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I was banded on 12-29 and have been eating between 600 to 1100 in calories per day. Lost 20lbs in the first 6 1/2 weeks. Pound up or down for the last 6 1/2 weeks. I see where people list what they've eaten for the day & it seems like it is so much less than what I've eaten. I can eat 1/2 to 1 cup of greek yogurt for Breakfast or cottage cheese, Soup, etc but others list "I can only eat a few bites" or 1/4 cup of whatever. I do measure all my food so I'm just concerned that I'm eating too much volume instead of watching my calories like I've been doing. Had 3cc in band from surgery & I requested a fill last week since I could eat pretty much anything. Now have 4 1/2 ccs and am eating softer foods for a few more days. Opinions?

Thank you guys for responding! I was thinking about the broth and popsicles. Went out yesterday and bought the popsicle moulds and some Chrystal Light lime. Cleaning out the fridge today! Tuesday start a two week fast. Thanks!

Sorry to say, I was banded on July 22 and still have port pain. You have a foreign body in your stomach and your body does not like it one bit. It is much better than when I was three days out and each week it eases a bit. My doc says 6 to 8 weeks is normal. I am 55 so everything takes a bit more time then when I was younger. Small price to pay. I fit into pants today that I have "outgrew" before I could wear them. Good Luck

Thats one of the single worst aspects of the laproscopic surgery is that they blow you up like a baloon... Took about a week for me for the air to disipate ... was very uncomfortable at times ...walking helps a lot .. . hope it settles

Hi everyone. This is my first post. I was banded on 5/23/06 - everything went great. The only issue I am having is my stomach is Greatly distended. I am on the verge of looking like an ethiopian kid in some TV ad for sponsoring the children. My stomach was rather flat before (believe it or not) and it really poofs out ALOT now and is rather hard to the touch. It is very uncomfortable. I have had a few bowel movements so that is not the problem. Anyone else have this?? The nurse said some people get this and it can last a few weeks... ugh

For the past few weeks the scale has been going back and forth between 198-200lbs. I refused to count it until I was under 197-today is that day😄😁 1st goal get under 200lbs met!

It seems like half of the time I eat, I end up vomiting. I have a horrible gurgling like feeling whenever I eat or drink. It seems like I have a lot of pain in the esophageal area after I eat also. Any suggestions? I am so frustrated. I am 5 and 1/2 weeks post-op. I had hoped that things would be easier than this!

I'm about a month behind you - surgery November, 2013. Your stats are similar to mine - I'm down 70 pounds and have 20-30 more to go. My loss has slowed way down. I've only lost 4.6 pounds in the past 8 weeks. I take my measurements and I am losing inches, which is good. I've been working out and doing resistance training. I'm frustrated, but I am not going to let it derail me. I talked to my doctor and while I was talking, I realized I was snacking more than I thought. I went back to tracking my intake again - not every day, but it does bring to light some habits that were creeping back in. I also started drinking a shake a day (some days I do 2 shakes). That curbs my appetite enough in the afternoon to get me thru to dinner. I cut down the number of Protein bars. My doc reminded me that if you graph weight loss for a VSG patient it's not linear, it's more like a stair step. I'm trying to be patient. I know my life is better today than it was 7 months ago. I want to lose more and am dedicated to do so. Best of luck to you!

My 1st 10 days, I didn't eat much of anything either. I was living on sugar free popsicles and Crystal Light. Since you're not taking too much in, don't expect much to come out the other end. :-p Including fasting the day before surgery, I basically didn't eat for 11 days. My system was used to processing 3000+ calories a day. That's a lot of empty storage space to fill, before it needs to clear out. Just keep drinking as much as you can and give your new stomach a chance to heal. In the first few months post-op, it wasn't unusual for me to only go once a week. I had one spell where it was almost 2 weeks, I got concerned and took some Milk of Magnesia. If you're concerned, you really should consult your doc. He can decide the best course of action. http://www.bariatricpal.com/blog/9018/entry-31570-constipation-and-milk-of-magnesia-or-how-fema-declared-my-bathroom-a-national-disaster/

