bandpal

It's so great that we are still communicating as our five year anniversary nears. I've been between 68 - 65 kilo for most of the year, maintaining a 62 kilo (136.lb) pound loss with a BMI of 23.2. Right now, I'm not eating breakfast, having a main meal at lunch and doing fruits (so good here this time of year!) and veggies for the rest of the day. Learning how to deal with stressors which used to make me eat, forgiving myself for slips and trying to be an all around good guy.

This takes a long time. We are changing the habits of a lifetime. The advice here is good: don't get too hungry, use a baby spoon (I even tried eating from the thin end of a spoon!) or chopsticks, put your utensil down between bites, chew thoroughly (one of the best lessons the band teaches) and avoid distractions while eating, which allows you to listen to your body. Overall, a lot of what I've been reading about mindful eating resonates to me. Good luck!

Hi All, It's been a while, hasn't it? On the hope that there are some of us still reading this board, I wanted to check in and say hello. Overall I'm doing well. I weighed in this morning at 62.9 kilos (138.4 lbs), 5.1 kilos (11.2lbs) below goal weight, and 67.1 kilos (147.6 lbs) less than I did on the morning of November 21, 2007. That's not to say there haven't been bumps in the road and elements of my new life which I'm not comfortable with. I can't keep anything down before the early afternoon hours, liquids included. It's rare for me to eat a meal without spitting up some food at least once. It's hard for me to drink for hours after meals, which has occasionaly interfered with taking medication. I'm also changing jobs this fall, which will necessitate leaving behind the "spitting image" which I've acquired at my old job. So... I'm making the 2.5 hour drive up the desert to my surgeon's office and am getting a full cc taken out. This'll take me down to 5 cc's, down from a high of 6.5 cc's two years ago. I'm a little scared. But I also know that it's time for me to step up and see if I can keep some of the good habits I've developed over the past three and a half years. Some of these are: - Eating slowly - Chewing food thoroughly - Not eating a large breakfast (basically, I don't eat breakfast anymore) - Eating primarily vegetables, reasonable amounts of protein and small servings of carbohydrates. - Avoiding sweets as much as possible and trying not to ping pong between sweet, salty and fatty foods. - Not binging late into the night. The band forced me to adapt these habits, which meant that I was able to extinguish the bad habits of a lifetime which got me to where I was on that November morning. Now it's time to see if I can keep these habits out of choice rather than from necessity. And of course I hope I'll still feel the band in there, doing it's job. Please wish me luck. Love to all of you who walked this road with me. I will never forget you. - Bandpal (David)

It's been a week since my unfill from 6 to 5 cm after a year of discomfort, and I find myself asking why I waited so long. I've had a great week: been able to reintegrate fresh fruit and vegetables into my diet and enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning without seeing it again later on. Perhaps most importantly, I've been eating slower and chewing thoroughly, and have made it through meals without drinking, something I've realized was not good for me. I actually feel the food go down more than I did when I was tighter (probably because of drinking less), but I get stopped up alot less. I've hardly had any pb's during the week, and the infamous "spit cup" which accompanied me to meals (and which I often needed in between meals as well) has been relegated to the cupboard beneath the sink. My daily routine consists of coffee in the morning, about a cup of either meat, meat and vegetable or meat, vegetable and carb (I vary between the three every day) for lunch, and then either salad or a fruit for snack and fruit or a salad for dinner. I've had 2 or 3 mini binges during the week (I say "mini" because there's no comparison in quantity to what went on before the band), but I just get up the next day and go back to my routine. No recrimination, no beating myself up, no drama. That is the great divide between life pre and post band. If, before, I had five "bad" days and two "good" ones, then now I have maybe six good ones and one bad one, which works out to a batting average of .833, so what am I going to complain about when I'm good enough for the Hall of Fame. If I keep going this way, I'll have Cooperstown asking for my fork! Thanks for listening, everyone, and thanks for being there!

I live in Israel, so it was an easy choice - plus, a great surgeon, a private hospital and national health insurance that paid for all but about $500.00. What's not to love? Good luck, Hopeful - you should be! Lapband has been one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I wish that for you.

Hi Hopeful, Congratulations on you decision and welcome! I had my surgery a tad northeast of Mexico (see my signature) but I do have one piece of advice to pass on: take it for what it's worth. When the big day comes, see if you can make sure that your surgery is among the first ones your doc performs, before s/he is tired or pressed for time. That's the way it was for me, and I've always felt it got me started on the right foot. All the best, good luck on your journey.

