lellow

Support is so important, not just with the food issues each of us have had, but with motivation for exercise and lifestyle changes. People generally achieve more weight loss when in a group that if they try to do it solo. Having people to bounce ideas off, learn new things from, vent about your failures to, crow about your successes to, and who will smack you about the head once in a while actually makes the road easier if you're willing to walk it. That's why after 5 years I'm still hanging around this place: the friends I have made on here keep me honest.

Wait, are you EATING enough protein? Like hard protein? Coz that has the added benefit over shakes of giving you added satiety, and helps with hunger too.

Hahahaha *smack*

tmf, my doctor said to me when I was complaining about gaining 35lbs in 10 months that had I not learned all the good lessons from being banded, I would have gained ALL my excess weight back and more, he is convinced. When I started losing again just before my replacement, we talked about the possibility of living without a band, and I said, 'no this is too hard without a band' and it was. Losing 3lbs a month was demoralising, and one 'bad' weekend meant I'd gain. Yeah, no, I don't want to live like that.

The band works this way: hard Protein keeps you full for longer. Eat protein in the majority and the rest in other food groups, don't eat sliders like chips and Cookies and ice cream, and you're working WITH your band to manage your hunger. Removing your band isn't going to change your old habits or your poor relationship with food. In fact if I were to hazard a guess, it would make it FAR worse because you have nothing there to help with your physical hunger. I think I understand that you're saying that you want to lose, but fear that you can't work with your band due to the fear that you will damage it because you think you lack self-control. That's a hard one to solve, I expect therapy might be a good start because that's psychological not physiological. But generally speaking removing your band will probably make that far worse for you in the long run.

It is what it's about, talking about experiences, which is why I have spoken to you straight. The fact is, to lose all your excess weight, you have to work at it, which you said you haven't really done, but still managed to clock up a pretty decent weight loss. I then said to lose the last bit, you're going to have to put in the effort. I then gave you related information from my own experience about how hard it really is without the band, having been on both sides of the fence recently. I also tried to put into perspective your fears about complications and how bad things can happen at any time, so worrying about it sometimes is worse than it happening. I addressed your post despite not quite knowing what you were concerned about to begin with and I may not have been as sweet about it as you might have preferred but I'm at work and posting during my lunch-break so my time is pretty limited. Yet I still thought to provide advice based on my experience. Take it or leave it, it's up to you.

This is what you get when you post in the Powder Room... :ph34r:

I'm a little confused by what your concern is exactly, is it that you haven't lost all the weight? Or that you think your band is going to suddenly cause complications? Or that you think if you try to lose those last 35lbs with the band that you'll cause problems?? Firstly, if you aren't exercising and you know you're not eating well, then I'm sure it's no surprise to you that you haven't lost all your excess weight. 60lbs while not eating well or exercising is pretty damned good if you ask me. If you really want to lose those last 35lbs, then you can use the band to help, but getting there will also be up to you. I have lost over 100% of my excess body weight, but Mis is right, you need to do the right things to make that happen. As for complications, yes sure I worry about it. Same as I worry about the complications that could arise from the broken tailbone I got this year. Or the IVF medications I pumped myself full of while I was trying to conceive my son, but until it happens, I'm not going to cause myself more issues by fixing what ain't broke. But that's just my own opinion. Lastly I actually DID have a complication where I had a leak last year that persisted for 15 months. I then realised how much I took my band for granted in terms of maintaining my weight for the 3 years beforehand. I gained 35lbs in the first 10 months of the leak while trying REALLY hard not to. Then I worked out and dieted to try to lose what I gained and only managed to lose 15lb in the next 5 months. So if you think losing 60lbs without exercise/eating well, and maintaining that loss for 2 years is disappointing, try working out like a dog, counting every calorie for 5 months and only losing 15lbs. That's what life without a band was like, and made it an easy decision for me to get my leaky band replaced with another band. Now, in 3 months after my band replacement, with getting fills and no formal cardio exercising and NO dieting, I've lost 12lbs already. So I'm not going to worry about how the band might cause me to be sick, I'm concentrating on how the band is helping get healthier.

