salsa1877

I know that I am the biggest advocate for sticking with what your doc says, but I don't think that you should have to stay on Protein supplements after you are on solid foods. If I had, I would have cut my tongue out by now. Just know that it gets much easier and as long as you can get protein in your regular diet once you are cleared to eat solids, you will feel much better. (Don't start the solids early though) Hang in there, it does get much better. My first week I was by myself at my brother's house...no cable, no radio, no phone, no internet. I feel your pain. But now 8 months later, those pangs of desperation are nothing compared to the confidence and happiness that I feel now. As for the protein now, I have not tried the bullets, but they can't be much worse than the protein powders. You can pretty much only go up from there!

You got it! I was only really mean to my dad's wife because I CAN'T STAND her. But I digress. Revenge truly will be sweet. Besides most of the people that could hear her, probably thought she was the idiot!

Don't worry about the statistics. 8 months out and I have lost 91% of my excess weight and will lose more after the tummy tuck. It all depends on the amount of work that you put into it. My doc considers it a success if you lose 50 pounds in one year, but you have to remember this is a lifelong journey. Gastric Bypass doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will lose (or keep off) any more weight than the lap band. The one thing you MUST know about this band and the statistics about it, for most people 98% of the work is done in your head and the rest is done by the band!

I am most likely going in for a total unfill this Friday. I have to have one before surgery (tummy tuck) anyways and I live 6 hours away. I know that I am going to rely on the wonderful people here to help me through the hard days. I am going to go into this with a positive attitude that I have learned so much about food and exercise and I will NOT need another fill...However I am on maintenance. You will get there and you CAN do this. You took the first step to gain control back. We will be here for you through the good and the bad. Good luck and stay in touch. We will help you.

I just tell them that if I want to choose to live a healthy lifestyle and eat foods that are just as good as the crap that they are eating that it is my business. I had one person that kept giving me crap and I just said, well we will see who is happy about that damn piece of cake when I am at your funeral. Kind of harsh, but this woman (my dad's wife) has gained about 45-50 pounds since I was banded and has decided that who cares how you feel and what you eat as long as you are happy eating it. Let's not mention that she has pancreatic disease and is putting herself at risk. So basically I just don't let myself be around them, or I put them in their place. I have become very blunt after getting this surgery. I didn't do it for anyone else. If your SIL wants to act like a 2 year old...treat her like one!

Yep I have those issues. I have no idea how much space I take up. I am getting a little better, but I will be walking to my car and thinking to myself "if only you could lose these 100 pounds you would feel so much better." Then i have to stop myself and think....UGHHHH you are 1 pound BELOW your goal. So I think most of us are having these probelms. I am hoping that some of my problems will go away when I have my TT. Right now I have such a HUGE amount of excess skin that when I am naked I look just like I did 91 pounds ago. Keep up your good work. 90 pounds is a huge accomplishment!

I didn't figure the pain would be that bad, but I am willing to put up with 2 months:wink2: Plus being a teacher I don't have to worry about work at all, so no stress in trying to figure out how to get back to work. It will be hot and we do live in the desert, but that is what air conditioning is for!:rolleyes2:

Yep did you notice my countdown ticker!!! I am soooooo excited. A little nervous because of the length and extent of the surgery. But I figure it will only feel like 2 minutes to me, and the pain will go away quickly. Even 2 months of extreme pain would be better than I lifetime of this jelly roll I am carrying around!

Nah we have a few people who are on here that were not banded in July of 07. I for one was banded in August and Steph (twilight) was banded in Dec. This is the best board and we welcome anyone with open arms, no matter when you are banded. Since you are new, this is a great place to get all of your questions answers from those of us that have been there and done that!

TT date is July 3. 2 days after my birthday. The best b-day present I could have ever given myself!

Welcome. You will get the hang of this site very easily and then become addicted to it. I get shaky when I can't sign on. Just kidding...kind of!

Wow! That is an amazing transformation. You have done amazingly well and are truly an inspiration to all of us!

