Jachut

I went from a BMI of 36, about 245lb to one of 19 at 132lb currently, no trouble at all. I've never had a problem with my band, I eat from all food groups - including bread. The main thing I do that some dont is I exercise a lot - I runfor up to an hour daily and do bootcamp a few times a week.

Post op day, oh, 1,900 and something. Currently eating coffee and a shortbread biscuit (freshly made from the oven), lol, kids are about to walk in the door from school, so it'll all be gone before I have a chance to do any real damage with it.

I would say that by having Fluid in your band from surgery, your doctor has set you up for a cycle of irritation. Its not the norm to have fluid in there at the start, most people's bands are empty for the first six weeks or so, it can be a hard time to get through but it allows the swelling and trauma of surgery to subside. Personally, I had great restriction, just from swelling, for almost twelve weeks after surgery, so that's how long it was until anything got put in my band. It sounds like you need it ALL out and just start again, from the liquid diet part and dont progress until the swelling has subsided. The reason you cant eat anything solid is you have too much restriction for now, if you allow your stomach to heal, rest and settle down you'll probably find it behaves much better.

I've been unfilled for four months, due to having another surgery and i've actually lost weight. I just said right, three meals a day NO Snacks, not for any reason, not even a nibble. And I do a lot of exercise (which I always did), running, body pump and spinning, about an hour of one or the other or sometimes two, six days a week. I eat what I feel like eating within reason at meals, I still eat off small plates and dishes. At this poiint, I'm finding it so easy I cant imagine why I would ever fill again, its too good being able to eat things like fruit, salads and bread and to actually be able to eat anything off the menu when I go out. My appetite isnt huge and I'm not hungry, I think after five years my body has gotten used to less food and no longer asks for it. I'm confident I can keep this up apart from special situations like holidays where its just so easy to overindulge.

I have to confess to being a freak too - but I do it because I want to, not because I'm forcing myself too. I'm home at the moment not working due to having chemotherapy and other treatment, so I'm spending 2 hours at the gym most mornings - its a goal, its something to focus on, it fills the days because I just dont have that much to do at the moment. I truly love runnning, absolutely love it. Does it help weight loss to be a 'freak'. I think it does to a degree, I mean I lost about 130% of my excess weight, I dont look like I've ever been fat, I'm toned and very fit. But that doesnt mean that everyone has to do it. When I am working, I have about 45 minutes a day to devote, and running is intense enought to burn 500 calories or so in that time. I've had times when I've dropped to half an hour or so a day, and not gained weight, its intensity and what yoiu do with the time you have that matters. If you're going to devote the time, then you may as well make the most of it is my motto. For me personally, walking doesnt meet that criteria but it is more intense for a more overweight, less fit person, so that's an individual thing. This is YOUR lifestyle change and the best changes to make are the ones that you can live with and stick to. Dont beat yourself up over what other people are doing, there's too many variables in everyone's lives.

Get it checked out - please. I had intermittent (very intermittent) bowel cramping that felt exactly like labour from just after I was banded. I had no other symptoms, just occasionally (like maybe once every six months) , when having a BM this cramping would start and I'd be on the toilet for hours, cold sweats and sometimes vomiting, it was that bad. Just like labour or really bad diarrhoea. Skip forward a few years and I started having frequency and clusters of BM's and a feeling like I wasnt finished, also the very occasional cramping. I got it checked out finally and I had rectal cancer, a huge tumour. Your symptoms DONT sound like mine, so I wouldnt be alarmed but I also wouldnt leave it. I could have checked this out five years ago - well I did talk to the doctor but we decided that as endometriosis is in my family, that's probably what it was. Would have been a simple operation, take out the small polyp and be done with it, instead I've lost my rectum, have an ileostomy, am having chemo etc. It just isnt worth leaving any problem unchecked.

You know, I had to be completely unfilled four months ago for a surgery, and I cant be refilled until all my treatment and another surgery has occurred, several months to go still. I just said to myself - 3 small meals a day NO Snacks. Not ever. Its worked. You can blame winter, you can think certain "diets" such as Protein Shakes will do the job, you can come at it from any angle and basically what it boils down to is that you have to just eat small and sensible and exercise every day. Its really simple, hard to do, but really simple. You can do it ladies - consistency over the long haul is always going to show results more so than desperate measures. The trick is not panicking. So, you slipped up, you're only human but you CAN get back on the wagon.

i agree, I cant count how many times I've had pig out days and got on the scales the next day and thought I'd gotten away with it. Only to find that 2lb appears 3 or 4 days later, lol. But 1500 isnt exactly pigging out or high calorie and certainly isnt serious or permanent weight gain territory, I lost all my weight never dipping below 1500 a day. What really helps me stay on the straight and narrow though is an absolutely no snacking rule. I cant handle snacking, I just eat too much over those six meals, it really is absolutely not proven to be any metabolic advantage, in fact there's lots of good research out there that suggests hunger hormones are way better controlled by long gaps between meals. I can follow the "no I absolutely cant eat that because I'm not allowed a snack" rule much better than "I can have small seerve of that for a snack" rule. I eat much more over the day when I snack and even unfilled now and needing to eat for maintenance not loss I find it hard to top 1500 a day on three meals.

