Paws

It's like reading about me. My band is 7ml and I thought I had a restriction of 6.25ml. For the last 2 years since my last fill I have not really been abe to eat much. No point in even thinking about breakfast, a cup of tea on waking and then nothing before 10am. Lunch was usually soup and some melba toast. Dinner had to be something like cottage pie. Bread totally out of the question. Was sick most days sometimes 2 times a day. Tired all the time and generally felt like plop. Last week I had my band de-filled and taken down to 3.5ml and I am in wonderment at eating. I get up and can have cereal and a cup of tea straightaway. I can have a slice of bread with no problems. Although I am eating more I am now losing weight as I can eat properly and am kicking myself for living like I did for 2 years. Love and hugs

If your band has slipped, you will struggle to keep liquids down and any food will come back up. Not sure it is painful so much as just constantly being sick as there is no room in the bottom pouch for anything, If this is the case, get to A&E right away, you might be able to have it resited or it will be removed.

Hiya, A lap band will not force you to eat healthy, I have a band and i am not sure i would do it over if i had that time again, as boring as it sounds counselling is really the key, you need to get to the bottom of why you eat the things you do and once you start to uncover that, things start to fall into place. I had my band put in 4 years ago, in the 2 years post op i went from 17 stone 11 pounds to 12 stone 4 pounds. I then went back up to 15 stone 3 and am currently at 14 stone 8. In the last year I have been seeing a counsellor on a weekly basis and it is only in the last 2 weeks that things are beginning to slot into place. My humble opinion is seek couneslling first, there are times when I have wanted to stop the counselling as it is too hard, but whats harder to stay as you are and be unhappy, or work through the things you don't want to talk about for whatever reason, and then come out the other side slighlty battered and bruised but with a better understanding of you. Love and hugs.

Hiya, I have been post surgery for 4 years now. Post op you need to keep to liquids for at least 1 week, ideally 2, you will want to eat solids because you will miss the chewing action, but please do resist. Then after 2 weeks of liquid it's 2 weeks of slops really, mushy type foods, again please resist the urge to eat solids, then it is getting used to how fickle the band can be, I met a girl through her having her surgery on the same day as me in the same foreign hospital, we both paid privately for our surgery and e-mailed before we met on the morning of the op. Sounds silly but we gave names to our bands. She could eat things that my band just would not let down and the other way round. Best to avoid processed white bread like the plague, it will just swell in your top stomach and then take forever to go through, if it indeed does and doesn't come back up. Steer clear of fibrous foods such as beef and dry chicken, again doubt it will go down. Just stick around for a while, make you feel uncomfortable until such a time you decide to bring it back up to stop that horrible feeling in the pouch. You will be able to eat all the "naughty" foods with just as much ease as before, infact you will probably find these go down easier than anything else. This is because the fat helps everything to slide down. For example, I can eat lasagne no problem, but not Pasta in any other form, this is because of the fat in lasagne helps it go down. I know i sound negative, but I would want people to learn from the mistakes i made. When I had my band, the surgery was only really done privately in the UK, some were done on the NHS but it was for extreme cases only and usually only funding available for 5 people per county. I never got the chance to ask people about my concerns and questions as things like this were not available. Just remember it is by no means a quick fix, for at least 2 years i rebelled against my band and was like a kid trying to see how far I could push it, now I have been in counselling for 1 year and things are now beginning to fall into place. it is a 2 pronged attack, the band and counselling go hand in hand, the band will not change why you started over eating in the first place. hope all goes well.