2muchfun

Do you have a post op care doctor or clinic? Fills and aftercare will be very important for you to succeed? tmf

eggs can be one of the hardest foods for bandsters to eat. But, it's mostly due to our old eating habits of eating too much, too quickly and not chewing enough. Learning to eat slowly with small bites and chewing to a mush could be one of the most difficult pieces of this puzzle for you to conquer. tmf

Someone, please stick a fork in this thread?

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400968/Coffee-and-Cancer-Risk.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16841331 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/coffee-oral-cancer-throat-death_n_2317525.html I'm not advocating you go against your doctors guidelines but you might ask what study he got his information from?

Stomach cancer? That's a new one on me? I drink coffee every day. Only one or two cups.

Sylvie, Don't feel alone. I was in Bandster Hell and could eat anything and everything I wanted for 4 months before I finally got my 3rd till that gave me some restriction/satiety. This is how it is with the band. Of course, it would have been good to know this before surgery so I wouldn't have been so pissed for so long. My doc and none of the seminars or nutrition classes said anything about this phase of our journey(or I wasn't listenting). Try to eat healthy food. That's the only way I was able to avoid gaining weight.

What you are feeling is common and normal. It won't change till you get enough fills to give you some satiety. You're in what they call, "Bandster Hell" and will be till you get that one fill that gives satiety. tmf

FYI-Many of us can eat anything we want within days of surgery. Your band is not filled so the stoma is wide open. BUT, most all of us are told to not eat solid food. We're told and instructed to consume liquids for a week and mushies for up to 4 weeks. Solid food early after surgery can compromise the surgery by causing the sutures around your stomach to tear away. tmf

Did your doctor not give you instructions not to eat solid food for a time? What were your post op diet instructions?

I can understand. I guess I'm kindof lucky. It's just me and my wife and I'm the chef. So, I cook and eat what is good for my band and my wife has adapted. We both work from home so meal planning is simple and there's not a lot of drama from kids running in and out. I can't imagine having little ones. I remember those days well. If they didn't eat all their chicken nuggets, I'd finish off what was left. I don't think they would have adapted well to this new way of eating. Hambugers, pizza, macncheese, spaghetti, linguini w/alfredo was our weekly meal plan. Now, pizza two or three times a year, hamburgers now without buns and low fat only. Keep plugging away and one day you'll look in that mirror and see the new you with baggy clothes and the gleeful feeling will return. tmf

If I had lost that much weight in less than 2 months I'd be overwhelmingly happy? Not putting you down, just saying how I'd feel. Is this not important to you? It was for me and after 8 weeks I had only lost 12 lbs and it stayed that way for 8 more weeks.

CGirl is right. Losing weight vs losing fat are two different issues. You can lose fat and replace the fat with muscle. It won't show on the scales but it will show in how your clothing fits. And, the vast majority of weight we lose immediately after surgery will be fluids our body stored. It can't really be a plateau unless you go at least 4 weeks with no "fat loss". Watch this video, it explains it very well:

Drink more than two glasses of wine and you won't give a *&^$#@

Breakfast Egg Beater omelet filled with turkey sausage, veggies and low fat cheese. Scrambled eggs with green chilis and onions. Sprinkle with cheese(low fat and only 1oz) lunch Salads with olive oil dressing, chicken or seafood chunks. Or/Turkey deli meat with cheese sticks dinner Any type of meat, vegetables like broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower, bell peppers, salads. No carrots or potatoes. If you eliminate rice, you can make a mean stuffed pepper with low fat hamburger, mushrooms, veggies.

We usually call this a stuck episode. And it feels like a golf ball is stuck under your sternum. You want to avoid this as it can eventually stretch your pouch and/or your esophagus. You're still very swollen from surgery and maybe you should stick to liquids or Clear Liquids till the swelling goes down. Your surgeon just stripped away excess fat around your stomach with a cauterizing scalpel, then wrapped a plastic strap around the neck and then brought up part of your stomach to overlap the band and sutured it into place. I know we're told this is not major surgery but your stomach might disagree. We've seen many new bandster's post that they can't drink anything post surgery due to the swelling. And, more and more, it seems that surgeons are filling the band with a few CC's of saline where in the past most did not add any saline at all. If this continues, call your doc. tmf

Seems like most Mexican food are sliders for me. Corn chips, tortillas, enchiladas pass through the pouch with virtually no satiety.

I buy the small packages of beef jerkey from Costco. They come in 1.25 oz packages. Maybe about 20 packages per bag? I eat them as a snack if I get hungry. They seem to satisfy much longer since there's so much protein and they stimulate the vagus nerve.

We don't look for full feelings, we look for satiety. The band won't stop you from overeating all foods but it can make you feel satisfied with less food. You're still in the healing phase and probably won't find or recognize some of the signals till you heal and can eat solids. If you're feeling a ball like feeling near your sternum you should call your doctor or at least slow down how much you're eating. Give the liquids time to pass through your swollen stoma. tmf

Jayme, I have to respectfully disagree that your issue is extreme. If after tomorrow, when you eat solids and find they don't pass the stoma, and if you are following the small bite, big chew rule, then you should call and ask for advice. FYI-many of us would love to have been in your shoes after only 2 fills. Many of us took 6 or more fills to finally find this kind of restriction. The hardest part now is changing your eating habits if you are like many of us. Learning to take small bites, eat slowly, chew my food to mush was the hardest thing for me to adjust to. If you don't learn this lesson, you will suffer many painful stuck episodes. If you conquer this issue, you stand a chance to lose many lbs in the future. Good luck.

No, I lost 12 lbs the first 2 weeks and felt like I was starving. I could drink and eat much more than the 1 cup the Dr recommended. It's quite normal and the patients who are satisfied on just few sips are few and far between.

My wife worked in a SNF(skilled nursing facility). She saw many morbidly obese patients come in who could not absorb tube fed nutrients and drugs since they no longer had a stomach. I agree with Missy too. I didn't want them removing my stomach. And, once you go sleeve or bypass, there's no turning back. With the band, I have a much higher chance of returning to my old self if I want or have to. It's a very personal decision and each of us must choose our own path.

As long as you can down fluids you should be fine till Monday. A fill will minimize the stoma and the immediate swelling makes it worse. Make sure you're downing cold fluids as cold is a good therapy for swelling. The swelling should improve by Sunday or Monday as long as you don't eat a lot of solid foods that can irritate the band area. If you're still struggling with fluids or soupy meals on Monday you might want to have them take out a small amount of saline.

As long as your surgery is completely healed, I don't see how pooping or lifting could be dangerous to your band. The stomach is a muscle itself and the colon is the organ that delivers waste to the rectum. I've experienced gas but not much more than normal.

Most all of us fall off the wagon with a binge or two so just get back on. Now vomiting is another story? If it's true hurling as we do when we get the stomach flu, that's bad. You can cause the band to tear away from the sutures holding it to the stomach causing a slip. Be careful and you behave yourself k?

It can happen. Not paying attention to the rules can cause your band to slip. Taking Nsaids can cause the lining of the stomach to ulcer and create a hole where the band is. Violent vomiting episodes can cause slips. And, in a very minor amount of cases, the band can slip for no reason. But, most slips don't cause a catastrophic penetration of the band into the wall of the stomach. You'll probably never know why this patient got the hole since most patients don't fess up to misbehaving while banded.