KelinTx

I love my spanx, i got the kind that fit from the bottom of your bra down to a few inches above the knee. I swear they take a good 10 pounds off!

I was banded on 9/13/06, so im rapidly approaching my 2 year anniversary. I've been problem free and an thankfull each an every day for my band. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Ive gone over and over this in my head a thousand times. What should my goal weight be. I tried to set something reasonably attainable for myself. I settled on 170 for the time being. Short term i focus on 10 pound increments at a time. Im sure at 170 i will still be viewed as being overweight.......but......i just dont know without having a plastic surgery intervention if anything to much lower then that is going to be a realistic expectation! So i say focus on somthing attainable!

Wendy's Chili is one of my favorite things to have since being banded. It tastes great...very filling...and at 210 calories and 15 G protein in a small how can ya beat it! I indulge at least once a week.

I can tell you from personal experience that the water retention problem i had went away within weeks of being banded. My legs from the knee down would swell up to painfull proportions. My feet and ankles got so much smaller i had to buy all new socks and shoes.

I also drink a very large quantity of liquids over the course of a day. I have done so daily since being banded. I drink at a minimum 64 oz of plain ole water daily. Add to that coffee, iced tea, and watered down diet grapefruit juice and i easily hit 120 oz of liquids daily. I pretty much always have a glass of something or a water bottle with me. The only exception to that is i do not drink with my meals or for at least an hour afterwards.

My weight at the start of the Lap Band Journey was 359. My surgeon or any of the Doctors i saw during my 6 month insurance imposed weight loss supervision did not have a problem with me wanting to be banded at that weight. In fact they were all quite encouraging. Not once did anyone try and deter me or suggest i opt for a gastric bypass. Im so glad i took the band route. Best of luck to you!

My standard reply is....Thank you so much for noticing and thank you even more for saying so! Having people notice my weight loss and commenting on it gives me great motivation. Alot of people are shy about commenting so when i get a compliment on my weight loss i always thank them for saying so.

I think its an absolute necesity to enter into the process with an "I CAN DO IT ATTITUDE". If your having doubts about it i would seriously research all the weight loss surgery options available to you and decide wich one would best suit your individual needs. If eating around the band is being contemplated before even having the surgery perhaps its not the best option. As far as myself is concerned .....i knew that since i was subjecting my body to a voluntary surgery there was no way i was going to risk harming myself or my band by not following the dietary rules and guidlines.

In response to your question about having plastic surgery.........i am seriously considering going for a consult in sept (my 2yr band date) to see about having my arms done, id love to have an entire body lift but realistically the cost would be out of the question!

Everything has gone south for me! I swear even my toes are flabby. I keep hoping one day ill wake up and my stomach will be gone, seems ive lost the least from there. All in all though im a very happy camper.

I think alot of it has to do with the amount of weight you have to lose. I lost super fast in the beginning because of the large amount i needed to lose. Now that im inching closer to somewhat of a normal weight im thrilled to death if i lose a pound a week!

When the waiter at your fave restaurant automatically brings you a to go box with your meal cuz he knows you box 2/3 of it up as soon as u get it!

Count me in......id love to get together with all the mckinney bandsters! I have a good many nice clothing pieces i can pass off as well!

You all are doing so great! I was glad to read a thread where there were other women that started the journey over 300 lbs like myself. I wish you great success. I also am from Mckinney by the way!

Back in May of this year i went in for a fill (my 11th) this would put me at 10 cc in my VG band. I had some restriction before this fill but felt i was able to consume far more then i should so i just wanted a lil more to get me to the point where my hunger would subside faster. I waited days for this fill to kick in kept wondering wow i feel NO RESTRICTION at all this simply can not be. I headed back to the fill center exactly one month later and was given another SMALL fill due to the volume already in my band., this fill would have put me at 10.4 (i keep meticulous records of my fill dates, amounts and loses). Now i start to worry because i feel no restriction what so ever NONE, not even in the morning when usually i can only drink coffee very slowly. On June 6th i went to the fill center and expressed my concerns and sure enough when the technician checked my saline level I WAS EMPTY!! OMG i was freaking out...she put 3.8 back in my band and said come back in a week and we will see if this fluid level is being retained. This was the longest week of my life, i was so stressed out with worry i made my self sick. I was panick stricken at the thought of losing my band due to a complication. I LOVE MY BAND I NEED MY BAND, without my band i would be well over 400 pounds by now. So this past Friday i went back to fill center and she measured my saline and THANK GOD everything she had put in the band the week before was still there!! YAY YAY!! So in short what had happened was when my fluid was aspirated out of me at 10cc SHE MISSED PUTTING IT BACK IN!!!! Im just happy all is ok with my band and i will deal with the temporary set back in having to recoup my fills to get to proper restriction. So all you bandsters out there you know how your body feels and if you feel something isnt right by all means MAKE THEM LISTEN TO YOU!! Human error happens what can ya do! THanks for listening

Oh yes i made sure they were aware that in no way was i going to be held financially responsible for someones error! And the situation is being taken care of without a problem.

169 pounds gone forever as of this am!

When putting the fluid back in the band after it had been pulled out to be measured.....apparently she missed her mark and never went back in my band!

Welcome and good luck to you! You chose a great Doc!

Ive never had any issues with popcorn as long as i go slow and dont go overboard.

My decision to have Lap Band surgery was based on it being a minimally invasive surgery with a short recovery time. I was up and about just hours after having the procedure preformed with no significant pain to speak of. Ive been problem free the entire journey thus far! (knock on wood) Without a doubt i feel ive had the same results with Lap Band surgery as i would have with a bypass.

I was also one that would never EVER push a plate away till it was clean. This i must say is the one thing that i am totally able to do now with out feeling deprived. I will say that the FULL feeling is different then before, i dont know that its actually a FULL feeling rather then just the feeling that ive had enough and need to stop. The band has made portion control easy for me wich was my biggest issue pre-band.

I always manage to get 3 meals in. Im not easily able to eat in the am's so when i make my lunch i divide it in two and eat half as an early lunch then have the other half of it mid afternoon, dinner and most nights i have a small snack in the evening because im not one that can go to bed hungry.

I started my pre-op diet weighing 359. I was 345 on 9-13-06 the day of my operation. My first fill was on 10-24-06 my weight on that day was 316 I hit the hundred pound lost mark in July of 07. I ve been losing pretty steadily ever since but it has slowed down a great deal. As you can see the weight pretty much flew off me in the beginning.