CG you need to teach me how not to be scared of my boyfriend approaching my lady bits with sharp objects!..... ...oh wait...

Thought I might add that I can't even imagine waxing my legs let alone my lady garden . A little trimmer on the area and I'm done. Mind you, I can grow it out completely, and still wear an itty bitty string bikini without anyone seeing any of it, so maybe never having had to deal with an unruly bikini line may have spoiled me!

Ok, first up I'm not going to pretend that it's all ok, because it's a real possibility that you may have caused some damage to your healing stomach. I would suggest giving your surgeon's rooms a call and come clean. He may or may not be concerned, and would advise you accordingly. I don't think anyone who tells you it'll be fine, don't worry about it, would be someone I would listen to anyway. It may be absolutely nothing, but no one on this forum is going to know whether it is or it isn't based on your post.

Yeah I don't like being hairless down there. I am not hairy down there at the best of times (yay for Asian genes!) but I honestly don't dig the hairless look. I feel like I'm prepubescent! So I keep it prettily trimmed and neat and keep my lady garden protected by the dark forest.

Booked in for my next (and last) tattoo. I already have a tattoo on my right arm but want to convert it to a half sleeve. My tattoo isn't until February but I love the anticipation so I'm not too fussed!

Google. There are a few lapband sites for Australians but I wanted one that was big and had a lot of information in it from a diverse group of people.

This band has been a godsend. I won't lie. It helps me maintain my weight easily. I know how hard it was for me to not gain when my old band was leaking, and how super hard it was to lose, so I'm loving that my new band has me back on track. Yes I've had complications, but generally speaking, yes I've been 'lucky' with the band. My band has been SO easy to live with. Or maybe it was that I had realistic expectations, I don't know . But either way, I love that it's there helping me every day. But I also realised that I made my own 'luck' with the band. Even when I wasn't formally exercising in maintenance mode, I paid attention to my portions, I did lots of incidental exercising like using the stairs instead of the escalator (I still do), I didn't resume my bad eating habits. I stayed, for the most part, on program. So I do see this as a partnership between my band and me. I honestly believe that weight loss and maintenance would be VERY difficult, if not impossible, for me without a band. But I also know this little thing around my stomach didn't do it all for me. Far from it. I exercised to lose, I maintained a healthy lifestyle during maintenance, I am exercising today to ensure long term maintenance. I worked with it, and continue to work with it, everyday. The surgery will help you if you're willing to help yourself. And I'm worth investing in myself to be the best I can be. No one is going to want the best for me the way I could possibly want it for myself. I went through surgery to allow myself the best chance of success, so I will not let myself down by not putting in the effort to make it work. So yes I've been lucky to live with a band easily, but I sure as hell made my own luck as well. So stop sitting there waiting for a miracle to happen to you, go out and MAKE it happen.

I was 222lbs (BMI of 37) when I was scheduled for surgery and my doctor said it was up to me if I did a pre-op diet. I did one for 3 weeks. There was NO way in hell I was going to get cut up only to find that they couldn't do the surgery because my fatty liver was in the way. For my band replacement 3 months ago with a different surgeon (I moved states), I weighed 150lbs with a BMI of 27 and I was told I had to go on liquids only for 3 days before my surgery. At a BMI of 27, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had a fatty liver, but I did it anyway, because if they did end up not doing the surgery, I wouldn't have had anyone to blame but myself. I absolutely believe that the right doctor/patient relationship is integral to success with the band. So his instructions need to be the one you follow, not those of other surgeons who aren't the ones operating on you. I know it's hard, it's REALLY hard, but so many of us did it, so you need to believe that you can too. One day at a time.

To me, a band without getting the fills until you are in the green zone is like buying a bike and riding it without the tyres inflated. Sure you can do it, but why bother buying the bike in the first place? If you get good restriction right off the bat, then great, but if you don't have restriction yet you intend to continue without the band's help, I reckon you could have saved yourself those incisions, that pain, the cost and not gotten the surgery to begin with, you know? I have gotten stuck many times. If it was that bad, I'd have learned not to get to that point, but I guess I don't learn that quickly. Because it is a learning process and learning is not a bad thing. In fact, it's like learning anything new - you get used to it and after a while it's not that big a deal. I've lived with a band for 5 years now, when it wasn't working last year, I missed how it felt SO much.