I was banded two years ago and was so excited about the program as were two of my friends who were banded about the same time. Each of us lost about twenty five pounds in the first couple of months, but none of us lost any more weight over the last two years! None of us have gained any weight either but just plateaued at twenty five pounds loss and stayed there. There are no support groups in our area so we tried to support each other. We are now going back over all of the information to see how and if we can start over and be more successful at losing weight. It is both exciting and depressing to see all of the many people who have been banded and have lost enough weight to have reached their goals. We were instructed to eat no more than one cup of food for each meal with a small Protein snack at night. None of us could keep that up very long without being really hungry. Is that what each of you successful banders have been able to do to lose all your weight? Did you just work past the hunger until you could be successful? I think the three of us may go back to our surgeon ( 5 hours away from where we live) and see if we can have our bands checked so we can start the eating program a second time so we can be more successful like so many of the banders are on this site. Have any of you had the same problems and then started all over again? I would love to talk with you to see if you were successful the second time around.

Every doctor gives different instructions. You have stitches on the inside and when you eat your stomach constricts to help push food along. liquid diets minimize this movement and gives your stomach and stitches more time to heal. (at 1 week post op I asked my dr's about exercise and I was told that I didn't want to 'pop a stitch' was said.......yikes, pop a stitch). Perhaps you can call your dr's office and talk to them. I was told to put cottage cheese in my cream Soups and blend them, extra Protein that keeps you full longer. Try to get more protein in to control the hunger. As with instructions, everyone seems to have their port in different locations. Usually it is under your largest incision. Mine is about 2 inches above my bellybutton, to the right a wee bit.

Thanks for all the wonderful advice. I only drank cranberry juice because its on the list of liquids allowed in the first week. Plus I figure putting some calories in my stomach would help with the growling. Also I feel very nauseous when my stomach is growling. My mouth starts to fill with saliva and I know I will throw up unless I put something in my stomach. I get the whole head hunger concept but these hunger pains feel like physical pain! I can't even imagine another week and a half on liquids only. I truly feel miserable! However reading posts on the LBT site helps because I know others are going through the same thing. (Misery loves company!)

Yes I am. I will be out for 6 weeks Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

2 weeks ago i went for my first fill and the new dr; bc my original dr opened his own thing and my insurance wont cover me to move or something) i saw didnt do fills till 6 weeks and they scheduled for 4( theres another post about that) so long story short i obviously didnt get it. Then today was my second attempt to get my first fill again... well the dr put the needle in and fished around for a few mins and couldnt get to the port bc it is too deep? So now i have to go to the hospital to do an xray fill. Well first off they have to get an approval from my insurance THEN schedule the appointment. Thats going to be at least another week! I have gained 3lbs since i have been on reg foods. The hospital is like 45 miles away! I know its not the dr fault this time but wouldnt you think they should have longer needles if, as he said "it happens more then often", instead of having to send me or other ppl to the hospital?? Im not happy at all!!

Just keep moving. My clots pre-op were from inactivity. Try to get in 30 minutes of movement per day, with at least two or three minutes of moving around per hour. I took a 3,000 mile driving trip in October after surgery in August. My doctor recommended that I get out of the car at least every hour and walk around. No clots.

Hello to all my surgery buddies, I've read some really amazing posts on here and just want to say thank you to all of you that show support to each other. It can be a very scary time, specially for those of us who are alone in our process to recovery. I had my gastric sleeve surgery on February 8th, I am 17 days post op as of this post. I still struggle a bit to consume even liquids. I burp a lot, and feel bloated all the time. I also have a constant feeling like everything slowly creeps up in my esophagus and just sits there. My pain levels are actually quite low, and my surgery incisions are healing quite well. I'm just worried about my stomach, my doctor wanted me to start introducing some solids slowly, but I told him no way I can barely tolerate liquids. So he has me on liquids for another week. I hope I am not one of the unfortunate few where the surgery will have long lasting complications and although I will lose the weight, my quality of life will be lowered because of all this discomfort. Thanks for reading, I wish everyone here a speedy recovery.

