Jachut

Well, I certainly dont feel like that during a spin class! I can only wish......... Personally, I would have kept pedalling, lol.

I have a 4cc band with 2.8cc in it. I was banded in 2005. I guess I lost weight in the first 18 months - 2 years and then not since, but I was lucky, that weight loss got me down to a BMI of 22. I'd have to say I share a similar experience. I am back to a "normal appetite". When I say that I mean I get hungry, I have what I consider more interest in food than a naturally slim person and I am always ready and able to eat inappropriately. The band just doesnt provide appetite control forever. But I really DO think I'm less hungry and interested than I would be without the band and when i do cave, I cant do the damage I once did. The main difference is that I havent ever regained any weight. How have I done this? Well, I dont precisely know, there's a bit of luck in there, but here are my main reasons why I think I've not regained: I never 'dieted' in the first place. I lost weight on a normal food plan, I didnt cut food groups and do crazy things or try to eat insane amounts of Protein in a day and I lost weight on a healthy 1300 to 1500 calories a day. Therefore, I cant go "off" my diet and I havent ruined my metabolism by starving my body for a year or more on less than 1000 a day. I exercised all the way through my weight loss and I still do exercise - I never stop challenging myself and I do more exercise now than I did when losing. The fitter I get, the harder I work. I exercise for an hour most days of the week and I will NEVER give this up. I dont let anything get in my way and I definitely think of it in terms of burning up those small treats I've had in a day. I continue to monitor my diet in that if I have had a few bad days, I do try to make up for it. I continually pull myself back on track and simply never ever lose sight of the fact that I cannot eat what I want (even though I say I lost weight eating what I want, I dont mean whatever I want in any quantity I desire!). I will eat chocolate if I want to, but I dont do it every single day. I accept that I'm a person who has an illness and it must be managed for life. I really dont expect to ever wake up and feel "cured" and I truly view my band as a weapon or tool to help me fight it, not an end in itself. Unfortunately, if my body is anything to go by, once youv'e had a large weight loss like we've had, if you regain, losing it means hardcore, oldfashioned dieting. There's no more of this cutting back a little and watching the pounds fall off. But its way more doable than it was before the band. I hope that's helpful, I know everyone says that they know their band is a tool, but so many people sound like they really cant quite accept that. This is a long hard road, and you dont ever really arrivea t a destination. Not to depress you but you dont, you have to manage this thing for life. I hope you can get the gist of what I'm saying and not see the downside of it. But I certainly wouldnt wait around to see if your band is punctured either, I'd be back soon to have the Fluid checked!

Hmmm, its very varied, we eat very very normally. Being Australian, we love a barbie! (barbecue) - chops, sausages, steak, chicken, whatever, with salad and potatoes. Roasts - lamb is a favourite. Lots of slow cooker food - stews and casseroles - with rice or mashed potatoes and vegies - I skip most of the rice and potato, we do eat Pasta - bolognaise, lasagne and lately I cant get enough pesto, I've got a real craving for basil pesto lately. We eat a lot of Thai and Indian style dishes too, but i usually cook them, not take away. I eat anything and everything, just like a normal person.

I think its a bit of redistribution. Because if you think about it logically, if you lose fat from your body, that HAS to show on the scale. And contrary to popular belief, women, and even men, dont gain pounds of muscle quickly. A couple of pounds of muscle added to your body over and entire YEAR would be really great going for a woman trying to lose weight. So short term, losing inches but not pounds does happen, but long term no.

This is so true - how much work are you willing to do. I've gotten to a BMI of 22, but I personally would like to be even thinner - I know, I know, I'm nuts. I really dont NEED to be thinner, I really dont see how thin I am, its all body image stuff, not a need to lose weight. But from a healthier mental perspective, I've never really tried because I know that I just dont want to have to do the work it would take to get and stay there. I can maintain this weight effortlessly. I grumble about a few lumps and bumps around the hips, but I dont care enough to really do anything about it. There's nothing wrong with deciding that, but you CAN lose more if you really want to.

