elcee

It depends on how heavy you are and how much you have to lose. If you are 60lb overweight then no it would not be normal. If you are 160 or 260lb overweight then it is probably not unheard of. A lot of that weight could be Water as well. You may find that your weight loss slows down or even stops for a couple of weeks whilst your body catches up. If it does don't panic.
No it is not OK to zoom through the steps the way you have unless you have been given the go ahead by your Dr.. I have just explained in another thread the reason why following your Dr's instructions postop are so important.
I don't understand why people go through this process, trust the Dr with their lives and then as soon as they are out of surgery decide that it is OK to ignore what he/she has told them.Doing what we wanted prior to surgery is what made us obese in the first place. If we carry on thinking we know better and doing what we want then we are likely to stay obese.
So hard is it may be i think you need to ensure that you are doing what you have been told you should do. Nobody said it would be easy, it's not, but we have all been there and got through it so I am sure you can too. It is such a short length of time in the big scheme of things and as soon as you start getting fills it will get easier.

My husband decided to cook chocolate chip muffins not long after my surgery, maybe I should have got a new husband!

I actually find a soft poached egg on a slice of toasted wholemeal bread is a really satisfying Breakfast. Mixing Protein and carbs for me is more satisfying than just eating protein. Carbs are not the devil that many people make them out to be and they do have their place in a healthy balanced diet.

It depends on how heavy you are and how much you have to lose. If you are 60lb overweight then no it would not be normal. If you are 160 or 260lb overweight then it is probably not unheard of. A lot of that weight could be Water as well. You may find that your weight loss slows down or even stops for a couple of weeks whilst your body catches up. If it does don't panic.
No it is not OK to zoom through the steps the way you have unless you have been given the go ahead by your Dr.. I have just explained in another thread the reason why following your Dr's instructions postop are so important.
I don't understand why people go through this process, trust the Dr with their lives and then as soon as they are out of surgery decide that it is OK to ignore what he/she has told them.Doing what we wanted prior to surgery is what made us obese in the first place. If we carry on thinking we know better and doing what we want then we are likely to stay obese.
So hard is it may be i think you need to ensure that you are doing what you have been told you should do. Nobody said it would be easy, it's not, but we have all been there and got through it so I am sure you can too. It is such a short length of time in the big scheme of things and as soon as you start getting fills it will get easier.

Sorry you were treated so poorly. By all means,file a complaint if you feel you should. Sounds like this guy is already on the BME shitlist,so he's been tagged.But,I have a patient who filed a complaint with the board(private)and then blasted a Urologist all over the social media. Turns out it was the pts. word against the Dr.(no proof),and the surgeon has filed a deffimation lawsuit against my pt. He's had to get a second mortgage on his house just to pay his legal bills. He's in serious trouble financially..... Good luck to you.

Did you get light headed? I sometimes have a drop in blood pressure if I've been standing for a long period of time. Could have been a blood sugar drop, as well. Finally, maybe you were just hungry. Real, true hunger.

Question - were you losing weight with the way you were eating before?
YES?
Then why is it so wrong.
If what you are doing works, you are happy with it and you aren't hungry why change. As they say if it isn't broken don't fix it.
As an Aussie I have totally different views to what is/isn't appropriate to eat once banded. I don't diet. I don't do low carb or any other kind of recognised diet. I just eat smaller portions of normal food and try to cut down on the junk inbetween. This is what most of us are told to do by our Drs and it seems to work.This was why I got the band as I was tired of always being on a diet, now I'm not.
I do have to admit though that the diet mentality doesn't really go away as I still catch myself reading diets in magazines and online and wondering if I should do them. But seriously why. If you can eat in a way that satisfies you, keeps you at a healthy weight and is easy to fit into your lifestyle then that is what you should be doing.

My favourites were being asked to model at a local fashion show and having neighbours not recognise me. I saw one at the post box a couple of weeks ago and she asked me if I was the new person that had just moved into the street!

Yes.
One of the former members, restless monkey had that happen to her. She lost weight prior to the op but did it her way not by following the diet she was told to. She went for the op , the Dr "opened" her up and found her liver was too big/fatty so he closed her back up without putting the band on. She then followed the diet she was prescribed and got the operation a couple of weeks later.
It is not up to us to try to second guess our surgeons. We are trusting them with our lives so we should be able to trust them enough to follow their instructions. If we don't understand or disagree with what they have told us we should discuss it with them. If we are still not happy then we should change to a Dr that we do trust and who's instructions we are happy to follow.

Everyone is different. If you lost a lot of weight before then that can effect how much you lost immediately afterwards and all sorts of other things have an impact. So long as you are following the instructions and doing your exercise then don't worry.
The goal is to lose the weight. The rate at which you do it doesn't matter as it's not a race.

I'd like to modify that statement slightly
The band works because you simply cannot overeat if you choose the correct foods.
So what the hell does that mean?
That if you eat foods such as solid Protein , veg and a small portion of carbs you cannot overeat. The band will work in the way that it is designed to work and you shouldn't be hungry for a period of a number of hours afterwards. What it won't do is choose those foods for you so if you decide that you are going to drink milkshakes and eat candy and icecream and Cookies and other so called slider foods your band won't stop you , you will be able to eat enough of these that you can still gain weight and you will get hungry again sooner than you should. The band also won't force you to exercise.
Often people that think they are physically hungry aren't. People lose touch with the true hunger signals and interpret stomach noises and grumbling etc as hunger which in most instances isn't. There are lots of reasons people eat other than true hunger.
Having said that I think most of us have had a similar experience to you. We have tried every diet know to man ( and then some) and not been able to keep the weight off. I know I have even tried hypnotism, injections etc. I have lost all my excess weight and have been maintaing now for approx 2 years. This is the easiest diet I have ever been on.

Well lets put it this way. There are a couple of possibilities.
1. I could be 80 my band could be still working fine and not causing me problems.
2. By the time I reach 80 ( in 30+ years time) they have come up with a new , more effective , easier way of losing and maintaining weight so I opted to have my band removed and go with the new method. A choice that I would not have had I gone for a bypass or sleeve initially.
3. My band is causing me problems because I am old and gaga and can't remember to chew properly. Again I have the choice of having my band removed or I might just get it completely unfilled.
4. My band is still working fine but I have no teeth so i am existing on slider foods and gaining weight.
I don't see what the issue is. At least there are still choices which is not true with some of the other surgeries.For example what if I got to 80 with a bypass and ended up malnourished because I was unable to eat enough and absorb enough for my bodies needs.
It is even possible that in this time frame my band may have to be replaced, possibly more than once. Again I don't see this as an issue. Knee replacement, hip replacements, prosthetic limbs,transplanted organs also all have a certain lifespan and then they too need to be replaced.

My favourites were being asked to model at a local fashion show and having neighbours not recognise me. I saw one at the post box a couple of weeks ago and she asked me if I was the new person that had just moved into the street!

I think part of the basics of eating properly that you need to get back to include how to eat as well as what to eat. It sounds as though a lot of your problems may have been caused by you eating too fast or not chewing properly or not leaving enough time between bites. If you haven't got this right then it is easy to get stuck and "vomit". Make no mistake it can be hard. First you have to unlearn the eating habits that you had for the rest of your life up until being banded.
You have also learned that no matter what you will always be able to eat candy. You need to find some way of dealing with this. You may need to cut it out completely. You may want to make an allowance for it in your calorie or points for the day/week.
You have also found out that having WLS does not guarantee success. That is because it is only a tool. It makes healthy eating a lot easier but it doesn't make the food choices for you or put the food into your mouth. That is the part of the process that you will always be responsible for.
Also at the beginning it is new and exciting and we are really motivated. After a while that wears off and it becomes easier to slip into bad habits. What you need to do is remember the reasons you wanted to lose the weight in the first place.
So you have made mistakes but that doesn't matter.Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to basics. Do this and I am sure you will soon achieve the success that you are after.
And don't forget to keep logging onto LBT as you will get lots of support and encouragement.

I think part of the basics of eating properly that you need to get back to include how to eat as well as what to eat. It sounds as though a lot of your problems may have been caused by you eating too fast or not chewing properly or not leaving enough time between bites. If you haven't got this right then it is easy to get stuck and "vomit". Make no mistake it can be hard. First you have to unlearn the eating habits that you had for the rest of your life up until being banded.
You have also learned that no matter what you will always be able to eat candy. You need to find some way of dealing with this. You may need to cut it out completely. You may want to make an allowance for it in your calorie or points for the day/week.
You have also found out that having WLS does not guarantee success. That is because it is only a tool. It makes healthy eating a lot easier but it doesn't make the food choices for you or put the food into your mouth. That is the part of the process that you will always be responsible for.
Also at the beginning it is new and exciting and we are really motivated. After a while that wears off and it becomes easier to slip into bad habits. What you need to do is remember the reasons you wanted to lose the weight in the first place.
So you have made mistakes but that doesn't matter.Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to basics. Do this and I am sure you will soon achieve the success that you are after.
And don't forget to keep logging onto LBT as you will get lots of support and encouragement.

