jalomum

All calories are not created equal....low fat Protein - protein satisfies hunger quicker, low GI carbs - slow sustained energy release rather than the 'all in one hit' or 'use it or wear it' energy from refined carbs. Too little food and your body will think there is a famine, it will adapt to this by slowing your metabolic rate to cope with the reduced supply - This is not good :-( Eat small amounts of good protein and Low GI carbs regularly throughout the day to help boost your metabolic rate and by the way....long steady walks are much better than high impact adrenaline boosting exercise. Best of luck to you

You need to eat real food, not sugar based drinks, milk and soft mushies. Fluids should always go through the band, mushies pretty much go through too but can back up a little, solid food is a whole different story. You were right to stop when you did or you may find yourself going back for an un-fill because believe me, if you cannot swallow anything without bringing it back then you are going to do damage to your band as well as get swollen around your stomach again and then they have to take more out to allow the swelling to go down. You'd get dehydrated too. You're on a learing curve and you need to take it slow and feel your way and eat real food please.

Sorry for the bad news but....If you have gall stones that are causing you pain then the only answer is surgery, key hole to remove the gall bladder or so I believe. I don't think they can treat them like kidney stones which they can treat with sound waves and stuff to break them down. Could be wrong though. I did research it as I have a 3cm one and am hoping it is too big to cause a blockage - which is the cause of the pain. Gall stones are a side effect of high fat diets and so over weight folks are prone to them :-( Good luck

Not had this problem but I have had a bout of gastro lately and the diarrhea side of it has hung on for a couple of weeks longer than I expected. I started using Probiotics a few days ago and now it is slowing down. Gut problems are increased or prolonged by any food containig fat as it takes longer to breakdown and allows the bad bacteria to stay alive until the next meal moves through. Eliminate ALL fat for a few days while taking low doses aof anti-diarrhea meds, probiotics and drinking at lease a couple of litres of electrolyte Fluid a day. Good luck

The Fluid in syringe tube should not be a factor, it is always there, 0.3ml into the port is 0.3 into the system. The port tube is not made to inflate, the band is! For me 0.25ml made the difference between being able to eat and only being able to drink!! This was not good. Tread carefully, you are nearly there. You could ask the doc to take out all the fluid and measure it but it is not relevant how much is in it now you are this close to good restriction. All that matters in knowing how much you put in and if the effect is good, bad or not noticeable. If you are losing weight then the fat pad between your band and stomach will shrink and the band will loosen. Initially this happened on a monthly basis for me. Now I can go 3 or 4 months without bothering for a fill and I am losing steadily but not too fast. 36kg in 9 months. Good luck.

Thank heavens that link got posted, I am so relieved, Oh Ron, you're so wonderful!! So idealistic, un-realistic, so full of c**d, oh you know what I mean. and please get rid of the budgie smugglers. NOT A PRETTY SIGHT! IT IS ALL A MYTH what a shallow, stupid, sweeping statement. Totally designed to make everyone who has not got super elastic, taut, tanned and terrific skin (and who is simple enough to believe it) come to the conclusion that they need to spend $$$$ buying this book/cd/video/workout thingy or whatever, so they can find out what they're doing wrong and sort themselves out. It will also convince those young enough or blessed enough to have never had a weight problem (or any common sense or relevant knowledge) that those of us who have; just never try hard enough. Ron Brown is a 'Certified Fitness Trainer'. Not a genius or a medical expert. His advice and experience is suitable for those who want to be un-naturally lean. His followers are the steroid junkies who wax and oil their bodies and train to the exclusion of life. It is not relevant to normal people. He has knowledge limited to his area of expertise and he uses the phrase 'in my opinion' frequently throughout his information because he is aware that it is theory and conjecture and HIS OPINION only. But desperate people hang on to it because it just may be the truth, the life raft! we are all looking for. Maybe the answer should not be surgery. But he has not got the right answer either. The answer should be to get rid of Ron Brown and his type and all of the over scrawny, underweight, self obsessed women who are plastered over the media and get rid of the shallow journos that put them there and get rid of those who patronise the whole shebang by buying the magazines to gawp at and dream about how they would like to be just like them and fit with what is considered the norm, standard, required and desired appearance. and let's get rid of all the scales, tape measures and mirrors while I am at it, I don't like them either. His web-site is so trashy I nearly got married there! I'm actually going back there now because I could do with a laugh after my rant!! Ron Brown you are wRONg Brown. Rich little wrong Ron! Good night all.

