Jean McMillan

If you're looking for a local mentor, you could try posting this question in the NY group: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/forum/46-new-york-local-lap-band-support/ You also might be able to find a local mentor at your surgeon's support group meetings. Good luck with your surgery!

A PB is a productive burp, or regurgitation of the food you just ate. It's not the same as vomiting because it's not associated with a feeling of nausea and it rarely comes from the stomach so doesn't have the bile content and taste of vomit. A PB usually comes from the esophagus, which is quick to object when it's overloaded with food. PB's can be avoided by practicing careful band eating skills: take tiny bites, chew very well, eat slowly, don't drink while you eat, etc.

I can't even look down the snack food aisle when I go food shopping!

A kick in the butt? (just kidding!)

I'm pretty sure that the one style of Realize port is a low-profile design, less likely to protrude after weight loss.

I've had that. My original surgeon said that when you're asleep in a horizontal position for 8 or so hours, mucus drains into your throat and esophagus and causes the morning "tightness". That makes sense to me because the morning tightness has always been a bigger issue when I've had pollen allergy attacks or head colds.

Port revision surgery may be done because the port flipped, got infected, had a leak, or protruded too much after the patient lost their excess weight. It's not done because the port wears out after a few years or anything like that. At 8 weeks post-op, I think it's too soon for you to judge how your port's working out. Have you had a fill yet? As long as your port is accessible for fills, I wouldn't worry about it. Even after your port site completely heals, the surrounding muscles may complain from time to time. My port flipped when I was about 2 yrs post-op. I had no symptoms from it, but suddenly fills got hard to do. I asked my surgeon if my workouts could have caused the flip, and she said yes, but that's not a good excuse for avoiding exercise!

I'd have to say, "Yes, I'm really going to pee. I'd invite you to come and watch, but I don't think Chez Louis wants men in the ladies' restroom." Or you could call him on your cell phone and let him listen to you tinkle and flush the toilet.

I either burp like a champ, or want to burp and can't. No harm in burping, really, but keep an eye on it. Burping after every single sip of liquid or bite of food doesn't sound right to me. While it's true that you tend to swallow a lot of air when you eat or drink too fast, all that burping could be a sign that you're really too tight. I went through a week or so of constant burping (or need to burp) recently, and it got to be so bad, it was interfering with my daily life. "Good morning, [burp] thanks for calling JC [burp] Penney. This is [burp] Jean. How can I [burp] help you [burp]?" Turns out I was way too tight, and a lot of other bad stuff was going on in there along with the burping.

Oh, dear. The inner brat in me would be all prepared with smart-aleck responses to the "Are you going to get sick?" line. "I will if you keep staring at me." "I don't know, but I'll be sure to let you know if I feel a hurl coming on." "Why do you ask?" "Maybe, maybe not. Is that why you came tonight, to watch me puke?" "I know you're really looking forward to that, but not tonight."

Yeah, the dear of dying young was a pretty persuasive argument for me, too.

I'm impressed that you've been able to overcome fear of food deprivation with a background like that. I have an acquaintance who adopted 2 small children (sister & brother) whose food deprivation was so severe that their pockets were stuffed with cat kibble, and even now 2 years later, those kids stuff their pockets with ketchup packets, sugar packets, and the like when they're eating out with their new family.

Wow, you've got a lot going on here! I'll try to tackle each issue... > Should have lost more than 10 lbs in 2 weeks? Are you kidding? Average weight loss with the band is 1-2 lbs/week, and you've lost 5/week! You're doing fabulous! > Do you need a fill? Most surgeons wait 4-6 weeks after surgery before doing a fill, to allow surgical swelling to subside and for your band to settle into place. You say you think your portions are more than you think they should be, but what amount did your surgeon or nutritionist tell you to eat at one sitting? If you're physically hungry, eat. Just don't eat a Thanksgiving dinner, OK? Why are you only eating twice a day? If I ate only twice a day, I'd be in a dead faint. > If you're on solid food, why are you relying on Protein shakes for your protein? You can keep experimenting with brands and flavors, and maybe try putting the shake in a covered beverage container (so you can't smell it) or serve it icy cold (my preference), but you can also get good-quailty protein from Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, moist animal protein & fish, eggs, etc. etc. >If you get gas pains every time you eat, you may be eating too fast and swallowing extra air. And if you're starving hungry by the time you eat (because you're only eating twice a day), it's very hard to practice good band eating skills (take tiny bites, chew very well, eat slowly, don't drink while you eat). Also, you may be experiencing some lactose intolerance,especially if your Protein Shakes are made with whey protein and/or you mix the protein with milk. Try a different protein (based on soy, for example) and different liquids, like almond milk, soy milk, rice milk.

