isaviolinist

I know I can't say anything to make you feel better but I just wanted to say I'm sending all good thoughts to you and your husband. I can't imagine how difficult the news must be to hear, on top of the struggles during the last few years. Go to your obgyn and talk about your options. In the meantime, just focus on taking care of yourself so you can be there to support your husband. The wonderful thing about a marriage is that you have each other to share the burdens that life piles on us. Thinking of you!!

Great attitude! When you think of this as a life change and a constant and changing process, instead of a means to end, it is so much easier to make peace with food and your body. All the best to you!!

I love soup. I eat it regularly. But I try not to eliminate much of anything from my diet (because this isn't a diet....I'm finished with diets forever) which is different than the way most banded folks use their band.

I have Realize C Band. My surgery date and doc is in my signature.

I have Binge Eating Disorder (BED) as well and I have started seeing an amazing therapist who specializes in eating disorders and has a clinic specifically for those who suffer with BED. While, I only just started seeing her in November or December, she has already helped me change my relationship with food and improve the quality of my life. I feel so grateful to have found her. I definitely suggest seeking out a therapist who deals with eating disorders specifically, and with a lot of experience with BED. I've also started reading this book: Intuitive Eating It is an anti-diet book so many bandsters and folks on LBT practice the opposite kind of behavior as is talked about in this book and would condemn it. But basically a lot of the book is about giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. ANYTHING (even chocolate, ice cream, carbs...whatever). And unconditional permission means allowing yourself to eat with no shame, sadness, regret, anger, self deprecating remarks, etc. There have been many many studies on the subject (some of which are outlined in the book) but when you remove the scarcity of a food (or anything), meaning you realize that it is there and available to you anytime you want and you have permission to have it without fear of repercussion from your mind, your family, the scale, etc., your brain realizes that its not necessary to overeat that food. And often, you begin to realize that you dont even LIKE these foods that you once binged on and obsessed about. Anyways, the book is really an amazing and well thought out approach to eating intuitively (a skill that, for many of us, is buried deeply underneath years upon years of diets and weightloss mantras) and while I haven't been reading it for long, I think it is changing my life. My band is currently filled WAY too tightly and in March I plan to get a complete unfill. It is hard to effectively relearn the skill of intuitive eating or even listen to my natural hunger and fullness queues when I'm throwing up most of my food. I believe that when I really do start listening to my primal queues regarding food, I will return to the weight that my body feels it should naturally be. And even more importantly, I will return to a state of mental and physical health. Those are my two suggestions: eating disorder therapist and pick up a copy of that book.

That's crazy. I completely disagree with the notion that surgeons are there to perform the surgery and that's it. My surgeon visited me 2-3 times before surgery to help me relax (and I met with him 4-5 times preop). He then came to see me while I was in the ICU. He also made sure that the hospital arranged for a private room for me. And then once I was transferred to that room, he came to see me there and also again before he left for the day. And then he came to see me the next day before I was discharged. All of my follow up appointments have been with my surgeon and no one but my surgeon has ever done any of my adjustments. And honestly, that is my expectation and anything less would have been unacceptable to me. If my surgeon went AWOL after surgery and I never saw him again and he didn't return my calls and emails, I would probably sue him and the hospital.

I suffer with binge eating disorder. I unfortunately didnt really think to start taking care of my relationship with food prior to banding (thus I lost almost 80 pounds initially, and then gained back almost 50 by bingeing...and yes, if you're addicted to food, it is REALLY easy to binge with the band...just think milkshakes). My BED is a daily struggle. I started seeing a therapist that specializes in eating disorders and has an entire clinic dedicated to just treating patients with Binge Eating Disorder. As I said, I struggle every minute of everyday with BED, but seeing an eating disorder therapist has helped a lot. My advice would be to seek out an eating disorder therapist or an Overeaters Anonymous meeting (OA isn't for me, but I know it has helped many many people struggling with compulsive eating). Good luck - you're not alone!!

