I've read everything on LapBand and read all the stuff here, attended every meeting possible, discussed with nutritionists and surgeons and feel i am an intelligent and informed LapBand recipient.... My question... and it's kind of mind boggling for me ....

How does the band work better and help you to loose weight once you have fills and are eating solid food versus now on liquids and mushies.. It seems almost counter intuitive. I know it just does because everyone says so and the system is designed to work in this manner, but does anyone have the actual explanation? It really seems like you'd lose more the less you eat (such as now) and yet, once you've received fills and are eating regular food is when the weight loss happens most rather than just post surgery when you're on liquids and real slider stuff.

Does anyone have a great explanation? I hope not to get any angry responses like i didn't do my homework beforehand or anything, but i'm just asking for anyones take on a good explanation...:scared2: I am still happy with my choice and all the resarch i have done has not provided me with a solid explanation to this actual topic. There is so much wisdom here on this site i was hoping for a veteran answer... thanks :thumbup:

You actually do lose a lot of weight in the beginning on liquids and mushies, but obviously that lifestyle isn't sustainable (or fun). It's the fills that take care of a good portion of the hunger and the consumption of slow-moving solid food that takes care of the rest. It's not counter intuitive really. Liquids--even including protein drinks--aren't that satiating and are pretty high calorie. Good luck to you!

solid food stays in your pouch longer and therefore keeps you full for longer, liquids pass through quickly so you get hungry quickly and you eat more.

As NYC said a liquid or mushie diet is nether fun nor sustainable in the long term

Okay, i understand.. But for example i'm only eating 600 to 800 calories a day right now and once i go to regular food, i'll most likely be consuming more calories, albeit different than sliders, so if weight loss is as easy as calorie consumption in and calories exerted ... how does weight loss at all it work with more calories in later on?

Maybe it's as simple as starvation caloric intake now and my body will switch once regular food is re-introduced... Maybe i'm overthinking the whole situation :thumbup:

Maybe you are over thinking a little bit ..... I don't know.

I like to think of it in very simple terms. It's all about portion control. I have not been able to eat a full plate of food in almost a year and because of that simple fact I have dropped 95 pounds. For me calorie counting is pointless, so I don't do it.

This was a post from a LAP-BAND® Dr. in a thread some time ago. I saved it because I really like how he explains things. Here is a link to that thread : http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f178/i-dont-understand-110373/

All weight loss comes from calorie deficit (burning more calories than you consume). Burning more and consuming less is what causes weight loss.

The band will not force you to burn calories. The band helps with the consuming less part. It helps with this in three major ways:

1. Reduced appetite - some surgeons argue that the band is an appetite reduction operation. It has been shown to reduce appetite hormones. Patients say they don't feel hungry - they don't feel like they are on a diet. The band reduces true physical hunger. Some of us struggle with emotional hunger, phantom hunger which is not cured by the band but reducing physical hunger is very helpful at combatting head hunger. Emotional hunger comes from deep rooted emotional pain causing negative emotion that is unfortunately temporarily cured by food.

2. Fullness on small portions - the amount of stomach above the band is small. You will feel full on a much smaller portion of food if the band is properly adjusted. The fullness feeling is not a "pat your lower belly" kind of fullness. Band fullness is a very high sensation - in the chest - the feeling that the last bite of food is somewhere near the base of the tongue and another crumb will not be physically allowed.

3. The impossible nature of overeating - let's say you feel full and not hungry but you decide that you will overeat anyway. A properly adjusted band simply will not allow this. A point will be reached where the system will reject anything more. The esophagus (swallowing tube) is a transport organ; not a storage organ. The esophagus has two buttons: down and up. It will try down first. If that doesn't work, it switches to up and you get to see the food again.

We've been banding for eight years and we see three groups of patients in our practice:

Group 1 - gold medal superstar patients who lose easily and steadily after band surgery and send us Christmas cards that will bring tears to your eyes.

Group 2 - patients who acheive the same ultimate results as Group 1 but it takes longer with more office visits and more education and slower weight loss but we still get there. The race car crosses the finish line but it's on fire and badly damaged.

Group 3 - patients that will be three years out from band surgery and only down 20 or 30 pounds. The three biggest reasons patients are in this group are: 1.) unsolved emotional eating 2.) zero calorie burning 3.) Quit, give up, stop coming to the practice for band adjustments, education, etc

One of the best books I've seen on emotional eating is: "Shrink Yourself" by Dr. Gould. Many patients have told me this helps. The secret to curing emotional eating is to identify the root cause of this negative emotional pain and work through it. This is the most difficult aspect of successful weight loss.

Edited June 18, 201016 yr by Humming Bird

Humming bird - great post - thanks!

Okay, i understand.. But for example i'm only eating 600 to 800 calories a day right now and once i go to regular food, i'll most likely be consuming more calories, albeit different than sliders, so if weight loss is as easy as calorie consumption in and calories exerted ... how does weight loss at all it work with more calories in later on?

Maybe it's as simple as starvation caloric intake now and my body will switch once regular food is re-introduced... Maybe i'm overthinking the whole situation :thumbup:

Yes..It is calories in vs. calories out. I will not lie, when i first went to solids...i gained a little. I freaked out, but was assured by my Dr. that it was very common and it would go away quickly...that my body was in a "starvation mode" and when it got the food it wanted to hold on to it. He was right (yay) and the weight gain came off quickly and i have been losing pretty steadily since. i can honestly say, I too don't totally keep track of calories, but i do know for sure that some days I really only get about 800 calories in me. Bad eating days (near TOM), it maybe even less. With the solid food, that little bit keeps you full longer because it takes much longer to go from your pouch to your lower stomach and so on. Liquids/mushies can pass right through...so in fact if you ate solely sliders, ate until you were full, and ate anytime you were hungry, you could cause yourself to GAIN weight because you could eat more. i could eat a whole tub of ice cream right now if I really wanted to because it is going to melt and pass right through the band...defeating the purpose. i hope maybe this makes sense :scared2:

Edited June 18, 201016 yr by chickadee81

I lost HEAPS of weight on liquids and mushies becuase I also had great restriction after surgery, with no fill. It lasted about eight weeks in which time I lost at least 30lb (well I consider that good, fast weight loss, it was 1/3 of my extra weight!).

If you're on liquids without restriction, and starving, then you'll be eating whatever you can with any body to it to fill your tummy - that means sliders. Creamy foods with a lot of calories. You can eat a lot more calories in cream Soup or Protein shake than you can in steak!!

I still find it now - choose a good meal, steak and steamed vegies for example, and I am restricted to a half cup portion of what is basically low fat food in its natural state. Make that Pasta with cream sauce and a cup goes down easily and I'm more willing to eat past satiety because its the kind of food that leads you to do that.

that's why you can often not lose on liquids but lose better on solid foods - your calories on liquids may be actally very high.

Thank you everyone for your answers! Hummingbird, that is an amazing post thanks for sharing. Like i said, i'm all new to this and just figuring out the learning curve and information is KING in my world... Thanks everyone for taking the time to share. :thumbup: