hey man ,
First congrats from making such an important life changing choice. Im 32 years old and was just banded 7/21/08 ...... following my docs directions to a tee i have already lost over 40 lbs. I was on a liquid diet for 2 weeks pre-op and lost 26 lbs.... then banded and have lost the other 14 in 11 days.... its easy if you are ready to make the changes needed. Now, they say everyone loses differently and every doc has different diets to follow so do not expect the loss, it will come.... as far as being ready, i dont think you can mentally prepare yourself to only eat 2 tablespoons of food and feel full but if you eat slow enough it helps. I just think about being able to eat solid foods in 4 more weeks. My best advise is to have a positive attitude, follow the diet to a tee and dont push the food intake at all. Eating to much can cause vommiting and until the surgery is completly healed they say can cause slippageof the band, then its useless. 2 days after my op , i started walking 2 miles a day, im sure thats helping. If you havent started the process of seeing all your docs it may take a while. I guess some insurances take longer then others to approve it , but the day i got my list of what i had to do ... i called every doc and got the soonest appt. so i was done with my pre-op appts within a month and obviously showed initiative and was banded faster. if you have anymore questions you are more then welcome to post them and ill do my best to try to answer them to the best of my knowledge. i really found that talking to people that have gone through the process helped me out alot sofar. Good luck