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Hi Alan , I went on the Atkins diet for two weeks and very strict I might say. I lost 12 lbs before the surgery. I started on a Monday and by Wedesday I was off diet Coke. That is the longest I have went without a diet Coke since they came out. But I am actually not craving them now and I will try my best to leave them alone.Today I am sore and gassy too. Also I am weak from the Clear Liquids.Tomorrow I am on Ensure and blended soups and should feel better hopefully. I know the feeling of being full for so many years and the relationship with my best friend food ! lol (who is killing us too). I hope the band will be an effective tool , and so I can try to get out of this hole I have dug myself into. I had a heart cath in November and had 70% blockage . I was at 301 then. I lost over 25 lbs. and then gained it all back and then some. Twice in my life I lost over 50 lbs. and never could keep it off. To me ,The band was my only real hope of being able to achieve a permanent and realistic weight loss. I am a newbie as we all were .....I am very nervous and worried about the problems of the band. I got on youtube and watched some horror stories and about decided not to go ahead with the procedure ,That is until I found this discussion forum and have seen that it can work. I am very lucky to live in a small town and have my docotor just ten minutes away too. He is young and I was his 18 th procedure ! He is a good general surgeon, who recently started doing the lapbands and all went well . You know the ole saying ...."Just make up your mind and do it !" That is what I did. Everytime I think about missing chessburgers and cold beer by the giant mugs and all the ice cream I wanted, I think about the horrible way I feel EVERYDAY at this weight.I want to FEEL good and I am not worried about what I look like anymores ! lol.....I just wanna see my grandkids grow up and make sure wifey is happy too :laugh: Alan if I could get down to 225 and stay there I would be pretty happy I think. Thanks to all for the advice too Mike in Texas

I was drinking like 30 oz in week 1 and 60oz in week 2 but with bypass... Everyone is different though.

I need some help. I had my gastric bypass 6 days ago and allnis going very well. I haven't had and dumping or pain at all, except for the stitches. Anyways it has been 6 days and no weight loss at all. I have been able to get about 60ounces of water or more and been taking all of my vitamins. Is this normal? Also my Dr said I could start to eat once I felt hungry sonon Monday o tried some eggs and it was very good and I handled it well. Today I had some eggs and refried beans, very little amounts of course. Can anyone hive me some more ideas on what I can eat over the soft mushy food phase? Also sorry if there is misspelled words my phone doesn't let me see what I'm typing on here

So I told my boss this morning that I am planning on bariatric surgery and that date will be in October or November. I don't have a date yet. She asked me to wait until December since it's elective. I really don't want to wait until the holidays dang it. I want this done ASAP. Not wait a month and half after my last dr appt. tempted to just hit fmla up and do it sooner anyways since they can't stop fmla. But is it worth it to piss off my boss? I work for a large hospital and the October/November months are our inspection window this year. What do you all think? Should I discuss this with the HR dept?

Hi! I was snooping around the blogs and found your post. i went to a gastroenterologist today for some other issues and asked what he thought of the lapband. he told me that i should go for a bypass! this caught me offguard. he said that with the lapband someone like me (almost 50 and about 90 pounds overweight) would only lose about 20-30 pounds with a lapband but with bypass i'd lose more. I have been on this site and know that there are many, many success stories here, but still, it took me for a loop.

On a side note I had the bypass but if I did not have a large amount of weight to lose as a different personality lol I would have def not had something with malabsorption, I would keep my body as close to normally functioning as possible and that's just my personal opinion and beliefs.

Thank you for your answers. Band is empty now until late November than it can be slowly filled up.... I am hoping not to gain too much in the next 4 months

It has been a while since I last posted. I tried to post on day 5 but the site was down and I couldn’t save anything on the computer that I was on. So now it is day 27. Tomorrow will be four weeks from my surgery date. That means that I can have mushies tomorrow. But before I get to that I want to recap a little. I was in pain for the first two weeks post op. It was mainly directly in the middle of my stomach and at my port site. I couldn’t understand how some people say that they don’t have any pain at all. My suggestion would be to take at least ten days straight to rest and get better. I only had five, which was okay but I definitely shouldn’t have gone to work day 6 and 7. I was so tired and just sitting at my desk was painful. At week 3, I was able to sleep normal in my bed except for on my stomach. I tried earlier but I was uncomfortable and chose to stay in the recliner longer. So that brings me back to now. I have been on clear liquids up to now and it has been okay. It definitely has helped with weight loss. I have lost 26 pounds post op so far. I have been surprisingly okay with the liquids keeping me full too. I am not struggling with insane hunger or cravings. There are times that I wish I could eat but I have been okay. I did slip up two days ago when I though “I am only four days from mushies, I should just start now”… Well I had clam chowder and the next day I had the worst migrane in a long time that I thought I was being punished. I threw up five times and my stomach was completely empty when I was better. So I guess I am back to the straight and narrow now. Tomorrow though I cannot wait to have beans and cheese or maybe some yogurt. I hope my stomach doesn’t retaliate. I also hope that I still lose weight steadily. It doesn’t have to be a pound a day but at least 1-2 a week. I am scheduled to have my first fill on November 14th. I wonder what it will be like. I cannot find my port so I hope they can find it well.

