SpecialK

Okay friends... I thought dry roasted almonds or a small amount of nuts would be an okay snack and it is in terms of being able to eat it but I have to tell you I must need someone like Fenton to stand guard over me with his stick and unsnapped holster whenever I step near nuts! My trigger food is Peanut Butter and I crave that taste but its just not worth the calorie hit I see when I have to put it on my daily calorie counter. I did find these little pre-packaged containers of Jif-to-go with a single serving size of peanut butter and I am trying that instead of having a whole jar open -- which is an unfortunate invitation in my mind to work to the bottom of the jar. Nuts!! I know better but I'm trying so hard to unlearn old eating behaviors. I guess with a business dinner of overeating and smacking my hands for getting into the nuts, I needed to 'come clean' and say I'm going to try really hard today to stick to 800-1000 calories and to stay off the scale for a few days and not punish myself looking at the numbers go up temporarily from these couple days of food insanity. Not big portions of foods but just nibbling here, there and before you know it, the calories pack on. It really makes me so aware of how many calories I really may have been eating on a regular basis before I started using an online calorie tracker about a year or so ago. Okay off to work and a clean start to a new day!

Nice to hear from you Ladyroz. Wonderful progress on your weight loss. I've stubbed my toe a couple times this week so I just need to take heart from those who are in it for the long haul with me. Thanks to all of you!

Welll tonight was the first time I had to go out with a group for a business dinner and they had picked Buca di Peppo's Italian in the Arena District - which I love the food -- and they serve huge giant portions family style. Everyone overeats so I knew this wasn't going to be easy to get through. Everyone started off with Chianti wine and I ordered Lemonade! I just felt funny not ordering something to drink but then I drank alot of it right before the meal part came which is a rule breaker (#1). Then we had a salad course and two pizzas to share among 11 of us - I had 1 piece of pizza and ate mostly the pepperoni off the top and just a little bit of crust and it was so good. I haven't tasted pizza since pre-surgery diet before March 3rd--2 months without pizza. Then two huge family servings of spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesan to share among 11 of us. I ate as small amount of salad as I could to save room for the meal and picked off a piece of meatball (they are softball sized meatballs!!) and about a 2"x3" piece of the chicken and some spaghetti. I was eating small bits of the meatball and chicken very slowly, trying to remember to chew, chew while talking business and laughing...something I haven't had to do since surgery to talk and eat at the same time and not forget to swallow a big bite of something. About 2/3 of the way thru, I got that pressure feeling warning me to stop. I finished about 2 more little bites of chicken and left all the spaghetti noodles go. I added up my calorie total for today and its over the top... lunch and snacks for business meetings too earlier --very disappointed that I ate so much but I tried to make the best choices I could each step of the way. In the past, I would have left that restaurant like so many others as very overstuffed--as in "roll me to the car". As we walked to our cars, I realized I felt full and satisfied but not stuffed and no pressure sensation so I must have stopped at an okay point. I am really surprised I could eat this much just a week after my first fill but I wonder if I was drinking the lemonade with my meal helping to push the food along--rule breaker #2. Next time, hopefully the business dinner will be somewhere that I order my own meal and don't feel group pressure to eat.

Most of us that were at the First Fill party...hee hee... on April 29 were each alone when we came and we just sat and talked in the waiting room until it was our turn to go in. Before you know it, its over. So, my opinion is I'd go alone...I went back to work after doing this on my lunch hour with nobody at work the wiser of what I'd been up to over lunch. No pain, no reason not to go to work.

If Dr. Price's nurse Judy was there with him in the office, he pretty much tells her to put you in for the fill appointment with Dr. Choban and if you don't hear in a week, I would call and leave Judy a message that you are waiting on confirmation of your first fill with fluroscopy and give her the date (a Tuesday) that you're hoping it will be (6 weeks out from your surgery date is the minimum they will do one).

I'd say if you have your Insurance approval now, that anything you lose before surgery is a bonus. If you don't have your insurance approval, I think I'd purposely try to stay around the 35 BMI since that is the requirement a bunch of insurance companies have. I didn't have that problem due to a high BMI ...would like to be at 35 someday soon!

