bigpapa2

Hey guy, i wouldnt worry about it if i was you. just make sure you report any changes or worries to your Dr. I have gained and lost restriction before. I was feeling great a few months ago and thought I had just about found my sweet spot when i went in for another little fill. I thought for sure that fill would either put me over the top or put me at the right tightness. It didnt, infact i lost restriction, I felt looser than i had the month before my fill. There was a point during that month that I thought my band was not even working until I tried eating some sushi and found out the hard why that my band was still working. i have since than recieved another fill and I am now what I think is a great restriction. Good luck with you weight loss.

Whooooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooo! i love my band also! whooooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooo!

Congrats to you! I am doing my world famous happy dance for you right now....I love my happy dance because it burns quit a few cals.....lol.....i hope to be there with you in 5 months

I love walking with less pain, standing up without making weird noises, playing with my kids and having more money in my pocket from not eatting fast food.

I had never had coffee in my 42 years of life until about 2 weeks ago. It might sound wierd but I had BM problems every since I was banded. Since i started drinking coffee i havent had a problem with it. So i make sure i get in atleast 2 cups a day with my splenda. It does the job!

No regrats here, wish I would of had it done sooner.

Well im here in Michigan and I'm very, very, very cold. its about 4 degress here and in the - teens with the wind factored in, but I must say that even before it became this cold I was very cold. The more and more weight I lose the more blackets i have to keep in my living room for me. I have also never worn house shoes before but now I go no where without them. I even take them on long trips to visit family and friends so they are ready for my tooties. So try and stay warm all you banders. And I will try that whole fingers under the belly trick.

I am so upset! and dont know if i was a good friend to my fellow bandsters this weekend. I went to my son's basketball tournment this weekend and was being a good bandster with my water w/crystal lite and many different good snacks that i could eat during the day. As the day went on there where a few people with donuts and other items that i was unable to have. A very nice lady offered me some great looking buckeye balls which are peanutbutter balls dipped in chocolate. My friend blocked me and said sorry he cant have them he had the same surgery that you had in March. Right than the lady said she had only lost a few lbs and wasnt sure why. I felt real bad because I didnt sit down and talk to her on why she was probually not losing the weight. I felt ashamed to tell her how much I had lost because I didnt want to upset her. Should I had said something to her? Was I a coward for not trying to help her. By the way as the day went on, I met 3 more people with the band or bipass surgery that had been having problems with their weight lose progress. Man there are bandsters all over the place in my area. I did invite one of the people to my support group. All of the other banders where band fewer than a year and were still very much over weight. They where all eating very badly! I am very worried about myself now. Was I right to just shut my mouth and just worry about myself or should I have tried to help?

I also eat before I go out to someone's home. I am lucky that my mom wil hook me up with the same thing everyone else might be eating but bake or G. foreman it for me. I also have no problem with taking my own salad and peanuts with me where ever i go, I always traval with my cooler, extra crystal lite and spelnda packets. Also someone said something about getting the band thinking we could eat the samething as everyone else but less. I am still trying to lose as much weight as i can before I get to my goal weight. There has been very few times that I have been able to eat the same dinner as my family. I try not to eat very few carbs, salt or reg. sugar items. I can eat some of the food they eat but just prepared differently.

Man its getting hot in hear! i think there are people who arent making a informed enough decision when it comes to the band but I also think that you can be told things about this process before hand and just not understand it fully until you have the band. What might but hard or hell to one person might not be for another. There is a lot of information I have got from this site that seem to be different when i went to my local support group. i also hope that if a person has a chance they should attend as many support group meeting as possible before getting the surgery. I love this site but there is nothing like talking to people face to face in a support group before I got my band. i went to 4 month of support group meetings before I got my band and still go every month now after 6 months banded. I love getting new info my people that have been banded longer than I and talking to people I might be able to help. I never had to do a liquid diet before my surgury and i have read about people on here that had to do one for weeks before getting banded. I'm not sure if i could of handled that...cant even put my mind around doing that. So thats it for me. I think it is so cool that people can ask any kind of question here or just rank if they need to. We all need to lose our minds every now and than.

Im not sure if you guys have tried this or not but I find that my chicken must be very moist, sometimes i cook it in my crock pot with chicken stock. i add some veggies and it is just like chicken soup. When it comes to all meats for me, the key must be moistness. I cut my chicken into very small pieces. Now no matter how I cook it, I cant do turkey because it is more of a stringie meat.

Numbing agent! I didnt know i could get one. My first fill took my Dr. about 30 minutes to find my port. My port was so deep the had to give me a ultra sound to find it and use a 4 inch needle to fill it. I still havent been able to get a fill with a small needle yet. Does eveyone else have to lift the legs up in the air until the dr. gets the needle in the port?

I feel your pain. I have had it both ways, when I went to my families xmas party everyone told me how great i looked and made me feel almost weird from all the attenion i was getting. but at my wifes family xmas party only one person steped up and asked me about how i did it and told me i was looking good. Now maybe because i live near my wifes family and they see me more maybe the weight change isnt that big of a thing because they see me a lot but I my family only see's me once a month, so the change is bigger for them because the see 15 to 20 lbs down at a time. I try not get too upset about it because even I dont see a big change in me sometimes.

Both myself and friends seem to notice my face first. After that my wedding ring didnt fit any more. Than I was walking around walmart one day and my 3X sweat pants fell down to my anckles, right than i though hey i think my butt is getting a little smaller...lol... I'm over 100 lbs off now and to be honest I still see a very fat guy in the mirror. I wish i felt better about my progress but it is taking my mind longer to see the weight lose than it is taking my body to lose the weight. I hope my mind jumps in the game soon.