Awe, that is so sweet. I have to admit, it brings me to tears when I watch it and that is several times a week. I just can't believe that is me in the new pictures....I keep expecting to see the fat lady reappear!!!

I couldn't wear a bra for a couple of weeks after surgery (incision was under the band), so if you're going back to work, I'd pick up some snug tank tops to wear under other shirts to tame the "girls"!

My Visa debit card is my right hand gal. On the back I've written "SEE ID". It never ceases to amaze me when people flip it over, read that, and hand it right back w/o asking for ID. And worse - when someone does ask for ID, they're so timid - like they expect it will make me mad. Carlene, that's great advice. Here's something else to watch out for. This isn't one of those "tell all your friends" email mass hysterias, this actually happened to me. We bought something at a store that will go unnamed. In retrospect we could remember making the purchase, but not thinking twice about it. Anyway - what happened was that the clerk swiped the card, and the transaction didn't go through. So he swiped the card at another reader and it went through just fine, end of story. Haha. I'm really bad about following up with our account, I know more is coming in than going out, so I just don't pay any attention. We use online banking and every few weeks I'll scan the transactions just to make sure everything looks OK, taht refunds were credited, etc. Well I go to scan, and see a lot of unexplained transactions, and by "a lot of unexplained" I mean over $4k worth of porn subscriptions. Sites for pedophilia, beastiality, snuff, etc. So I call our bank, and they launch an investigation. Ends up, I guess this isn't all that uncommon (from what the bank told us) that people get jobs as store clerks to have access to customers/credit/debit cards. They bring in their own "bogus" scanners that do nothing other than record the information from the swiped card. So the customer goes to buy something, they swipe it once into their recorder, "Oops, doesn't look like that transaction went through" (they've just captured all of your information), "let's try it again on this reader, that one might be broken" (on the actual store scanner that will go through). Our bank was awesome and they credit the money back, no questions asked, but I know there are people out there with online banking who are worse about checking it than me. One lesson learned we took away from this is that we now limit the amt of money we keep in checking. On payday X amount is automatically transferred into savings (we've always done that), X amout is automatically transferred into what we call "liquid savings" - savings for purchases, taxes, vacations, whatever... not real savings, just a way to store up money we know we will spend eventually), and X is automatically transferred into investments, and the rest goes into our checking. Now I keep a max of 4k in checking unless I know I'm going to make a big purchase. I'll check every few weeks and if we're over that, I'll transfer to one of the other accounts. I talk to my friends who keep 100% of their cash assets in their primary checking account, and I share my story with them, and usually they change their ways. We had ewnough to cover the fraudulent purchases, but if we hadn't, all of our bills are done on autopay, and that means everything from our cable bill to our mortgage could have bounced. That means lots of penalties, fees, and the potential for credit impact.

I have a 9.75cm 4cc band. I didnt get much restriction until I was at 1.7 ccs. There is no magic number, it really varies. I was at 1.5 soon after banding and it was too much, a few weeks later I was ready for another fill. It is very individual.

I had a drink about 2 1/2 -3 weeks after surgery.....but this was only 1 drink sipped over an hour or so. I think you would be fine with a glass of wine. Enjoy!

I'm 1 week post-op and have had no nausea until last night. Everything has been going great for me, no problems until now. Nausea interrupted my sleep and I am still nauseous this morning. I want to try to avoid vomiting, but I'm not sure what to do. I am afraid to eat right now. is there something "over the counter" I can safely take? Does anyone know what this might be/why this happened? Thanks

This is interesting. I was sleeved on may 1st and I never thought to ask this question and the dr didn't mention it. I've been swimming like everyday for the past several weeks. My incisions have been healed though.

i am waiting also to see if my insurance coers mine. i have a date set for my surgery. while doing my set up. i was informed by the finance person that this time it is covered by my insurance. my psych eval have to be done over and my pre-labs is schduled for next week. everyone pray that my insurance covers this. OH WHAT A BLESSING THAT WILL BBB!!!!!!!!!!!!

My husdand is One week post VSG. Began eating pureed foods for 2 days. Seems like each time he eats he gets really tired and needs to lay down and rest... anyone else experience this? Thoughts?