I think you need to eat more too, purely for your future health. That sort of intake would generally place you at risk of malnutrition, osteoporosis, stuff like that, you really cant eat that little long term without supervision, especially doing as much exercise as you are doing. You're doing more than enough. You've lost an awful lot of weight, personally, I think yoiu're just going to have to be patient. I found the same thing, I just kept on going at a moderate level - eating well, exercising regularly and that last 10lb took me a year to lose, there'd be nothing for months and months and then suddenly 3 or 4 lb would go overnight sort of thing. But I did lose it in the end.

I lost more than 100% to go well below the top of my healthy weight range. I just lost until it stopped, i didnt set a particular goal.

I went back last night for the first time in about 4 weeks - I'm having chemo and have a picc line in my arm that I had to let heal up and become well implanted. Boy oh boy am I going to be sore by tomorrow, lol. And I could tell I have a few less red blood cells than I did a few weeks ago, a few of those burpees had me seeing black spots. But oh, how I love brutal exercise, lol. Good luck with yours, you'll have a ball.

No, I dont count pregnancy weight, however, by the time I got banded at 240lb I weighed more than I did at the end of my 3rd pregnancy by about 3lb.

That's how it went with me. It just got slower and slower and slower over time until eventually it stopped. I really thought I was finished at about 160 lb but eventually I lost 10lb more and they were the 10lb that made the biggest difference, lol. After that I've never lost another pound, but never gained either. If there's things you can tweak, such as getting stricter with your eating or exercise, then go for it. But the answer is NOT to go for more fills and end up too tight and have to have fill removed. I tried that, and the extra fill only made me uncomfortable (not vomiting tight, but it was too tight) so I took it out again - it was only 0.1cc (4cc band). It never resulted in any weight loss, by the time you're close to goal, your body is pretty darn efficient and you just have to be patient. But you do get there eventually.

I didnt have to do a pre op but thought I would anyway - My doc recommends Optifast. Within 3 days I'd passed out about 4 times. My doc took me off it, since I didnt have to really do it. Truth is, pre op is pretty terrible for you health wise, but it serves a purpose. Its the low carb element than shrinks your liver, so my advice would be to do your very very best, but if you cave in and eat something make it a Protein. And there's probably better shakes out there nutrition wise too. I wouldnt have lasted, I suck at willpower for dieting like that, I always have, I still do and I always will. And its had no bearing on my success with a band.

Csections are much harder, and I didnt even think a csection was much at all, so that makes the lapband surgery a piece of cake. The worst part is simply recovering from the anaesthetic - the groggy feeling, sore throat, sleepiness and for me, I get a bit teary and emotional for a day or two. Physically this surgery is easy. However, help would be wonderful, you should take your time to recover and having support makes that much easier - that dinner/bath/bed time (arsenic hour I like to call it) is horrendous on the best of days, if you can get help during that time, that's wondeful. But you should be right during the day with a 1 year old given your other little one is at school.

The way you said "I joined the gym" makes me assume you havent been exercising regularly? It is just SO important, exercise works even better for keeping weight off than it does for losing and you simply can absolutely not afford to quit exercising ever again if you want to keep weight away. That would be my advice, learn to love exercise and if you cant, learn to be dedicated. I'm having chemotherapy and radiation at the moment and I'm STILL running most days, its that important to me. It truly makes all the difference in allowing you to live and eat relatively normally without regaining weight. You can do this. See your band doctor (its REALLY important to stay in touch with your doc and to go in for check ups), think about a top up fill if you think you might need it (I've had a small top up every 12 months or so since I hit goal 2 and a half years ago, I was banded in December 2005 too). You can do this, but band and weight maintenance is for LIFE. But a 40lb weight problem is much less than you once dealt with, you have a tool to work with and hopefully medical backup, you CAN do it.

