dietpeach

Well, I hope my story has been helpful to somebody. I was hoping it would be. Does anyone else have an update? I know Pete was banded the same day as I was. I hope you're all hanging in there. It's getting tough, but I'm trying my best.

You only a week and a half out of surgery. I heard it takes a month to get the anesthesia completely out of your system. Also, do those 21 pounds include your pre-op diet? If not and it's 21 pounds since surgery, you could also be tired from too few calories. Are you on liquids or mushies?

Thank God that I have not had that problem yet (I'm not even 2 weeks out of surgery), but I've read on these boards that the following pose helps to unstuck people: Yoga Journal - Downward-Facing Dog

You are correct. I used to be a very serious athlete (national level) and this is what the trainers taught us. They said that it took about 45 minutes of running to use up the blood glucose and the glycogen stores and finally start burning fat, so if you need to burn fat you need to run for more than 45 minutes to do so. (New research that came out since my training days suggests that short bursts of intense exercise as in interval training also helps burn fat.) Also, I never heard of a body "burning" protein for fuel during exercise, though I have heard of people's bodies digesting its own muscle in case of starvation. At any rate, there are always different theories around. I'm not trying to get involved in controversy, I'm simply putting my knowledge on the table. It's possible the nutritionist here learned differently or misunderstood the science (or isn't a nutritionist?). (But I agree, nobody on this board should ever advise someone to go against her doctor's orders - you were brave to stand up and say so.)

I think you need to be unfilled if that happens. Does anybody know? Call your doctor just to be safe - even after hours. It sounds urgent.

While the bypass patients lose faster and they probably lose more, when they have complications they have complications. The kinds of complications that come up for them are life-threatening: stomach juices leaking into the abdominal cavity and possibly leading to sepsis, severe malnutrition necessitating lifelong IV infusions, seizure disorders (it's true!), and even starving to death. While many bypass patients do just fine, a high enough percentage of them have these severe complications to make me wary of the procedure, as long as I have a safer alternative - after all, how do you know won;t be one of them? Complications with the band are only rarely life threatening - and the procedure is completely reversible if need be. If a port flips, they fix it. If the band slips, the either fix it or take it out. You might not lose as fast, and you might not lose as much, but if you work your band you can do very well without risking your life. The bypass has 10 times the death rate as the lap band, and that's just on the day of surgery - over time I can't imagine it gets better when you see those complications that can happen down the road for them. What I'm doing is I had the lap band. I plan on working with the band by following a diet until I get to the point of restriction, and even then I might continue to follow a diet. If I fail at this, the bypass will still be there in 5 or 10 years, but I will have tried the safer method first. You Tube is actually a good place to get first-hand accounts of people who have suffered severe complications. Good luck.

I always believed that actual hunger is what makes people think about food all the time - not gluttony or or bad character or laziness or whatever else a lot of people assume about fat people. If a person isn't hungry, their mind doesn't turn to food automatically. I hope I'll feel the same way as you - so far I'm definitely less hungry and I think less about food, but my stomach is probably still swollen from the surgery, so we'll see.

What would help me in a situation like this is to accept a small piece of cake, take it back to my desk, not eat it at work, bring it home, wrap it and freeze it. Tell yourself that "someday" you'll have it - after you're on regular foods. That's only if I feel I'll get upset over the "loss." Even better is not to bring it home at all, but just promise yourself that if you still want it when you're on solids, you'll go buy or bake some. By the time solids comes around, you'll probably forget you ever wanted it. And if you haven't, you can make that one of your occasional treats. During my pre-op and post-op liquid phase, if my family ate something and I felt "deprived," I'd take out a portion and put it in the blender, and then freeze it to eat during my mushy phase. Now that I'm in the mushy phase, I don't even want that food anymore, and haven't eaten a single one. But at the time, it made me feel better and helped get me through. It's hard to not be allowed to eat anything - don't add mental or emotional pressure to the stress. Telling yourself you can "never" have it again could make you cry, but it isn't really true. You can have it again, but not too much and not too often - and not right now. (((hugs)))

This whole situation is so sad from beginning to end. I don't know how he could ever forgive her for causing so much damage to his life - and almost ruining it completely. (I wouldn't.)

They say the average lap band loss is 50% excess weight loss. Did you do better or worse? At what point did you stop losing? (Your excess weigh is the amount you need to lose to get to a healthy BMI.)

Whoa, can we really puree pizza? Isn't it too thick? Please give details!

Her whole family was sick at the same time, so she assumed she had what they had. You mentioned there's a lesson to be learned, and I agree. To me the llesson is that doctors make mistakes, even with their own health, so it's all the more reason to be vigilant with any symptoms you might have and not just rely on your doctor to catch everything. Anyway, it's such a sad story - she left behind twins! It's a real tragedy.

I lost about 10 pounds, but my belly is 1 inch larger. Could this be Water retentionfrom too much sodium in the broth? Broth is the only non-shake thing I'm allowed to have on the pre-op diet (besides vegetables), so I'm having plenty. I would say 4 cups a day (It's also a welcome break from sweet drinks!) Is water retention bad for the surgery? If I stop drinking broth, might I lose the water in time for surgery? Does this affect my liver?

Wow! Was it hard for you to lose 100% I've noticed that younger bandsters seem to do better - are you very young? I'm getting banded next week. I hope I have success!

I'm on the dreaded pre-op diet now, and I'm not doing too well. My saviors have been broth and sugar-free Jello. I'm cutting down the broth to reduce sodium, but I ate way too many jello cups today. They are sugar-free and 10 calories a cup. I seriously must have had 10 cups today. Is that way too many? Could this interfere with my weight loss? I'm really starting panic about next week's surgery now!

Don't tell me it gets worse!!! No!!!!! :thumbup:

Hey guys, I just rated this thread 5 stars.

Thanks. I think I'm really just panicking because my surgery is next week. Eek!

I was reading through the pre-op diet instructions, and it says we can have broth, but it doesn't say how much. Is there a limit?

BeautyLocs, With 500 Lap Bands under his belt and good references, it sounds like your doctor is fine. I just became concerned when you mentioned only seeing bypass patients at the support groups, so I got concerned that he mostly does just bypasses. Good luck and I hope you will be a success!

Congratulations on your success. You are right to feel proud of making progress towards better health. I wish I'd been banded at a BMI of 36! Your weight loss is faster as a percentage because a percentage is a number which shows how much you lost compared to how much you needed to lose. You only needed to lose 60 pounds. 70% of that is 42 pounds. If another woman loses the same exact 42 pounds as you but has 150 pounds to lose, well, 42 pounds is only 28% of her excess weight. Pound for pound you've both lost the same, but percentage-wise you've lost two and a half times as much. Understand? To put it another way, 9 months is 40 weeks, and you lost about 42 pounds (70%) in that time. So you've lost just over a pound a week. Losing 1-2 pounds a week is what a bandster is supposed to do, so you're right on target. This is not at all to diminish your accomplishment, but rather to put it in perspective for all the others reading your post who might feel disheartened at their own progress. I myself have not been banded yet - I hope I can also lose 70% in 9 months, especially since I have a lot to lose. Keep up the good work!

Bridgett, I went through a phase of thinking I should do bypass because you lose so much weight so quickly - but really, you just lose more weight the first year. The part of the stomach they cut out in a bypass is the part that produces certain hunger hormones (ghrelin, etc.). So with those hormones out of the way, the bypass patients have very little hunger that first year. After the first year, however, the body figures out the hormones are missing, and finds other ways to make you hungry (just like in Jurassic Park, where the female dinosaurs' bodies figured out a way to reproduce with no male dinosaurs on the island). So hunger returns for these patients, and there is a period where they actually regain 20-30%. So that amazing weight loss doesn't stick. Meanwhile, the lap band patients are still losing at one year out. So by the time the lap band patients finish losing and the bypass patients finish their slight regaining, by 5 years after surgery they reach essentially the same amount of weight loss. So in the long run, there's no difference in weight loss - but the lap band patients have had far fewer complications, and a much lower mortality rate. By the way, the new Lap Band "APS" has loss rates in the first year similar to the bypass, so now it's possible to lose faster than before with the band. By one year out, the Lap Band APS patients had lost 62% of their excess weight and were still losing at the conclusion of the study, so they will ultimately lose even more. This is the band I'm getting. By the way, may I suggest you look into other surgeons? It sounds like your surgeon specializes in gastric bypass. If so, I would try to find someone in your area who specializes in lap band. If you're anywhere within a two hour drive of Manhattan, I recommend Drs. Ren and Fielding at NYU. Good luck! P.S. The Lap Band is the surgery all the doctors in Manhattan are rushing to have done on themselves. What does that tell you?

And I'm starting to get kinda nervous... :tongue2:

Thanks Pete. :tongue2: I'm getting nervous about so many things: the surgery itself, complications, if it doesn't work for some reason, maybe I'll fail. I'm also getting nervous about the "unknown": what will it be like to eat with the band, what will it feel like to get "stuck" or to "PB" or to "slime." It all sounds very strange and freaky, but soon that will be me. Also, not knowing which foods I will be able to tolerate, and which I won't. I know it will be worth it, but I'm still quite nervous.

Spam alert...