”. If you’re thinking, “But I don’t love to diet!” maybe it’s time to adjust your thinking. Instead of thinking, “I hate dieting,” try this on for size: “I love being a WLS success.” And it’s definitely time to discard the notion of being “on a diet”. A diet is something you do for a finite period (a week, a month, 3 months). It’s temporary, and when it ends, your eating goes back to the way it was before the diet, and lo and behold, the weight you lost comes back, and sometimes it brings all its friends. I know that for an absolute fact because it’s happened to me so many times since I was 14 or 15 years old. Being a weight loss success means practicing healthy eating every day of your life, for the rest of your life. Some days may be healthier than others, and that’s OK. You’re just practicing, right? It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be regular and ongoing. I don’t think about weight loss and health and all that good stuff every waking minute, and not all my thoughts are virtuous. I spend quite a lot of time thinking things like, “Why doesn’t that pickup truck just pass me rather than riding on my tail?” or “If he spits toothpaste on the mirror one more time, he's gonna die a painful death.” But thoughts about weight and health do go through my mind a few times a day. I’ve heard WLS patients say they never want to have to think about that stuff ever again. I don’t think I could succeed that way, and those thoughts are not a burden for me. The real burdensome thoughts I bear are ones like, “I should have hugged Mom more often before she died.” Oh, I know that “shoulda, coulda” thoughts are a waste of time and energy. That’s probably why they’re so hard to bear. But that’s a topic for another article. So, do you want success? I want to hear you say it, loud and proud: I WANT TO BE A WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS! I WILL BE A WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS! I AM A WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS! And give yourself three cheers for your effort, even if you feel you haven’t yet achieved success. Sports teams get cheered at every game, whether they win it or not. BE A CHEERLEADER Speaking of cheering… Sometimes your WLS journey seems endless, and you wish someone else would notice all the work you’re putting into it, and you wonder why no one else has noticed that hard work and praised you for the results. In Bandwagon I list some of the reasons other people don’t seem to notice your weight loss (#1 being that they’re preoccupied with their own issues), but you can set the stage for the cheerleaders you wish you had by becoming a cheerleader yourself. When you give out (deserved) compliments, smiles, and encouragement, all that good stuff will eventually come back to you. Other people are usually attracted to someone positive and optimistic. Of course, there are people who are attracted to the vulnerable loser I used to be, like several toxic ex-boyfriends I could name, but I’m no longer so desperate for attention that I’ll take abuse just so I won’t be alone. Here’s an example of how cheerleading works. I have a young coworker who I’ll call Suzie. She is short and plump, with a sweet face and severe acne on her face, throat, chest, neck, and upper back. I often feel sorry for her when I look at her poor, inflamed skin, but pity isn’t going to do much for her, and I’d rather save my pity for the truly deserving people, like me. (Just kidding!) It’s hard for me to watch my young male associates flirting with the other girls and ignoring Suzie. But I don’t go up to Suzie and tell her those guys are idiots. I go up to her, gesture at her sweater and say, “Suzie, that color looks fabulous on you!” A smile lights up her face, and we go back to whatever we were doing before that exchange. Two days later, Suzie finds me in front of a mirror, holding a sweater up to my middle-aged body, and she says, “Miss Jean, that would look great on you, but I think you need a smaller size.” Get the idea? Try it - you might like it! FAKING IT I probably quote this saying too often, but it bears repeating now because it relates to the theme of this article. 12-step programs have a saying that never gets old and applies to anyone who’s trying to change or to live a better life: FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT At one point in my life, that saying struck me as disingenuous. I was hung up on being the “authentic” me and looked down on the idea of role-playing my way into a better place. But I was miserable being that “authentic” me, and faking it is one of the things that helped me learn how to be a happier me. Pretending to be a weight loss success is one of the things that made me a weight loss success, just as practicing scales is one of the things that makes a pianist into a virtuoso. So, try it - you might like it!

No hard feelings here. And you're right about babies who arrive with or without advance planning, and with or without the use of contraception. My house is full of unplanned and beloved children. They happen to be canine kids, but we love them all. If we'd been able to have human children, our house might be full of grandchildren by now. Whatever species, they all need feeding and loving! And so do their parents.

At a support group meeting a few years ago, a pre-op woman and her husband argued openly about her desire to have WLS. She clearly needed major help with weight loss because of some serious medical problems, he was vehemently against it, and the argument kept escalating. The facilitator of the meeting was struggling to get him to calm down enough to talk about why he was so against it. Suddenly he burst out that he didn't want other men looking at her and wanting her. He was so upset (and embarrassed, probably) that he got up and stomped out of the room. It would be easy to say that he was being a jerk and inconsiderate of his wife's needs, but all I heard was the agony in his voice, and his terror over the possibility of life without his wife. I hope that couple was able to get some counseling or other help. I've been married for 25 years to a guy who I love but who still has a hard time talking about his feelings. Men are acculturated to be strong and silent, and I have to take extra care to reassure my sweetie on a regular basis. Because I can't bear the thought of life without him.

