cammy

The pancake parlour is pure evil!! (but i love it!) They have things on that menu so band friendly you will feel like you haven't even got a band as you clean the plate I usually get the strawberries & cream pancakes (make it the 1 pancake not 2 and get the cream & ice cream instead of just one or the other - that way if you are tight there is plenty of lube for you & if you leave half your meal it looks liek you've eaten more since you only have one pancake not 2 ~ all meals have 2 pancakes by default but there is a menu option to change to just 1). The chocolate pancake is like mudcake so if you can do mudcake you can eat it, otherwise just stay away from it - the cherries are canned and the skin & pips can be a bit painful if your tight. "IT" the banana walnut one goes down soooo easy, again get the one pancake instead of 2 and add the extra ice cream. For savoury the potato pancake goes down easy but is very very greasy, it comes with a nice side salad that always goes down well i usually eat all the salad and only 1/4 of the pancake - what they call 'fries' DO NOT ORDER - their fries are disgusting dried diced up bits of old potato that wil lhave you begging the porcalin to free you from your agony! Banded friends don't always beleiv e me and they have all lived to regret it pb'ing in the car the whole way home. Steer clear of the breakfast menu because the portions are rediclous huge, my 6'4" athletic boyfriend can't eat an entire portion there off that breaky menu so that's really saying something! He usually eats 2 items off the regular menu... savoury crepes (they are yum and all that I have tried have been band friendly especially the bolognase ones) and then a desert pancake. Just drink Water is my tip - all their drinks are loaded with cream and you'll feel crappy all day afterwards and so not worth the weight gain. I eat pancake parlour in melbourne about once a month (they are all good, eastland doncaster jam factory swarnston st etc.); everybody I know in melbourne loves it. The pancake parlour in surfers paradise is a lot different and i found it disgusting.... i dont know how the same company can own both yet have such different menus and food. The menu doesn't have pictures in the resteraunt but the website does so to get an idea of how much a serving there is (so you know wha tnot to order) have a look here: http://www.pancakeparlour.com/Menu/menu.html Have fun!!

It's post fill swelling that causes the "too tight" you really have to baby your tummy if you are one of the ones that suffers from post-adjustment swelling. Sip from a childrens sippy cup with the 3 little holes instead of adult sipping from a glass (it is vastly different the amount actually going into your mouth and with the sippy cup you can't accidenty chug causing even more swelling which is when you need to go have fill removed - if you can sip a 200mL one of those 4-5 times a day your not going to die while you wait for your swelling to go down..... just be careful moving to mushies or creamy consistency too soon if you have a tummy that is sensitive to adjustments. I know it's hard (and I learnt via unfills the hard way too!) but it's a necessary evil for those of us that are espeically sensitive if we ever want to get proper restriction. Most people are not as sensitive as us ~ for many this is just a learning curve that happens one or twice in the beginning where they ate too much or too fast or without chewing enough within a few days of a fill (but compared to pre-band they genuinely thought they had hardly eaten anything). That irritates the stoma causing swelling... and if it swells to much or you don't baby it enough afterwards that leads to needing an unfill. It's easier said than done though ~ I find liquids a traumatic expereince; it was okay the first year but now my tummy flips and I feel nausea at the thought of having to stick to liquids (or clear liquids) for a week.... and by half way though the first day i'm out of my mind with hunger - a Rx for phentermine helps alot in this situation.

I'm 2 years out and i've been at goal for a year. I eat a lot more than the people whom have responded that are still trying to lose weight... so eventually you do become more like a normal skinny person and less like somebody that appears to be on a drastic diet (well at least from the on-lookers point of view). A normal day for me is.... B: 2 serves of Cereal (60 grams) with milk or a 4" plate of breakfast caserole S: a piece of fresh fruit (eg. apricot or 1/2 apple) or shaved ham L: 6" Sub or similar sandwich or a lean cuisine with salad or 2 rice cakes topped with LF ham, cucumber, WW cottage cheese, caramalized onions and tomato. S: 50g cold roast chicken or 30g shaved ham & 20g brie cheese D: 4" plate of whatever the rest of the family are having - usually fillet steak or chicken breast; steamed vegetables & brown rice or Pasta. dinner is always my smallest meal and usually i leave half of it still on my plate - I just either have trouble eating around the stress of other people complaining about their day OR i've picked so much while i was cooking that i've already eaten more than enough. S: Chocolate; nuts; other snacky foods... only 1-2 serves though. So really it's not so bad... your just a normal person eating what you like (apart from mushy food) and maintaing a healthy low weight. Nothing scarey, you don't have to become a health nut or anything like so many think you need to do to be successful. Good luck for your up-coming surgery

Welcome Sarah :xena_banana: You'll find lots of friends here and a real-life support group is great to attend too. There is one at the valley priavete hospital in Mulgrave last Tuesday of the month February - November. Geoff that is so true! I find myself doing the same with eating only I still get hungry so eat more often just in tiny portions and while i'm doing something else.

