Here's what I'm having issues with...

Golden rules say 3 meals a day, no Snacks, no calorie drinks. Each meal you may get down 1/2 cup of food bc of the size of your average pouch tummy.

The next rule conflicts with the others.....

You need approx 1200 calories per day. So on average you need to fit 400 calories into 1/2 cup. You would have to be eating some pretty high calories foods to fit in that many calories. 1/2 cup of pure sugar has only 385 calories, so even if you ate only pure sugar you wouldn't have enough calories. What can you fit into 1/2 cup that is healthy and will get you enough calories?

Maybe I'm missing something big time. I know that I am miscalculating somewhere or I don't know enough. When I follow the rules I may get down 700 calories. Waaaay to little. Help! What am I doing wrong?? Thank you!!

Karen, they sound like real jerks. I agree w/Sarah, you really do have your head on straight, despite the jerks. Your weight loss is great!

Oh you're body adjusts all right. It just slows down. Pretty soon you'd be struggling to lose on 600 calories. You also cant possibly get adequate nutrition from that little food.

Listen to your own body. If you're making good food choices, not overeating or cheating food past your band and you're losing at a reasonable rate, I wouldnt listen to her.

This is my understanding on how it works.

Your metabolism is based on how much energy you burn, how much energy you burn is based on how much muscle you have. Your muscle is Protein, so to prevent your body from going after your muscle for energy/vitamins, thats why the protein shakes/60+g of protein a day is soooo important. My surgeon has told me it more important to make sure i get that 60g of protein and take my multi Vitamin, then it is to get 1200 calories. So basically she rather see me get 60g of protien and only get in maybe 900 calories vs eating high calorie food with little protein.

Okay so I had an appointment with the nutritionist at my surgeon's office today and I told her I was eating around 1200 cals a day. I expected a pat on the head and a "good job" but instead I got a shocked look and an "OH NO you are eating WAY too much". I'm supposed to only be eating 800 cals.

No doubt in my mind you know more than she does. In a perfect world only fat people would have credibility in these things, cuz anyone who has dieted as much as most of us have has learned a FEW things along the way. A skinny person who thinks they know about dieting is like a deaf person who reads a musical and thinks they can carry a tune.

(Or something like that...)

But what I wanted to say... a strange observation I have had over the years is that if I stay on 800 cals for any length of time my metab just shuts down. To lose consistently I NEED an avg of 1200 cals a day--AND EXERCISE. I eat 12-1400 cals, RUN on the elliptical 20 minutes every morning and walk 40 minutes EVERY night & I'm consistently losing 2-3 pounds a week. I already know after I've lost another 10 I'm going to need to increase my workout time or intensity. On 800 cals I absolutely would not have the energy to exercise this much.

Ms. Moon--I say bend over and give your nutritionist the BIG MOON!!

The trouble with extreme dieting on less than 1200 or so a day is that your body WILL start to burn its own muscle as well, regardless of what you are putting in your mouth. As you're muscle disappears, so does your metabolism.

Your body will deplete its glycogen stores very quickly and at 800 cal a day you're not replacing them. The whole point of dieting of course is to burn the fat from your body for energy and you're body does do this, but it also inevitably burns muscle. The more extreme your diet the more Protein you'll lose from your body.

Atkins' claims (and other similar high protein low carb diets) have never been proven and have very little scientific basis to them. Slow and steady has always been the way to go with dieting precisely because you preserve your muscle tissue to a greater degree and are therefore less likely to have that huge rebound weight gain which happens because all of a sudden you start putting calories into a body that may be lighter but is less optimally proportioned than it was before. Fatter bodies burn fewer calories than leaner more muscular ones.

Now this may not be a problem if you have a band in place for life since hopefully you will keep the new eating habits - apart from the fact that its possible to be very light but incredibly flabby at the same time due to little muscle. But if you ever took the band off you'd be almost sure to have an enormous weight gain. You're body would not be able to handle the level of calories a normal person would eat in a day.