It's been a week since my unfill from 6 to 5 cm after a year of discomfort, and I find myself asking why I waited so long. I've had a great week: been able to reintegrate fresh fruit and vegetables into my diet and enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning without seeing it again later on. Perhaps most importantly, I've been eating slower and chewing thoroughly, and have made it through meals without drinking, something I've realized was not good for me. I actually feel the food go down more than I did when I was tighter (probably because of drinking less), but I get stopped up alot less. I've hardly had any pb's during the week, and the infamous "spit cup" which accompanied me to meals (and which I often needed in between meals as well) has been relegated to the cupboard beneath the sink. My daily routine consists of coffee in the morning, about a cup of either meat, meat and vegetable or meat, vegetable and carb (I vary between the three every day) for lunch, and then either salad or a fruit for snack and fruit or a salad for dinner. I've had 2 or 3 mini binges during the week (I say "mini" because there's no comparison in quantity to what went on before the band), but I just get up the next day and go back to my routine. No recrimination, no beating myself up, no drama. That is the great divide between life pre and post band. If, before, I had five "bad" days and two "good" ones, then now I have maybe six good ones and one bad one, which works out to a batting average of .833, so what am I going to complain about when I'm good enough for the Hall of Fame. If I keep going this way, I'll have Cooperstown asking for my fork! Thanks for listening, everyone, and thanks for being there!

Hooray for your doc! Gym membership might not obligate you to press forward (when are people going to figure out that things like that don't work for us?!) but I bet you'll work hard to justify your PCP's support and belief in you! Sounds like you are moving along just fine!

Hopefull, looks to me like you received a lot of good feedback here, so take what you need and leave the rest. I think your question was entirely legitimate, and judging from the responses, so did many others. What I got out of this discussion was the concept of appetite restriction versus physical restriction from the band. I am comfortable thinking about the band as an appetite dimmer, decreasing the volume of the black, bottomless abyss inside of me that I always ate to fill. For today, that hole is a puddle, and for that I am grateful! Good luck,

Wow, congratulations Bobrocky! Four hours from soup to nuts - that's pretty amazing. To think that I considered it pretty extreme getting kicked out into the rain at 0600 on the morning after my banding... Good luck, keep the posts coming.

Wow, congratulations Bobrocky! Four hours from Soup to nuts - that's pretty amazing. To think that I considered it pretty extreme getting kicked out into the rain at 0600 on the morning after my banding... Good luck, keep the posts coming.

Wow,,, will be wishing you well from the Holy Land all day long and putting in the good word for you with the man upstairs, they say it's just a local call from here. Good luck, go get 'em!

I was also afraid... but I remember sliding onto the table and saying to my doctor, "OK, let's make me beautiful" before I took my three breaths. I felt like I had been worked over in an alley for the next few days, and took liquid tylenol a few times, but something else kicked in right way besides the pain: the knowledge that this was it... that things were going to be different from here on in. I was barely hungry during my week on liquids, and remember this as being a terrific blessing and relief. Finally, the monkey was off my back, I lost 30 pounds during the first month! I think that first week was really important for me - I can always come back to knowing that I lived a week without food and nothing happened to me. Good luck, again: your great adventure is about to begin!

This is a much bruited-about subject here, there's no right answer. You just have to do what feels right for you. For me, shame was a big part of my life before the band, and being up front with others about what I have done is part of my recovery. I have nothing to hide, nothing to apologize for (which does not mean that those who chose to act differently are acting as if they do). In this way, I also am able to make myself available to others who might be considering the operation.

MsVetRN, might this be what you are looking for? There's some good stuff here. http://drsimpson.net/fills/Lap-band-eating/lap-band-not-restriction/lap-band-and-restriction.html Good Luck,

None of us would be here if we hadn't been in pain already. What about the pain of knowing that your kids are teased at school because of how you look? What about the pain of no one sitting next to you on public transportation? What about the pain of untimely splits in seams or popped buttons? How about the pain of trying on new clothing? What about the pain of wiping yourself turning into a major engineering project? What about the pain of sleep apnea and high blood pressure and diabetes and out of control cholesterol? Any sort of outside intervention is an attempt to invite a certain amount of pain so as to stop a larger source of pain. Talk about risks - the biggest one out there, for people like us, is doing nothing. The days before banding were not easy for me, I had the same fears. But knowing that things were soon going to be different was very gratifying. Spend your time saying goodbye to a lot of misery, and look forward to a new start when you wake up. We will be there for you!

Hey Heidi, The band means giving up control in order to get control. Congratulations on your weight loss. Naturally, there will be days without loss - this is not as simple as opening the plug in the bathtub and watching all the Water drain out. The band definitely "save[d] my life and help[ed] me to be the healthier person i want to be," and I know that if I could do it, so can you. Being emotionally wrought from time to time is only natural. You have embarked on a major life change, one which affects your self image, your behavior, your relationships and your appearance, among others. Celebrate yourself for doing what you have done, and know that today is not only a new day but a better one because of the step you've taken. Good luck!