Niki, I would just trust my feeling of fullness or for me last night at dinner it was a sense of pressure when I was eating a salad at O'Charley's that is a favorite - a huge bowl of lettuce with chicken tender pieces, some walnuts, few crumbles of blue cheese and dried cranberries. Normally, pre-band I could easily have eaten most of that big salad. Last night, Not! I couldn't even finish about half the chicken on the top - was eating that before the lettuce and picking pieces of nut and cheese to mix in flavors. I easily took 2/3 of that salad home and I'm going to give it a try as dinner tonight. After a certain amount of chicken, which I was taking small bites (not tiny really) and chewing well before swallowing, it was going down fine, just started to slowly feel pressure - I guess that was my stomach pouch sending me a signal of fullness. I stopped at that point and allowed what I ate to settle and I was fine the rest of the night on hunger then. P.S. It is so hard passing up the rolls at O'Charley's but I have done that twice....

They give you two hospital gowns - one you can snap/tie in front as a robe on top of the one snapped/tied in the back. I just made sure the back was tied up good and walked without the 2nd hospital gown as a robe. You are right, getting an arm in a robe with the IV in your hand/arm would complicate things. P.S. You can slip your undies back on shortly after surgery once you get up to your hospital room and/or first time you get up to go to the bathroom so that your backside is covered up for the strolling the halls :-)

For Fenton and the whole Shrinking Shamrocks gang -- keep up the good work and Smile! :frown:

This first fill on Tuesday is already paying off for me so I'm a happy camper now, able to stay closer to 800 calories a day now without hunger as opposed to being very hungry at 1200-1400 calories right before my fill when I was at the 6 weeks post surgery point -- so for those in bandster hell...hang in there it will get better. I'm already scheduled for my 2nd fill on June 10th ...I am betting I will need it at that point but we'll have to see. Fenton - that's fantastic that your exercising and getting moving has helped you. Congrats. I'll post a quick cartoon here in another post to give you a laugh!

Before I had my psych eval, cardiac and sleep clearances and nailed down I had my first appointment with the surgeon so I think that is what they are trying to schedule you for with Dr. Choban. That is exciting that you don't have to go through the insurance approval hoops but only what Dr. Choban requires so she can approve you not having to potentially do the others if she feels its okay. If not, it could be possible it will take a month or more to get to the appt with Dr. Choban so I'd go ahead and be working the psych eval and sleep clearance things in the meantime, particularly the psych eval because I am guessing they won't let you hop past that clearance because they want to be sure we really are emotionally and mentally equipped and ready for this decision. If you can convince them you are not a person who snores at all, you might get past the sleep clearance. If you do have a snoring problem, you probably will have to do the sleep clearance. When I did my sleep study, I had a pre-study appt with the dr., then the 1st night's sleep evaluation overnight, then 2 weeks, then the 2nd night's sleep evaluation with me on my CPAP machine so I think 4-6 weeks elapsed on that in total. I was guessing your name is Lynn from your user name. Welcome!

Juli - you are a real testimony to the positive things one year later in losing weight has done if you are going to be able to do the Columbus to Portsmouth - TOSRV bike trip. That is heavy duty. Can't even imagine how many calories that will burn. Have a blast! and stay safe.

Miki - based on the small amount you say you are eating before hitting fullness/restriction, keep an eye on your protein grams and supplement with a protein shake to keep up your nutrition and do the multi-vitamin thing too.

For the Shrinking Shamrocks bandsters -- I got my 2nd fill appt scheduled for June 10th just 3 days before I head to Florida for a week of vacation but I think it will be fine because I tolerated this first fill just fine and I think 3 days is enough to see if I'm having any trouble with restriction. It will keep me on the straight and narrow while I am on vacation so I am okay with that. I get my first appointment with Dr. Miller now as my follow up physician for June 24 after I come home from vacation so that should be good for me to be able to tell him how I'm doing with the 2nd fill. I am surprised to again find the scale going down some each day following this first fill and that I'm again able to stay in the 800+ calorie range these days after being very hungry trying to stay at 1200-1400 calories right before my fill on April 29. Amazing tool here! Work it Baby!!! LOL