I didnt have to do one at all - its cautionary IN CASE of a big fatty liver which is not uncommon in the obese population but most of the time, its not actually needed. As my doc said, its a fairly rare liver that is so enlarged it cant be operated around and in most cases its simply the enormous amount of abdominal fat that causes the most difficulty - and that's not going to be eliminated in even six weeks Iof a liquid low carb diet. Dont worry about sucking at the pre op either. I'm the worst dieter in the world. I thought I'd give the Optifast a go, to get going on my new life earlier, to give myself a jump start. I didnt even last three days, I couldnt stand it. All I managed was not to eat anything not nailed down in the weeks leading up to surgery and to exercise every day and I was mighty proud of that. I've been VERY susccessful with the band. Not being able to last on starvation rations is no indication that you wont be successful with th band - after all every single one of us has a history of failed dieting behind us!

Strangely I find soup VERY satisfiying and even hard to eat at times. Add in even a 1/4 square of a piece of wholegrain bread or a cracker or two, and those swell in the liquid in my pouch and I have myself a meal that will sit a LOT longer than say tuna and salad. But I'm VERY cautious about how much bread/crackers, lol, anymore and WHAM, stuck and up comes the lot.

Heather, you're really summing up how I find the band too. That's always how it worked for me. Any doctor who tells you that you'll eat a half a cup and be satisfied is, I believe, misusing the band and doesnt understand it. Stick with such a doctor and i think your chances of erosion and slippage are higher than average. At the very least you're in for misery and a sense of failure and self blame as you search vainly for something the band cannot provide - complete control over your eating. People's disillusionment and sadness over how it hasnt worked, not to mention how much of a failure they feel, is so sad because its sometimes simply a case of the wrong tool for them. I remember one member on here who claimed it didnt work, she got flamed, we had posts locked mainly because she just insisted it didnt work and wouldnt take any responsibility at all for what she was choosing to do. People's indignation was justified to a point, I mean at some point in time you have to be an adult about your own choices, but she went on to have RNY and has been successful. it was just the wrong darn tool for her. She'd been both misled by her doctors and also had allowed herself the luxury of indulging in a fantasy/hope/dream of a miracle cure without really facing that little voice that should tell each of us we have a part to play in this as well. There's not much advantage to pullling rank, but I do attend Prof. Paul O'Brien's practicee, he's one fo the band's pioneers, a worldwide authority and he suggests that the point of the band is not to feel stuffed, but that the band somehow exerts some appetite control just by being there. Its a tool means its your job to listen hard to that (it can be a very very quiet voice in the general babble of all our other food cues) and also to eat to "not hungry" anymore, not to stuffed. If you feel thanksgiving full after eating you are overeating and if you feel that way after half a cup of food, you are way too tight. Most of us can only tell head hunger from real hunger when we're very motivated to do so, and even for the most successful bandsters, its an issue. This practice is very upfront about the way the band will and will not work, but there's still people sitting in the waiting room talking about giving the doctor a good piece of their mind because they've lost no weight and should have been given more fill. if the band is used the way it is designed to be used than it is a very successful "tool" but that relies very heavily on the user, and it doesnt take into account people's issues around eating, many of which are mental. You hear so much negativity about the band here, and a good proporotion of the time, it is simply not being used the way it is meant to. That doesnt mean its a bad tool, it means its not the right tool for you. The band decreases portion sizes and general hunger and that is ALL it does. If that's not enough for you, then its not the right tool. The skill of our medical professionals is in determining that, and guiding people in the right direction. However, the band CAN be used as a much tighter collar, some people CAN have it so tight they barely think about food, lose lots of weight fast, dont have undue vomiting and stuck episodes.

Its individual - a lot of the descriptions above scream TOO TIGHT, WAY WAY TOO TIGHT to me. I could not live one step from a liquid diet for example and its not the way that my surgeon described the way the band is meant to work. To me, a sweet spot means being able to eat from all food groups in appropriate amounts, sticking to about 1500 calories a day and not being starving doing that. But it will definitely incude head hunger and wanting to eat simply for the sake of it. I also didnt work for months to get to that point, each and every single fill bought that for me but eventually it would wane, it just lasted longer and longer the more fill I had in my band. It never entered my head to go tighter than that sort of level as I lost weight well there. For my part, I am prepared to employ some self control and willpower, to run for up to an hour a day and to go to bootcamp. That's just me though. But it goes to show that a sweet spot is not definable, its different for everyone and you will most probably just "know" when you get there.

