Jack

well stated!

I'm getting evaluated by a new program that will include various supportive in-person components. They include a pedometer as well as nutrition/counseling. Also some new drugs, which I will not be adopting. 'Diet drugs' circa 1963 was ineffective for what I was after. So I'm ready to 'become accountable'.....as long as it's not inconvenient!!!! HAR!

Keona: re: "I am not feeling full as long between meals as before." I've shared many of your same struggles. The BIG focus for me, is to continue with the notion that 'feeling full' is a false sign and NEVER served me well in any of my pre-OR-postBand life. What serves to moderate my own circumstance, is to recognize the difference between 'hungry' and 'NOT hungry'. Any food intake based on 'full feeling' is doomed, as that sensation never lasts long for me. The goal of eating is be NOT hungry. Any eating when NOT hungry is 'sport eating'. So I understand your concerns and struggle at times with you, toward our similar Goal. Even now, at times 'one or two bites' is plenty, yet the habit of eating the whole thing remains strong. It helps to downsize the eating bowl. Cheers in your journey.

fellow Bandsters.....it slipped by without my realizing it.... Officially now ONE DECADE postOp....10 years ago had my Band installed. New Year/New DECADE begins.... ....and the thrills just keep rolling along..... Cheers and Joy to ALL

fellow Bandsters: hesitate to comment here for concern of being misunderstood for my intent I for one always prefer to seek the underlying cause of any such dark aspect of my own life and times.... I don't really understand 'depression' in any real way. In the various life roles I've played over the decades, my preference for attempting to understand 'depression' is to define it as perception of being unable to positively affect one's circumstance. In a bumper sticker observation, 'depression is anger turned inward'. Boredom & avoidance of conflict & fear of change all have a role, so I'm told. The now antique notions of applying behavioral modification has always provided better results in my own life. Rather than pondering 'why' etc, action applied with intent to solve the problem, has always resulted in improved circumstance. Presented with the reality of 'having become diabetic' 25 years ago, I was given the choice of continuing my drinking preferences OR saving my eyes and kidney function. Through what I can only attribute to 'divine intervention' after intense personal crises, overnight all desire for alcohol was somehow gone....after 30+ years of nursing such a habit. We can become more of what we believe we *think* we should be, by following the example of the pioneers on the Oregon Trail. Leaving their old life and attempting to carry away the entire household, new demands on the trail meant dumping the old cast Iron cook stove along the way. Crossing the new rivers & streams meant leaving the dressers & fancy furniture sitting along the trail. Scaling the high passes on the way to "Oregon Territory" meant leaving the Memorial Anvil Collection of irrelevant unneeded baubles of the Old Life behind. We can ALL move ourselves in ANY direction we choose. Trying to carry/drag/tug the albatross of Old Life along soaks up energy we need for the journey. The butterfly becomes what it is by leaving the old worm casing behind. Destructive drinking and depression are symptoms that CHANGES are due, IMHO.

Welcome back! re: "need some tips for getting back on track and for high protien foods that wont stick. Any help and support is appreciated!" you've done well before and now don't have the distractions of not being sure how Bandster lifestyle actually works day-to-day. What works best for *me* is to keep my head down & taking each day with MOST steps in the right direction. cheers on your new journey

years ago reports seem accurate, that many people suffered increased 'mucus' from ingestion of dairy products...especially 'milk' and today the 'not milk' fanatics list dozens of know bioactive additives in milk products, that do bother some folks..... There are a variety of herbal teas I've long used for the astringent qualities..."cold tea" "gypsy throat tea" etc etc Your local health food store may well have a qualified nutritional consultant available (NOT just a 'sales person') who can give you some tips. Start reading widely on the subject, there are a jillion sources that offer good advise.

In jr high & high school, I was one of those who just couldn't stand Breakfast....but just wait till the mid morning carb-dispensor machine was available.... I never did like 'donuts'.....but IF I ate one it would take a BAG of them to quell the beast within. I'm certain 'corn syrup' anything is a substance that does horrid things to MY metabolism.