Today I was fiddling with my collage maker on my phone and made a collage of one of my 'before' pics from 2003 and one of me that I took today, in 2013. I wanted to use it as my profile pic on here, so this is it: I sent it to myself at work, had it up on my screen and someone I didn't know very well walked up behind me and said 'who is the person on the left?' So I said, 'oh that's me 10 years ago'. Believe it or not, she puffed herself up in indignation and looked me in the eye and said quite rudely "you're lying, that's not you!" and then proceeded to tell me that the person in the photo on the left looked nothing like me, the woman was obviously older, the skin tone was all wrong and who was I trying to kid anyway??? I didn't have to say anything, my colleague next to me actually said 'actually that is her' and explained about the lapband (everyone who knows me knows about it). The women then did the huge dramatic act of pretending to be hugely shocked and then interested in how I did it, completely ignoring the fact that she'd basically just accused me of lying! Lucky for her, I thought it was highly amusing, and took it as a compliment, and walked away thinking it would be a good anecdote for this blog. Hey, sometimes you gotta look for the silver lining in everything, right?

Just as another anecdote to this story, I went and saw my 7yo the same weekend I wrote the original blog post, and I was talking to my ex about this subject on the Sunday. I showed the ex the picture above and my son spied it over my shoulder. He then got upset because he wouldn't believe that the person on the left was me and thought we were making fun of him. My older kids remember that photo of course, but obviously my youngest doesn't ever remember mum being heavier...

Lolol this thread keeps popping up and it always makes me laugh. I took my boyfriend to Surfers Paradise for the weekend as his birthday present, and he reckoned he could barely walk afterwards lol. Me relaxed and drinking cocktails all day and walking around in a bikini? Yeah, boy, he didn't stand a chance! But he left smiling! Best vacation ever!

I'd always been self conscious of my 'puffy' mons. I lost weight, got a body lift that tightened that area a little, but to me it was still noticeably puffy, especially since the rest of me had reduced. I cursed my puffy mons!! Then my hubby and I split up and in the year that I was single, not one guy ever mentioned (or noticed, I'm sure) my 'puffy' mons. My boyfriend actually thinks it's sexy! So I'm ok with it now lol.

