Hey, Banders!

It’s seems as though summer just ended, but we’re halfway through autumn already! The leaves are changing and falling off the trees in many parts of the country and world! Many of us are getting in the mood for the holidays. So, throw or give away your leftover Halloween candy, and start planning to stay with your weight loss this holiday season! LapBandTalk.com is a welcoming place to hang out with your weight loss surgery friends. Come spend some time with us after you read this newsletter! This is what is in the newsletter this week.

• We’ve published our first book – The Big Book on the Lap Band: Everything You Need to Know to Lose Weight and Live Well with the Adjustable Gastric Band

• Member Spotlight: Meet YngGram!

• Bander Challenge: Form a Better Habit!

• Weighing Yourself: A Short Guide to Using the scale to Your Advantage

This newsletter is full of updates and information, so keep reading and then head on over to the forums! We hope you like the newsletter, and please keep in touch! We always love to hear from you about the newsletter or anything else related to the boards. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Alex Brecher

Founder

LapBandTalk.com

The Big Book on the Lap Band: Everything You Need to Know to Lose Weight and Live Well with the Adjustable Gastric Band

This is exciting! It’s taken months of research, interviews, writing, editing and organization – and now our first book is out! It’s “The Big Book on the Lap Band: Everything You Need to Know to Lose Weight and Live Well with the Adjustable Gastric Band.” The title says it all, and the book is a guide from the beginning of the journey through life with the band. These are just a few topics that are covered in the book.

• How obesity can harm you and millions of others.

• Why it’s so tough to lose weight without surgery.

• The lap-band: what it is, how it works and the surgical procedure.

• Looking at the risks and benefits to decide whether the Lap-Band is for you.

• Choosing a surgeon and preparing for surgery.

• Your post-op aftercare program.

• Your post-surgery recovery diet progression from liquids to solid foods.

• The lap-band diet: healthy eating and weight control for life.

• Starting and continuing an exercise program.

• Life changes to expect after the lap-band surgery.

• Using LapBandTalk.com and other resources for support and information.

How can you get your hands on a copy of the book? All the information you need to know is available here! Check it out and spread the word!

Several of our LapBandTalk.com members are featured in this book. Thanks to everyone who helped out – we couldn’t have done it without you! If you didn’t get involved this time around but you might like to be featured in another book, contact Alex Brecher via LapBandTalk.com’s private messaging system. We’d love to hear from you!

Member Spotlight: Meet YngGram!

This newsletter’s spotlight is on YngGram from Virginia. We all tend to think about losing weight for heart health and to get more energy. Well, YngGram’s story is particularly touching – she’s a breast cancer survivor who decided she needed to lose weight when she learned that obesity could have caused her cancer. She got banded in 2009 and is now only 15 pounds short of her goal weight. That’ll put her under a BMI of 30!

YngGram feels better about herself and her life. She enjoys shopping now, and doesn’t have joint pain holding her back. She can breathe more easily, too, which definitely lets this mom of three enjoy her two grandchildren more, too. One of her best moments came when she realized that she finally felt restriction after her most recent fill. Another great moment was explaining to her gynecologist about how much weight she’d lost!

One of YngGram’s biggest challenges is her lifestyle. As you can see from her profile, she is a Pool Diva! She plays league pool four nights a week, from 5 p.m. to midnight. She’s not allowed to bring food into the bars, so she has special challenges sticking to her diet. Even though she still has weight loss challenges, YngGram has learned some important lessons. One is that she wasn’t sticking to her diet as closely as she thought – so make sure you read your instructions carefully! Another is that it’s important to get enough to drink every single day, even though it can be tough.

YngGram is on LapBandTalk.com almost daily. The boards help her remember that the lap-band lifestyle “doesn’t just happen.” She needs to take responsibility every day for making the right choices. LapBandTalk.com is even more important to her because she doesn’t have any lap-band group meetings to attend in her area.

YngGram is an inspiration to breast cancer survivors and lap-band patients everywhere. Thanks for sharing your story with us and being in our member spotlight!

