Hello,

I had my banding done on July 3rd. By July 7th, I developed an appetite and couldnt live on just liquids so I took a chance and ate a yogurt and clam chowder Soup. Everything went down great, I dont feel a restriction. On day 5, I ate a bowl of fruit loops with milk and survived. Later that day, I went to Target and accidentally swallowed my gum and was freaked out thinking I was going to puke while shopping but everything is fine. I don't seem to have problems eating, Im tempted to try a slice of pizza but am a bit scared. Should one be restricted immediately after the surgery or not until the first fill? Anyone else out there that has been able to eat without problems? Has anyone tried to eat and ended up with problems? I'd like to know what other people have experienced.

Thanks

D.

At this point, I don't think it's about restriction. The liquid diet isn't for weight loss. It is so you can heal properly. I could be wrong about this, but scar tissue (I think) is supposed to form around the band during this stage and is supposed to help prevent slippage in the future. If your band slips, that means surgery to remove or repair. Please don't take the chance. You have come this far. Don't eat any more solids. Please! Go back to liquids!!! Good luck and keep us posted!

I just ate 1/2 slice of pizza, I wish I would have read your post before I did. Thanks for the info. I didn't realize that eating too soon could interfere with the healing process. I guess the best thing to do is to go back to liquids, I don't have much longer to go!!! Thanks for the advice, I think for once in my life I'll take it.

If you have to eat something that bad then make it a mushie. Just make some scrambled eggs

Hello Chris,

Im not too crazy about eggs, any other mushie you can recommend?

call your doctor and talk with them. You really really really should NOT be eating this soon out. If you are going to do it anyways, at least call your doctor, maybe they can explain the reason and scare you enough into NOT eating again until you are suppose to. It is only a short time out of your life. YOU CAN DO IT!!! Just be strong and keep thinking of how skinny you will be this time next year!!!

Don't risk hurting yourself by giving in. I know it's easy to do but you've come this far and you can do this. Go back on liquids and try to find some liquids that sit well with you. When you progress to mushies, you'll feel a little more satisfied. Remember though, that until your first fill you probably won't have any restriction. It's all about healing right now and some willpower. Once you get restriction it gets easier.

Once you get on food though, you have to examine your food choices. pizza and fruit loops aren't great ones.

Good luck. You'll get through this phase of "Bandster Hell" and be on your way to healthy soon. Keep us updated.

Hello Wagnerd,

I understand how you feel, I had my surgery 07/02/07, and by Friday 07/06/07 I felt the same way, my doctor told me I could go ahead and progress to thicker liquids so now I am eating Jello pudding and creamy Soups made extra liquidy. I also feel as if I could eat a hamburger but you really must stick to the diet in order for your body to heal. But feel assured that there is someone else out here going through the same temptation, I just can't wait for my first fill!!!

Good luck to you!

try to at least stick with thicker liquids or like drinkable yogurt , extra liquified mashed potatoes... baby food..(the banana ones the best) i even sometimes do this now when i dont feel so good. Hang in there, you wanna become best friends with your band in order to do so you have to be really nice to it in the beginning

WARNING, this is very LONG, but if you are cheating and eating when you shouldn't be, it's also very IMPORTANT.

Oh for goodness sakes, people!!!!! There is a REASON that you are told not to eat, it isn't to make you miserable. I will explain why below. Some docs are advancing their patients faster, but those numbers are VERY few. I don't think the data is there yet saying it's okay to eat more solid food so soon post-op, maybe there is, but I haven't seen it yet so I will do what my doc says and that is what makes sense.

Here's my tough love speech:

I remind myself of this everyday. It is NOT easy to stick with this diet, especially when so many other seem to be moving faster through the food stages than I am. But I do remind myself that moving slowly MAKES SENSE and my surgeon's group has had NO SLIPS (other than one that was totally the bandster's fault-eating things he really shouldn't a few days out). Ready?

I am a person who wants data to back up most things a health care provider is doing to/for me. The Allergan website (the folks who MAKE the LapBand) says this about food stages:

Post-Surgery Nutrition

After surgery, you will need a new nutrition plan. Your surgeon

and/or dietitian can help you learn about and get used to the changes in lifestyle and eating habits you need to make. It is very important to follow the eating and drinking instructions beginning immediately after the operation.

In the first few weeks after your surgery, you will be on a liquid diet since only thin liquids will be tolerated by your stomach at that time. As you heal, you will gradually progress to pureed foods (three to four weeks post-op) and then soft foods (five weeks post-op). Finally, you will be able to eat solid foods.

Granted perhaps there is new research that says prolonged periods on liquid diets are not necessary and the Allergan site just hasn't been updated yet. I would wonder what a surgeon who advances quickly's complication rate is and more specifically what their SLIP rates are? Are they advancing people faster because of the AP band and the selling point that it's less likely to slip because of it's width? Is there a study they can show you to support the shorter move to soft foods? Has surgical technique changed and is there a way now to access the back of the stomach (not previously accessed because of it's proximity to the spinal nerves) and suture the band (I haven't heard of it)?

The reason for the liquid diet is because the band gets "seated" on the stomach and held in place by scar tissue that forms during the weeks we are taking in liquids. The stomach is a muscle, and that muscle has to churn and undulate to digest and move food through. Liquid requires little stomach movement to process. When we start to chew something, that lets our digestive system know that food is coming down, fluids begin to be secreted to aid in digestion and the stomach starts moving in preparation to start the breakdown of food. The band is held in place on the front of the stomach by sutures in the stomach where it is pulled up and over the top of the band, then sutured to itself. There is nothing holding the back in place, the surgeon tunnels behind the stomach to pull the band around and then scar tissue forms to hold it. That scar tissue can't form properly or as well if the stomach is churning and moving to digest. Kind of like pulling a paper cut on a knuckle apart every time you bend your finger, it takes forever to heal.