Your body will deplete its glycogen stores very quickly and at 800 cal a day you're not replacing them. The whole point of dieting of course is to burn the fat from your body for energy and you're body does do this, but it also inevitably burns muscle. The more extreme your diet the more Protein you'll lose from your body.

Thats why your Protein shakes (especially whey protein which has all the essensial amino acids) are so important as well as exercise to build up your muscles. I have one friend who has 120g of protein a day because she is RNY.

All i know is i'm going to make sure i get atleast 60g of protein a day even if that means i have to have 1 or 2 protein shakes a day for the rest of my life.

I would think though that it would be incredibly important to keep up muscle building exercise as well, like weights or something. That would give you optimum results. It may put a few extra kgs on the scales over time but you will be less fat.

THEN she asked how much I'm losing. I said I lost 20 lbs the first month, plateaued for two weeks and in the past week I've lost 5lbs. She told me I'm not losing fast enough. I reminded her again that I'm a band patient and not a RNY. (again, I'd rather hoped that 25lbs in just under two months would earn me a "good job!")

Isn't the normal expectancy of weight loss is 1 - 2 lbs a week, even for lapband? If thats true, than you are WAY above normal.

Here's a cyber pat *PAT PAT* because you've done a good job. Keep it up.

Hugs

I think 1000-1200 is good but i have to start the first three weeks at 30 grams Protein and 550 cal. full liquid diet then 800 and 60 grams protein for 3 weeks then a little more. my mother in law is afraid that i will starve to death the first 3 weeks. of course she is 110 lbs dripping wet and never dieted a day in her life so how the hell would she know. she is telling everyone she is sooooo worried about me ....PLEASE....she is sure this isnt safe.....WHATEVER

Can anyone help me with this ticker thingy........aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhh

never mind i think i fixed the ticker

That's why my surgeon, her nutritionist (and all the research I've done) say buggers to that idea.

Most bandsters should be getting in 1200-1500 cal/day. Larger patients might even start higher. The goal is to lose 1-2 lbs a week on average.

I started at at 394 lbs. For me to lose at the proper rate, I started around 1800-2000 cal/day. There is no point dropping lower before you have to...you have to have room to drop. If you start in the 1000-1200 range (or lower) right off the bat, where are ya gonna drop to when loss stops? (and it will stop as the metabolism adjusts)

Banding is about sensible weight loss. Ultra-low-cal is not sensible. Rapid loss isn't sensible. Both will nuke your metabolism and make it harder to maintain long-term.

When you're eating sensibly, you don't need to be as tight to feel full on those sensible amounts.

To feel full on 1/2 cup meals (which is cr*p, sorry but it is...poll done on the huge Bandsters list on yahoogroups a year or so ago showed that veteran bandsters doing well were averaging 1 to 1 1/2 cups per meal, plus planned snacks), you have to have a LOT MORE restriction...that in turn puts you at higher risk for reflux, slippage and/or erosion. My observation over the past 3-4 years on the boards is that US surgeons are being, in general, much more aggressive (because they're trying to hurry up loss), and thus we're seeing a higher slippage and erosion rate than worldwide stats indicate.

So, find the highest daily calories that allows you to lose 1-2 lbs/week on average over time, maintain the LEAST amount of fill that allows you to do it comfortably, get over the idea that the band is there to stop you from eating, but embrace the idea that it's there to HELP you stop eating by giving you clearer hunger/satiety signals, and use common sense when it comes to healthy eating for a lifetime.

Nancy

Dr. Kurian

394/265/180

Here's what I'm having issues with...

Golden rules say 3 meals a day, no Snacks, no calorie drinks. Each meal you may get down 1/2 cup of food bc of the size of your average pouch tummy.

The next rule conflicts with the others.....

You need approx 1200 calories per day. So on average you need to fit 400 calories into 1/2 cup. You would have to be eating some pretty high calories foods to fit in that many calories. 1/2 cup of pure sugar has only 385 calories, so even if you ate only pure sugar you wouldn't have enough calories. What can you fit into 1/2 cup that is healthy and will get you enough calories?