All good advice, and at the end of the day you just need to realise it is simple choice. What do you want more, to eat whatever you want or to feel good about your dietary choices? You can do one or the other, there's no magic, no tricks, you just have to decide to do it.

Dont know where the actual stats are, but I have been banded for over five years now and I have nothing but praise for the band. It worked SO well for me! I didnt have stunningly fast weight loss, but I've lost well and truly more than my excess weight and got to a BMI of 21 with no diffculty. Unfortunately I've lost more due to cancer treatment, but that's not the band's fault. I always approached banded eating as the end of any form of dieting, forever. I refused to ever do it again. What I've now found is quite amazing to me. I was unfilled over four months agao for my treatement and I was terrified of a return to preband hunger and eating habits. It simply hasnt happened. I have changed my relationship with food forever, I maintained for three years with fill in my band and now that its gone, I realise I dont even need it. My body has adjusted to the lower weight, my mental processes around food and eating are healthier, and I have retrained my habits and tastes. So there's another advantage, I can probably live from now on with no fill so I dont even have to live with the minor (and very worth it) restrictions of the band, I am to all intents and purposes a "normal" eater again. Just a tip - running an hour a day sure helps that. I can afford to eat without gaining weight.

Nobody's boobs could be worse than mine, think Something About Mary, lol. A good bra and dressing properly makes a world of difference. I've given up on trying to show any chest or cleavage, ribs showing through your chest and wrinkly floppy skin are not quite the same as a plump pair of bosomns, lol. I embrace it and go for the "elegant" look instead of the "voluptuous".

No, you dont need to cut your workouts, logically you KNOW that's not fat lost and gained. Its Water fluctuations, when you're constantly tearing your muscle tissue and it has to repair, it gets bigger, yes, but it also holds Fluid in the process. That's why people gain weight when they start at the gym, not because they've gained 3kg of muscle in 2 weeks. I'm a bit the same, its just hard to see weight go up no matter what the reason. I have a temporary ileostomy at the moment, so I produce lots of very liquid poo (lol, TMI but its kind of on topic) and I really battle dehydration issues as a result. So how nuts is it that I feel "good" on the days that my weight is under 60kg (which is dipping down into a BMI of 18) as a result of dehydration and "bad" on days when I've manaed to eat a dietary combination to thicken things up and retain more fluid in my body and thus weight a kg or two more? Logically I know that the amount of fat on my body has not changed, but my mood can still be dictated by what I see on the scale. I'm scary thin at the moment and I should Celebrate any gain. Likewise, exercise is only going to improve your health and weight loss results in the long run and you do NOT need to cut it back to lose weight. ITs the fat you lose that matters, not what the scale says. Perhaps its just better to not look, although I can never resist.

Nope, too much of a perfectionist. I set my goal really low (64kg or a BMI of 20) and I actually looked better at about 67kg (I'm about 61, now with a BMI of 19 and REALLY skinny). But I just couldnt let it go, I had to see (I actually lost quite a lot extra due to illness) and now I'm here, I'd rather the feeling of control at maintaining this weight than actually looking better. I think I'm a little nuts.

I live on salad - if its just a vegetable salad with a lean Protein and a no fat/low calorie dressing, then I cant see how in the world you could "overeat" it. There's simply not enough calories to do any damage. I love just a mix of vegies - lettuce, capsicum, snow peas, red onion, cherry tomatoes, a little bit of avocado - with a tin of tuna, salt and pepper and a spray of a good olive oil. Restaurant salads - caesar salads, roast vegie salads, chefs salads you need to be a bit more careful of - those are more like all other foods and not "free" foods like raw vegies are. Eat them, enjoy them but know what you're eating and how much of your day's calories it represents.