At least that's what the band folks have said for years that is how it all happens. Perhaps someone somewhere has done a new study and what we've always believed is actually not right. It's possible, but not likely.

Do you see now why I'm hesitant to eat early?

Of course, if someone can show me concrete good data (not just a study with a sample of a few patients) that the longer liquid stage is not necessary, then I'll be happy to change my thought process.

I look at it this way, if I were pregnant and my doc told me I had to be on liquids to keep my baby healthy, I cannot imagine being desperate enough to put my unborn child's health at risk. I'd be on that liquid diet PAST the date the doc told me to just to be on the safe side, wouldn't you? Why won't we protect OUR OWN health with just as much vigor?

Why do we risk our own health when we know that being in liquids is for a finite period of time (two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, whatever)?

Why on earth are we "cheating" and risking our bands? Just because something goes down okay doesn't mean it isn't setting us up for damage later. Damage we do now freshly banded may not show up until a year or two down the line. Maybe we have a bad episode of vomiting and because we just couldn't wait to chew, we didn't get good adhesion of scar tissue early on, it may slip.

Really think about it, folks. If it were to protect an unborn life, we'd do anything. This band is the key to our new lives.

I truly hope that no one thinks I am speaking down to them or judging them because they have slipped up. I certainly am not! I am trying to point out the reasons why it is so important to try to get back on that horse and toe the line as long as possible.

I would never dare to say that merely being banded would end years of food issues. Lord knows if I could make it to 371, I have had some food issues, and continue to have them.

I am posting my tough love because it is (as I said) something I have to say to myself every day, if not more often than that. I am by no means perfect. If we screw up, we screw up...Hopefully no harm done. Take the time to evaluate what happened and get back on the path you should be on. My concern is not so much for those who make a mistake once or twice, my concern is that there are so many out there who say, "Oh, it's okay, it went down fine so I guess I can do it." Or those who look at what other's diets are and advance theirs faster than their surgeon or nutritionist reccommended.

But of note, the granddaddy of the band in the Western Hemisphere supports three weeks of liquids before moving to solids. My belief is that chewed really well most solids could be considered mushy so I totally understand the jump over mushy to solid.

I post this because I truly do not believe that everyone got a good education about WHY they should be sticking to whatever liquid stage their surgeon or nutritionist wants them to. So often physicians have a tendency to say not to do something, but never explain the how and the why behind it. If you can give me a good reason for something, I'm much more likely to accept it. It somehow makes a tough thing a little more doable if I know that reason for it is important.

I am not comparing being banded to being pregnant in any way. However, I am pointing out that we would all do the very best we can for a child, yet we tend to be lax when it comes to our own health. Perhaps we should have lots of counseling before we have a bariatric surgical procedure. I know that it is impossible to just say STOP and then do it. If we could say STOP to ourselves, we wouldn't have been fat. But the band requires so much from us, I think (or at least I hope) that we were all fully informed about the changes we were going to have to make after banding. It isn't easy. I knew it was going to be damned hard so when I got closer to being banded I started to practice behaviors that I read about here and other places. I started eating Proteins first, I got baby utensils to eat small bites, I stopped drinking with my meals, I tried to get used to chewing, chewing, chewing (the hardest for me to do). I obviously could not have handled decreasing my intake amounts pre-band, but I did the best I could. I researched, researched, researched. Am I tooting my own horn? Am I the poster child for bandsters? NO! I am pointing out that I got to that "place," I came to that magical moment where I just couldn't take it anymore. I decided (as we all did) to have SURGERY to lose weight. What a crushing blow, to admit that I just couldn't do it alone. Well, I could probably lose some, but I knew it wouldn't stay off. I needed this tool, so I learned as much about it as I could, I learned why we do things. I think if you are going to go so far as to have surgery, you should take some accountability and not say, well, I couldn't do it before, so the band will just stop me. How many threads have we all read where someone thinks it's okay to be so tight they PB on just about everything because that's how they are losing weight? That is NOT good. That's not protecting the band, or ourselves. I am only trying to catch us (and myself) and support us being as healthy and proactive in this journey as we possibly can be. I want every single Bandster to be successful and healthy in their weight loss as they can.

Ditto EVERYTHING Faithmd said!!!!!!!

This is the kind of post that makes me glad i was on this forum way before i got my surgery done. I read threads on this forum for countless hours, so i saw all this stuff and i knew i couldnt break, and WHY i couldnt break (from not following the diet). I would have added my 2 cents on the original post but all i can say is READ WHAT FAITHMD WROTE!!!

I ate solids after day 16 but I totally regretted it we paid a bunch of money for this surgery and if the drs say dont eat for 21 days just do it

I went back on lequids from day 17 to 21 I was so paranoid that I had messed something up, I had no propblems on what I did eat but the worry that I might have messed this thing up WAS NOT WORTH IT! STAY ON LIQUIDS FOR 21 DAYS

**faithmd, Thank You So Much For The Post Im Not Banded Yet. But I Will Follow All The Stages.

Wow...Thanks Faith!

Faith is absolutely right, an informed patient is a compliant patient. The guidelines weren't established to jerk us around.

I also refer to the band as my tool to aid in weight loss. One day my husband saw me eyeing up a scrambled egg!

He said "You better let that concrete set before you use that tool!"

Sometimes he's smart!

Good luck Wagnerd!