Long a whipping boy of the industry that began in opposition to the 'Sugar is my Friend' craze, ever more evidence accumulates. My own educational background included convincing evidence of health problems for at least SOME people. And I'm convinced in part my own Diabetes 2 is related to poor eating habits and corn sweeteners of the 1950-60-70 era. If you want a bit of exciting reading from about 35 years ago along the same lines as our 'new scientific findings', dig up a copy of the old book "Sugar Blues". Perhaps arguable yet startling and definitely on track to find physical facts relating to health and nutrition. Here's an updated report: "Is sugar making us sick? A team of scientists at the University of California in San Francisco believes so, and they're doing something about it. They launched an initiative to bring information on food and drink and added sugar to the public by reviewing more than 8,000 scientific papers that show a strong link between the consumption of added sugar and chronic diseases. The common belief until now was that sugar just makes us fat, but it's become clear through research that it's making us sick. For example, there's the rise in fatty-liver disease, the emergence of Type 2 diabetes as an epidemic in children and the dramatic increase in metabolic disorders. Laura Schmidt, a UCSF professor at the School of Medicine and the lead investigator on the project, SugarScience, said the idea is to make the findings comprehensible and clear to everyone. The results will be available to all on a website (SugarScience.org) and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-scientific-team-alarm-sugar-source.html

Cheers to ALL on this First Day of the New Year....are we all ready for another Action Packed Adventure???

I had gall stones long before banding; I still have stones along with my gall bladder. Surgery is a common Tx for certain level and Hx of gall stones independent of Banding. Personally I've had episodes of what used to be called "biliary colic" every few years: swelling, inflammation and pain in R side resulting from or productive of more gall bladder issues. There's a host of non-medical treatment of such conditions, some of which are highly effective on some people. When I was in practice I helped considerable number of patients, self included, following strict dietary procedures. I'm of the opinion we were not born with extra organs that should be casually removed unless all other options have failed to remedy certain symptoms. Given outright organ pathology, rather than mere periodic treatable functional abnormality, options become more constricted.

Interesting invention by the food Scientists: " LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have developed an ingredient that makes foods more filling, and say initial tests in overweight people showed that it helped prevent them gaining more weight. The ingredient, developed by researchers at London's Imperial College and at the University of Glasgow, contains propionate, a natural substance that stimulates the gut to release hormones that act on the brain to reduce hunger. Propionate is produced naturally when Fiber in the diet is fermented by microbes in the gut, but the new ingredient, inulin-propionate ester (IPE), provides much larger amounts of propionate than people can generate in a normal diet."Molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that control appetite, but you need to eat huge amounts of fiber to achieve a strong effect," said Gary Frost of Imperial's department of medicine, who led the study." read more at: http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-create-feel-fuller-food-ingredient-233147819.html

Ah, newbies!!! Answer THIS question: Did you ever learn to dance without getting your toes stepped on? Can you ever recall a time in your lives when 'stress' in social situation was NOT a personal reaction? Can you ever recall a time where 'eating' somehow merged with "OVEReating" without making any clear connection with 'social stress' and anxiety? If you can answer 'yes' to these and similar....welcome to MY club! re: "It turns out the stress of not wanting to be seen overeating and concealing my appetite was making me feel deprived" games are games....ask how I recognize this one..... 'Feeling deprived' is NOT the same as 'feeling HUNGRY'. And 'feeling STUFFED' is not the same as 'being NOT hungry'. Way too often we strive to feed a non-physical sensation rather than recognizing 'why' we over eat is as important as 'am I satiated'. Learning to recognize those various triggers that stimulate us to comfort ourselves somehow by OVER eating is a dance of many steps. HERE's a GREAT insight. Yes, it took me a long time to learn this too: "I am mildly hungry when it's time for my 3 meals a day, but I don't really need a snack in between lunch and dinner. If I eat slowly I can feel my band doing its thing and become satisfied pretty quickly. " Cheers on our journeys, fellow Bandsters! Keep moving towards the GOAL!!!

re: "I feel like I'm always hungry? I'm almost forcing myself to feel restricted." IMHO, the REAL 'restriction' comes when we *first* begin to notice the difference between 'hungry/not hungry' is totally unrelated to concept of 'full/not full' and 'restricted/not restricted'. I believe dealing with actual 'hunger' vs my own unanticipated FEAR of becoming hungry, produced a lot of over eating behavior unrelated to physiological 'hunger'. When I noticed the component of 'enjoying the act of eating' rather than 'hunger/not hunger' played a large role in my own compulsive sport eating, an essential non-physical element of over-eating became visible. Of course, the self-reinforcing nature of high carbs/high blood sugar levels overwhelm the rational brain. Hunger is not as big a deal postOp as it was preOp. Old habits of striving to 'stay full' are doomed to fail. IMHO 'restriction' must become a MENTAL response more than a physical one. 'Not hunger' first began becoming noticeable in my early return-to-solids phase. As little as "one bite" literally DID take away that 'hunger'...along with the anxiety of becoming 'hungry'. When the effects of that 'one bite' lasted for minutes/an hour or 2 I became fascinated that the sensation of 'restriction' really didn't seem to matter so much. I began to focus on the concept of 'satiety'....something never experienced other than looking it up in the dictionary. 'Satiety' is related to 'not hungry' far more than 'restriction' or 'full/not full'. As far as I can tell, all of the Tribe of the Morbidly Obese suffer a common Grand Notion of Fail: the goal of eating is to 'get full'. That is simply wrongWrongWRONG. This may not work for everyone, but seems to have a positive effect on *me*. Cheers on your journey. You can do this.