This is definitely true. I havent got fill at the moment, when i was restricted, I *could* eat anything - fruit, vegies, breads. But some things were harder than others. Now, I've never been a convert to the high protein/low carb way of eating, so I wasnt comforted by being able to eat meat and other Proteins becuase I personally think they need to be eaten in moderation, but I worried about my intake of wholegrains and fruit and veg. However, looking back, I now realise I was seriously nuts to be thinking that because although i've been very successful in losing over 100lb and keeping it off, what I actually WAS doing was eating Protein in moderation, too few fruit and veg (could eat them, they were just so hard, time consuming and over time as a result I didnt really want them anymore) and lots of slider foods - too much yogurt, Soup and sweet, easy carbs like muffins, cakes and biscuits. I didnt worry about eating things like chocolate either. Of course, with portion control I wasnt over eating, and I never had any weight regain, its not like I lived on these foods, I just ate them in preference to healthier things becuase I wanted quick, easy and pain free eating. BUT - and that's a big bug - I was too darn tight. I didnt think I was, I didnt often get stuck, never vomited, didnt have any signs of overtightness like reflux and coughing at night. But if you cant eat good, healthy food three times a day, if you're nibbling, grazing and eating slider foods then chances are you are TOO TIGHT. The band simply is not designed to choke you so you cant eat, its meant to be used as a mild appetite control and to keep you satisfied on smaller amounts of food. You may still want to eat, you may want to be stopped completely by your band from eating bread (if that's something you want to avoid) but it just plain doesnt work that way. In short, keep your restriction at a proper level and you will probably be able to eat well from all food groups. But that will mean you also need some willpower and application to avoid eating when you shouldnt and plenty of exercise. Its not a magic fix. Personally, despite having been diagnosed with another serious illness, I feel incredibly well since unfilling comletely (had to for a surgery). My consumption of fruit and veg etc has increased, I no longer eat crappy carbs like biscuits, I get three or four slices of wholegrain bread or cereals a day and I've actually LOST weight since unfilling! I would never go as tight as I was again.

I handle bread fine and always have - although I dont have any fill these days, but when I did, I could eat bread pretty easily, just not a lot of it.

I have moments like this too, my avatar pic was probably at my best, I'm at least 25lb lighter now and I look scrawny and like a 90 year old naked. I have a flat chest, all my ribs show, and after all that weight loss and not needing any PS, the last 25lb have left saggy skin on my arms, my bum is just skin with no volume and i have no breasts left at all. I have to try to regain some weight but mentally, I just cant let go enough to do it. I take comfort in the fact that my husband loves me no matter what, I can hide the worst of it (the boobs and bum) with nice lingerie, so I take advantage of that and dressed, I am tall and nowadays, a size 6, so I can generally look pretty darn good. The general public dont see me naked. I just figure there's a reason why there's only a few supermodels in the world - they're genetic freaks. I am happy enough to be a normal approaching middle aged woman.

I think it depends how much thinking and research you have done prior to seeing a surgeon and attending a seminar. If you're like me, you will have researched this for ages before you see a doctor. Other people see the doctor and attend the surgeon as their very first step in considering a band. If, like me, you'd already decided you wanted it, then no, its not too fast at all. If you're only just starting to think about it, then perhaps wait a while.

Stick to what you've been told to do. You've been told it for a reason. Presumably you got banded because you are ready and willing to change, so now's the time to start. Get back onto your program, put this behind you and stick with it from now on.

We've all got different anatomy - larger stomachs with more fat around them will get more restriction from an unfilled band. The scar tissue that forms around the band can also provide some restriction. Post op swelling can last an awfully long time too - I didnt have my first fill until 12 weeks out from surgery, I had the best restriction I've ever had with my band in that time. It depends on the band too - at least five years ago when I was banded there was a 9.75cm and a 10 I think, put a 9.75 on a larger stomach and you're going to get a different result than a 10 on a small stomach. Placement might matter, but you'd hope all surgeons were getting it right. For some people, just the huge decision, mental commitment is enough to keep them on the straight and narrow for a long time, for the desperate obese person who's made a rushed, emotional decision and is hoping for a miracle with the band, disappointment is probably looming. Its really just the same as how we all tolerate different levels of fill.

I just make up soup recipes, I get creative with what's left in the bottom of the vegie drawer. Usually I'll use a base of butternut pumpkin (I think that's squash to you guys?), and chuck in whatever I have. I always sautee some bacon and onion first, then for the stock or broth I use Vegeta seasoning (its just a vegetable powdered stock). I dont make it too watery, I like thick soup. I just puree this all up, serve with a dollop of natural or greek yogurt. One favourite is zucchini and leek - again sautee onion and bacon, then add in a couple of sliced leeks and 3 or so zucchini, about a cup of Water and sweat it all down so the flavour is really intense, then add in your broth/stock, simmer till its all soft enough to be pureed - at this stage, I often puree in some light sour cream or natural yogurt. I make a really yummy one - pumpkin soup (either canned or home made) with some crunchy Peanut Butter, sour cream and curry powder blended in - that one's a real meal due to all the calories in the pb and sour cream. I'm a real fan of stew style soups too but those are chunky and have bits of meat, not really for liquid stage. I find I cant go past good old Heinz Cream of Tomato soup - love love love it, made with milk and with a grilled cheese sandwich - ah, comfort food for Friday night dinner. And very occasionally, I get a yen for a cup-a-soup. Any Thai inspired soup is a hit round here too - a good laksa cant be beat (but again, not a real liquid due to chicken or prawns and noddles),, and we all love Tom Yum soup.