I've had it all my life. I was pulling whiskers and wondering why Lady Shaves wouldn't get rid of the hair on my legs when I had my first bra. Menstruation has been hit and miss. I usually only knew it was coming an hour after it arrived! Not fun to deal with. A lot of my time was spent soaking and scrubbing blood stains. It does not encourage you to revel in your womanly cycle! PCOS was finally diagnosed by a specialist when I was 42 and just as things were getting right the Thyroid went and pushed the IR up and over into Type 2 Diabetes with more weight gain. Most annoying thing for me is that I fought and struggled with the IR related weight gain all my life as well as the hair and skin issues and then once the PCOS was finally diagnosed and they gave me Metformin; my weight started dropping and when a couple of nurses I know noticed and commented on my missing 20kg, I explained the diagnosis and medication and one of them said 'well now you've managed to lose some weight you may feel more inclined to try and lose some more' and I was like....didn't you hear me....I just take a tablet that corrects a medical problem and it's going away without changing anything else....I have fought for nearly 30 years and you pat me on the back for taking a tablet!!!! I was so annoyed and the GP's that failed to diagnose it will still not recognise the diagnosis even though all the test results are there and Medicare pays my bills for it's long term management. Same attitude from my band medics - you are fat because you ate yourself this way- you must eat more than you admit to yourself or you wouldn't have been morbidly obese....and my personal un-favorite from my GP when I pointed out the test result diagnosis of Insulin Resistance...'Yes, well Insulin Resistance hmmm just a buzz word, the latest excuse'. It is not the condition or it's symptoms that I struggle with, it is the attitudes of people who just decided I was in denial about why I was fat. I over heard my mother-in-law saying that I must stuff my face as soon as they left because I hardly ate anything when anyone was around!! AAARrRGGGGHHHHH! and now...oh you are doing well...what diet are you on....stay with it this time it's working. Sorry for ranting, get's me very upset. And yes, the soulcysters website/forum thing is brilliant. Info on every aspect. I even went on the teenage pcos section and it was so sad, it was like reading a diary of my torment when I was that age. Still, onwards and upwards....:-) Good luck to all of you. It ain't easy but I know it could be a lot worse!

Yes it does. I had un-diagnosed PCOS for 30+ years. When it was finally spotted and treated the Metformin and hormone troche together meant that I dropped 20+kg without changing my diet. Then the thyroid went and my TSH was off the scale almost at 57, I thought I was dying. The result after 18 months with no thyroid was that my weight had gone up and over my previous untreated PCOS maximum and was at 138kg. I am now down to 105kg since my op in Aug 09. The band, with some restriction, stops me feeling hungry early in the day then lunch-time onwards I just eat the normal low GI food that is best for PCOS folks anyway. The weight loss helps with the insulin resistance which in my case has turned into type 2 diabetes due to the thyroid collapse, I think I am now back down to just plain old fashioned IR again now. :-) I thought like you that it wouldn't be any benefit but once I hit 138kg, after fighting the insulin resistance weight gain all my life and then having the thyroid do so much to add to that side of it, my GP recommended it and I said...but I am overweight because of medical conditions that will still be there working against me even with a band and I felt very mis-understood by them. I talked to a top diabetes expert and my trusted endocrinologist (who had diagnosed the very obvious PCOS missed by my Gp's for so many years) between us we decided that at 45 years of age I did not want to spend the next 3 years trying to get my weight back to where it had been before my thyroid packed up. My life was wasting away and I decided after much research and heartache that I did not want to die of a heartattack while I undid the damage from the PCOS and Hashimotos. I felt cheated, like it wasn't my fault and why did I have to have the operation. I also struggle with the pre and post op care as no one reads my records and assumes I am a junk food addict that sits on my butt watching TV and stuffing my face all day and that's why I am overweight! If your excess weight is due to the IR then so long as you are having Metformin for it, hormone treatment for the excess androgens and Oroxine or whatever (none generic, go for the full price brand,,,there is a difference!) for the Hashimotos it should benefit you. Make sure your T3 & T4 are at the high end of the range and your TSH at the lowest end to get the best benefit from your thyroid meds. PCOS is hard to deal with as it is a collection of symptoms that are too often attributed to other things. The PCOS symptoms are related to an excess of androgens and Insulin Resistance. These need to be treated by a doctor with specialist knowledge. Menstruation needs hormones to regulate it. The body hair is the wrong sort, male hair not the softer velus female hair, hair growth can slow down and lighten if hormone and hair treatments are used at the same time. Excess body weight, probably carried centrally - small bum, skinny legs and big round belly, is caused by Insulin Resistance which prevents you from using and causes you to store too much of the energy you consume, Metformin deals with this and then the band will give you the best help to get rid of the excess weight you have probably amassed throughout the years. Both Hashimotos and PCOS are autoimmune type conditions. Auto Immunes tend to run in packs!! Most people that are diagnosed with one have or end up with more than one. Good luck with your decision and journey. I would say that the band in conjunction with Thyroid treatment and PCOS management will take you where you want to be. I'll see you when you get there :-)

