Drasan

Thank you DeLarla for this great thread! I relate to so many of the posts that all of you have made!
This thread stands as a testament that morbid obesity is not just a physical disorder but it is also a mental/behavior disorder. The band and other WLS aid us with our physical disorder. What the band and other WLS do not do is help us with our mental/behavior disorder. We know what we should do intellectually, it's just not connecting with our emotional brain. I love the references to a "band for the brain."
I eat when I'm stressed.
I eat when I'm bored.
I eat when I'm procrastinating.
I eat to Celebrate.
I eat when I'm sad.
I eat when I'm happy.
I eat to morn.
I eat when I'm tired.
I eat when I'm thirsty.
I eat and sometimes have no idea why I'm eating.
I even eat when I'm too full sometimes and I'm not thinking, to try to make that too full feeling go away. yea, I know, crazy.
After band surgery, I eat less at those times. Thank goodness for the band.
I'm shocked that long term behavior therapy is not required pre-op and post-op for WLS patients.
A large support group meeting once a month where we get talked to, is not enough. It's helpful but dang, read these posts!!!
We need help!
It feels very scary to make this post. I feel very exposed just like many of you have expressed. Thank you for your bravery. It helped me to get this out.

Thank you DeLarla for this great thread! I relate to so many of the posts that all of you have made!
This thread stands as a testament that morbid obesity is not just a physical disorder but it is also a mental/behavior disorder. The band and other WLS aid us with our physical disorder. What the band and other WLS do not do is help us with our mental/behavior disorder. We know what we should do intellectually, it's just not connecting with our emotional brain. I love the references to a "band for the brain."
I eat when I'm stressed.
I eat when I'm bored.
I eat when I'm procrastinating.
I eat to Celebrate.
I eat when I'm sad.
I eat when I'm happy.
I eat to morn.
I eat when I'm tired.
I eat when I'm thirsty.
I eat and sometimes have no idea why I'm eating.
I even eat when I'm too full sometimes and I'm not thinking, to try to make that too full feeling go away. yea, I know, crazy.
After band surgery, I eat less at those times. Thank goodness for the band.
I'm shocked that long term behavior therapy is not required pre-op and post-op for WLS patients.
A large support group meeting once a month where we get talked to, is not enough. It's helpful but dang, read these posts!!!
We need help!
It feels very scary to make this post. I feel very exposed just like many of you have expressed. Thank you for your bravery. It helped me to get this out.

Alicesandra,
Weight gain is unwelcomed no matter how it arrives. I'm empathize with the pain of being overweight.
After reading your post, I'm prompted to respond because from everything I know about the function of the band as a tool, it doesn't sound like it is the correct solution for you. The band works best to help those of us who tend to consume too much food to refrain from doing so. If you aren't consuming enough food, what are your expectations from band surgery?
Congratulations on the weight loss!

David Letterman isn’t the only one who composes top 10 lists. Here’s my top 10 list of the things you need to know about gastric band surgery, served with a generous helping of GJTL™ - Genuine Jean Tuff Luv™.


