So I know I am going to hear all types of bad things about this post, however I thought I would start this so people understood what it is to cheat on your band. I haven't posted here much as i haven't had many problem with my band. Plus it is taking a lot of adjustments to get me to the right level. I have lost 40 lbs since March so that is good in my books.. However i am one of the "lucky" / "Unlucky" ones that can pretty much each anything or even drink anything with my band but not have a problem. THere is two problems, 1. Soft breads and 2. Dry meats, but that is it.

However during my journey I have found I have been cheating and didn't really think i was , until i look back and say yup i was. You can take this post either two ways, 1 you can take it on HOW to cheat or 2, take it and look at it like oh i am doing that and it is costing me calories.

1st thing, sodas, OHHHH i love my soda, I have a problem that i can actually drink normal leaded coke without any problems at all. However, when i thought i couldn't i found that i would order slushies or coke icee's this would get rid of all the fizz and guess what leave all the sugerrry goodness. This was bad bad bad. I still do it just not as much. yes i know it I am not loosing weight because of it, I understand.

2. Dry items i found that if i put gravey or coat it with some type of sauce. Guess what that is just calories galore, gravey's and sauces are either sugar or fat.

3. Bread, toasting it helps, but not by much, i can't get around this one at all.

4. What i have found with the band, which i don't like, i feel the band will stop the good foods but all the bad foods are what i call slip and slide. Things like KFC bang right through, candy, chocolate , cheesecakes, key lime pies etc all right through without a problem. I don't like this about the band because i use to not be a big sweet eater, now i crave them.

I have found that food should not sit on top of the band for a long time, this is a common misconception, that you have a pouch. You really don't what triggers is the feeling of full which occurs when the top of the stomach is stretched. I have found that i can even eat or drink and feel full even though the pouch is empty. It just doesn't last very long. This is because the item that stretched it only did it a little. Now if i eat a piece of filet i can eat two bites and start filling full. The key is to wait wait wait. I am still a very fast eater and i get stuck occasionally. I have started to slow down. Like i said I am not perfect at all, and people can use this post for either good or bad, that is up to you. But please post what else you find that you can cheat with, it might help people who go OHHH i didnt' think about that.

Thanks

I don't think cheating is the real term, you are risking your health, exposing yourself to another surgery if something goes wrong with your band. I decide to do the band because I love myself and I want the best for me. I was tired of hurting my body with food, hurting my family as my life expectation were getting shorter and shorter, I was tired of being discriminated for being overweight and I put a stop on that. As I start this journey, I don't want to know how to cheat, how to love myself less! I don't want a diet soda or a pizza to define me as a person, I want to live to the fullest, I want to see my daughter grow healthy and I want to grow old with my handsome husband... So there is no space in my schedule for cheating!

It seems to me a lot of people either weren't #1-properly educated pre and post-op, or #2-slept through all of those classes. When I hear that someone pureed pizza & thought that it was okay, I wonder.......wasn't that outlined in the education classes? When I hear of people drinking carbonated drinks because their band hasn't acted up, I scratch my head & think......don't they know that the issue is potential band erosion? Did the education classes not cover how to read food labels? When I hear some of these things, I just wonder what the mindset was was when they moved forward with this surgery.

Please understand that I'm not passing judgement on anyone here. I've made my own mistakes. I never tried to "cheat the band", but I've maybe eaten a little bit more than I should have, or chose something that wasn't the healthiest choice. One night at a concert, I drank with reckless abandon. At the time I felt fine. The next morning, the calories were the least of my problem. The fact that I threw up was the HUGE issue. Lesson learned... I rarely, if ever, throw up from drinking. But clearly, my body no longer processes alcohol the way it did pre-band. Was I trying to cheat the band? No, I was not.

I think, possibly, the thread header "How to Cheat On Your Band" maybe isn't exactly what you meant? If it was, then no, I do not understand why anyone would "intentionally" push the envelope straight into the danger zone.

This is one of those posts that can head south real quick. But I'm going to put my own spin on it.

I don't cheat my band to cheat it. However, I bend rules to actually achieve nutrition. For instance, I too have issues w/ dry meats so I almost always eat certain meats with a sauce to moisten it and allow it to pass more easily. Technically, sauces are calories, sliders etc. But depriving myself of essential Proteins is my concern, not the added 15 calories of sauce.

Also, when you are at goal weight and are maintaining, you eat a crap load of things you didn't in diet mode. Just today I had a strawberry shake. Now, If I ate this because it was an easy slider, or if I am counting that as a meal xxxxxxxxxxx wrong. However, some foods I wouldn't touch prior to goal are now more permissable in small amounts and intermittently.

Noone needs to be self righteous here. We all have foods (even healthy ones) we struggle with and want to find ways to incorporate them into our diets. My only advice is to not have too long a list, introduce these foods nor methods too soon after being banded, and compensating calorie wise when you are knowingly cheating.

Life, banded or not, will always be about moderation. Stick to your rules, give yourself permission to live and enjoy life, but don't make either excuses. If it doesnt work for you (ie gaining weight) it's time to nix it.

Things I dont condone the most is overeating, eating knowing you will be pb (ie bulemia) etc. That's something you'll never hear me endorse

hazelbliss, I agree, and I think that was kind of the point. We can eat and make things palatable, but if we do, aren't we really cheating the band. But if that is the only way to get our proper Protein,is it really cheating?

**crickets**

I hate throwing labels around & name-calling, but only a !@"*^$&¡ MORON would think pureeing a pizza is a good idea.

I'm trying to be understanding here, but how can someone "cheat" and not "know" it???? Not only is that one of the reasons why we meet with a nutritionist pre-band..... But it's common sense, guys!! I mean.... COME ON!!

