mmm3

Thank you for your post! It is very reassuring to here from people who have been at this for a while. I get nervous about how the rest of my life will look like. I keep asking myself is this something that I will be able to have the strenght to keep up for the rest of my life? Will the band last for years inside of me? I know I'm going through with it, but I can't help but ask myself these questions. It is just the mental game that I've played with myself all my life and which has played a huge part in my gaining the weight that I've been fighting to lose all of my life.

Me too. Are you starting to feel a little nervous or are you still in shock? I'm in a little shock and I just keep trying to mentally skip over what the actual surgery day will be like. I have pulled up some blogs that had surgery pictures and it freaked me out a lot!

Me too! Good luck. It is exciting.

A close friend of mine was banded and had a drink at a birthday party. She was 3wks out and was just fine. It is about being sensible. Alcohol will hit your system much quicker since you don't have as much food in there to soak it up and even the ice will take up space. If you are still taking any kind of pain killers it should be a no- no and you may want to wait a long while at the party to see how the alcohol affects you before getting behind the wheel, or the best option would be get a designated driver until you know how long it takes the alcohol to process out of your system. If you get hammered on one drink then you may forget to control your self around all of the other goodies, so that would be a reason to think about the drink. But overall I agree with you count your calories and use your common sense. You can't stop living because you are banded, you just have to make common sense accommodations.

I am on my 2nd day of pre-op diet. I had a ready made protein drink yesterday- Myoplex EAS vanilla, it was great and filling. Then some chili for dinner. Today was a homemade protein shake, a ready made shake, condensed soup, light yogurt, and a cup of broth. I haven't snapped and bludgeoned anyone with my blender yet. I do recommend vanilla based protein drinks because they can be mixed with more things. Try adding instant coffee for a iced mocha version, diet chocolate syrup, bananas, a liitle strawberry yogurt, some peanut butter and chocolate syrup or orange yogurt and make an orange cream flavor. Get creative, but try to stay low-cal. I'm thinking about this time as a cleanse. Good luck on all pre-op diets!

My banding is scheduled for 11/18. I was told to do a one week liqued pre-op diet, but decided to do a 2 week diet. So today was my first day on a liquid diet. I had 2 shakes and did have a bowl of chili for dinner. I figured that I could atleast work on a low-carb diet for this week. Next week will be my real liquid diet-- this is my "practice" week. Everything I've read on this site says that the first 6months is the biggest weight loss time, so a head start is always good!