Don't eat until you are hungry and stop when you are not! :-)

IMHO you are doing everything right, you are eating well, taking exercise and still losing consistently. That is the tool in your tummy being used perfectly. It's an awesome weight loss at a steady pace and you are allowing your body to adjust on the way down. No starvation, PBing, or slowing of metabolism through low intake and too much exercise...all added stress on our already strained bodies. Very admirable. Slow and steady wins the race. Yes you could lose it faster but you would also have a harder time of it and have to push yourself really hard, you could make it the focus of yourlife to the exception of all else. But why? The way you are doing it means that the changes you have made will probably stick for life and you get to live a normal life while you make these humoungous steps forward. Way to go honey!! Top job! I have a banded acquaintance who has lost around 80kgs in a year! Awesome, exceptional, incredible...now she daren't have the fill removed because she is scared it will all go back on. For the last 6 months all she has been able to eat is thick Soup and maybe some miniscule chopped up Pasta, everything else comes back up. Oh yes and chocolate and ice cream of course. Exceptional weight loss...horrific habits and now she has lost all her excess weight and still does not know how to eat properly. She has not seen her surgeon in a year and daren't in case he insists she has her fill out. Surgeons like your's should walk a mile in our shoes before they underestimate our achievements and progress, they should examine the developing food habits and emotional factors too. You look lovely in your photos too, what a change! My advice: keep doing what you're doing and find another doc to do your fills, tell him why you no longer require his services. If you keep going to him he will treat others like this too and not realise he is a source of negative feelings. Change docs and make sure both he and your new doc know why. My surgeon is brill but the doc he used to do the fills was someone who treated me as though I had no brain and no understanding of anything. I used to get really upset knowing I had to go see him. There are now 2 other docs I can see and they are really nice. I have explained to both them and the receptionists that this other doc's manner and methods are offensive to some people. Motivation and information from him was in army style and he expected the 'Sir, Yes Sir' reply too. Get over it! It was that bad that if I had to see him I would just cancel and re-book.

Hello Putytat52, I have just been researching Gall stones (they showed up on my ultrasound this morning whilst looking for kidney stones!). The heartburn, reflux and mid-chest pain are all symptoms and people who have lost weight quickly are very suceptible to them... you may want to just check it out with a doc next time you see one!! GP maybe, rather than band doc. May not be relevant but just thought I would mention it.

What you can swallow will depend on how much fill (and therefore restriction) you have a different stages. When post op swelling goes down and there is little or no fill then you can eat what ever you like!! More restriction means not so easy to eat, makes you think about everthing you put in your mouth and you will work out for yourself what will and will not work for you. Don't panic!! It's a learning curve and that is one of the reasons they put fill in so slowly; so you can adapt at every stage and learn.

Just wondering rlynn...have you had a fill yet, since you first posted as not having lost since the pre-op diet?

More restriction = more chance of getting stuck. Less thought about what and how you are eating = more chance of getting stuck. Tighter does not always mean better because: chocolate and ice cream will always go through but if it is too tight the good stuff has to be left out....not so good. I should think you could 'not ever get stuck' but your band would probably not be performing optimally or you would be an angel!!

Now that's what I call a 'Positive Mental Attitude'. Awesome!! Just remember that it is a tool and you need to follow the instruction manual for it to do it's job. It takes time to change the habits of a lifetime but it can be done if you stick with it through the dark and the light. Good luck

Hi I think like, the rest of us, you will just have to wait and see what happens. Make sure your food contains a good mix of Vitamins and Protein for your body to use to repair the damage done whilst overweight and see what happens when you get to where you want to be weight-wise. Deal with the walking before you start planning the running... Good luck

It could be gas related from the op but just to be on the safe side I would probably ring the surgeons office and have a chat with them. Better safe than sorry. My opinion only.