I have often started one of these threads, but would stop after writing a bit because while the LAP-BAND®®® has helped me lose weight and now maintain my weight for nearly two years, it seems crazy to feel like a success. I started with a low-ish BMI (37) and losing 90lbs+ didn't seem significant enough to class me as a success, I thought! And I just felt that I was very fortunate that the band worked for me. Yes, I exercised - 40 mins 3 times a week when I was losing - but I didn't count calories, I didn't do low carb, I just got regular fills, ate when I was hungry and in time, my addiction to food diminished and I just lost weight. The band helped me with portion control, but more importantly, it stopped me thinking and wanting food all the time. Does that make me a success? You be the judge lol! It's funny but opposed to other ways in which others lost weight, I think, for me, not counting calories and not worrying about not eating certain food groups actually meant that I stopped thinking about food, and that was why, in my opinion, the band worked for me. Food stopped being an obsession. A lot of people ask me what I ate while I was losing. Well, everything really, just in much smaller portions. I ate the odd portion of chocolate sometimes, had an ice cream on occasion, but I ate everything in small portions, and as a result, didn't really ever feel deprived of anything. The mindset that seemed to work for me consisted of general guidelines that my (Australian) Dr gave me and ones I made up for myself. These included: Only eating when I was hungry. I often felt 'peckish' and would think of food, get cravings and feel like something naughty. But before I went to get something to eat, I'd ask myself if I was really hungry. If my stomache wasn't growling, I wouldn't eat. I'd tell myself I'd eat when I was really, truly hungry, and the funny thing is, when I really was hungry, I usually felt like something savoury and not chocolate or sweets or anything. Over time, the 'peckishness' seemed to stop. always eating just enough food to 'tide me over' and telling myself that if I was still really hungry in 30 mins, I could have some more food. In all the time I've been banded, I've gone back for more food just once after the 30 mins. Now I just automatically eat small portions, even when I could easily eat more. Exercising even if I didn't feel like it. I don't think anyone feels like exercising. But afterwards, I'd jump off my spin bike and do a little dance, and remind myself of how good I felt. I had set days that I'd have to exercise, and the only time I didn't do it was when I had the flu for a week. Otherwise, sore or tired or grumpy, I owed the bike the 40 mins and I'd do it, even if it was past midnight, even if I couldn't think of anything worse than exercising. No excuses. I don't exercise much on a formal level anymore, but being active has become very much something I just am now. Allowing myself loads of rewards for getting to mini goals: I think we are truly hardest on ourselves and we don't think we deserve to Celebrate our successes if they're 'small'. I wrote down all the rewards I would get myself once I reached this weight or that weight, and I made sure I rewarded myself. Every single bit of motivation helps! Telling myself that I wouldn't have to live like this forever - fighting the cravings, exercising like a demon, only ever eating when I was hungry, not indulging myself. That helped me with the will power side of things, feeling like it was just a temporary thing I had to do. Yet funnily enough a lot of the things I was doing are now habits that have become a part of my life. I now only eat when I'm hungry (and sometimes when I'm not thinking about it, I forget to eat!), I no longer have to fight cravings (just don't have many cravings anymore), I remain active and am quite fit in general. I don't have to fight to maintain because the band lifestyle has become my 'new' lifestyle and that allows me to maintain easily. Making sure I had regular fills - this I think is crucial. The band works best when it physically prevents you from eating too much. I have never been ashamed to use my band to it's fullest potential. It stopped me over-indulging yes, but it also had the unexpected effect of making me understand how little food I actually needed to survive. And taught me to eat to live and not live to eat. After getting to my goal weight, I had a lower body lift, and a week ago, I got breast augmentation. I still am a little stunned by the chick looking back at me in the mirror in the mornings, but I've never been happier with my life. I now surf, cycle, play soccer with my 4yo - I feel like I'm finally living the life I was meant to live. And as glib as it might sound, it just wasn't that hard to lose the weight in hindsight. At the time I was losing, it seemed so difficult and seemed to last forever, but in the scheme of my whole life, it was really only less than a year for me to get to my goal weight. The band was an absoloute godsend to me, and I appreciate every single day of my life since it was put in. Now can I also add the disclaimer that I am in no way advocating that my way of losing weight is the way anyone else should. I believe that band rules are there for a reason, and am all for doing whatever works for you. For me, it was more about mindset than particular details about diet or exercise, and the main lesson I learnt from all this is that you can re-train your brain to do the things you need to do to lose weight and keep it off. But I also know that without the band, I couldn't have done it, not on my own. In the end, the proof is in the pudding though. I have been big all my life and I now have a BMI of 21 and have maintained for 18 months. I don't care why it worked, I'm just grateful it did!

I am an advocate of slow and steady for that very reason. Even so I've had my own stuck episodes over the years! I do think though that a stuck episode can get SO much worse if you're already a little bit tight, and then getting stuck sends the swelling right over the edge where you can't even hold down your own spit. So you have to get unfilled even though you probably weren't at the green zone yet. Allowing the fill swelling to subside, giving you some 'room' in case you get stuck and learning how to eat between fills is a good way to go, imo.

Straight after surgery I felt it, sure, because I was still swollen, but no, when the swelling dissipated at day 3, I had NO restriction. None. Nothing at all. I didn't get any until I had filled my 10cc band to 6cc. Same thing when I got my band replaced. Hunger returned a few days post surgery, and I had zero restriction until I got to about 5cc this time. So not everyone has restriction straight out of surgery. In fact I think if I were to do an unofficial poll, I'd say over the years I've seen more people couldn't feel anything at all once the swelling went down than people who could.