Lol puréed pizza!! When I was younger I was a cook for a rehabilitation center/nursing home. We would purée just about anything (chicken, beef, hot dogs) but pizza?? It must not look very appetizing lol!!

BARFFFFFFFF!

When I have eaten something that cause me a problem, my husband teases me about putting a steak or something in the blender :ph34r: ! Gross!

Took me a bit to decide whether or not I wanted to reply to this thread. Sounds to me like a stereotypical binge eater who expected miracles from the band. Sure you can cheat and eat around it but why would you want to? Sounds like your addiction has some serious control of you and perhaps you should seek out a binge eaters support group or counselor. Band is not going to control your food choices. That is all head stuff. Even a Bypass patient could stroll into McDonalds and order an 800 calorie shake and suck it down. They might have after affects such as dumping but the point is any form of WLS is "cheatable" if one so desires.

Deprivation is a diet and in my experience it is not a long term solution and I have been there and done that BUT on the flip side I know I need to make good choices to be successful. My band will help me if I do the right things. There is certainly nothing wrong with having the stuff you enjoy but it's all about moderation and learning to say "OK, I have had enough for now", "I can have more later"

I am sorry you are having these issues your having but again you can eat around any form of WLS and until you address the addiction and the internal conflict your going to chug along until you either get with the program or you give in to your addiction.

If any part of this post sounded harsh I apologize as it is not meant to be. Food addiction is such a serious thing and at nearly 500 pounds I refused to concede I suffered from it.

I wish you all the best

My Wife has a friend who had bypass surgery and 4 days post op he was talking about blending Crab Rangoon to fulfill his Chinese cravings. Food addiction is very real and always in our faces as we need to eat to live.

hazelbliss, I agree, and I think that was kind of the point. We can eat and make things palatable, but if we do, aren't we really cheating the band. But if that is the only way to get our proper Protein,is it really cheating?

Hi

Well here's an interesting thought. Speaking of cheating the band...sometimes don't you think the band cheats us? (smirk). So in my post I spoke to 'tricks' I use when I need to consume healthy foods like chicken. I simply add tomato sauce for instance. Nowhere in bandland rules does it say you can't add flavor, you can't have foods that could be labeled sliders on occassion etc. But it does say, get your protein in. So on those terrible days when the band is just naturally tight I get creative. Again, like chicken with tomato sauce to help moisten it instead of risking getting stuck.

There's a huge difference between cheating the band to get all your fav foods in, and than cheating the nature of the band when it prevents healthy eating. I also believe, any extremist who thinks they are going to maintaing a 100% pure diet for 10, 20, 40+ years is unrealistic. In the beginning we run high on idealism. It makes zero sense why you would go thorugh this operation simply to sabotage yourself. However, years into the band you recognize that moderation is the actual answer and can be accomodated in your normal diet. ie a handful of m&m's.

Again, we are talking food choices. Not other habits like overating 2+ cups of food, drinking your meals (ie milkshakes and cookies) etc. I just want to make that clarification because "cheating" can be implied in different ways

I agree with Hazel and Jim.

I think our poster was trying to say that they have "cheated" the band themselves what have you and more then likely because of food addiction did not clearly notice that they were "cheating" themselves or eating around their band.

In another post today, I explained that I'm a Sweetie! I love all those yummy sweet things. Would I throw them in the blender to have them...no (the visual makes me sick...and cures of of the want to eat it! so that's a good thing!)

When I am in the middle of an emotional turmoil (today would be a good example!) I can eat things and not even pay attention to them. I'm hungry I eat. If the food item makes me "feel" better for the moment even better.

I don't want to cheat my band or myself, that's not why I had surgery or why I am here. Yet it happens sometimes, and because I know it and I am aware of it I can make a change and make a different choice next time before I start mindlessly eating.

I think our original poster was just trying to bring that out to the light, and ask others to share what food items trigger that mindless eating for them, that in affect "cheats" themselves by eating around their band.

um, why purposely cheat...?? then why have the band??

to be successful, you too have to change. sure, there are times when you have to make the most healthiest choice out of bad choices, when you have no control.

yes, it may work today, or tomorrow. but with doing so, you might wind up being those who are unsuccessful. do you really want that? i know i don''t. in fact, i'm getting a new high off of everyone telling me how great i look. the more i hear it, the better i feel!!

ARGG thank you Lisacaron, you understand where I was going. I have not had problems with my band, i am ontrack with my weight loss etc. I don't know where people got that I have had problems etc.

What i am trying to get out of people instead of a constant lecture of not cheating the band was a list of what did you work out that you were doing, that could be construed to cheating the band. For example again. I found that i can drink Icee's, not intentionally it was by accident, because I wasn't thinking about the band when i ordered it. I was out having a good time and doing what i use to do. I found that I can drink icee's which is not a good thing for me because they are a habit that i have, typically when i goto the cinema. But after i relized this I have been able to make the correct decisions. But here is the point, what if I didn't work that out immediately and continued down teh path of a weekly icee or frozen coke, which in turn was causing me not to loose weight.

For example the woman that was pureeing her foods, this come up as an example during my nutriention class.

Another example, orange juice or any type of juice is incredibly high in calories.

Shazem, there is no point in intentionally cheating your band the point is, you could be doing it without even knowing that you are.

I think patient education is just as important as the actual procedure of having the band placed. We were given 'rules' to go by and were told if you don't go by the rules you won't be successful. (The top rule being no drinking your calories.) It's easy to cheat but my thinking is why would you want to? Why would you go to such drastic measures as having wls just to abuse it? I totally see the point of your post but I knew this before I even had the surgery. Unfortunately this isn't always the case. I would just encourage people who are looking into wls to research surgeons and find one that offers a lot of education and support.