It's not mean, it's arithmetic. Let's say your basal metabolism needs 2000 cal/day just to keep you alive. To lose 1 lb/week, you need to eat 500 cal/day less, so that's 1500 cal/day. But if you're pregnant, you need to eat 300 cal/day more than your basal metabolism needs, so that means you need to eat 2300 cal/day. Bottom line: Pregnant Mom > 2300 cal/day > healthy baby Pregnant Mom > 1500 cal/day > unhealthy baby

I think all of us deal with self-sabotage to some extent. Even "normal" people do it, but it's expressed not in eating behavior but in other areas of their lives. With a big family, you have a LOT on your life's plate besides food. The approach that works best for me when I'm trying to make major changes in my behavior is to pick one small behavior and work on that until I feel I've got it under better control before I take on another one. So for example, you could decide to get all junk food out of your house (give it to friends, family, food bank, dumpster) and promise yourself not to bring home anything else like that for (say) 2 weeks. Trying to make big changes all at once is a setup for failure, in my opinion. I know very well what it's like to get trapped in hopelessness. I think you need to get some small successes (see above) under your belt so that the hopelessness loses some of its power over you. And as you said, you need lots of support. You can get that here on LBT, in an in-person WLS support group, in a group like Overeaters Anonymous, and/or in counseling with a therapist experienced with WLS and eating disorder patients.

Thanks! I'm so glad Bandwagon is helping you!

Here's the line from that abstract that resonates for me: Nevertheless, LAGB had a remarkably safe course, and it may therefore be considered for motivated and informed patients. Since you're both motivated and informed, I'd say the band is a good choice for you.

Sorry if that came across to you as mean, because that wasn't my intention, and I don't think the OP (original poster) took it that way. My point in recommending birth control is that having babies and losing weight are both worthwhile but incompatible.

You've gotten some very helpful responses to this thread. I just want to add one thing...congrats on the 2 post-band babies, but you need to find some birth control that works, at least until you get your weight and your eating problems under control. Just sayin....

I agree with CarolinaGirl that you shouldn't be adding foods to your diet just because other members are straying from their post-op eating instructions. I think you need to call your surgeon's office and talk to a nurse or other medical professional about ad-libbing your food and also about the shortness of breath. Narcotic pain meds can depress breathing, but no one here on LBT is qualified to diagnose and treat medical issues.

You're sure it's a decent percentage (25-35%)? What makes you sure of that? The study quoted in that article consisted of only 151 patients, studied in Belgium from 1994-1997. I'm not a big fan of statistics. I agree with a boss I once had who used to say, "Figures can lie, and liars can figure." I'm not calling you a liar, just pointing out that statistics can be manipulated to support just about any argument.

We'll have to agree to disagree, because I've seen so many self-pay patients struggle to pay for fills and/or treatment for complications. Your fills at $150 each are a good deal for self-pay, for sure!

I'm sorry, but the only food choices in your list of what you ate that sound like good ones for weight loss are the mango, strawberries, and water. You might want to try using an online food tracker (sparkpeople.com, myfitnesspal.com, livestrong.com, etc.) to get a more accurate idea of how many calories you're consuming and whether any of them are providing good nutrition. It helps me, anyway. I'm expert at rationalizing bad food choices. That's one of the ways I got fat in the first place.

Frequent regurgitation or vomiting is bad for you and bad for your band. No one should tolerate that for any reason or any length of time.

Symptons of band slippage include the inabiity to drink or eat, chest pain, heartburn, reflux, night cough.

I'm confused about whether you were diagnosed with a band slip or band erosion (the band "severing" your stomach). They're 2 different things and in almost 5 years, I've never heard of them happening at the same time in the same patient. As for legal assistance, you'll have to find a medical malpractice attorney and convince him/her that your complications are the fault of your surgeon or the maker of your band, as well as prove that those complications cost you big bucks and/or destroyed your ability to work and take care of yourself. A claim like that has to represent a big chunk of change before it'll appeal to an attorney. You could also contact the manufacturer of your band. Good luck.

Most surgeons require a lot of pre-op tests and evaluations to make sure you're healthy enough to survive the surgery. In my opinion, that is not at all a waste of time.

Your fills cost $1,000 EACH?! Holy moly! I'd try to convince your surgeon to do a fill without the fluoroscopy. Fluoroscopy does not actually guarantee a "perfect" fill and at $1,000, it's more of a money maker for your surgeon and the radiology facility than a helpful service for you. This is one reason that I tell pre-ops that the band is not a good idea for self-pay patients.

Well, even more sympathy for you on being abandoned by your surgeon. My original surgeon lost his medical license (drug abuse allegations) and it was hard finding another surgeon to take me on. I wish you the best!

You can order by clicking on one of the Bandwagon ads here on LBT (at the bottom of the page), or by going to http:jean-onthebandwagon.blogspot.com and choosing a purchase option (on the left hand side of the page). Thanks for your interest!

Why do you ask? Have you had a complete unfill? Why? Are you worried about some aspect of that? I had a complete unfill to treat a band slip. I had to wait 6 weeks before starting the gradual process of adding back fill. Eventually my fill got back up to it's pre-unfill level.