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Hey, Banders!The weather’s warm, zucchini and watermelons are abundant and the Summer Games are providing inspirational moments for all of us. We hope life is good for you and you’ve been achieving your own goals this summer. To help you stay focused, here’s another newsletter from LapBandTalk.com. This is what we’ve got for you:

Burning question: What are the Best Sources of Protein?
Member Spotlight: Meet kll724!
Bander Challenge: Record Your Diet!
Life with the Lap-Band: What’s Your Emergency Plan?
We hope you enjoy reading the newsletter and you get inspiration and a few great ideas from it. Of course, when you’re done reading, come on over to the LapBandTalk.com board and talk about the newsletter or anything else that’s on your mind. Also remember to drop me a line any time if you have comments or suggestions for the boards. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Alex Brecher
Founder
LapBandTalk.com
Burning Question: What are the Best Sources of Protein?
Last week we talked about why you need protein when you’re losing weight after surgery. But where should you get your protein from? There are a bunch of good sources. When you’re on a liquid diet after weight loss surgery, Protein shakes and Protein powder can help you meet your needs. Fat-free milk is another good source, and it also has Calcium and Vitamin D for strong bones.
In the pureed foods stage, you can add in things like canned flake chicken, extra-lean ground beef and light tuna. Tuna has an extra benefit because of its heart-healthy omega-three fatty acids. Fat-free yogurt is another great option. You always want to look for lean meats and fat-free or low-fat dairy products instead of full-fat ones. That’ll help you limit your calories and reduce saturated fat, which is unhealthy for your heart because it raises your cholesterol levels.
By the time you get to the soft (semi-solid) foods and solid foods stages, you have a lot more options. Fish, crab, white-meat, skinless chicken and turkey, and egg whites are almost pure protein – plus some essential nutrients. Be very careful to avoid any bones or gristle in your fish or meat. Some vegetarian options are tofu, Beans and low-fat cheese. Melted cheddar cheese makes a delicious topping for almost anything. Always eat slowly, savor the flavors and chew your food well before swallowing.
Choosing Proteins that are lowest in calories and saturated fat will help you lose weight and stay healthy.
Did you miss the previous Burning Question? You can always see the earlier Burning Questions in our Newsletter Archives. You don’t have to miss any important information!
Member Spotlight – Meet kll724!
This week we have the honor of featuring kll724 – or Karen – from Lakeland, Florida. This 64-year-old woman had gained weight over the years, ending up at a size 24 from her young adult size 7. She decided to get banded when she saw the success that her friend’s daughter had with the surgery in Mexico. Her surgeon in Florida had her follow a six-month pre-surgery diet, along with taking phentermine, so she could “learn to eat like a skinny person.”
Not everything was smooth sailing. She had to get a complete unfill and revision due to slippage. She got dehydrated because she waited until Monday to call her surgeon before finding out that she could have called on Sunday! Karen is now down 100 pounds from her high weight of 244 pounds. Her arthritic knee is no longer troublesome, and she walks every day “without breaking a sweat.” Her husband calls this beautiful lady his trophy wife! Success with the lap-band seems to run in the family – both of her children have also been banded.
Karen truly appreciates the warmth of LapBandTalk.com, where, as she says, “no one cares if you are 20 or 70.” Having maintained her goal weight for a while now, she offers wise advice for other banders. First, follow your surgeon’s advice. Second, be patient with yourself and don’t compare your weight loss to others. And finally, “remember that the band is a tool, and you do need to work at the weight loss.” We know that her advice works – if you need proof, just head on over to kll724’s profile and take a look at her photo gallery. She’s looking awesome! Thanks, Karen, for being such a supportive member of the community and for being in our spotlight!
Each newsletter features a different LapBandTalk.com member in the Member Spotlight section. Let us know in the member spotlight forum if there’s someone you want to learn more about or if you want to be our spotlighted member! We’re all eager to hear more about you, so let us know who you are! If you’re shy and don’t want to post publicly, just PM Alex with the message that you want to be in the spotlight. This is our favorite part of the newsletter! Thanks for making it happen!
Bander Challenge – Let out your inner Olympian!
The Bander Challenge is the section of the newsletter when we suggest a challenge for you to try. The goal is to motivate you to push yourself to the next level – and that’s definitely the focus of this newsletter’s challenge! The Olympics are in full swing, and the whole world is watching these phenomenal athletes chasing and achieving their dreams. You may not have the grace, power and strength of the world’s best athletes, but you do have goals, hopes and dreams – just like Olympic athletes – and the chance to make them happen. So this newsletter’s challenge? Go for the gold and act like an Olympian! Olympic athletes put 100 percent of their effort toward achieving their dreams, and you can put 100 percent of your effort toward losing (or maintaining) weight and living a healthy lifestyle. Your challenge is to figure out what specific actions you might take to ensure your success. These are some ideas.

