Hi my name is Whitney. I am getting banded on July 27th (3 days from today). Although I am truly looking forward to my surgery, I believe my nerves are starting to kick in. I think my main concern is how I will physically feel. I am also a little concerned about what specific foods I should be eating following the surgery. I am meeting with my nutritionist on Tuesday and going over specifics pertaining to this. My surgeon provided me with a packet explaining post-op foods but it was very vague. Any suggestions or advice anyone might be able to give me would be great. Were there things you wished you would have thought of or remembered to have with you or do for your surgery? Thanks!

Hiya,

I have been post surgery for 4 years now. Post op you need to keep to liquids for at least 1 week, ideally 2, you will want to eat solids because you will miss the chewing action, but please do resist. Then after 2 weeks of liquid it's 2 weeks of slops really, mushy type foods, again please resist the urge to eat solids, then it is getting used to how fickle the band can be, I met a girl through her having her surgery on the same day as me in the same foreign hospital, we both paid privately for our surgery and e-mailed before we met on the morning of the op. Sounds silly but we gave names to our bands. She could eat things that my band just would not let down and the other way round.

Best to avoid processed white bread like the plague, it will just swell in your top stomach and then take forever to go through, if it indeed does and doesn't come back up. Steer clear of fibrous foods such as beef and dry chicken, again doubt it will go down. Just stick around for a while, make you feel uncomfortable until such a time you decide to bring it back up to stop that horrible feeling in the pouch.

You will be able to eat all the "naughty" foods with just as much ease as before, infact you will probably find these go down easier than anything else. This is because the fat helps everything to slide down. For example, I can eat lasagne no problem, but not Pasta in any other form, this is because of the fat in lasagne helps it go down.

I know i sound negative, but I would want people to learn from the mistakes i made. When I had my band, the surgery was only really done privately in the UK, some were done on the NHS but it was for extreme cases only and usually only funding available for 5 people per county. I never got the chance to ask people about my concerns and questions as things like this were not available.

Just remember it is by no means a quick fix, for at least 2 years i rebelled against my band and was like a kid trying to see how far I could push it, now I have been in counselling for 1 year and things are now beginning to fall into place. it is a 2 pronged attack, the band and counselling go hand in hand, the band will not change why you started over eating in the first place.

hope all goes well.