Hi Edward - I lost about 80 pounds initially and very quickly, but then gained back 50 in a very short amount of time. It really sucked and I found myself just giving up for awhile. In September I decided to get back on the wagon. The hardest part was going back to the gym, making good food choices, logging back into fitday.com, etc. But since then I've lost all the weight I had gained plus more. I'm not sure what to say about getting back into it, but I know I didn't do it until I was ready. Just try to start today with something simple (like taking a walk, or logging your calories for the day). Maybe don't try to do it all at once. Ive also started going to therapy for my binge eating disorder which has been helpful (the band did not fix my head issues with food in any way). Anyways, I'm sure when you're ready you'll get back to it (and it seems like you're moving toward being ready as you came back here to post).

Yay!! That's so fabulous! What are you going to do to celebrate??

I'm glad its not just me - there is no way for me to view the most recent posts either (and I'm not going to go through each forum category individually). I even tried creating a new account and it was the same. I sent a private message to Alex and another admin and no one replied back to me (big surprise there). I just have not been coming here as often. This site went from being amazing, functional, informative, etc to completely non-user friendly and dysfunctional.

Sorry I didn't check in yesterday. Its because I had nothing good to report :-( Its been a tough couple of days for me. Trying not to beat myself up but its been frustrating. Today was better. I'm up a couple pounds but I never mark the weight increases (unless its significant). As long as the trend is downwards, Im happy with it. Hopefully I'll have something good to report next week. We'll see.

I weighed 283 I'm a little over 5'2 BMI was around 50.9 I can't remember about the comorbidities. I had/have insulin resistance (it wasn't diabetes yet), mild sleep apnea, some joint pain. I guess those were all technically comorbidities but I don't remember what else. I have BCBS (and my surgery was done at a BCBS Bariatric Center of Excellence so the approval process took like a day...I never waited to be approved)

I'm constantly having problems with lbt since the switch over. When I click on new content it will show me 1 or often no new posts per hour (it will say that maybe there was only 1 new post from 9 am to 9:59 am and no new post from 10am to noon (which is clearly not true as I can see tons of new entries when I click on the homepage). Alex hasn't responded to me in ages and one of the admins was responding to me and he is completely ignoring me at this point too. I don't know about you, but lbt has become completely dysfunctional for me since they switched to the new "improved" lbt a few months ago. I never had any problems with the old site and the administrators seem not interested in doing anything. It's their loss as many of us who have been banded for awhile and who have been using lbt for awhile are starting to migrate away from the site, thus not contributing valuable experiences. I'm looking around for another band website, as lbt is so cumbersome to use these days (plus I get tired of reading the same 5 new posts everyday...sometimes I'll get 6 new posts on a good day).

I totally agree! I go to a cross training class (I pay monthly for however many I want to go to...you can choose once a week all the way up to everyday...I usually go 3 times a week) and I also go to a spinning class (I bought a package of 8 classes and I can use them anytime...I go once a week). Its very helpful to buy those types of classes because you're motivated to use up all the classes you bought and like whey said, people start wondering where you are if you dont come! I also belong to planet fitness (I like that they're a 24 hour gym) and even though its pretty cheap to belong there, I still feel like I want to get my money's worth every month which usually leads to me working out there the other days I'm not cross training or spinning plus sometimes it motivated me to do 2 workouts a day (spinning and PF or or cross training and PF etc). I know there are memberships for planet fitness starting at 10.00/month. I can't remember what that gets you but I know the 20/month membership will get you some free personal training and you can also use any PF anywhere. Joining a gym definitely helped me as far as the motivation goes.

Walking as much as your able will help you. All other exercise should start after your surgeon clears you. And I'm probably misunderstanding, but were/are you smoking now, right after surgery? Or were the complications as a result of smoking prior to having surgery (I'm assuming you were required to stop smoking for a certain period of time before you had surgery)?