That's unfortunate... bandster hell (the period between when swelling subsides after the operation and before the first fill) is hard enough without such small fills. My first fill was 3 cc's at three months after surgery. It's a good subject for a poll: when was your first fill and for how many cc's was your band inflated? Would it be possible to get a fill from another source?

Speaking as someone who's experienced too little and too much restriction, appropriate restriction limits the amount of food I eat and gives it definition, while keeping out things that obviously aren't good for me and never have been (breads and doughy foods like cake or cookies). Eating before the band was like walking down an endless hallway in the dark where I couldn't feel the walls on either side. Proper restriction with the band gives me a sense of proportion, something I never had before. I was never full until I was ready to explode. Satiety with the band is a blessing, but I believe that ultimately I have to learn how to deal with hunger. Too much restriction actually lead to more hunger for me because I couldn't keep anything down and felt horribly frustrated. The result was BBB - "Bullemia by Band". That's not what this journey is about for me. The band is a tool which educates me over time to a better relationship with food and eating. Any degree of restriction which effects that is where I want to be. All the best of luck, -Bandpal

Good for you on your persistence! Round about where I live, we say: "If you don't like the answer you get, go and get another answer."

First of all, there's no "stopping" it. It's hard-wired behavior and it's with me forever. I do believe that it's possible to greatly lessen the frequency, and I have. The band has helped tremendously, because: I can't eat as much. I can't eat as quickly. When I eat too much too close to my bedtime, the food comes back up when I lie back down and I either can't fall asleep or am woken up with food in my mouth in the middle of the night. The next morning after a binge, my pouch is still full of food for hours. All of these enable me to stop (something I was almost never able to do before) and ask myself questions like: "Is it really worth it?" or "what do I want to do - eat or sleep" and sometimes the answers comes back "no" and "sleep". Thanks for writing, and good luck!

Hi All, I wrote this and posted it yesterday to my monthly support group (November 2007) but no one really posts there anymore, so I want to share it with you also, since the subject matter is relevant: It's been a while, hasn't it? On the hope that there are some of us still reading this board, I wanted to check in and say hello. Overall I'm doing well. I weighed in this morning at 62.9 kilos (138.4 lbs), 5.1 kilos (11.2lbs) below goal weight, and 67.1 kilos (147.6 lbs) less than I did on the morning of November 21, 2007. That's not to say there haven't been bumps in the road and elements of my new life which I'm not comfortable with. I can't keep anything down before the early afternoon hours, liquids included. It's rare for me to eat a meal without spitting up some food at least once. It's hard for me to drink for hours after meals, which has occasionaly interfered with taking medication. I'm also changing jobs this fall, which will necessitate leaving behind the "spitting image" which I've acquired at my old job. So... I'm making the 2.5 hour drive up the desert to my surgeon's office and am getting a full cc taken out. This'll take me down to 5 cc's, down from a high of 6.5 cc's two years ago. I'm a little scared. But I also know that it's time for me to step up and see if I can keep some of the good habits I've developed over the past three and a half years. Some of these are: - Eating slowly - Chewing food thoroughly - Not eating a large Breakfast (basically, I don't eat breakfast anymore) - Eating primarily vegetables, reasonable amounts of Protein and small servings of carbohydrates. - Avoiding sweets as much as possible and trying not to ping pong between sweet, salty and fatty foods. - Not binging late into the night. The band forced me to adapt these habits, which meant that I was able to extinguish the bad habits of a lifetime which got me to where I was on that November morning. Now it's time to see if I can keep these habits out of choice rather than from necessity. And of course I hope I'll still feel the band in there, doing it's job at 5 cc. Please wish me luck. - Bandpal (David)

I took two weeks and valued every day. A butterfly needs time to emerge from a cocoon. It was a new experience for me, taking the time, getting used to the change and putting myself first. It's funny to have such good memories from that time, considering that I was post-op, in pain, and didn't eat anything for a week - but I do! Good luck to you!

The pain does pass... use this site, read about other people who have been where you are now. I remember a lot of gas, shortness of breath, inability to find a comfortable sleeping position, pain from the incisions... all that went away. Can't see my scars anymore, and it's a lot easier to sleep now with 130 lbs gone... you can do it too. Good luck, be strong, wishing you strength, patience and the ability to laugh even though it hurts. - Bandpal

Congratulations, Cakes, and welcome! There's a lot of information and experience here. Lapbandtalk has been an integral part of my journey, accompanying me on a 65 kg weightloss and through more than two years of successful maintenance. How have your eight weeks been? Comfort level? What kinds of foods are you eating? How much of a weight loss have you had? Wishing you a lot of luck and success... Bandpal