MacMadame

Welcome to LapBandTalk! UHC tends to be decent about approvals. Though, of course, they are an insurance company so they suck by definition.

Happy Holidays! Sounds like you got yourself a great Christmas present. :hurray:

PJTP: Um, I have nothing to say.

I was only on liquids for 1 day before the surgery. My doctor likes us to lose some weight pre-op but doesn't say how we have to do it or how much we have to lose. So I just did a regular sort-of-South Beach-type diet pre-op. But the day before you have to be on Clear Liquids to clear out your system. (I had to do a bowel cleanse, too. Yuck.) Then I was on thin liquids for 2 weeks -- this includes Protein drinks and soup and milk. So it's much better than clear liquids. It was hard when my family had dinner. I had to leave the room and shut myself up my bedroom. LOL But it was only two weeks. From weeks 2 to 7 I added in "soft" food. So yogurt, pudding, cottage cheese, cheese sticks, eggs, chicken salad, etc. It's not hard if you aren't hungry. It's SO HARD pre-op because when you go on a diet, your ghrelin levels rise. But post-op, it's not like that, at least for sleeve, bypass and DS. People who are pre-op are always saying "you have such great willpower" when they see what we post-ops eat, but it doesn't take willpower at all. At least not for the quantity. The willpower comes in when it's time to pick what to eat -- like not eating junk when everyone else is. But even that is easier too. If you eat less carbs, you crave them less.

Welcome to LapBandTalk. Come to the CA section and I'm sure you'll find someone who has used St. Joe's. We have a big SoCal contingent in the forum. I'm from NorCal myself, so I can't help you.

It's not that unbelievable. When I was younger, my skin always retracted when I lost weight. Maybe not 100%, but enough not to need PS. However, I'm a lot older now and, at this point, good genes and a lower starting BMI aren't enough. I really don't understand why all these doctors are saying to wait two years though. I think that's excessive. IME, by 6 months, my skin had retracted as much as it was going to. We have a PS come to our seminar/support groups periodically and he said you just have to be "metabolically stable" -- which for a bypass or sleeve would be 3-6 months of stable weight and for a lap-bander would be any time. (But they still recommend 3-6 months at a stable weight for bandsters.) A PS I saw for a consult said the same thing. My surgeon doesn't have a set talk he gives during the seminars. He hands out info about the four surgeries they do and then takes questions. So sometimes PS comes up and sometimes it doesn't. One time it came up, he said about 1/3 of their practice ends up getting PS. He added that doesn't mean 1/3 need it. Some people chose not to have it even with a lot of excess skin and some chose to have it even with just a little. I knew I would need it because I needed it pre-op. I really need a breast reduction -- I have a lot of problems with back pain and shoulder pain and now I can't buy bras because the stores assume if you are a 36 in the band, you can't big bigger than a C cup or maybe a D. I did find some 36 DDDs at Macy's, but really I should be in a 36 G. The only reason I haven't gotten one before is that I was afraid that if I did and then lost weight, I'd be too small. I'm not sure I "need" the tt. As a 50+ year old woman, I have no desire to have the body of a 25 year old, but I do have a big poof of skin above the waist that hangs down and a pannus below the waist and these are not getting much smaller even as I lose more weight. I already have trouble with my pants being saggy in the butt in order to fit over the rolls in the stomach area. So I suspect I'll get something done about that as well. Besides, I already have scars in the same places as are placed for a bi-directional TT so, if I do it, I'll actually end up with better scars than I started with. :thumbup:

In CA, they almost always pay for a breast reduction and they will pay for the removal of the panus but not for a full tummy tuck (i.e., no muscle repair). But that's about it. Some PS will work with you and have insurance pay for the panus removal and only charge you the difference to do the rest -- since a tummy tuck includes removing that flap of skin. This works out well for me since I need a breast reduction and you can't do that without also lifting so I'll get that too. :thumbup:

I always read that as Brandy Robinson Crusoe Hey, she got in before the new year. That's awesome.

