akurre12

Hi everyone! It's been awhile since I've posted here but I wanted to share my one year bandiversary pictures! I can't believe I've been on this journey for a year already. No regrets, I would do it all again in a second! I still continue to lose weight, and I don't have any particular stopping point in mind. I plan on just going with the flow until my body tells me it's at it's comfort zone. I feel great and am just loving life everyday. I can't believe the difference in my confidence, I feel like I'm finally the person I was meant to be. Before: After: Progress:

No I did not get plication with my lap band.

Thank you everyone for your kind words! To answer a few questions: -Starting weight was 308 -Exercise: 4-5 times a week for at least an hour, sometimes longer. I'm really into Zumba, bike riding, walking, 30 day shred, and the Arc trainer eliptical -Food advice: I eat whatever I want, just in moderation. You can view my food diary on myfitnesspal if you'd like (akurre12). I crave cheetos, cheesburgers, and fries constantly still after all this time. So I don't deprive myself. If I buy a bag of $1.49 cheetos, I eat it over the course of 4-5 days so I don't ruin my day. -I usually eat between 900-1200 calories a day, and I don't eat back the calories I burn during exercise. I try and shoot for at least 300 calories burned a day, but try even harder to burn at least 500!

Surgury date June 18th 2012, as of 1/11/13 I was officially at 80 pounds lost. Yesterday I took pictures because I was having trouble seeing any difference in myself lately, and taking those pictures completely made my week. I went into them thinking there wouldn't be much of a difference between my 50 pound pictures and these, but I was shocked at how wrong I was. It really put the confidence back in me and it makes me want to work even harder!

Thank you everyone! yes I do exercise almost every day. I go to a Zumba class three times a week and then I do the Zumba game for kinect once or twice a week. I also do the elliptical for 15 min on my lunch break at work.

Im not sure how best to describe this but I'm hoping maybe someone had a similar experience. I'm four months post op and I'm experiencing dull and sometimes sharp pains near my port and also on the left side (even in the middle sometimes, kind of all over I suppose). About one month ago I had a gallbladder attack that put me in the er, which included several hours of dry heaving. I decided not to have it removed because it had gotten better by morning and my doctor said it was up to me if I wanted it removed. So anyways, eever since that I've had pains in my stomach off and on. This time it's been going on for days and its uncomfortable. Could I have done damage to my band, is it related to my gallbladder? It's not that bad, so it seems silly to go to the doctor about. Probably is a good idea though. Thoughts? Also, should add, around this time I had a bad fill. My fill doctor is pretty bad and this last time was the worst. She has trouble finding it, this last time instead of poking me with the needle over and over she left the needle in and just moved it around a lot. Which created a nasty painful bruise that I had for a week. Still hurts a but there.

Wow, that is the smallest bite of food I have ever seen lol. I personally, take a bigger bite than most people probably would, still at least half the size of the bites I would take pre-band. I like to chew and taste the food, and I just can't seen to enjoy it if it's the size of a pea. So anyway, I take larger bites but I swallow it in stages. So I won't swallow the whole bite all at once. I know I run the risk of accidently swallowing the entire bite, but so far I've had no issues

Surgery was June 18th, 2012 and on September 19, 2012 I took some 50 pounds down pictures! The sun was of course completely in my eyes. I took some with the same outfit from June, and then some in an outfit that actually fits. Progress_11-9[1].bmp

Surgery was June 18th, 2012 and on September 19, 2012 I took some 50 pounds down pictures! The sun was of course completely in my eyes. I took some with the same outfit from June, and then some in an outfit that actually fits.

I have 6 ccs in my 10 cc band. I feel pretty good restriction, I was thinking of getting another .5 added just to help with the snacking. I do still get hungry in between meals more than I'd like to.

So I go for my first fill last week, and everything started off going really well. The doctor was super nice and I really liked her, she offered to numb the area but I decided to tough it out and not have it! Then she started, and she couldn't find the port. She was pushing down on the area, which I understand because she's trying to find it, but it didn't take long for that to start to really hurt because it's still sore from surgery apparently! Then she started sticking me with the needle, still couldn't find it. She was pushing rather hard with the needle too, it made me really nervous! So then I'm pretty sure tears started to form at that point and she offered to numb it again. So I had it number, and she finally got it, but it looked like she stabbed me 5 times with that needle before she found it. She did mention the first time is the hardest and then after that she'll mark in my record where it's located. Now it's still sore a week later, and there's a bruise there. Is this normal? it's not possible for her to jab the tubing with the needle while she was missing is it? Am I just being a baby about this? lol Also, she made me an appointment to come back in two weeks. From what I've been ready, 4 weeks is the normal amount of time. Has anyone only had two weeks between fills?