Janet- I know you are right... I just didn't want to take any more time off of work. It is not easy to do when you are a teacher and I have missed a LOT of work this year. I still have a day or two left of sick leave so I can still take the time and they can't say anything. I emailed the doctor's office and gave them my three choices and see what he says. I am confident that I could maintain, but there is always that fear that the pounds will come right back on. I know that I could always go back and get filled. I just don't understand why I am so tight. I have next to nothing in my band. I guess I just have weird anatomy. I am at LESS than half of what was in my original fill 1 month after surgery. To me that seems weird. It doesn't matter how much I chew or how small my bites, it hurts to eat. I know I need to go in for an unfill, it is just a matter of do I get rid of the whole thing or just a little! We will see what the doc says. Well I need to go make lunch for tomorrow. Will check back later.

Thanks for the responses. I am hoping that she is overestimating the time. I would love to see some refunds from the anethesiologists fees! Karey- I am very excited and I am going to love it. My plastic surgeon requires that I get an unfill so that there are no nutritional issues. After hearing about all of your experiences I had decided to anyways! You all are looking phenomenal! Can't wait to join you!

I got in my cardio/weights combo for another 1.5 hours! Check in with you all tomorrow.

No matter how tight I am I have ALWAYS been able to gulp water so that was never the problem for me. Now if only I could eat food! I am really pissy with my band right now. I want to eat food and I can't without pain. Soups for as long as I can handle it. Here is my question for everyone. I have to have a complete unfill before surgery per PS orders because she doesn't want any nutritional issues. I am perfectly fine with that because my band seems to tighten up when I am under stress anyways. I can have that unfill the last part of June when I don't have school. However I am really tight again and miserable. If it still hurts to eat after a week of liquids do you think that I should 1. Go and get my complete unfill now and then just really behave until perhaps the middle of August OR 2. Go and get a little unfill and then go back again in June to get the rest of it taken out. 3. Just deal with it and live on mushies and soups until June when I get the unfill. Remember it is a 6 hour drive. I am really torn right now and would like to hear what you all think. I am scared that I will gain weight back BUT I have been unfilled before and managed to lose 10 pounds during that time. Now I just need to maintain.

I am going to butt in from the July 07 board, to tell you that if you are still losing AND you don't get the sliming, pbing feeling, you are LUCKY. This is how I was with my first fill. If I hadn't gotten something lodged from taking too big of a bite, I honestly don't know that I would have ever had to have another fill. Ever since then I have been battling the too tight feeling, and believe me you don't want that. You have most likely NOT stretched your pouch, you are just at a comfortable spot. I find that I lost most of my weight when I was looser than most people would want to be because I could eat the right kinds of food. When I was so tight that I could only get down liquids, I wouldn't lose much. So milk this for all it is worth and know that some people NEVER have to have fills.

I ate low carb most of the time I was losing, because that is what made me happiest. However I didn't cut the carbs out completely because that will trigger cravings in most people. Jachut and Grace are absolutely correct when they say that sometimes you have to give into the cravings to prevent binging, but that those carbs need to be wholegrain. If you can't just switch, try going VERY low carb for a week and break the addiction. The first week is always the hardest, but you can make it. During that week of breaking the addiction I didn't allow myself anything sweet. No fruit, no SF jello, no SF ANYTHING that was sweet. Once I was through that I seemed to be able to eat sweet stuff without sending myself spiraling down. Now when I want something sweet I eat fruit, but I try to partner it with a protein...cheese, protein fortified cereal, etc. But that is just me. You have to find what works for you. But try some of the suggestions before me as well as mine. Something might work for you. Best of luck.

They are all correct. When I asked my doc why there were so many different instructions out there for post-op diets he said it was for 2 reasons. First, the training of the doc. Second is the technique of the doc and this is the one that is crucial. You doc knows best about what will be safe for the way he does his surgery and the type of band that you have. If you practice the will power NOW (and yes the band still requires will power) then it will pay dividends later. I learned the rules early and I followed them to an obsession almost, but 8 months later I have lost 91.5 pounds. You can do this this. PM me if you want some good soup recipes. In fact I am back on soups because my band is too tight right now!

