MacMadame

Be sure to read the labels. Most gummy Vitamins do *not* have enough of various ingredients. Chewables and liquids tend to have less "stuff" than pills you swallow because there are a few minerals and vitamins that just can't be made to taste okay. But in the early days, most of us can't choke down a big Vitamin. Centrum, in general, has decent vitamins. I'm on Centrum Chewables, myself, but want to move to the pills when I can. If you are a woman, you need more calcium. :laugh: Okay, I can't guarantee that, but I think there is a 90% chance, you need more. When you get your labs done, be sure the don't just check serum calcium, but also Vit. D and PTH. If PTH is high and Vit. D is low, then you need more calcium.

Hey, in the month between booking my surgery and having it, I went insane on a regular basis! It's all good... :laugh:

Well if you don't get in, lots of surgeons will take a self-pay who is a "lightweight". My surgeon would band you and his price is around the same (14k - give or take) but I believe it includes a year of aftercare. Some US surgeons use the international standard of 30 BMI instead of the US standards. In my case, I was self-pay but my insurance has covered all my pre-op testing. We put it down as being for "morbid obesity". They covered my after-care prescriptions too. I've heard of that happening a lot. It just depends on your insurance. Anyway, the study would be cool and probably closer to home, but if you don't make it for some reason, consider shopping around.

I don't know about most, but my doc says 70-90 g and in their experience, people who push protein and limit carbs lose more weight and lose less muscle mass than people who don't. Once we get to goal, we get more carbs.

Every list I've seen lists it as a full. That doesn't mean your doctor allows it. Mine doesn't put us on "full" liquid but on "thin" liquid and custard and yogurt aren't included.

Is it "cheating" to get chemotherapy if you have cancer? Obesity is a disease and we *know* that diet and exercise doesn't work against it. This has been documented over and over since as early as WWII. The only effective and durable solution we have for obesity at this time is WLS. Now it would be great if modern science could come up with other solutions. But so far they haven't. Diet pills only work while you take them and even then the average EWL is only 20%. WW did a study where they found the average EWL was only 10% and that was only looking at people 1 year out. Not 5 or 10 or 20 years out. One study showed that 2 years out 5% of the people who got to goal had kept off more than 50% of their EWL. So now people say "diets work for 5% of the people". But that's not really accurate. First of all, it was only 5% who got to goal... in most diets less than half get to goal. Secondly, it was only for 2 years and some of them were already gaining back. They just hadn't gained back more than 50% yet. Heck, I kept of more than 50% of my EWL once for 2 years. It took me 8 years to gain it all back, with change. So I'm a Dieting Success!! Except not. That's why I eventually realized that I couldn't keep going on like this and I had to do something that worked. WLS allows you to be satisfied (not hungry) on much less food. Before WLS I was *never* 'satisfied'. I was either "not hungry but stuffed' or 'hungry'. Now I am satisfied all the time and only hungry when I go too long without eating. That's the difference between WLS and dieting and why one works and one doesn't.

But do you believe a big FLUORIDE DOPE??!!! (Kidding. I agree completely. Maybe this is just something that got lost in translation.)

It was in SF, not Sac. Sutter owns EVERYTHING in the Bay Area now, I swear! :thumbup: I go to PAMF and Sutter owns them now. The way it works at PAMF is that your PCP refers you to the Bariatric center. Then they are supposed to give you a group appointment. That's as far as I got. My neighbor used them for his RnY though and he did lose 50 lb. before he had surgery. He was doing classes and meeting with the nutritionist. I had trouble getting my group appointment because my insurance has an exclusion and the Bariatric center wouldn't return my calls. So I went outside the group. I had my surgery with LapSF and used CPMC in SF. They are also a Sutter company, but LapSF is independent. LapSF also does surgery other places, but not in the Sac area. They do "clinic" and suport groups out there but you'd have to come to SF for your actual surgery.

Yes, it's definitely HUGE.

That's great losing weight before your first fill! Not everyone can do that because they are still hungry.

You might want to start a new thread about this to get the most answers. Some docs will put saline in the needle, then suck out everything that is there and then put it back along with some new. It's a good way to make sure they are hitting the port (and not putting it all into your skin) or that there isn't a leak.