Susannah your fears are valid. The band is most definently not suitable for everybody and i'm sure your surgeon has sent you to a psychologist to determine your suitability. I love my band and got to a normal healthy weight within a year. I am very determined but still struggle to maintain my low weight. This is not easy but it is worth it. The health benefits alone are worth it and the physical size is just icing on the cake so to speak. I know a lot of people who never should have had the band so i'm not going to tell you to get it if it's not suitable for you (more than half the people I know with the band were not good candidates and many lied their way through the psycholgical evaluations). There are various weight loss surgeries for different situations. There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. Around half the people that get the band (Around the world stats recorded by inamed not people on this forum) have not lost more than 15kg at the 5 year mark. That sounds bad so the average the weight loss and then show a % of excess weight lost on average which nicely works out to 50% when you take all the people like me that lost 130% of my excess weight and balance it with those that didn't lose anything, lost a little or gained). Don't let yourself be one of those people! Those that get to a normal bmi and below skew the stats to make the band look a better success than it really is. That is not because of the band "not working" - all the band does is restrict quantites of solid foods, anybody can eat around the band (chocolate and junk slip right down in huge quantites so if they are your poison your up for a challange). Not everybody that gets the band really wants to lose weight more than they want to eat "xxxx". Obesity is a disease but it's also frequently an addiction to food not just hunger. You have to put in a lot of effort - the band restricts and it's around your tummy not your brain. I would say get the band if you can say yes to the following: Your doing it for yourself and nobody is pressuring you to lose weight (eg. some people do it just so it looks like they are doing something to shut up their family/friends who tell them they really need to do something abou their weight). Your life will not suddenly become perfect when you are skinny - if you think it will think again - if that's the reason your doing it you need to work on the other problems as well as your weight. Skinny doesn't solve problems. you understand how the band works and that their will be chest pain and pb'ing (vomiting) in your future as you learn how to deal with the band. People who dont' know/deal with this get a rude shock. If your worst fear is vomiting your a good candidate for soft food syndrome - that is bad and why many people complian of little or no wieght loss after the initial Water weight drop. We don't want to vomit but we can't be eating just soft foods to make sure we never ever have the band tell us " no" (eg, if you dont' stop eating when you get the first signal the band sends th efood back up and out - if you only eat soft food or liquid calories the band doesn't send the food back up even if you eat to excess - you need to work the band and let it tell you "no" even if that means once in a while you make a mistake and the food comes back).If your dedicated and will do ANYTHING to make your band journey work you can do it. No question. If you go in saying "i wont do this and i wont do that" you are hurting yourself. You have to set your goal, keep your eye on the prize and be prepared to tell all those family and friends that try to sabotage your success (and they will - it's happened to all of us) where to stick it. Don't eat to make people happy (eg. oh please have some b'day cake it's my b'day and I want you to have some, you hardly eat anything these days, your so skinny now (when your really still obese)). Do what is right for you. You are #1! Your health should come first. If you have doubts about your ability to follow the band guidlines sort out those doubts and decide if the band is really for you. 1 in 5 people require re-operation for some reason within 10 years. It could be as simple as a flipped port or as serious as erosion. You have to realise your chances of needing another surgery in the future are quite high. Think carefully before you take any advice on board at all stages of your band journey. Research who is giving the advice and ultimately go back to your surgeon because you are paying for his good advice. Did they just get the band last month? 10 years ago? Have they had lots of problems or was their ride an easy one? Are they still obese after a very long time with the band but preaching to you about how and what you should eat? Each opinion or answer comes from personal experience so it's different for each of us so we are all going to come to the table with different ideas/opinions on the band. I really researched those who I took onboard the opinions of and I really attribute that to my success. It's a pitty those people are no longer around as they were very inspirational. I did what they did and made goal in the time they made goal. I made sure to follow only the most successful and tried to ignore those who had the most to say about what you should and shouldn't do but lost the least/struggled the most to get to a healthy weight. Work smarter not harder! I'm honest about it. Theres no point in sugar coating it because this is a serious decision for you & one in which you really need to weigh the pro's and cons and be super honest with yourself about what you REALLY eat. I rarely post but there are really successful people on here who do post so seek them out and see what they did.

Have fun at the picnic ladies! It's a bit too far for me twice in one week but i'll see you all on Tuesday night.