Eat for success. Olympians choose nutritious foods over junk food because they’ll perform better. A meal with vegetables, fruit and lean meat will go a lot further than a hamburger and fries. The same is true for you – you’ll feel better, think more clearly and have more energy when you eat nutritious foods.
Plan your meals and exercise. Success is no accident. Olympians plan every aspect of their training programs from training and recovery to diet and sleep. You should plan your own diet and exercise so that you always know what to do.
Keep a log. An Olympic athlete keeps a training log to record each day’s workout and be able to look back and see what worked and what didn’t. Keeping your own diet and exercise log keeps you on track and lets you look back to see what patterns led to success and where you could have improved your choices.
Visualize success. Most successful athletes take time each day to visualize their victory. They think about running that last lap in record time and accepting their medal on the victory podium. You can think about the bikini that you’re planning to wear next summer and the proud look on your spouse’s face when you two go out to dinner in the future.
How will you let out your inner Olympian? Let us all know in the member Challenge Forum! Tell us what you did and whether you think it worked for you! The challenge is completely non-competitive, but we’d love for you to share your experiences. You’ll help inspire others to chase their own dreams. Miss a challenge? No problem! Just go back to the old newsletters to see what the challenges were. It’s never to late to try something new and tell us about it on the forums.
Life with the Lap-Band: What’s Your Emergency Plan?
It’s Sunday morning and you haven’t been able to eat or drink all night because of nausea and vomiting. Your surgeon’s office hours are from Monday through Friday. You wait miserably until first thing Monday morning, when you call your surgeon. The receptionist is horrified to hear about your ordeal and says, “Why didn’t you call yesterday? We have someone here 24/7 for emergencies!”
This scenario comes up all the time on the boards, and it’s truly heartbreaking because in most cases, the suffering you feel is entirely unnecessary. You should know what number to call when you have trouble. If your surgeon didn’t give you an after-hours number, ask for one. You should never have to wait a whole day just because your emergency happens on a weekend.
And with that advice, we’re done with this newsletter. You can always read it again and look through old newsletters in the Newsletter Forum. We’re always happy to hear from you and to see increased participation on the boards, so log in and get talking! Thanks for your support. Take care of yourself and each other,
Alex

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Have you ever said, “I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don’t know where to start.” Check out these easy do-able steps that can make all the difference.


“I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don’t know where to start.”
That’s what a new client said. Her head was so full of diet advice, nutrition tips, weight loss ads, and beliefs about what she “should” be doing, that she was overwhelmed and feeling stuck before she even started.
Should she cut back on carbs? Start working out? Keep a food diary? Rejoin Weight Watchers? She knows she’s a stress eater, so maybe she should start meditating and eating mindfully.
She also really needs to catch up on her sleep, but her desk is a mess and she wants to spend more time with her husband….
Overload is like that and so is emotional overeating. Both can feel like tangled messes with no obvious starting point. When you are stuck in a cycle you don’t know how to stop, taking action can start to feel like it’s going to start an avalanche. Add to that the panic many of us feel when we are exhausted and overloaded that paradoxically causes us to bite off too much, and see our options as “all” or “nothing,” and many stressed-out overeaters see themselves facing a challenge that feels insurmountable.
“If I’m going to go to the gym, I really need to go six days a week and stay for an hour,” said a client who hadn’t felt she could fit in a workout for weeks.
“I need to start keeping track of everything I eat, I need to drink more water, and I need to start eating more vegetables and stop eating after dinner.”
“I’m going to eat healthy, journal, meditate, and work out every day.”
“I’m so stressed. Nothing can change until I get a new job.”
All of these women started to feel overwhelmed before the words were even out of their mouths.
Guess what? The road to lasting change is hardly ever a major life overhaul. Creating peace with food and peace with your life almost always happens in small do-able steps. Contrary to what your stressed-out brain may be telling you, powerful change can be created from simple consistent shifts.
How do you start taking charge of overeating, stress, or that feeling of having too much on your plate?
You start by creating success and effectiveness and allowing that to snowball. The success and feelings of accomplishment are what help you create momentum—and that, in turn, creates more ease and motivation. Pick one small simple step that you can commit to for the next week. If it makes you tired or feels intimidating to say it out loud, cut the size of the step in half.
Now do it. Check it off every day, and celebrate yourself profusely. After four to seven days, choose another step.
Your goal here is to choose a step that increases your progress and momentum one inch—not a mile. When you are getting started from a place of stress and overwhelm, your goal is to get into action, but NOT to add more stress and overwhelm to your life.
The first step should feel almost (but not quite) effortless.
Eating breakfast in the morning
Checking in with yourself midafternoon and and asking yourself what you need
Making a list of five things you can do when you feel stressed (that are not food)

Start small. Create effectiveness, and the momentum and your progress will build. Really.

I asked the same question until about a month ago after my last fill:( I pretty much felt like there was something that got stuck in the pit of my chest and it made it hard for me to talk at times. I could not eat or drink anything and when I tried some water, shortly there after it reminded me of the movie Hooch and Turner, when the dog slimed all over the floor.lol But then I felt fine after the slime went away.
I also found out this past weekend that when it gets really hot outside, my band might be swelling up more than usual as well. I couldn't eat even a couple bites of stuff that normally wouldn't bother me. After it cooled down this week, I was back to normal. Just remember, everone reacts in different ways, I had to listen to my body and how it reacted to certain foods and weather obviously:)