Dave_NW

Wow! That is amazing! You deserve to feel so proud of your hard work! Congratulations! Dave

Wow, I thought I was the only one. I get hiccups when I'm done eating, too. Dave

Erin, I'm sorry you're having trouble. If you've been at this more than a year, you definitely need to schedule a visit to your doctor, and discuss things. Maybe you need more in your band? If you had success in the beginning, what's different? Maybe you need to evaluate how it was vs. how it is now, and go back to basics? Start with the "pouch test" (search the forums for posts about that), to make sure your band is working right. Then decide how best to proceed. Check your nutrition, because if you're not eating right, it's easy to find yourself snacking. Eat more nutritious meals on schedule, so you won't be hungry in between times. Up your activity level, so you burn more calories. It sounds cliche to say "Weight loss is mathematics - calories in have to be less than calories out" but it's pretty much true. Other things come into play, certainly, but if you go back to the things you did in the beginning, it's a good place to start. Your doctor will have some great advice, I'm sure. The other thing I highly recommend is to try and find a local support group. Seeing people face to face can be an enormous boost, since you'll see you're not in this alone. Others have been where you are, and their experiences will help get things back on track. If you're alone, it's easy to fall into a rut. The trick is getting yourself out of it. Wishing you only the best success, Dave

Glad to be of help. I found it on sale ($30 off) at Best Buy a few weeks ago for a friend. costco.com also sells them, with a free year's subscription, so it's the best overall price I found. Amazon sells them, too. Check around, and see what you can find. The prices seemed to be pretty consistent. Good luck! Dave

Jess, I have one, and think it's excellent. I have the Bodymedia armband, which is the same as the Bodybugg, made by the same company, Bodymedia.com. Main difference is it also measures your sleep quality and duration, which the Bodybugg doesn't, I believe. They come in several models, with or without external monitors to see at a glance what you're doing throughout the day, There is even a bluetooth version that lets you track on your iPhone or Droid with a free app. All models sync to your computer via a USB cable. It requires a subscription to the Bodymedia website ($6.95 a month.) I use that to sync my armband both from home and from my work computer. Since it goes to the website, the collected data goes to the same place. So when I log in, I can see what's up, no matter where the last sync came from. It's easy. You wear it on the back of your tricep on the arm you don't write with. It's easy to wear, it's easily hidden by your shirt sleeve, and you get used to it quickly. I wear mine basically all the time (except in the shower - it's not waterproof), because it tracks all sorts of movement, calories burned when you're active or resting, and as I mentioned, when you're asleep. (As you may know, good sleep helps with weight loss.) The nutrition part of it is very good. You enter your food intake by meal, either by selecting from their built-in list of food, or by creating your own items. It saves the entries to show you what you ate today, tracks calories, and shows you in graphic form where your calories are coming from (fat, Protein, carbs, and such.) Where the armband really shines is the personal profile. You set up where you are now, in terms of weight, age, and activity level, then set your goals. It will then tell you how many calories you need to burn daily, how much caloric deficit you need, and how many to consume to make your goals. For example, if it says you need to burn 3500 calories in a day to maintain your current weight, and you eat and burn a total of 2500 calories, you have a 1000 calorie deficit that day. It takes 3500 calories burned to lose one pound, so if you keep having 1000 calories a day deficit, then in seven days you'd have a 7000 calorie deficit, which translates to two pounds of weight lost. (I hope that makes sense. I understand it better than I can explain it, I think.) I find having the armband there helps me throughout the day. I can see how much activity I've had, and how much more I need to get in. Steps taken (it has a three- or four-way pedometer built in), activity levels when working out, and caloric intake and expended all are shown in an easy to read format, so you can see at a glance where you are for the day. If you're short on steps taken, take a walk. If you need higher activity, work out for a bit. It tracks it all. It simplifies the process, and about all you have to do is eat right. It'll show you what more you need to do that day to reach your goals. I think the thing I like best about it is that I don't have to worry about things. I check the armband website, and take appropriate action based on what it's telling me. No more guesswork of whether I've worked out enough, or if I've eaten enough (or too many) calories for the day. When I then enter my weight changes, I can see over time what I need to do to achieve weight loss. Easy, breezy. I can't recommend it highly enough. Hope this helps. Dave

Heading home from the gym I wasn't feeling like cooking, so I swung through the drive-through at Wendy's for a cup of their awesome chili. It's approved by my Nutritionist, and tastes really good. Dave

Not sure if you got your answer yet, but getting stuck is when you swallow something, and it seems to get caught in the band. I've only been stuck a few times, and to me, it feels like a hard painful knot right above the base of my sternum. Hurts like crazy, and no amount of swallowing seems to help. Usually the food item passes through the band within a few minutes, with no further incident. But sometimes getting stuck can result in another event, known as "sliming." That's when the salivary glands go into overdrive trying to lubricate the esophagus to try and help pass the item. Your throat and mouth fill up with foamy, slimy mucous-like saliva. You spit it out, and more replaces it. When the food item finally passes through the band, all the other symtoms stop, and life gets back to normal very quickly. None of it is pleasant, and if you can avoid it, you'll want to do so. When it happens to you, you'll know it, and you won't want to do it again. Generally, if you eat slowly, take small bites, and chew thoroughly, you can avoid getting stuck. But for some, certain foods trigger a stuck episode. I'm learning that for me, it's broccoli. Cooked till it's mush or eaten raw, doesn't seem to matter. Those little green trees get stuck nearly every time I try them. Part of living with the band is learning what your body will tolerate, and what it won't. Dave