A little less than a year to lose the weight but I really pushed it to the limits with exercise & calorie control (i'm so not very strict on that stuff anymore though - i've been about the same size for a year already). Aussie docs seem to do things different to american docs - since the nurse served champagne at our end of year bash last week i'm assuming they don't frown upon it here (in moderation of course, drinking during weight loss phase dramatically slows weight loss but you can drink again after your weight is gone). With the exception of things that swell up when wet (like bread) or reform when wet (like rum balls) what you can't eat is really what you can't chew well enough (or when you haven't mixed textures sufficiently to break up things that easily re-form like bread & rum balls). There are tricks to being able to eat anything which is necessary to know since it's usually the healthy stuff people have problems with (junk goes down so easy! grrrr...). Gravox gravys are pretty low calorie v's other dressings/dips/sauces when made up to the directions on the tin so it's a good lube for meat to help you chew chew chew without hurting your gums. If you really want steak and can't chew it because it's a tough cut of meat you can marinate it for a few days, then cook it, then put it in the food processor till it's light and fluffy - doesn't sound nice but tastes divine and my whole family love it that way in sandwiches, mixed in with Pasta and on salads now. It's good because it means you can eat the low fat cuts which tend to be much much tougher than the fatty cuts.

Why no steak or champagne? I had rib eye fillet steak & yellow glen "pink" last night without any problems. My teeth are in pretty good condition though. Get a dentist to check your teeth before you get banded and find out an honest opinion on their condition, your ability to chew effectively to turn solid protiens into mush & if there is anything you can get done to improve their condition. If you have good teeth your food options are virtually limitless, poor condition teeth (which more than 50% of people seem to have hence so many people not being able to eat chicken and other meats - bread is a different story not related to teeth) mean more limited food choices as you can't chew as well no matter how hard you try. People tend to be very sensitive/easily offended about the condition of their teeth so this topic isn't mentioned very often at all but is something to be considered before banding.

Jacqui when you get to goal you might re-think being able to keep the weight off benefit - it's always a struggle, even if your a health nut unless your prepared to stay at an 'overweight' 25+ bmi as your goal. Higher weights are easier to maintain with the band, lower weight are not. I don't know anybody at a BMI=normal (less than 25) weight goal that maintains with ease... that is by far the biggest myth of the band I think. You basically still have to diet like a normal person or suffer the regain.

This procedure isn't very invasive at all so it would be a good option for people who need to drop weight quickly for medical conditions (some people are too heavy to get the band safely so this could be a 1st step) - espeically if they don't have the mental willpower to stick with Optifast. I know I couldn't do optifast again, my stomach flips at the thought of it. For those that have a genuine saiety disorder (not emotional eaters) it wouldn't be a good option though beacuse as soon as it's out they'd gain most of their weight back again. And since it's nearly the same price as the lap band if you have health in surance I can't imagine people would be happy gaining all their weight back & having to pay all that money out again. It would be very depressing.

I've seen 3 lap band surgeons and they all do blind fills unless you are super-obese or carry all your weight around the abdomen..... if they can't feel the port they can't do a blind fill.

I have to disagree with most - while it's nice to think life will be rosey, perfect and everything you ever dreamed of and you'll be so darn busy when you get to goal you wont even notice that you don't have a project I think that is "wishful thinking" and not close to what most of us discover as reality. Yes it seems like getting to goal would cure all our problems or whatever but it doesn't, and with your personaltiy you'll need to find another project once your there or you will fall into a depression. Maybe get heavily involved with your childrens school activities? You'll need something like that because being thin doesn't change your life instantly the way a lot of people like to dream it will. I think it's good that you are thinking ahead because I didn't and it was a bit like "if not dieting then what?" and I felt lost for a while. I too am project/goal oriented or nothing gets done so I know where you are coming from. I've been at a normal BMI for nearly a year and I do somewhat miss the thrill of losing weight and how focused it kept me.

I haven't been in ages but I promise to come along tomorrow night - it's the last meeting until end of feb right? I wonder why they don't post the details on the ESV website? It doesn't feel time for xmas again already, the last xmas meeting feels like just a few months ago. I hate this getting old thing! It will be good to see all the people that only come along at xmas meeting though. Now i have to hunt down some xmas wrapping paper! Goanna we have probably already met - how long have you been coming along to the meetings for? I haven't been for a while but i went along to nearly all of them from the time i was banded until July.

If your having mucous problems the first thing they rule out before putting you on soda water (which some docs think can cause other problem in the long run) is dairy consumption - a lot of people get the thick mucous build up from dairy (yoghurt, milk, cheese etc.). My surgon had me cut that out first for a few before trying the soda water.

I didn't realise the meeting was in 2 days, doh! Everybody puts their wrapped up gifts in the middle, then the first person picks a gift, the the 2nd etc. if t he 2nd person like st he first persons gift better than can take it and so on so forth. It's fun! What is the gift value this year? I didn't get a letter.

Jenny at the Karingal lunch when we were talking about soda water it was only for a specific condition that some of us get with mucous first thing in the morning. If we don't do the soda water to break down the mucous membrane covering the band hole we physcically can't eat or drink anything else without it coming right back The membrane that forms over the hole at night acts like a trampolene and only certian things like soda water seem to penetrate it. Fun stuff!!

