I'm at the end of my lap band journey... I have completed all 6 months of dr. visits, dietician, and done the psych eval.

The entire visit with the psychologist was, to me, a bunch of bullshit. We talked for about 40 minutes before the 700 question test, yes, 700 questions! and he basically just went over the same stuff the dietician went over. Exercise and crap like that. But, he told me something that really bugged me. He told me that for me to be this weight that I must consume 4500 calories a day. I told him that I didn't agree and that I know I didn't consume that. He did that stupid thing doctors do when they dismiss you... and I knew at that point that he probably thought I was some lieing fat person who really consumes more than what they say they do, but I'm not.

After leaving I immediately decided to keep track of what I eat. I wasn't going to change a single thing either. I'm going to eat just how I normally eat as not to change the results at all.

So far after three days, I average between 2,000 and 2,600 calories a day. Yesterday was a big calorie day with the 2600, because I had that stupid chinese buffet, but again, I didn't want to not eat what I would normally eat simply because I knew I was writing it all down. I even put the stupid mayo pack I used on my chic-fil-a sandwhich! and the cup of hot coco I drank.. can you believe that was 150 calories?? yep!, but I put that down too.

I still have 4 more days left to go, but I have a feeling they will all be about this amount, because this is what I eat on a normal basis.

When I'm done with this, I'm going to show him and say "see, not all morbidly obese people sit around pigging out all day eating 4-5 thousand calories a day". I'm so sick of people having this impression of obese people!! I sit right next to a vending machine at work and have never even gotten anything out of it! But, I'm sure people just assume that.

My biggest worry is, if I'm 294 pounds and consume 2,000-2600 calories a day, will I lose much taking that down to 1200-1500 a day with the lap band? And, what if my metabolism is just big time slow?? and that's causing it... Ugg...

I'm really new to this forum. I'm not sure I understand your blog, coolcrystal. Have you had the lapband? If so, where in the process are you? Betty Dilley

betty_dilley@comcast.net