"lot of grieving about losing my band." a process that requires attention.....but like riding a bull it's only for a short count till the buzzer! You are already 8/27th in the winner with only your own INNER strength!!! You can do it!!!

Most necessary to hydrate properly! Also the 'dry chicken' can be a BIG problem.....usually it will pass eventually. Re: drinking while 'potentially stuck': Be careful, you can make yourself more miserable. Sip. Sip. Sip. Wait in between to see whether that last Sip went down. My early postOp return to solids days, did require adaptation and awareness of my eating behavior. Congratulations on avoiding the lure of chocolate. Which phase of your dietary eating plan are you supposed to be on? Tip: NEVER in this early stage, try to do 'dry chicken' even if it's whizzed into paste. And probably a mere tiny spoon of it is more than enough to seem like a giant egg laying in your pouch. Learning to eat hard Protein take time, and your healing phase must be modified to allow a host of changes in your physiology to evolve.

Good to hear you've managed to find a way to solve your problem. If my own Band office were 8 hours away, it would be more trouble than it is now at 5+ round trip plus whatever in-office time there is. And yes, the fill-charges have gone up tremendously. However, in my own case, 10 years postOp, I'm in better shape now than I was preOp. If fact, it is very likely I would have died from one of my own co-morbidities if my health hadn't improved from the effects of the Band. Sorry you had such troubles. I'm not going to rush out and have mine removed just yet though. The worst day I've had postOp is still better than the best day I had in the 5 years preOp. Good luck.

re: "Does this mean I am in my green zone." I don't think so. And "restriction" has a wide range of interpretations: for ME it means "not WANTING to over eat". BEING unable to overeat AND having to PB is a step past what *my* personal notion of 'restriction' really is. My early PB episodes finally left me with the understanding the difference between "being hungry" vs "being satiated". For far too long I over ate with the concept that unless I felt "FULL" I should consume every bite of every thing in the house and seek out more until I simply was too physically stuffed to eat more. That of course is nonsense...yet is how I was raised and how I continued into my young adult hood...."too much is not enough if I can stuff more down with my eating shovel"... re: "After literally two weeks shouldn't I be able to eat more solid food." The "ART" of the Bandster is to understand that SOMETIMES, just ONE bite, or ONE nibble, really IS all you actually want/need/ to escape 'hunger'. For me learning what "NOT hungry" means, is way more important that worrying about 'full' vs 'not full'. Try to define the terms you use and what you mean. Then analyze where you want to be. THEN modify your eating behavior and old BAD eating habits to conform with action that will move you toward your goal. In fact, even now, I abhor 'chicken nuggets' for a variety of reasons. There was a time I too tried to gauge whether eating 2 or 4 or 6 indicated some kind of success. In reality for *me* "just ONE" chicken nugget is plenty to make me not want more.

re: "While I would not say that I feel "restriction", I have a pleasant dulling of hunger and minimal desire to over eat or eat unhealthy foods." My own decade-ago "first fill" was a full 6 months postOp. I was SOOOOoooooo tight there was no need to do anything. Mine is the antique 4cc Band, and as little as .1~.2cc makes a tremendous difference. IF it were me with the sensation you describe, I would specifically advise the Doc I didn't WANT a fill ....yet. Cheers on your journey.

Sufficient quantities of raw unfiltered apple cider will work amazingly well for a flush as well. To maintain the normal peristaltic wave of the digestive apparatus, we need both Fluid and non-soluble Fiber. For me, the Holy Shredded Wheat or similar clone thereof, is more efficient over nearly a half century, including a decade of postOp Bandster Life. And yes, I have a regular Bowel Habit that is very similar to preOp function. In my 32 year practice it was very rare the patient who didn't respond very well to a few basic physiologic necessities, without meds or OTC remedies. Even with my own experience as guide, my postOp first FIVE DAYS without a BM was a epic study in need for close attention to the basics. Combination of delayed effects of surgical sedation and postOp narcotics created an incrementally daily increasingly monumental issue of concern. A couple days of 'prune juice therapy' of 6 oz qid finally produced the desired results. Day 6, without that relief, I probably would have visited ER. If you are having issues with transit time of your dietary intake, better attend to normalizing it soon. There's wide ranges of variables between peoples response to changes in their 'normal' diet. It may well take a professional to help restore your function. Don't be shy in seeking help.