Just wondering when are you slimmimg. I slim when i eat too much or even when i drink something too cold at night or lay down right after i drink. I slimed if i tried to drink soda, so I dont try it any more. i can usually stop eatting before i start to slim. Do you slim every time you eat or drink?

I am almost 6 months out and still only BM once a week.

The walking thing worked for me. When I am stressed or depressed it helps for to just grab a bottle of walker and get out of the house. When I get outside and my mind changes from what i am upset about to how the heck am I going to get back home things seem to get better. I have had days when i just didnt want to walk and knew I wouldnt do very well that day if i went walking because of my motivation or mood and found that once i got out there on the trial all my mood seemed to change. i also find that if I go to the chatroom and just chat for a minute my mood gets better also.

The band can be a great tool but i find that the hardest thing is not testing the tool too much. I have my days where i want and do test my tool but they are far and in between. This is harder than any diet i have been on. I say harder because its really up to me to make this work and i know that now. It's like i have no excuses any more because of the band. I know that ice cream and other bad things can still hurt my progress so i stay away from them. I could never do that before and I am not sure why I have the ability to do it now, I guess i had to hit the bottom like a addict to finually figure out that my life depends on this to work this time. The band helps me so much but I truely believe that it isnt the band but me that is doing it. The band is my saftey net and I try hard every day to not use that net. I am a addict, I used to eat because i was depressed and i ate because i was upset. i also ate because i just loved to eat. I still get depressed and upset and i have found ways to try to deal with that without food but I can never stop wanting to eat or over eat, thats where the band steps in, it stops me from eatting too much when I'm weak. In the last 6 months i have walked, biked and worked out harder than i have ever worked before. Why i couldnt do that before i have no idea but hey it seems to be working now so i will just keep roling with the progress. I guess i'm try to say the band wont make you lose the weight, its what you do with the band, how you work that band. I love my band! I am working hard not to let my band down. You will do great, just try not to test your yourself or band too much.

I'm almost six months banded and I don't drink 30 minutes before or after I eat. I was just telling my wife yesterday that not drinking during my meals is one of the things i miss the most. i hate going out to eat and the waittress asking me many times if I want something to drink or not. They look at me like I am weird for not ordering a drink.

I had soda about 5 times in a week. And than i started slimming and getting really sick. I even had blood come out in my slimm. I tried it again about two weeks later and again I started to slimm again so I dont do it any more. I know its not good for my body or band because my body tells me so...LOL!

I didnt know it but i gave my wife and kids the best xmas present ever last July 23rd. The band! This year we didnt have a lot of money to buy a large amount of toys for our 5 kids. I was a little upsetting until my kids told us it was the best xmas they had ever had. Because of my band and my weight lose I was able to do more things and play with my kids. As a family we made ginerbread houses, decorated the house and tree and played a lot of board games. I had the energy to play computer games like the Wii and playstation as a family. We played chess, checkers, baked cookies and many other family activities including a family movie every night. I never would of thought that is was not the toys and gifts my kids wanted for xmas but more time with me and my wife and the band made that possible for me. We just cant wait until the spring and summer to come so we can do so many other things together outside, For the first time in years i will be able to get right in there and play with my family instead of being the dad watching everyone play and taking pictures of the fun without being in any of the pictures. I thought I was getting my band for me and found out it was for my entire family. COOL! Oh and i also found out I can burn up to 50 extra cals. playing cards with my kids for 30 straight minutes. So if I times that by 5 kids i can really start losing more weight...LOL! Well I got to go now my daughter is about to dress me up and put make up on me, dont think that will burn many cals....LOL!:Yawn:

I have yet to workout at a gym as of yet, I enjoy walking out side and working at in my home since there is snow out side right now. on the 23rd of Jan. i will be at my 6 month post op point. i just started working on my abs about 3 weeks ago. I have found this great DVD called The Core preformance. You do the DVD with a stability ball. It is a great workout. You do it at your own pace. I also do other things like lift my legs up in the air striaght while im on my back and have someone push them down tword the floor trying to give rest. and than lifting my legs back up. I also do this side to side while my legs are being pushed. I have a 8 lbs ball that i also use to do crushes and trunk twist with. Now I also just sit and try to tighten my abs while i am watching TV for 15 minutes. The ball is a great way to workout your abs without getting on the floor... Hope that helps you some. OH! and try a boxing DVD. The twisting while punching is great also.

After my fills I lose around 5 lbs a week for the first two weeks, by the 3rd. week i stall or lose less than 2 lbs. My 4th. week is my worse and I need another fill by that time.

Happier? hmmmmm. I'm only 110 lbs down right now with at least another 80lbs or so to go. I can get up out of my chair without great pain or noise, I can play with my kids, I am off all my meds but 1, I workout 5 times a week, I can get out and visit friends, and go to my kids school sporting events without being embrassed for me and my kids. I also talk to a therapist every week to talk about my reasons for turning to food when I was depressed or upset. So my body is happier, my mind is getting happier and my kids are even happier than I am about my weight loss because they have their dad back to play with. My joy is coming from my comfort, my joy comes from not having to ride in a scooter at walmart when shopping with my family, my joy comes from not just sitting at home feeling sorry for myself and being able to help some of my new friends with their weight loss. I have been stuck in the house for 2 years, gaining weight for over 10 yrs. and not moving around at all, now i can go outside for over a hour just walking around and feeling the wind against my face. Maybe lossing weight doesnt make you happier but it gives me new abilitity to live and have fun like I havent in many years, which by the way makes me very happy!

I am also taking lexapro and i havent had a problem losing any weight as of yet.