You know, given my current situation, I've really wondered whether weight loss has somehow been a factor. There's no doubt about it, having a lot of fat gives your body a lot of places to store toxins and losing a lot of weight is a really big upheaval for your body, it causes changes to virtually every system. It really is better never to get fat in the first place. But you have to focus on the positive, that the benefits of weight loss to our health FAR outweigh the negatives.

We've got kids at home, so DH was there with them, it was only an overnight stay so he didnt visit. He came and got me next morning, and of course I spoke to them all. Truthfully, I find it quite hilarious that I had to have an operation to get some peace. An overnight stay in hospital, a chance to read my book, bliss! At home I had to act much sicker than I was (I could have gone back to work a day or two after the surgery, truly) so that they'd all leave me alone and do stuff around the house for a bit longer. Ah, nothing like a spot of elective surgery for a bit of a holiday.

My average day at the moment, this was yesterday breakfast: a quarter cup of a high fibre Cereal, with half a sliced banana and about half a cup of milk, a half a piece of wholegreain toast (thin) with vegemite. Lunch: a bowl of home made pea and ham soup Snack, a skinny cappucino and half a small piece of cake (shared with my mum). dinner: thai tuna patties and salad (I had one pattie, would mash to about half a cup size and about a cup of a lettuce based salad). I probably eat no more than a cups worth of food at a time, depending what it is, salad I can eat more of. that's a very typical day for me. Breakfast almost always carb based, lunch most often a good soup containing legumes or pulses or a salad with a Protein in it, dinner can be absolutely anything but most often home cooked from scratch involving protein and vegies. I usually skip the rice or Pasta at dinner if I'm serving it to my family. I put it on my plate so that it looks normal and satisfying but I leave it till last and barely ever eat it.

Have to agree, I really dont buy into this special before workout shake, followed by special post workout shake. The idea is to burn your fat. Like I said, harder exercise tends to deaden my appetite, but I tend to agree that a fill might be on the cards. And whilst I personally wouldnt suggest more food (dont really buy the starvation mode theory either) spreading your calories over more balanced meals would be a bit more sensible. For whatever reason, people that eat bigger meals less often do tend to be heavier.

I agree with elements of what you say but I think a fair bit of it is a bit misleading and even inaccuate. None of us could really lose weight permanently without a "leash" to some degree, because we're disordered eaters. Most of us can lose 30, 40lb for a while without a band, but keeping going to 100, 150 or even 200 and keeping THAT off permanently is a whole different ball game. I wonder, do I "listen to my body" or "rely on my stomach to tell me its stuffed"? I eat till I feel satisfied. If you ask me, and you didnt really, lol, measuring out a volume of food and telling yourself that you will eat no more no matter how you feel is the kind of disordered eating that puts us out of touch with our bodies and landed us where we are. It makes you afraid of food, unable to trust your body to tell you what it needs. Well, that's how it works for me. Sometimes I'm hungry and I eat more than other times when I"m only a bit peckish. That's what NORMAL people do. I've been very successful doing this, so again, whilst what you're saying may well be true for you and many others its definitely not black and white , a fact anymore than I can claim that what I just said is true for everyone. It simply isnt. We all have different issues. I do however agree completely that seeking ever tighter fills is not the way the band is meant to work. No wonder the band is seen as such a dicey and uncertain piece of equipment. People cause their own erosion and slippage problems much of the time by being simply too tight and people that truly cant behave in the way you're describing would probably be better with another surgery. You're right, the band DOES take self control. Restriction does not mean a choke hold, it means help to stop when you're satisfied on a smaller amount of food. And you're 100% right, just because you can eat something doesnt mean you should.