I do the bike because I find it easier to get into a zone. I started out with 30 minutes on an easy level. My goal was to bike 5 miles in that time. At first it was hard, but now I am up to almost 6 miles. I just try to do more each time I go than I did before. I only go 2x a week because that's what works for me. I think the program you are talking about is called Couch to 5K and it's a great program if you like to run. You can do it on the treadmill and if you can't do it every day, just take longer to go through the levels. I also wear a pedometer and if I find by afternoon that my step count isn't as high as I'd like, I go for a walk around the buildings at work. I also will make more trips around my house instead of planting myself on the couch all night.

Hey, you're up in my neck of the woods - Northern CA! My BMI was around 37 when I got my surgery. I self-paid. I think you are right that this study is your best chance of getting others to pay for your surgery. Sorry, no experience with that particular Doc. I'm in the East Bay and work on the Peninsula.

Exercise will tighten up everything so it's not so flappy, but if you are prone to excess skin (due to age or genetics or starting BMI) then it's going to happen. I'm not convinced that losing slower makes a big difference either. Your skin will continue to tighten up once you get to goal so that gives the fast losers time to catch up.

Good luck, 4meonly!

You could have a stricture or some other problem. It's not normal and you need to call your doc right away. You may have to get some tests done to figure out what is wrong. P.S. I'm going to move this thread to the RnY forum here on LBT.

The band can't stretch. It's made of silicon. Did you mean something else? (I know all these terms and band slang gets confusing sometimes.) It sounds like you have a leak somewhere if you are losing Fluid. There are a number of things that can be done for that including using a thicker fluid to fill with.

Yeah, same with my blue. I didn't have a band so I'm not a good person to ask. Obviously I picked the sleeve instead. The main thing is you have to be willing to have a permanent change to your anatomy. It took me a while to get to that point. Before that I was "band all the way!"

I'm not yet 3 weeks out and I'm still swollen enough that taking my vitamins is giving me grief. All my meds are smaller and are fine.

The weight you gained in the hospital was probably Fluid. You were hooked up to IVs for days, right? It should fall off as long as you continue to make good food choices. The hair loss is from the anesthesia of the original surgery. There are all sorts of tips for how to prevent it or minimize it but I'm of the school of thought that there is little you can do about it. Mine's already falling out even though I did all those things that people tell you to do and I'm only 2.5 weeks out.

Oh, I can comprehend it. Some people will do anything to lose weight especially if they don't have to change their eating very much.

Removing ghrelin doesn't slow your metabolism. People with sleeves lose weight at the same rate and about the same amount as people with bypasses. Lap banders lose slower (on average). It's also not true that you are still hungry after you eat with a band. The Lap Band is designed to mimic the pouch of the bypass without actually removing anything. The nerves that respond to the stretching of the stomach respond when you fill the pouch or, as it's technically called, the pre-stomach. Then the food slowly trickles into the main stomach in order to be digested. But the full signal should have been sent by then. The big problem I see with the band and hunger is that you need proper restriction to get that "full" signal. Sometimes it takes a while to get it. Some people never get it. Some people get it and then lose it. So they are hungry. This is something I couldn't take. To go through all that -- pre-op testing, surgery, having to chew my food into mush -- and still be hungry? I would have gone mad! Another issue is that there is not as much ghrelin reduction with a band as with a sleeve. With a sleeve, you get almost no ghrelin at first and eventually you get normal ghrelin. With a band, there is no impact on ghrelin. This also sucks because ghrelin stimulates the appetite. Here's a study comparing ghrelin levels with sleeves vs. bands: http://www.bernhard-ludvik.at/download/pub/2005_ref61.pdf

There is also something called BLIS which is a form of insurance that you can buy that will pay for complications. However, it's not something a lot of surgeons belong to unfortunately. But it's worth checking out if you are a self-pay.

It's different when you get hunger control though. OTOH, the surgery is only on your stomach, not your head. So you may have to do some head work too. It depends on what your food issues mostly are.

If you are exercising, you might be replacing fat with muscle too. Have you taken your measurements to see if you are losing inches even if you aren't losing pounds.