BrowneyedBandit,

Learning to track everything we eat and do is hard. Our past behaviors do not always go well with be accountable to all we do and eat. Tracking your food now and after surgery will need to become part of your change to a healthy life and progress in weight loss. Even after banding it is still easy at times for us to not always judge correctly. Most people on a diet underestimate the portion size by about 30% that is why measuring and weighing of portions can be very important in the beginning and during plateaus. There are several apps for droids, iphones and blackberry's to help you track your calories and exercise, myfitnesspal, spark people are two that I know right off had. They both have an endless food library and it only takes a few seconds to input your info, you can run reports and show them to your nutritionist or physican. It you enter the food as you eat it you are more likely to be compliant. Developing some patterns of good habits will help you post surgical because believe me the surgery does not fix everything. If we are all honest we have all went through a great deal of emotional loss in the early weeks and months after surgery. The long term success of WLS is; tracking your food, your exercise, drinking your water and keeping your follow up appointments with your MD. Good luck and I hope you get your approval soon.