Maybe I'm missing something big time. I know that I am miscalculating somewhere or I don't know enough. When I follow the rules I may get down 700 calories. Waaaay to little. Help! What am I doing wrong?? Thank you!!

There are no "feelers" at the top of the stomach. Satiety is triggered by the vagus nerve which runs next to the stomach. Many morbidly obese people have physiological or psychological satiety disorders (physiological would be that the signals aren't being triggered properly at the physical level, psychological would be that the person has trained themselves over time to ignore real hunger/satiety signals and responds more to head hunger, etc.). The band, when the pouch fills, "kicks" that vagus nerve which sends a full signal to the brain and when well-kicked, that's what keeps hunger at bay for a few hours...the pouch doesnt' stay full of food for 3-4 hours (which is why it's ok to drink 45-60 min after a meal), but if the signal is good and strong, hunger doesn't come back for 3-4 hours.

Nancy

Dr. Kurian

394/265/180

I was told by my doctor that there are little "feelers" at the tops of our stomachs and that as an overweight person, it clearly took a lot more food to reach that point than a slim person would. Thus, with the band around a small pouch at the tops of our stomachs, any food there reaches our "feelers" sooner and then proceeds to send the messages to our brain that we are full.

Sounds good to me :cheeky

Please bear in mind that surgeons are really only concerned about 1 thing: the numbers on the scale.

If someone chronically undereats, their metabolisms will slow down in response to perceived famine. Also, unless that person is doing real weight training (not toning level, but building level weights), 25-30% of their weight loss will be lean tissue, which also contributes to a reduction in basal metabolism.

I managed to do something my surgeon didn't think was possible. She does RMR (resting metabolic rate) tests at her practic. Shortly after my surgery, my RMR was 1850 cal/day. That's just to be breathing, no activity whatsoever, and my starting weight was 394. She retested me when I was about 90 lbs down...now, mathematically, that RMR should have gone down...it goes down for the vast majority of people. However, I had adhered to a pretty strenuous weight-training regime. My RMR INCREASED to 2100 despite losing almost 100 lbs. At no point have I undereaten, and throughout I've been lifting weights.

I went into banding determined not to end up a 5'10" 180lb woman struggling to maintain on 1000 cal/day...not healthy for long term living.

Nancy

394/265/180

I was told in my surgeon's seminar just yesterday NOT to worry about calories in the beginning because your body is basically living off of the fat thats already stored. He said if your not hungry don't eat, just make sure your taking your Vitamins and drinking lots of Water because eventually a year from now (most likely sooner) your pouch will adapt to food/size and you will be eating the 1400 calories.

Nancy, I have never met you before but I think you are my new hero - your attitude rocks!!

Ms. Moon--I say bend over and give your nutritionist the BIG MOON!!

LOLOLOL!!! Wow, that's damn funny. Kare, THANK you for what you said. This is EXACTLY how I'm feeling. 1200 is fine esp. in light of the amount of exercise I do. I can't even imagine being able to lift my head much less my legs and arms if I was doing 800 cals. So yes, I'll figuratively "moon" them and I'll lose this weight in a way I know is healthy for this big ol' body of mine.

Here's a cyber pat *PAT PAT* because you've done a good job. Keep it up.

THANK YOU!!!! Okay, I don't know why I need that "validation", but I do. Kind of childish, but I guess after struggling for YEARS to even lose even a couple pounds, to have dropped 25 in two months to me was an AMAZING accomplishment. So thanks for the pat on the ol' noggin because that makes me happy!

My sis who ROCKS by the way and is a main support (and is lo carbing with me) said in her best snarky sisterly way "you said the nutritionist was tiny....she's probably never been overweight much less obese...so she probably doesn't even know what it's like to weigh that much and have to eat that little". And I thought that was a good point. A nutritionist works to "general" guidelines. So she can just say "eat 800 cals" without really understanding how mentally and physically upsetting that can be.

Thanks LBT friends! You are an amazing sanity check both in saying "yeah, you're right" AND giving tough love saying "um...might rethink that one".

Ya'll rock, that's all I'm saying.