I understand about wanting it moved, mine stuck out and looked like some kind of cancerous skin growth, it wasn't a small bulge - with the skin on top it kind of looked like I had a ping pong ball slipped under my skin It's like a slight bulge now but not noticeable to others unless i'm wearing a bikini or they are copping a feel :rolleyes They didn't need to cut into the muscle for me, you must be super skinny!

Where is your port now? Mine was originally attached to my abdominal muscles (some people have it between their breasts or underneath a the breast bone though)... when it started to show it got moved during tummy tuck and it kind of under my ribcage a bit stil attached to abdominal muscles though. Worth it in my opinon - I kept knocking it when it stuck out and it hurt - it's much less obvious now.

Amen to that!

Um... you do realise they band bulimics frequently right? Even when they have a normal BMI. Banding a bulimic helps them more than it hinders them. Banding an annorexic would be wrong, banding a bulimic is the road to a cure for many. Most bulimics are NOT thin. They are maintence bulimics - they purge enough to maintain their high weights and not gain higher. When people try to 'help' them out of their problem they gain weight like crazy. This is where the band helps. Once the food is through the band that's it, there is no throwing it back up. There is no bending over to pick something up and the food automatically coming back from a lifetime of bulimia auto-reflex. Bulimics are perfect candiates for the band - probably more so than regular people. I don't see your logic at all - espeically saying shame on the doctor - it was probalby the best thing for her at the time. I can totally understand her behaviour - she isn't actually throwing up, she's just PB'ing, it's not food coming back from her lower stomach rather her pouch.... which she probably doesn't fill too full before PB'ing lest it go through to her normal stomach (where she can't purge it painlessly from). The hunger that is going to come when the band is removed isn't going to be cured with head work and that's going to be a huge battle for her. Maintence bulimics usually become that way because they have such strong hunger pains and don't want to keep gaining weight - not because they want to be size 10. Remember also for long-term bulimics there is no pain or anything with purging, it's practically a reflex. Think about what it's like to just think "I shouldn't have eaten that" and bam it's back back in your mouth if you think it before it's gone through the band (and if you have no band if you think it anytime from 5 mins to 3 hrs it can be back just like that). That's what it's like for a lot of long-term bulimics and thats why it's hard to quit the habbit. Even if they desperately try. The band helps, once it's through it's through and there is no bringing it back.... the 'window of opportuity' to purge is so short that it helps you get out of the habbit. Going from 4 times a day to once a week is significant progress. Without the band her teeth could have rotted from the stomach acid; high esophogal cancer risks etc, heart problems. Denying these people the band would be the shameful thing to do... not the opposite. Hope I have educated a few people - people with a form of bulimia are not less deserving of the band. If they were at least half of the people I personally know with the band would not be candidates.

Hope to make it there, might be a little bit late but it goes for a few hours yeah?

Seriously the plastics were a dream comapared to the band! They bath your insides with some serious narcotics though while they are in there doing the plastics so you don't feel anything for ages! I was ready to get up and leave the hospital as soon as I woke up, felt liek they didn't do the surgery at all. I didn't have any type of pain or discomofrt with my boobs but my tummy was sore where the drains were (once they were out the minimal drain pain/stinging was gone and it was all good). The band though... that was hell! I hope I never have to get that replaced :paranoid

Hey Anna, Is the new gastric band (AP) made by inamed still or is it a different brand? I haven't heard about it so it would be cool to find out more info on it. I had a hell of a time in recovery also - i was shocked that so many people are up and at it after a day or two - I was down and feeling like I was dying from the port pulling for a couple of weeks. It gets heaps better Under 130 is an awesome scale victory! Congrats!!

I'm not sure of the address off the top of my head - it's on police rd, i'll have a look at the number on the way to the meeting on Tuesday night and post the details then

I'm sorry your going through this and hope you can get it resolved quickly without too much expense. Have you signed up for private health insurance? If not probably a good time to as if anything goes wrong in the future which is likely (inside 5-20 years) that you'll have to meet that full cost also. I think this is why most surgeons wont touch 'self pay' in victoria. If anything goes wrong the patient is up for the $$$ as there is no health insurance to cover it. A week in intensive care could send you broke if anythign went wrong during the original lap band surgery. The doc probably isn't charging anything for his services, it's the anestesia, hospital etc. that your usually paying for (same as if anything goes wrong with plastic/cosmetic surgery.... the surgeons don't charge for their services but you still have to pay everybody else which gets expensive). If the band is faulty you'll need to submit all your costs to inamed/allergen as they will have to cover a certian amount. Maybe call them to confirm this first? There is a lifetime warranty with the band, how much it covers though for surgery i'm unsure. Good luck & I hope things start looking up for you soon!