Laci- Are you ready for some tough love? NOT CONDEMNATION! If you are not ready at this time, that if fine. Put it away in your mind that someone has given you some and come back here when you are ready. By the time I get to post this you will probably have 100 other replies, but I want to take my time and post what I really want to say. This is a post that I wrote to someone else and they felt like it gave them some practical advice. I hope that it works for you...if not, then you forget that you even read it! And 60 pounds is an amazing feat so you know you have it in you. Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post! Nope the Easter Candies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have "chocolate" (which will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of chocolate shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "chocolate". Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have. 1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit. a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life. b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there. c. Write down why you are more powerful than chocolate(this one is tough!) d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your chocolate) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym. e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons. f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you brownies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that brownie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it. 2. Another possible tactic if you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish. 3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person. 4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. You need to POINT BLANK tell your people, I CAN'T have this food here. And yes that means YOU too. I know this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my DH, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie! Wow I knew this would be long, but I had no idea how long. If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy. Good luck.

Yes you most certainly need an slight unfill. It is better to get it taken care of now then risk getting something lodged (very very painful) and have to have a complete unfill. Been there done that!:biggrin: I know it is often a pain in the butt to get to the doc, but it is crucial. My doc is 6 hours from me so I KNOW the pain! Good luck.

Well it may be your fortune that you hit the wrong button and found us. This is the greatest board on the forum, in my opinion. As you can see from my signature, I am not even a July bandster, but I post here anyways! They are truly my family. Feel free to ask any questions you might have about the band. Most of us have been there and done that. For me it is the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. With lots of hard work (mental and physical) I have lost 91.5 pounds in 8 months!!!!! This is no walk in the park, and there will be ups and downs, but it has given me more confidence than I have ever had in my life.

Janet - I just bought a skirt that was size 6. I didn't believe it though. And yes your body will completely change once you add weights. Once I started really working out at the gym my body went through a total change. It was once I really added weights that people started making comments that I was getting "SKINNY" even though I wasn't losing huge amounts of weight. Alright so I have pb'd 3 times in 2 weeks and I am getting tigher by the day. I thought you were supposed to loosen up as you go???? Well I think my tummy is just irritated so I went back to liquids. One bite into my salmon tonight and I said this isn't going to work. So I gave the fish to DH and took my asparagus and pulverized it with some onion and garlic in the food processor. Then I added some FF evaporated milk (which doesn't seem to bother my stomach), some parmeasean cheese, and some italian cheese blend and made some soup. For the first time in weeks I ate without pain! We just went to the store and got some different veggies so that I could make some soups for the next few days. I am going to stay on liquids as long as I can handle it to really let my stomach relax. Hopefully that will buy me the time I need to get to June 17. Anyone ever turn tuna noodle (well actually bean) casserole into a soup? I am going to try it tomorrow. I have a hard time getting protein in when I am on soups, but I will just have to get creative. Alrighty well we are going to play our WOrld of Warcraft so I will pop in and out and see if anyone is around.

I never order my own meal anymore. I just share with DH. We have found that we need to remember to tell the waiter to not have them split it in the back though because I get nervous and jittery when they bring out a half order and it is still 3 times the amount of food that I eat. People look at us funny when I ask for a dessert plate or bread plate to eat my meal on. I tell everyone about my surgery so I just tell the waitress and they seem to be VERY helpful. As for my epiphany moment...mine came when I inhaled an entire 9x12 inch cakepan full of carrot cake 1 month before surgery. That was when I decided I needed help and I haven't looked back since. It is funny when we get our epiphany moments, but when they happen they are life changing.

As for the goal weight...that is up to you. I am attempting to stop before I get to the perfect BMI and I am only 28. I am having a tummy tuck in a little less than three months and after I am all healed from that I may decided to lose a few pounds, though I don't think so. I am in a size 8/10 and frankly I don't want to look like skin and bones. And my DH doesn't want that either. I can run 2+ miles and I work out a lot so those things overshadow the scale to me. Remember, the scale is just a number and as far as I am concerned I want to be defined by more than just a number. (And this is coming from an analytical chemist!)