Hello Dee The 'tightness' only refers to what will pass through the band. It is not something you can physically feel. When you try to swallow something that will not go through, that is when you can tell how tight it is. Even then, it is the feeling of something being stuck not the feel of the actuall band around your stomach. When I have enough fill- I never feel hungry before lunch time. If I do try to eat before then it does not seem to pass through the band no matter how long I chew. I can eat things at 4pm that I would not be able to eat at 10am. I can tell when I need a small fill because I start to feel hungry before lunch time. It seems that there is less tightness later in the day than in the morning. My surgeon says that if you go and lie down in the afternoon the morning tightness resumes. He thinks it is to do with the distribution of fluids within your body. I have never tried this. I had my band in August 2009 and it took until January 2010 to work all this out and I'm a quick learner!! I'm still learning to live with it but 30kg down and I would not like to be without it. I hope this is helpful. Good luck with your op and the learning curve that will follow it. This site is a wonderful place to find information and guidence.

Sorry but I have to contradict you there, you have picked up the wrong impression, I think this thread has some caustic replies because the initial post concerned the 'it didn't work on it's own so I want someone to blame' mentality and she had only had the band a couple of months and not given it a chance or even put it to work by having fills. I'm sorry your hubby is having such a rough time, you must all be very miserable, I had the same thing before Christmas for 3 weeks and it was horrible, I didn't lose anything because I was prevented from eating my usual healthy diet and was even getting finely shredded and well chewed lettuce stuck. So I ate chocolate and ice cream...both of which I hate....well, maybe not the chocolate so much....Cadbury's of course!!!:smile2: It sounds like he has too much fluid in his band. If it's too tight food can't pass through so it has to come back out the way it went in. The vomiting will make his oesophagus inflammed and swollen and reduce the stoma opening enen more thus making the problem worse. The swelling will stop things passing through that would easily pass through the band if there was no swelling. He needs to have liquids for a couple of days to allow the swelling to subside, then start working up to thicker consistancies. If he still has no luck with any solids then he needs to get some fluid out. More fluid is not always better. He needs to be eating good food and be able to keep it down. If he keeps retching and vomiting he will end up with the band slipping and have to have surgery to remove or replace it. Please, read more threads and check out the advice. In my opinion you are in the best place for help and advice, this site is a fantastic resource for anyone with or considering a band. It has the good, the bad and the ugly. unfortunately you seem to started in the wrong spot. If you read all of the posts in the thread there is plenty of good and the lady who started the thread has posted a few times since and has said that she didn't mean it the way it came out and that it was ' tongue in cheek'. Good luck to you and I hope you resolve the problems and soon start to see benefits.

There is a pad of fat around the outside of your stomach and it is inbetween your stomach and the band when it is fitted. The pad reduces in size as you loose weight but you don't really notice it until you get some restriction. You get restriction and then lose some weight and the fat pad shrinks a little and the band get looser, I did this a few times in a regular 4 week cycle and then the last fill I had in December made it hard to eat anything. It took 3 weeks to loosen this time and I've not had one since as I don't want to be as tight again. I can pretty much eat whatever I want now but I don't usually feel hungry until after midday and I can stop sooner than before I was banded. It's good you'll get to check with your doc tomorrow.

I fell out with my local WW on my second visit when the 'pep-talker' of the evening was pointing out that our weightloss would be slowed or stopped if we did not take into account and make an allowance for the calories contained in oils in any Evening Primrose/ Fish Oil capsules if we were taking them. I felt this could have a negative effect on some memebers who thought they would lose more weight if they stopped taking them.

Came out of surgery and didn't feel hungry for 2 weeks, then the swelling went down and I could eat a horse!! Low fat one of course!! 3 fills before I had good restriction and the hunger disappeared. I can tell when I need to have a top up because I think about eating before 1pm. Cancelled my last appointment as I didn't need it, hanging out for my next one now!! If you have no restriction you should be using the time until you do to alter any bad eating habits you have one at a time. If you eat enough of the right stuff your hunger will be sated and your health improved. Eating too little will just slow your metabolic rate and make the situation worse...hunger is your body asking for food...but it is asking for good food, not crap. Fills have to be done slowly for you to adjust to it. You need a little bit of patience and application. A poor workman always blames his tools!!

I always assumed the slime was a reaction to food being stuck. It is thicker than normal saliva and I'm fairly certain it is supposed to carry off or up, whatever is causing the irritation to the oesophagus. It comes in large mucous type slimy lumps that would be quite at home in any spittoon!!

I have followed this debate and it is truly a very emotional subject. I would just like to ask Patty if she follows the teachings of the bible in all things? and if so, has that always been the case all her life. Also do you apply these values to all lives that are in the process of being created or just human ones. And on the subject of the holocaust analogy which I understand to have been an atrocity commited by someone who believed he was following the teachings of God as he interpreted it... According Steigmann-Gall this speech took place in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in April 1922: Wikipaedia:Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. .. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. I really wish Adolf Hitlers mum had elected to have an abortion.