Do you ever look at your plate of tiny bandster food portions and think, "That's not enough to keep a bird alive"? That thought, or one like it, crossed my mind every time I sat down to eat in my early days as a bandster. Although I was eating tiny portions, losing weight, and feeling stronger and more energetic as each day passed, my brain kept whispering, "Something's wrong with this picture." Eventually I grew accustomed to those small portions, and now I rarely think about it unless someone else makes a comment about it - like my coworker who looks at my doll-sized lunch and exclaims, "I don't know why you even bother eating!" ONE MEAL AT A TIME Getting used to bandster food portions took me 6 or more months. At first I would look at my small plate with tiny portions of food on it and instantly feel deprived and sorry for myself. Never mind that the small portions were plenty of food for my banded stomach...they just weren't enough for my brain to accept. By paying very close attention to how I felt as I ate, I realized that small portions were indeed enough to quell my physical hunger and that I wasn't going to drop dead from malnutrition. Of course, the small meals didn't keep the hunger at bay for very long until I'd gotten enough fill in my band for a small portion of food to send long-lasting satiety messages to my brain. Since I was terrified that eating too much at one meal would hurt my band somehow, I stuck it out. My nutritionist's eating plan included 3 small meals and 3 planned, healthy snacks each day. I have to admit, I looked forward to each and every one of those meals or snacks. It wasn't until after I'd reached my goal weight that I began to forget to eat and stopped looking forward to each upcoming meal as if it were a happily-anticipated Thanksgiving Dinner. Yes, it would have been nicer and easier if the long-lasting satiety had kicked in earlier on my WLS journey, but really can’t complain because later is better than never at all. Maintaining my weight loss means eating like a bandster for the rest of my life. So I had to work my way through one challenging year in order to enjoy 35 or more years as a healthy, normal-weight person with a small appetite. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. But then you know me, Little Miss Sunshine! A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE One day when I was about 9 months post-op, I found myself in a restaurant looking at the food on someone else's plate and thinking, "Oh my God, look at genormous plate of food!" That genormous plate of food contained the same huge serving sizes I ate as a pre-op, but because of the mental adjustment I'd made, it no longer triggered the "Oh, goodie!" button in my brain. In part, it's a matter of perspective. Perspective refers to the appearance of objects (or subjects) in relationship to each other. When my personal perspective was to view a Thanksgiving dinner plate as my "normal" food portion, the genormous plate of food looked right to me. After 300 or so bandster meals and snacks, my perspective had changed so that a tiny portion was my "normal", and the genormous plate of food looked ridiculous, even overwhelming. MASTERING THE FEAR OF FOOD DEPRIVATION The issue of food deprivation is a topic that deserves more attention. If we don't learn how to deal with it in a healthy way, achieving weight loss and a healthy lifestyle is going to be a lot harder. Fearing food deprivation is a basic instinct that drives every living organism. Every creature - human, animal, insect, you name it - survives by seeking food and shelter. So when I tell you that you need to master your fear of deprivation, I'm not telling you to deny this basic instinct by not eating when you're hungry. In fact, I'm telling you to respect it, that in fact you should eat when you're physically hungry. If trying to ignore physical hunger has been your strategy during years of dieting, it's time to try another strategy. You will never learn to recognize early satiety, or to experience and honor prolonged satiety, if you ignore your hunger. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with hunger. It's simply your body's request for more fuel. Food is fuel that you need, fuel that you deserve, fuel that you must have to stay alive and be healthy. While you're re-training your conscious mind to respond appropriately to physical hunger cues, you may go on experiencing uncomfortable emotions about eating less. There's no shame in that. Talk about it with your support group, friends, and/or counselor, or write about it in your journal. Generally speaking, keeping your emotions bottled up gives them more power to hurt or control you. On the other hand, talking about them to the exclusion of everything else isn't helpful either and borders on the obsessive. When I need to talk or journal about something upsetting or painful, I give myself a time limit. The time might be a 50-minute counseling session, or 10 minutes of journaling. When the time's up, I go on to something else. THE HALF-PORTION APPROACH I talk a lot about this approach because it's a good way to prevent overeating, and I’ll repeat it now because the half-portion approach is also what made it possible for me to survive my fear of deprivation while my mind and body adjusted to eating small food portions. Here's how it works. 1. Do not put serving dishes on the dining table. 2. In the kitchen (or wherever), measure out your planned bandster portion. Put half of it on a small plate (like a salad plate or the saucer for a tea cup), take it to the dining table, sit down, and slowly eat it, paying as much attention as possible to how you feel as you eat. (If you're eating in a restaurant, ask the server to bring a to-go box with your meal, put most of the food in the box, close it, and start eating what's left on your dinner plate.) 3. If your body gives you any "soft stop" signals, stop eating. You can throw the uneaten food on your plate away, or if that makes you anxious, put it and the other half of your portion (the one you left in the kitchen) in a storage container in the refrigerator, knowing that you can eat it later if and when you get physically hungry again. 4. If you finish the half-portion without getting any soft stop signals, go back into the kitchen, put the rest of your portion on your plate, take back to the dining table, and eat it, following the same instructions as in #3 (above). 5. If you get physically hungry again before your next planned meal or snack, go ahead and eat the reserved food portion. Eating it is not cheating, because you had planned to eat it, you measured it, and it's yours if you want it. This approach helped me get used to eating small portions while staying alert to satiety signals without the overhanging fear and anxiety of food deprivation. Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you!