I think part of the basics of eating properly that you need to get back to include how to eat as well as what to eat. It sounds as though a lot of your problems may have been caused by you eating too fast or not chewing properly or not leaving enough time between bites. If you haven't got this right then it is easy to get stuck and "vomit". Make no mistake it can be hard. First you have to unlearn the eating habits that you had for the rest of your life up until being banded.
You have also learned that no matter what you will always be able to eat candy. You need to find some way of dealing with this. You may need to cut it out completely. You may want to make an allowance for it in your calorie or points for the day/week.
You have also found out that having WLS does not guarantee success. That is because it is only a tool. It makes healthy eating a lot easier but it doesn't make the food choices for you or put the food into your mouth. That is the part of the process that you will always be responsible for.
Also at the beginning it is new and exciting and we are really motivated. After a while that wears off and it becomes easier to slip into bad habits. What you need to do is remember the reasons you wanted to lose the weight in the first place.
So you have made mistakes but that doesn't matter.Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to basics. Do this and I am sure you will soon achieve the success that you are after.
And don't forget to keep logging onto LBT as you will get lots of support and encouragement.

I may have a few more wrinkles than preband but at least now I only have 1 chin. I think 2, 3 or more chins looks really awful and makes a person look far worse and far older than a couple of wrinkles.

Good. I haven't chewed anybody out all day. But I'm gonna be the good guy. Last week was my 60th birthday so I'm feeling grandfatherly.
I don't see what the big deal is. You probably ate like a pig before you got banded, why would you not want to now? What has changed that would modify your behavior?
It's as though you bought a new car, but t's not going to get you anywhere untill you put some gas in the tank. And your band does not have any gas in it.
WELCOME TO BANDSTER HELL!!!!!!
The first 4 weeks were very tough for me. I got a fill at 4 weeks. Then I went home and gained weight before I showed up for my 2nd fill 4 weeks after that. In other words, it took me 8 weeks before I started to feel any difference at all. Up to then, it was as though I was not banded at all!
People kept telling me I have to do this and I have to do that....be strong...have some disipline....S***! I could do (or try to do) all that without going through all this surgery stuff. THERE HAS TO BE MORE TO IT THAN THAT!!!
IT took me 3 fills, 12 weeks, after surgery before there was something real I could start to work with. But even then it took more time to learn the lessons of being a true bandster.
So, be strong.....have some discipline......do this, and do that.....it will get better.
And don't worry, you didn't ruin anything, and you are too newly banded to stretch anything.

I made lots of veggie Soups and added in lentils etc for Protein and then blended and froze them.

If liquids are coming back up, call your surgeon ASAP. Even if it is swelling, you'll need a slight unfill. Gurgling is OK if the liquids are going down. Warm liquids might increase swelling. Try room temperature, as cold can trigger a spasm.
As kll suggested, try liquids only and see how it goes.

A teaspoon or 2 of my homemade muesli is far healthier to snack on than Cookies, chocolate, icecream etc. I don't think that is what made me fat.

It would be nice if they could write these reports in plain English so us average Joes can actually understand what they are talking about!

No generally when food is stuck it doesn't come up. It is STUCK. What has happened is that you have swallowed a bite that is too big or not properly chewed or something that may be difficult for you to eat post band and it has lodged in the opening between your band and your stomach. It sits there and can cause anything from mild discomfort to extreme pain. This can last from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours or in extreme cases a couple of days.
Whilst it is there nothing else will go down so trying to move it by drinking won't help, you will bring the liquid up but the object remains lodged. Your body also tries to move it through by producing excess saliva. Again this saliva won't go down so you have to cough or spit it up. This is what is referred to as sliming.
Different people have different remedies.They include:-
Papaya enzymes (never worked for me)
pineapple juice
Doing an arm movement similar to the chicken dance.
Getting into downward dog position
Jumping up and down.
Drinking a can of soda really quickly - if you try this make sure you are close to the toilet because apparently it loosens the stuff and brings it all back up really quickly, I have never been game enough to try it.
Sometimes it is possible to cough the item back up.
After the stuck episode your oesophagus is likely to be swollen and irritated. I have found that sucking ice chips helps to reduce the swelling and the discomfort. It is also recommended that you stick to liquids for a while after a stuck so as to give the area a rest and a chance to recover.
The aim is to never get stuck but I think most of us manage it at some time or another. It often happens because you are not paying attention to how you are eating or because you are trying to eat in a hurry.

PS. Crackers very rarely cause a stuck as they dissolve before they get to that point.
bread is a major cause as it is doughy.
Protein foods are probably the biggest problem especially if they are dry , tough or overcooked. For this reason you should choose moist cooking methods and eat your meat with a little sauce. Also dark chicken meat goes down a lot better than white chicken meat.

Lellow has reminded me about the noises. The first few months after surgery I burped a lot, it the changed to farting which is definetly not good. But it all seems to have settled down and those minor inconveniences are long forgotten.
My digestive system does still make lots of really loud gurgling noises. I am getting used to them and they don't really worry me except occasionally at night when I am trying to go to sleep. Then they can feel very weird. But to swap all that ugly fat for some strange noises seems like quite a good bargain to me.