Well, drinking 64 oz. of Fluid a day is a pretty common recommendation for everyone, even people who don't have WLS. So it's something you should be doing now. :thumbup: It can be hard the first couple of weeks post-op, but eventually it gets as easy as before surgery. I can do 80 oz now if I work it, but the first week, it was more like 32 oz. But some lucky people can do 64 from the get-go. For the food progression, even if you get a lap-band, the good surgeons want you on liquids for about 2 weeks minimum so your stomach can develop scar tissue around the band. For the other surgeries, you are doing it to let the staple line heal as it's at it's most delicate then. But most surgeons have all patients on the same regime no matter the surgery type or only have small variations based on surgery type. I don't necessarily agree with this approach, but I can see their POV. Anyway, after 2 weeks, you progress from liquids to mushy food and then to regular. How fast you progress, and how many stages there are, really depends on a combination of what you can tolerate and your surgeon's program. Some are very conservative and some aren't. Some patients have a harder time of it than others. Etc. I was on liquids for 2 weeks and then was supposed to be on soft food for two weeks. But I was still pretty swollen so at my 3 week follow-up visit, my surgeon told me to wait until week 7 to progress to regular food. But some of his patients progress to regular food at 4 weeks. It just depends. Yeah, it's pretty common not to feel full on liquids. It's really worse for the lap banders, I think. Ask around here about "Bandster Hell" when you have no restriction so you are as hungry as before, but you are supposed to be on liquids. With the sleeve, it's a bit different. Some people report being hungry in the first 2 weeks, especially on liquids, but it generally comes and goes. Then by about 2 weeks out, you just don't feel hungry any more, except head hunger. At some point, that comes back for most, though I know a few who just never feel hungry after that even years later. For me, I lost my ghrelin hunger pretty much immediately after surgery. But I still have occasional hunger off and on due to other things, some real, some in my head. The band works differently. In the beginning, it isn't doing much at all. Some people get restriction right away, but most don't. So you start out really hungry and gradually get less hungry as you get more and more restriction until you get to your sweet spot. Then, you are satisfied until the sweet spot wears off and you need another fill. But eventually you'll need less and less fills and the sweet spot will last longer and longer. So it's almost the opposite... start out starving and then get as hungry as you are going to get vs. start out not very hungry and gradually get more hungry later.

I work out all the time. But each workout only burns 200 calories. (And that's according to the machines at the gym, which I don't totally trust.) So do that 4-5 times a week and you have burned off 800-1000 calories. It takes a deficit of 3500 to lose a pound so you can see that even exercising at intensity (5+ METS) won't make you lose even a pound a week, maybe a half a pound at most. The reason to exercise is to give yourself a cushion in your eating and to be healthier. It really isn't going to burn off a lot of calories all by itself unless you exercise like crazy -- and even then you may replace the fat with muscle and so not see anything on the scale -- though that's the healthiest way to lose weight and you'll see it in your clothing sizes. Another reason to exercise is because it's associated with long-term success. In a study I saw, in the first six months, there was no difference in weight loss on average between the exercisers and non-exercisers. But over time, the gap grew with the exercisers losing more weight and keeping it off better than the non-exercisers.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I'm from CA so I don't know about Dr. Bour, but there are forums for every state on LBT so check out the SC one and I'm sure you'll find someone near you.

Welcome to LapBandTalk!

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Have you posted in the Lapband Struggler's section? It's under Lapband Complications. You should be able to get lots of helpful hints there.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Getting approved is half the battle, sometimes, so congrats on that. As for cooking for the fam, use it as an opportunity to teach them healthy eating habits. When I decided to get WLS, I took over grocery shopping from my dh and now there is about 1/3 the junk in the house that there used to be. No one seems to mind either.

You need to talk to your doctor's office because they all have different guidelines on this. I was supposed to walk from day one and went back to the gym at 2 weeks but some people are told to wait longer.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! This is a great place for help and guidance. Be sure to check out the newly Post-op section, in particular.

Usually everyone wants their money up front. So most people take out medical loans or refinance their homes or things like that.

Well, boys are tiny. Dh and dd have been fighting over the tv all. Dh wants to play Rock Band 2 and dd wants to play her new Wii games.

Actually, we're in the Lounge now. You can still complain about stupid things though. Isn't that what people do in a real lounge? :tongue2:

Ohmigod, I'm baking and some of the results have been hysterical!

Welcome to LapBandTalk!

Well, it's also raining here... that makes it dark early in the day and I don't think it's safe to run in the dark, especially since I haven't got any reflective tape on my clothes.

I'm also a whimpy Californian who complains when it goes below 70 F. :thumbup: But it's also raining off and on all week and that makes it dark and I'd rather not run when cars can't see me and wet stuff is falling from the sky. I have a 24 days free coupon for a local gym -- I think I'll use it over the holidays.

The other thing I feel compelled to point out is that it's a FREEZING outside! But not in the gym. :thumbup:

But part of that is the weird way they measure weight loss. They don't do it as a percentage of excess weight to lose, but as a percentage of your starting weight. So that means people who start really high and are very small so can go down very low, have an advantage over those who don't start as high or who are taller and can't go as low and be healthy. Anyway, I started Week Four of Couch-to-5K this week. But I do it at the gym and I'm at home for the rest of the week. Should I make myself go out in the cold and jog? I don't think I can!