If you know anyone whom you want to see featured in our member spotlight, please let us know in the Member Spotlight forum. Feel free to nominate yourself – we can all learn from each other’s stories and tips. If you’re shy, just PM Alex Brecher to let us know that you want to be featured. Thanks!

Bander Challenge: Form a Better Habit!

Each newsletter includes a member challenge. It’s a challenge for yourself, and not a competitive contest. Our newsletter challenges provide encouragement to something new and unusual. Attempting these challenges gives you confidence in your own abilities and lets you know that you’re capable of doing way more than you thought you could do. Plus, when you share your experiences in the Challenge Forum, you can inspire others to try your ideas!

This month, we’re challenging you to form a good habit. It can be something that you have never done before, or it can be something that you used to do and then stopped doing. If you’re a few weeks or more out from your surgery date, your new habit might be refocusing on a good habit that you used to do but then stopped doing as you got further out from surgery. You can even complete this challenge by quitting a bad habit, possibly replacing it with a healthy action instead. Here are a few examples of ways to try this challenge.

• Eat your Protein first at each meal.

• Get back in the habit of measuring your portions instead of estimating.

• Drink a glass of Water each morning two hours after you eat Breakfast.

• Taking your dietary supplements at the same time(s) each day so you don’t forget.

How did you complete the challenge? Let us know in the Bander Challenge forum! We’d love to hear any updates on any previous Newsletter Challenges. You can find them in the archived Newsletter Forum. It’s never too late to try a Newsletter Challenge!

Weighing Yourself: A Short Guide to Using the Scale to Your Advantage!

Weight loss surgery is clearly about…the weight. You want to lose large amounts of excess weight relatively quickly. The scale is an integral part of your weight loss journey because it lets you track your progress, but it can also add frustration to your journey if you don’t use it right. Sometimes the numbers don’t seem right – you think you’re doing everything right but the number on the scale doesn’t go down; or you know you cheated on your diet but the scale actually shows a loss.

You can’t control the numbers completely, but you can take some steps to make the scale as useful as possible for your weight loss journey.

• Weigh yourself at the same time every day. Most people choose the morning, before they’ve eaten anything.

• Weigh yourself in your underwear or without clothes so that your clothing doesn’t affect your weight.

• Only count your weigh-ins once per week. Identify a certain day of the week as your weigh-in day, and only consider that day’s weight number as you think about your weekly weight loss. Due to natural daily fluctuations, you can’t possibly lose weight every day. You’re more likely to see consistent decreases in weight if you only formally track weekly weigh-ins instead of daily ones.

• Have other markers of progress in your weight loss journey so that you’re not disappointed if the scale doesn’t show what you want. You can point to a perfect week of food records or smaller body measurements as signs of progress even when you don’t hit a weekly weight loss goal.

The scale should be your friend on this journey. It’s a source of positive feedback for healthy eating and other good choices, and it can be a gentle reminder to get back on track if you slip up. These simple tips can help you get the most out of the scale. Do you have any others? Let us know in the Newsletter Forum!

Tip for the Forums: Finding a Niche!

The forums can be daunting if you’re a newbie, or even if you’ve been around for a while. We suggest starting by introducing yourself if you haven’t already. Then, check out the forums that are most useful to you – if you’re pre-surgery or post-op, you might like the pre-surgery Q&A forums or post-surgery ones. Everyone can benefit from knowing more about the post-op diet, and that’s a popular board for our member! Don’t forget the special group forums if you want to hang out with slightly smaller groups of members with common interests. Don’t be shy! If you’re not sure where to go, just post your question anywhere. Someone is sure to direct you to the best place.

That’s about it for this week’s newsletter. We hope you enjoyed reading it and are ready to come discuss it and everything else on the boards! You can always check out the archived newsletters at the Newsletter Forum, too. Thanks for being part of our community!

Until next time, take care of yourself and each other,

Alex.

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Great newsletter Alex! Thanks.

Always enjoy your newsletters! You always include a lot if useful info.

Thanks Alex!

great news letter....thank you