I was told 'eventually you might like it again'......as a fizz Water fan preOp, I lost all desire for it for several years. Eventually my taste for it came back. Also I learned to drink it in a pottery mug, as the glaze typically did something to kill much of the carbonation without affecting the flavor much. (Magniesium oxide....or was it Iron oxide?........ reacting with the CO2....) Personally I had migrated in the 80s from any kind of soda pop 'diet' or otherwise, to various spring waters. My own surgeon was ambivalent about a lot of things saying 'your tastes will change considerably', and over time something you don't like now likely will change. Don't be in a hurry with carbonated water. In a year or 2 you may tolerate it quite well. Or maybe not. This close to postOp I don't think it's a good idea.

postOp I didn't care for coffee the first few months My regular routine is "2 mugs on rising" in AM, perhaps 1 before/by noonish, perhaps not. And I take it 'Neat'... coffee is NOT a condiment!!!! I like it per the old Arabian instruction: "Hot as hell Black as night Sweet as love" Except the sweet part.....and I let it cool a bit.....but they got the rest of it right...

jly: Great advise from B52 especially "Long story short, I had to learn to eat in ways I could never have imagined possible...." I've had to make unexpected changes in 'how' I eat certain things. The first few years dry chicken, hamburger meat itself WITHOUT all the other stuff, and a number of other foods, left me with daily PBs. Even recently, after a decade of Bandster life, I can be plagued with episodes of PBs. I do NOT consider these episodes as "getting sick'. And a few years ago they were so frequent I spent considerable time in the office of specialists chasing down what may have been a morbid cause. In essence, the results was ~while there ARE anomalies such as 'esophageal dysmotility' etc, in my case re-defining how/when/why/what to eat solved most of the complaints. Being 'too tight' for a couple years didn't help much either, yet we must recognize and adapt to our new postOp reality. Don't be afraid to break your hard Protein down further if needed. If dicing via knife isn't enough, consider, for a while, some kind of blender/shredder, until you get better adapted to your new eating needs. Certainly you can expect other Bandsters to offer suggestions that they found helpful; whether such work for you is open to exploration. And consult with your provider of course, should any issue remain uncertain. Still, dry chicken is a challenge for me too. Cheers on your journey.

I think some of us have our 'hunger receptors' set on 'extra high range'....and during the early postOp phase was astonished to learn a LOT of my own 'hunger' was actually the fear of becoming hungry, rather than being hungry. This phase of recovery can include a lot of reading and actual physical activity, during which many learn what was interpreted as 'hunger' was actually something else but summarized by conditioned bodily responses we interpret as 'hunger'. Much of our time is consumed by our habits of consumption....what will we eat, what should we eat, how will we eat it.....etc When we take away the 'eating' part there's a huge time gap filled with opportunity for the Belly Dragons to being their subtle campaign to convince us to feed them. Sport eating as a long-established behavior in spite of rational meal consumption, is/was something I for one continue to wrassle on a regular basis. The turn for me began when I discovered that often just a taste of something on my fingertip would soothe the approaching frenzy of over eating. It takes thought and repetition to build in the 'regular meals' WITH 'regular snacks' schedule. Eating on demand has to be regulated by something other than the whimsy of 'hunger'.....as that is such an indefinite sensation. The notion that 'eating' or 'swallowing' rather than 'hunger' is a drive we seek to satisfy is rarely discussed. I believe for some of us....for ME at least....the temporary illusion ~I~ control ~something~ is obsfucated by eating every time my anxiety/discomfort/drifting attention/loss of focus on other activities/strong emotion/etc fires into action. Discipline beyond the temporary discomfort helps move me toward my Goal. Cheers on your journey.

wonderful topic.....it was years ago that I realized My Actions or Failure to Act produced a lot of my own 'guilt'. Somehow I've moved beyond those cloying disappointments and energy drains. The more 'active participation in my OWN life' I undertook, the less guilt I had to drag around. 'Guilt' for me was like 'credit card debt'. I cut up them things in 1994 and haven't looked back. As a result my own 'discretionary income' seemed to rise as my debt load dwindled.....no sin of overspending, no guilt/sorrow/poverty of spirit. In any case, the motivator for personal growth was that dank compost-cake of disappointment and despair with a thick frosting of guilt. Some of the reason I was able to break free of that emotional sugar/fat/overload, was taking the WLS steps and early support from Lap Band Talk.