What brand vitamins are you using? I am 4 days post op and also find it difficult to get down my huge chewable. I have been using Opurity vitamins. They are optimized for bypass and sleeve. I used to crunch them with no problem pre op but now I take tiny bits at a time, chew that little bite to dust and dissolve it with a tiny sip of water before swallowing. It's a process but worth the extra time to avoid any trace of nausea. And congrats on your progress!!!! I'm still waiting to lose all the fluids from the IVs.

Anyone getting bypass in the Dallas area?!

@@Treadmillwalker I use my iPhone most of the time. Where is the notification? I don't see how to add friends anywhere LapBand ~ November 1, 2016

You do have another option, a sleeve. Better weight loss and far fewer complications long term than the band and MUCH safer than bypass with no malabsorption.

I'm set to have surgery in November. My mother works in preop at the hospital where I will be having my procedure. She told me that if your nerves are too bad the day of surgery, they can give you something there to help you calm down. And my surgeon has told me that the pain is different for everyone, but one thing that helps most patients is to stay ahead of the pain. Don't wait until you are hurting to take your pain medication. Just anticipate the pain and take the meds!! Best of luck to you

Which surgery did you do? From what I understand Bypass patients are more likely to have that problem. Even then though, it seems like a crap shoot and the dice land differently for everybody. I think you just got lucky/unlucky depending on how you feel about it.

The statistics my surgeon's office and bariatric support group say that the average vsg patient loses 60 - 80% of their excess weight, gastric bypass patients = 50 - 80%, and lap band 50 - 65%. I am hoping to go all the way to goal - which for my height is 130 lbs. That's 188 lbs. of excess weight to lose in all for a short, old woman Good thing is that I am 33 lbs. down since I started the medical weight loss plan - and it will be a few months before I can get in for surgery due to my schedule - so hopefully it will be even a bit less - I hope for a weight of 250 at surgery - with a small, non-slippery liver. The doc also says that statistically patients lose 50% of excess weight in the first 6 months, another 25% during the next 6 - and the final 25% over the course of the next year.

I have spent the past hour or so reading blogs and catching up on the lap band community. As I was reading it came to me that we have all been given a wonderful opportunity to have the support of thousands of people. People like us, who can over advice from first hand experience and learn from all of our successes and failures. I never introduced myself when I started blogging, I just started pounding away spilling my thoughts and feelings on the page. So her goes, my name is Diane, I am 55 almost 56 this November. I am married, have two children, a boy and a girl and 3 grand children, a dog, Lexi ( She is posted with me in my picture) and a cat, Sassey. I love animals and if I lived in the country would have many more than I do, animals love us unconditionally and don't care if we are fat or thin. How and why did I chose lap band? I have been what you call the professional diet queen. I am 5'1" and have struggled with weight gain after the birth of my first child in the late 70's. I lost the weight and just gained it back with the birth of my second child. I lost that weight and did pretty good until I went to nursing school and packed it right back on. In those early years I could keep it around 180 or 190 but still thought I was fat, but I never realized what fat was until I hit my 40's. That is when I really started to plump up, I reached a high by the time I was 50 of 260's and believe me on a 5'1" frame that is a lot of weight and my knees began to tell the story a few years ago. Three years ago my right knee went out, swollen, painful, difficult to walk, etc. I went to the doctor, they x-rayed and MRI. I had some beginning stages of osteo, thinning of the cartilage on the inner part of my knee joint. The doctor injected with steroids, last about 48 hours and then I did the weekly injections to rebuild the cartilage. It puts the cushion back between the joints. That lasted about 8 weeks. Then the dreaded conversation came up, Diane you need to drop a few pounds. I knew this already, I had two bouts of pneumonia over the past two years, my BP was out of control, and I was having sleep apnea. Oh by the way I forgot to mention I have been a nurse for almost 30 years. You would think as a health care worker we would have better health habits. But no, we probably are one of the most unhealthy group of people because we are always taking care of others and not ourselves. I am very stubborn, duh so I refused to wear a CPAP for the sleep apnea, and when I saw the metal they would put in my body as a joint, I said no way. Off to Jenny Craig I marched, I joined for 500 dollars, bought my meals at 120 plus a week and lost down to 195 lbs. Then it became too expensive and I just knew I could do this on my own, portion control and 1200 calories, a piece of cake I thought. NOT!!!!!!!!!!! I plumped back up to 248 lbs within 2 years of stopping Jenny Craig. So that is how I got to lap band. Live a life of pain and not enjoy life or get off your butt and do something about it. As for the nursing, I am a critical care nurse, so you would think I would know better and make better choices. Oh well that is the past and this is the new me. I involved my family in my journey, I made my appointment for the information meeting and took my husband with me and told all of my family. I figured if I was going to make this a life style I better include the persons in my life so they could be supportive. I thought about not telling the people at work, because sadly I was one of those people who thought weight loss surgery was a cop out. Boy have I changed my mind. so once I scheduled my surgery I told all of my peers at work I was having Lap Band surgery on the 28th of October. Now a very good friend of mine at work, Ron, looked at me shocked and said" your not fat enough to have weight loss surgery." I could have kissed him but instead, I stopped and said, "Ron, I am morbidly obese. My BMI is 47.5. I have to lose weight or I am not going to get to enjoy watching my grandchildren grow up. He looked shocked and said, I had no idea you weighed that much. Thank god for the Ron's and the Paul's(my husband) who love us whether we are skinny or fat and see us for something more than how we look. I will tell you I was scared, I think my biggest fear has been that I will fail, fail to loss and keep it off. But that very fear is my driving force, I will not gain this weight back and I will be successful. The difference for me know compared to back in the dieting days is I am choosing to change my life style with a gentle nudge from my band. I always lost weight on the planned programs I paid for, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, South Beach etc. But when I stopped paying I gained the weight back. Lap Band is a permanent solution to me because as long as i listen to my band, make healthy choices and exercise I will be successful. I know a lot of people struggle with weight loss and the band but in my opinion we fail because we fail to change our behavior. When I don't lose weight now, i sit down and look back at what I am doing. If I am honest with myself, I am snacking between meals, eating past satisfied and not exercising. I chose not to eat sweets, potato chips(which I love), I stay way from carbohydrates, pasta, rice and potato's. Not because I can't have them but because I like them to much and they make me feel over stuffed. I love pizza, can I eat pizza yes, should I eat pizza no. It is full of carbohydrates, so I look for alternatives that satisfy that void. This truly is a journey and you learn about your body and your inner self along the way. For me this journey is not about being skinny it is about learning to make the right choices, developing a healthy life style and spending quality time with my family. So now you no my story. I was banded October 28, 2010. I weighed in at 248 on surgery day and as of today I weigh 180. ( I have been stuck here for several weeks) I started in a size 24 and now wear a size 14. I have lots of shrinkels but who cares, I consider those my battle scars.