Yes, this is something you can bring up with your surgeon, but preferably not as a last minute thing before surgery. A pre-op upper endoscopy helps the surgeon get the lay of the land (so to speak) even if the patient doesn't have reflux or another UGI issue. Sometimes reflux is caused by hiatal hernias, and an upper GI will show the surgeon if that's the case with you. Since reflux is as much of if not more a problem after band surgery than before, it's very important that your surgeon or someone else on his medical staff address this issue now. As for the lack of communication by your surgeon's office...let's give them the benefit of the doubt. My surgeon's office has been so inundated by the influx of new patients that they are all struggling to keep up with all the work involved in communicating with patients. My surgeon employs a person as a Patient Advocate who does nothing but coordinate all that. I suggest that you call your surgeon's office and don't hang up until you speak to a live human being. Tell that person you have a number of questions that need attention and ask for the name of the best person to answer them. Ask to be transferred to that person and leave a voice message for her/him if necessary. Then follow up with that person a day or so later.

Yes, your body is adjusting. You have lost a ton of weight already and your body's probably thinking, "Holy moly! What's going on here? Is she trying to starve us to death? How can we stop this weight loss? OK, metabolism, you slow down right this minute! Take as long as you want to burn those calories she's eating. The longer the better..." Please don't feel disappointed in yourself. Everybody hits plateaus sooner or later no matter how hard they're working at healthy eating and exercise. If you're not eating more than you were before, you don't need a fill quite yet. Hang in there!

Ah, you guys and your big bites! A single forkful of food for my husband would take me 30 minutes to eat! Yes, more fills wil make eating more painful if you don't master good band eating skills: take tiny bites, chew very well, eat slowly, don't drink while eating, etc. etc. I find it helpful to cut my food into those tiny bites as soon as I sit down to eat. If I don't, I get distracted by conversation or whatever and don't pay enough attention to what's going into my mouth.

All true, but grehlin is also produced elsewhere in the body, not just in the stomach.

Yup. Normal. It's pain referred to your shoulder by your diaphragm, which gets irritated during surgery.

Well, participating here on the LBT forums can help keep you motivated. You could also ask another member to be your accountability partner. That's someone to whom you tell your daily food and exercise plan, report how you did with the previous day's plan, and discuss any issues in your life that are affecting your eating and weight.

In my opinion, your band is too tight. You should not have to struggle that much to eat healthy foods, and a band that's too tight can lead to complications like a band slip, esophageal dilation, stomach dilation, or band erosion. Even a tiny unfill could make a big improvement in your quality of life without compromising your restriction. When was your last fill? It can take up to 2 weeks to adjust to a fill, but if you're still struggling after that, it's time for an unfill. The fact that you're having some trouble even getting Water down is troubling. Call your surgeon!

I can't help you with that because I'm in Tennessee. You might get more answers if you post your question in the Texas forum: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/forum/57-texas-local-lap-band-support/

Jim, you do need to pay attention and make good food choices...don't want to lose the muscle tissue that helps you move, gives you shape, and burns more calories than fat! Thanks for your good wishes for my surgery last week. It went off, but with a hitch. I woke up with 6 incisions, no band, and no sleeve, because my surgeon encountered a stricture at the juncture between my esophagus and stomach that wouldn't allow her to pass the "bougie" calibration tube through there, so she couldn't do the sleeve. So the next step will be to dilate the stricture a few times, then let everything heal for 3-4 months before we attempt any further surgery. God clearly wants me to master Patience!

I had a breast reduction before my band surgery. Aside from plain old age-related sagging (I'm 58), my girls look pretty good now, but I do have excess skin now that drapes over the old lateral incision line from the breast reduction. There's a photo of it here: http://jean-onthebandwagon.blogspot.com/2011/02/breast-reduction-surgery.html My plastic surgeon had predicted that I'd have that skin overhang if I lost weight, and he was right. He also said that it could be fixed or at least improved by additional surgery, but it doesn't bother me enough to warrant more surgery. The worst-looking part is in the area under my arms, and anyone who's staring at that part of me deserves a slap anyway. I've heard lots of bandsters complain that their breasts look like tennis balls in socks after weight loss, but I work in a department store as a bra fit specialist, and I also hear non-bariatric patients of various ages and sizes say the same thing. It's hard to predict how your skin is going to react to massive weight loss, and worrying about it won't change the outcome. You might be pleasantly surprised!

Thanks! It was a very unpleasant surprise to wake up with 6 incisions, no band, and no sleeve. It'll probably take a few months to come up with a new plan, and in the meantime, I'm flyin' blind! The good news is that being in better physical shape this time is making my recovery from surgery much easier than my original band surgery.