Congratulations Call Me Joy! Approval is the biggest hurdle. You should be hearing about a surgery date soon. Be prepared that they could call you and give you as little as one week or maybe 2 weeks to go for surgery. The pre-op admission testing day is about a week ahead of that. You go that morning for pre-op admission testing and they do an x-ray, draw bloodwork, then you go for bariatric surgery class with Melissa, then a nutrition class with the nutritionist (Andrea I think her name is), then they take you to a different floor where you get into a gown and they weigh you, do an EKG, blood gasses (another blood test), then finish you off with a physical by a hospital staff doctor. I was surprised that the process took maybe about 4 hours that day. Here's a heads up- go early enough that you get the x-ray and bloodwork drawn done early (you have to be fasting) then you can go to the Tim Hortons and get coffee and a bagel or something to eat, before going to the 2 classes and the other testing. On waiting for your sister... humm.... I can kind of see waiting and kind of not waiting... If they offered me a surgery date in May and I was ready to go but she doesn't have her approval from Medicare, I'd go ahead and get my surgery. If she gets her approval before they give you a surgery date, then maybe I'd wait to synch up but I was chomping at the bit to get banded as soon as possible to so I could start losing. Pre-op diet -- Dr. Choban and Dr. Price didn't make us do pre-op diet but I did voluntarily on my own and lost about 6-8 lbs by doing 2 Protein shake meals and 1 meal with lean meat and veggies only, sugar free popsicles for treats. So, other than the night before surgery, nothing to eat after midnight that night, not even Water or ice chips, you don't have to do a pre-op diet. Now, some of us, me included had one last fling or "Last Supper" or "Farewell to Food" meal the weekend before our surgery on Monday -- I chose to do mine on Friday p.m. (PIZZA) so that it had more than a good chance to be digested and out of my system by Monday a.m. surgery time (actually I had a 1pm surgery time). I have heard of folks having some huge meal on Sunday evening as their last meal and then think they are good for after midnight to fast for Monday surgery but I really think some of that food is still moving through your digestive tract so just to be safe if you're going to have a splurge I'd do it Friday or Saturday for a Monday surgery date or something similar.

For newbies in Ohio - go to the USA Local Support Groups thread section, then pick Ohio from that list, then you'll see different discussion threads about folks from Riverside, OSU, Mt. Carmel, the local meetings we've begun - next is coming up May 10 at Polaris - and we've also got a Yahoo Lapband group we can hook you into for Central Ohio. Hope to see you post over on the Ohio section.

I use Splenda Brown Sugar Blend in moderate quantities and I'm fine but I do count it in my daily calories to keep me honest. Lap Band patients should NOT have any dumping or diarrhea or other unpleasant side effects from sugar like gastric bypass patients but nonetheless, too much sugar = less than desired weight loss. That's enough to keep me in check.

Our doctors and the fill nurse do the first fill with fluroscopy and I think it gives us a sense of peace about them finding the port as quickly and painlessly as they can on the first time. About them not needing fluroscopy/ultrasound to find a port due to it being an inch below the skin....well some of us have more fat than others, and they do have trouble finding some ports because they are deeper below the skin than maybe someone with less fat in the abdominal area. Can't wait until I can poke around on my own belly and feel my port but for now, I cannot feel it. On bruising, I have heard some people just take longer for bruising to go way. I wouldn't worry about that one.

I guess I can only edit a post for so long or maybe I hit the maximum post size so here goes Part 2 by request of those who want to keep being counted. 248. TGC - March 20 249 Andrea1 - March 4 250. Shaunni78 - March 10 251. Hazel-eyes - March 14 252. Shoop3010 - March 25 253. JulieC - March 25 254. Boadicea - March 18 255. Tess415 - March10 256. Dosh - March 25 257. Dewl - March 21 - Rest6n, VA 258. Needtolose - March 11 259. Irhishere - March 20

Yes me too on the yo-yo things for diet/weight loss and particularly the folks at work being afraid to say "gee you are looking good". It will have to be more dramatic before they say something probably. My church friends who know about my lapband give me positive kudos each week about how they can see the changes from week to week.

This made me smile -- same problem so I always have the dental hygenist give me a small paper cup to spit in and then dump the cup. Now, the dentist I go to now has these totally comfortable exam chairs that are big enough for plus size folks like us. One dentist I went to was afraid I was going to tip the chair over when he had me reclined way back working on me... talk about embarrassing and of course the chair was narrow and pinched on my hips too.. Thank goodness for today's more modern dentist office settings.

On the First fill amount, yep, even at our hospital on the same day with the same size band, some people got 2.5 cc's and others got 4.5cc's so just trust your doctor who can tell what is best for you.

Thanks Sarah. I think this Fill is helping. Down about 2 lbs since getting it!

This is another example of doctors and hospitals varying on what the heck they do. Ours says Clear/Full liquids for 1 day, then pureed/mushie, then soft foods, etc. Wow - you got to eat a string cheese stick on the same day. I just had 1/4-1/2 cup of low fat ricotta cheese with about 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce mixed in and spices (oregano, garlic, salt/pepper) and it was pretty thin consistency and tasted so good after 24 hours of liquids again.

Wanted to give you some hope that this week there were I think 3 or 4 of us going in for our first fill's this past Tuesday and we all got about 4.5cc's in our bands that hold 14. So cross your fingers to get the same. Best of luck. I know its hard hanging in there for that first fill.