One of the girls on here had her tubing rubbing on her diaphragm and causing bad pain, she had an op to shorten the tubing. I dont know anyone who's had it down in their pelvis, but I'm having a big pelvic surgery later this year and thankfully my surgeon has lapband experience, he did say that he could pretty much guarantee the safety of my band but said the tubing can be REALLY hard to find after a couple of years, it does tend to move around and bury itself, so he vowed to be very careful not to puncture or nick it.

I couldnt live on that, I found I never needed to dip below about 1400 a day. I maintain quite well on 1800 to 2000.

Pasta, rice and bread high GI foods, but you rarely eat them on their own. The whole low carb thing is basically flawed by this, if you eat a balanced diet and eat Proteins at every meal as well as small amounts of carb foods, you wont have that blood sugar response. If you eat a slice of white bread on its own, you probably will, but that's not good balanced eating, is it? Of course you can eat pasta, bread and rice IF your band will tolerate it. You dont need enormous quantities of energy foods like this, particularly if you're trying to lose weight but you dont need to withhold food groups to manage your weight. Its just a matter of what your band can tolerate, and that's an individual thing. I personally have no trouble with bread, but clear, pulp free apple juice or cold yogurt will have me over the toilet bowl within minutes.

You're a brave girl, I think its a very sensible idea to be honest. If you've had a gutful of being obese and you're quite willing to modify your socialising then you've got the advantage - you're young, your skin will bounce back, your metabolism is good and you should be able to get fit very quickly. Your 20's and early 30's before you settle and have kids can be one of the best, most exciting times of your life and why waste it being fat and miserable? Not that you wont be able to go out and have a drink with your friends. But 10 beers and a 2 am kebab probably wont work all that well, lol. And when everyone's eating Mcdonalds, you'll be the one buying salad. I like that though, I like being a 'small eater', I always admired the skinny chicks who nibbled on the fries whilst I couldnt resist downing a Big Mac with the guys. You're past puberty, you've thought about this, if you're willing to make the sacrifices then I for one would only wish you the best of luck and applaud you for taking charge so early in life.

I find that harder exercise deadens my appetite - try throwing some intervals into your cardio where you go all out, REALLY exhaust yourself and you might find you're not hungry. Works for me. Lighter exercise like walking makes me hungrier, for sure. Not that I dont do it, its great for you, but I find that harder stuff really makes me not feel like eating for hours afterwards.

Both DH and I are banded, but we were done a couple of years apart. mealtimes havent changed at all. We eat as a family what we always ate. DH and I just both eat less of it. But its the same food, we all sit down together, there's nothing abnormal or 'diet' about the way we eat and people who didnt know couldnt tell. We just dont overeat.

Its hard to tell because they're probably different brand names, but I've had 2 colonoscopies in the past month - unfortunately the first discovered a large malignant tumour, sigh. But anyway, prognosis good so lets not dwell on that, lets talk about the joys of bowel prep! The first one, I had to do 3 sachets of picolax. That was easy as. It was effervescent, yes, and difficult to get past a band, but you're allowed to sip it, and had to take a sachet once every 2 or 3 hours, so it was very very doable. It tastes like that saline stuff we used to drink as kids. It wasnt too violent, it resulted in 3 totally liquid bowel motions for me, a couple of much smaller clear ones and two or three false alarms, was all finished by the next morning and ready for the colonoscopy. The second time a week later, I had the Picolax and a sachet of colonlytely - that stuff is much more difficult. It makes up a litre, and its cloudy white. You have to get that entire litre down in the course of an hour, I really struggled with that since it tasted like a bucket of elephant semen (well, what I imagine that would taste like), kind of thick, warm and salty. Ergh. I gagged and fussed and carried on like a baby over that one but I did it. I used a straw and got it right into the back of my mouth, to try not to taste it, and I just worked on it for an hour. Again, the result was not too violent. At no time was I required to skull anything, I was able to sip slowly. Also because I have a band, there wasnt a lot of muck in my system to start with, plus you have to to clears for about 12 hours before hand and a band makes that a lot easier too. Its really not too scary, or too difficult to do.