So I feel so torn about this subject and everyone seems to have a different answer. I'm sure there must be other posts out there like this, I'm just having trouble finding them! How many calories should I be consumiing? I asked my dietician how many calories I should be consuming and that opened a huge can of worms, a long discusion about how it varies and how it's hard to get a set answer, and I honestly didn't have time to push the issue because I had back to back appointments that day. I use My Fitness Pal, so I have a pretty accurate view on how many calories I'm consuming. A typical day is between 1000-1200. I excercise every day (a few days off here and there) for 60 minutes and My Fitness Pal tells me I burn 300-500 calories depending on what type of exercise I'm doing. I'm two months post op, 37 pounds down, and now my weight lose has slowed. I was losing 2-3 pounds a week, and last week I was down one pound on Thursday and so far nothing this week. I know from reading online that a low calorie intake will create a slow weight lose, should this be happening after only two months? So my other main question is, if a low calorie intake creates slow weight lose, how am I suppose to consume enough calories each day when the band prevents me from eating a lot? They say three meals, and snack only if you're hungry. I don't want to snack if I'm not hungry, but I feel like I need to get enough calories! If my weight lose is slowing because of the low calorie intake, any suggestions on how to increase my calories without eating junk? Any thoughts?

My weight loss surgery book that my doctor gave me says that they recommend waiting 3 months after surgery! WHAT! lol Besides the fact that that seems like a crazy amount of time, recommending and telling us not to are two different things. Why are all these doctors so vague lol. I'm almost 5 weeks post op and had a glass of wine, i was fine but it definately hit me harder.

So I'm 4 weeks post op and I just recently started using MyFitnessPal on my phone (I've become slightly obsessed with it! ) and most days it tells me I'm eating too few calories. My mom had the band done about 3 years ago, and she said I should try and get at least 1000 calories a day in the beginning so I've been shooting for that. Now sometimes my lunch is too filling and I don't feel like eating my afternoon cheese stick snack, but I'm worried about skipping it because I'm barely making it to 1000 calories a day as it is (1095 yesterday, minus the 595 I burned exercising ). I would really like to cut snacking out all together, but until my first fill unfortunately my belly normally sounds like a hungry monster 2 hours after a meal, so I've been bringing small Snacks to work. So I guess the main question I have is, how do you guys get a decent amount of calories in each day? Bigger meals? More snacks? And I know this question has been asked a million times, but how many calories are you consuming each day?

Wow, if you can stay full for 5 hours, then yeah...I would assume you wouldn't need a fill. I'm eating the recommended small lap band portions and my stomach sounds like a monster 2 hours later. I cannot wait until my first fill! 10 pounds is really great though! I would be happy with that, consider yourself lucky because I know some people are struggling to lose anything in the beginning.

I love this idea too! I saw it on pinterest a few months ago and was so excited to start, until I remembered I never have cash lol! But my parents started doing it and they had like $40 to bring with them on their vacation last week!

Here's something that often crosses my mind as I'm going through the purreed/soft food stage. What's the different between actually making it pureed or super soft, and making it that way in your mouth by chewing a really long time? Is it just that the Dr want to make sure we don't accidently swallow a large bite of something not soft, or is there another reason behind this that i'm missing. The first few days I spent a lot of time making things extra fine and mushy, but now I feel I can make the same consistency by chewing. Thoughts?

I am not trying to get around instructions that I was given. I know you do not know me, so it's easy to make a quick assumption about me. I'm very strict on the lap band rules that my Dr gave me. I did the liquid diet for 5 weeks, never cheated even once (not even a bite!), healthy low fat soft foods suggested by my Dr for the past week and a half. I'm three weeks post op and down 26 pounds, so clearly things are working well for me. This was just a thought I had while eating my purred chicken salad, and then finding a peice of chicken that was not purred compeletely and realizing that the consistency of it being chewed was the same as the rest of my chicken salad that is purred. I've never once heard that chewing causes the band to move, I also can't find anything on the subject when I research this. We're still supposed to chew the purred food and soft food thourougly, so I'm not chewing any more than I would if it were purred. I do appreciate the input though! Just wanted to give you a view into my world so you can erase the assumption that I'm looking for cheats or an easy way out.

I'm aware that I'm still healing, and I'm very careful, probably too careful when I chew lol. I figured I was going to get the typical follow your doctors orders answers. It was just a thought, I'm not suggesting everyone does it!

Oh my goodness! I've never once thought of this before, but now it will always be in my mind if I chew gum. Looks like it's mints only for me!

Well I don't have much advice for the pureed stage, because they put me on a purreed/soft stage instead of strickly pureed. I can tell you though, that I used the canned chicken and put it in the food processor for chicken salad and it was really good. It looked really creepy at first, pretty much a paste consistency, but it tasted exactly the same as the chunks! So I would suggest trying to puree the chicken especially for your chicken salad, because chicken is a tough food to have to sit there and chew forever lol!

I'm also in this spot! 3 weeks post op and trying really hard to stick to my three small meals. It's frustrating to me because my scale results have stopped, no weight lost last week! Hopefully we can get some good encouraging replies!