My Story in just 2 pictures November 2010 just before surgery and November 2011 (the handsome young man is my wonderful son). I still have some way to go but the end is near. Recently diagnosed with macular degeneration of the eyes I have been forced to give up all strenuous forms of exercise or give up my sight earlier than anticipated - I have had to do this the very hard way with just diet, walking and the band. Good luck to everyone on your personal journeys Regards from Yogyakarta Indonesia The Bodyfixer

Has anyone tried popcorn 8 weeks out from gastric bypass??? Cravings!!!

thanks AdaGray -- I do have, I think, two severe co-morbidities -- HBP, which was initially resistant to treatment, but now seems to be working (after PCP doubled starting dosage). I've also learned from my endocrinologist that I was pre-diabetic a year ago. My PBP didn't say anything about that to me, and my endo thinks there's a good chance I'm diabletic now. I get my blood sugars tested next week. so, taking sudafed spikes HP? I didn't know that ... hmmmm. It's funny, but I was thinking that the stress alone was going to start driving my BP up! I was also desperate enough to think that I could stop taking my thyroid meds for a month and easily gain 20 lbs, which makes the whole point moot, because that would drive my BMI up to 40. I really really don't want to start at any higher weight, though, expecially since my bariactric surgeons are notorious for pushing gastric bypass over the band, and equally notorious for being ultra-conservative with the fills ... Anyway, thanks so much for the info -- please let me know how your approvals go. I am glad that my insurance doesn't force me to document five years back, as that would really be difficult for me. Good luck to you!

Hi all I'm new to the forum. Had gastric sleeve done in 2012 was 370lbs lost little over 100lbs. October 3, 2017 had revision to bypass due to acid reflux. Think I'm losing slow. Surgery weight 270lbs today 245lbs just about 8 weeks out. Anyone else have revision or surgery around October 3rd. Sent from my SM-G935V using BariatricPal mobile app

Just looked at my phone. When I open it up the options I get under BROWSE are for the main Forums. In order: Gastric Sleeve Gastric Bypass LAP-BAND General Weight Loss I think if you just click LAP-BAND you should get what you are looking for.

Anyone who has military affiliation know if tricare will cover this?

Could someone who has had the DS Loop tell me about this? I had a gastric bypass in 1980, due to regain I want to get a revision. I'm not sure what kind of surgery is possible after so long. I know I have a lot of scar tissue built up. I don't know if anything can be done. If anyone else has had this please let me know thank you in advance. Sent from my SM-G965U using BariatricPal mobile app

I had my sleeve done November 30 2012. I have lost 34 pounds since then. kinda slow for my expectations... I was seeing all these stories of people loosing like 30 pounds a month for the first three months so I was very excited of that possibility. but I have only lost 15 pounds a month this has brought me down.... I eat healthy, 15-20 carbs per day, watch my fat intake, and calories. I guess I just need some inspiration to pick me up to get back on the wagon. Ive been lazy when it comes to working out, and I know that if I tried harder it would happen faster. HELP!!! I need some encouragement!!

I would have your surgeons office send the paper work to Medicare and see if they will cover it. I know that they will cover regular gastric bypass surgery. Good luck to you and let us know the answer if you don't mind.