TIME FOR SOME TOUGH LOVE?
Genuine Jean Tuff Luv™? What’s that? It’s my version of the kind of love that hurts so good, because it gets you going in the direction you want to go.
Stern but caring parents, teachers and coaches who maintain strict rules and demanding training regimens are said to practice tough love. Those rules and regimens may not be fun, but they can turn around kids, students or athletes who’ve gotten off track or are underachieving.
Tough love may seem too severe, too tough. It works best when the parent, teacher or coach believes in, proclaims, and respects the inherent value and purpose of the person they’re trying to help. Sometimes all we need is a wakeup call to shake us out of our stupor and pull us out of a rut. The drills and discipline of tough love can help (even as they hurt) when our bandwagons have gotten lost or stalled somewhere along the way to success.
A bandster once said of me, “Jean tells people the things they don’t want to hear.” I chose to take that as a compliment. Many times in my life, I’ve benefited from a slap upside the head by a concerned friend. When I do the slapping, I try to do it with just enough emphasis to get a friend’s attention long enough to deliver an important message, followed by a gentle and loving kick in the butt. So here’s my top 10 list of things you need to know about adjustable gastric band surgery. Consider yourself kicked!
THE GJTL TOP TEN LIST
1. You will not wake up in the recovery room at your goal weight. Average weight loss with the band is 1-2 pounds per week, and virtually no one loses weight at a nice steady pace of (say) 1.75 pounds per week. Some weeks you’ll lose, some weeks you’ll stall and some weeks you’ll gain, but as long as the overall trend is downward, you’re doing great!
2. Slower weight loss with the band does not prevent sagging or excess skin. How your skin reacts to massive weight loss depends mostly on your genetics and your age. As we age, our skin loses elasticity. If the possibility of sagging or excess skin worries you, start tossing your change into a plastic surgery piggy bank.
3. Weight loss surgery (of any type) does NOT cure obesity. Obesity is a chronic and incurable disease characterized by relapse and recurrence. Although bariatric surgery is currently the most effective way of treating obesity, obesity is something you’re going to have to manage for the rest of your life, with or without surgery. For most of us, a tool like the adjustable gastric band makes that a lot easier, but it’s not effortless, either.
4. Most eating problems after band surgery are due to user error, and can be prevented by using good band eating skills. Read an article about those skills by clicking here: How to Eat Like a Bandster.
5. In order to decrease your weight and increase your health, you must decrease your food intake and increase the quality of your food choices and the time you spend exercising. While you may be able to lose weight for a while by just eating much smaller portions of chicken McNuggets, potato chips, and candy bars, eventually that approach will stop working, and at the same time it will start biting your health in the butt. And though it may be difficult for you to exercise at first, each pound you lose will make it easier, and each additional hour you spend exercising will not only burn calories but improve your physical and mental health.
6. No weight loss surgery procedure will cure eating disorders, eating demons, emotional eating, boredom eating, stress eating, celebratory eating or food addiction. Changing those behaviors is your job. If it’s too hard to tackle yourself, consider getting some counseling with a therapist experienced with eating disorder and WLS patients, and/or joining a 12-step group like Overeater’s Anonymous.
7. The band rarely works without fills. Even if you initially lose weight with one or no fills, sooner or later, you’re going to have to face the fill needle. And if you’re too needle-phobic to tolerate a fill needle, why did you choose band surgery in the first place?
8. The restriction “sweet spot” is a myth. There is no such thing as “perfect” restriction, or if there is, you can’t count on it to last more than one hour, one day or one week. This is because the band is an inert silicone object implanted in a living, breathing human body that changes constantly in reaction to the time of day, time of month, time of year, hydration, illness, medication, stress, you name it. Restriction variability is part of the gastric band package.
9. There is nothing magic in the band that makes you lose weight. Changing your eating and exercise behavior is what makes you lose weight. All the band does is make that work easier for you by reducing your physical hunger and increasing your satiety.
10. YOU are responsible for your weight loss. Not your band, not your surgeon, and not the server at McDonald’s who invariably asks you, “Want to supersize that?”

Thank you DeLarla for this great thread! I relate to so many of the posts that all of you have made!
This thread stands as a testament that morbid obesity is not just a physical disorder but it is also a mental/behavior disorder. The band and other WLS aid us with our physical disorder. What the band and other WLS do not do is help us with our mental/behavior disorder. We know what we should do intellectually, it's just not connecting with our emotional brain. I love the references to a "band for the brain."
I eat when I'm stressed.
I eat when I'm bored.
I eat when I'm procrastinating.
I eat to Celebrate.
I eat when I'm sad.
I eat when I'm happy.
I eat to morn.
I eat when I'm tired.
I eat when I'm thirsty.
I eat and sometimes have no idea why I'm eating.
I even eat when I'm too full sometimes and I'm not thinking, to try to make that too full feeling go away. yea, I know, crazy.
After band surgery, I eat less at those times. Thank goodness for the band.
I'm shocked that long term behavior therapy is not required pre-op and post-op for WLS patients.
A large support group meeting once a month where we get talked to, is not enough. It's helpful but dang, read these posts!!!
We need help!
It feels very scary to make this post. I feel very exposed just like many of you have expressed. Thank you for your bravery. It helped me to get this out.

Once the band honeymoon is over, usually about 6 months to 1 year after surgery, it becomes will power more than band power to lose weight. The hype on the boards of this forum from band honeymooners probably misinformed me more than any of the ads from Allergan.

Would you do it again?
I know this is a topic that has been covered and then covered again. At the risk of boring long-time posters on this forum, I'm going to bring the topic up again.
I saw my younger sister for the first time in years and she awed at me over the 45 lbs that I've lost and kept off over the past 2 years. I know this is not an admirable weight loss for banders over a 2+ year period, but it's the first time I've been able to lose weight and actually keep it off. Anyway, my younger sister asked me if I would have the surgery again. I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice that she's considering the possibility of this surgery for herself.
I had to think about my answer. In fact, I'm still thinking about it. Would I have the surgery again?
Some days the answer is yes. Some days the answer is no.
Yes. I've lost 45 lbs and kept it off. This surgery put an end to the steady weight gain I was experiencing. My overall health has improved.
No. Some days I feel defeated that my weight loss did not continue after the first 6 months. I fooled myself into believing that band surgery would make it so that I never had to diet again. This is not true. Let me repeat this .. You will have to diet following band surgery .. for the rest of your life. It is not a magic bullet that fixes poor eating habits and poor lifestyle choices.
So my answer to my sister is yes, I would do it again but I would say that with a caveat. The band stopped my upward spiral of weight gain and my health is better for it. For that, surgery was worth it. The caveat is, if I want to lose weight after the initial weight loss, I still have to diet and exercise. To be successful, Weight Watchers or other diets are still in my future. So why not just diet and exercise without the band?
It's a personal decision. Just be honest with yourself.

I went to a bariatric support group meeting a few months ago. I've been determined to let go of an incident that happened but another thread just brought all my feelings to the surface again. Please forgive me for using this forum to vent.
I'm a band patient who didn't get restriction right away from fills. It took over a year of working with my surgeon to get me to the right place. Needless to say, I didn't lose weight like some others have reported. At times I've been discouraged but somehow, I've managed to stay mostly optimistic and keep working at it, which is finally paying off.
At the support group meeting, two women asked me when I was banded and how much weight I had lost. The way they looked me up and down with obvious disgust/disapproval made me feel like a failure and want to crawl into a hole. When I thought about it later it just made me mad.
This was not my first experience with judgement and comparison. In the surgeon's waiting room I met another woman who'd had surgery around the same time as me. We talked about our weight loss and she'd lost a whole lot more than me. The smug, judgemental air that came off her really hurt.
Of all the people in the world who should be supporting another heavy person I would think it would be other people who have actually walked in fat shoes. I don't understand the competition and the judgement.

I lost weight for 6-8 weeks after surgery, then nothing! Nothing for about 10 months while the surgeon gave me fills attempting to get my band to the right restriction. I didn't gain any weight back, which was great but I stopped losing.
The last fill I received 3 weeks ago. My surgeon filled me using fluorscopy to get the fill to a safe maximum fill for me. Now I have restriction and I've started losing weight again, YAY!
My point is this, everyone's journey is different. When I looked at the weight others were losing, it was easy to get discouraged, and sometimes I did, But I hung in there and worked with my surgeon.
This is a process, not a race. We need to be careful when comparing ourselves to others.
Good luck with your process!

I was banded over a year ago. I lost weight during the first 6 - 8 weeks following surgery. Then I played around with the same 5 lbs for the next 10 months even though I was receiving regular fills. With each fill, I kept thinking, "this will be the one that gives me that restriction I felt after surgery." But it didn't happen and I started losing faith in the band and in myself. I started to think, I've failed again.
Then my surgeon told me he would give me a fill under fluoroscopy. This is how it worked. He filled the band completely under xray closing off the opening from my pouch to my stomach. I drank barium and it stayed in my pouch. He then began to slowly withdraw some of the fill, until the barium began to drain into my stomach, leaving the opening from the band at what he felt was good restriction.
It's been 2 1/2 weeks since the fill under fluoroscopy and what a difference!!! I have restriction! THIS is what I expected from the band. I'm finally getting the help I wanted and needed from the band. I haven't weighed since the fill but I'm feeling the difference already in my body. My husband was holding me and said, "You're losing weight!"
BUT .. over the past year, I developed some bad habits. I've had to go back and review and get my head on straight to work with the band again. I've gotten stuck several times, a couple of really bad ones with slimming and coughing. It hurts and works as a great reminder and reinforcer to do what is right. I really have to pay attention now and really slow down. I can't just eat whatever anymore and I can't eat nearly as much. I get full very quickly. I am now eating the recommended amount of food ... and very carefully.
I'm a happy bandster .... at last!