Well, yahoo! Feeling great for you right now! That's so good to hear. Keep up the great work! Dave

My surgeon's team says 1 to 2 pounds a week is where they expect and want bandsters to be. The rapid weight loss you experienced early on was mostly due to liquid diet and restricted calories. Now that you're getting back onto solid foods, it's normal for things to slow down. I totally understand how frustrating it can be after that initial rush of weight loss to have the scale seem like it's frozen. But when you think about it, 2 pounds a week is 104 pounds in a year, right? Keep up the great work. It sounds like you're right on track. Good luck! Dave

I appreciate you posting, but I think you may be misremembering how it went. I made ONE statement to the other guy in the room about being tired of all the sex talk, and everyone went off on me. I am not one to insult ANYONE, online or in person. It is absolutely not my style. If insults were being posted in the chat room, they were most definitely NOT posted by me. I don't DO that. After several minutes of the harrassment I received, I made one final post, which was, "Okay Ladies, you can have your fun." And I left the room. I have not been back since. If you truly remember something negative happening, it was after I left the room. Maybe it was the other guy. He was still there when I left. In my earlier post I was not accusing anyone of making it a porn site. I was referring to the explicit chat happening at that time, and how I felt it was inappropriate. True, I don't go into chat rooms as a rule, but I am certainly intelligent enough to have an idea how they work, or I wouldn't have gone in there. In that case, I did think I was making a private comment to the other guy. Sorry, obviously I was in error. I quickly figured that out when it was pointed out that my post had been seen by others. But I also didn't ask to be openly humiliated by everyone who felt it was acceptable to make fun of my error. I didn't post anything else, waiting for the assault to end. But when the hostility continued, without me saying ANYTHING more, I realized that was not the place I needed to be. So I left. It was made very clear to me that I was not welcome there. The greater point that it happened AT ALL points out the problem with unmoderated chat rooms. My bringing it up on this thread was in response to the OP saying she encountered similar treatment on another forum. Prior to this thread, I haven't brought this event up to anyone, and it happened last Fall. So obviously I wasn't that traumatized by what happened. I just happen to think it was uncalled for. Just as I think your several insults to me in your post here are uncalled for. Anyone reading what you've said here can easily see the open hostility in what you said about me. It pretty well supports my memories of what happened in the chat room that night. Thanks for helping me out. Dave

That makes sense. Once it's placed, the shape would be more circular. The one I saw was a "Please pass this around so everyone can check it out" sample they showed at a pre-op seminar I attended. They passed around both types, and that triangular shape of the band portion was the only real obvious difference between the two. I have no idea how old the samples were, or whether they were different than what is being used now. Dave

I thought the Allergan band IS the Lap Band. Am I missing something? Dave

That's an interesting idea. I've seen both bands during pre-op seminars, and it seems the main difference is the Allergan band has a number of "pockets" that make up the band, so maybe seven or so segments? It makes up a roughly circular shape. The Realize band has fewer "pockets" and makes more of a triangular shape. I asked my surgeon which he uses, and he said they stopped using the Realize band because it had too many problems. He said they only use the Allergan band these days. He wasn't specific about what kind of problems. (My surgeon was Dr. Ross McMahon, head of the Bariatric Surgery Center at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.) Dave

Jack, the more I read of you, the more I'm convinced we're twins separated at birth. This is amazing to read about somone else who felt/feels as I did/do. Cool! Dave

Oh. Right! I keep forgetting... Dave

My band surgery included repairing a hiatal hernia and a ventral hernia. They did them all at the same time. (I asked them to, since I figured as long as they were under the hood, they may as well do a full tune up. My insurance paid for it all.) Other than me ending up with more incision sites than those who only get banded, everything was the same. Most bandsters end up with five or six incision sites. I have thirteen. Eek! The endoscopy will be a non-event for you. They'll anesthetise you, and you'll take a nice nap. While you're out, they run a camera down your throat to check your lower esophagus for the hernia. They'll find one or not, assess how best to repair it, then remove the camera, and wake you up. The most you may feel afterwards is a minor sore throat. In my case, I didn't feel a thing, and within a half hour I was good to go. Dave

Those are good questions that deserve a good answer: My pre-band eating was that I never felt "full." I'd abused my system by chronic dieting for so many years, I never knew what "full" was like. I could eat as much and as often as I wanted, and only after I'd eaten way too much, and my stomach was bloated and I was miserable, did I decide I felt "full." There was no off-switch to my appetite, and no matter how much I'd just eaten, within a few hours I'd be at it again. Since being banded, if I eat in a hurry, or don't stop to assess what my body is telling me, I can still eat way more than I should. Last night was a time when I expected to eat too much, because I was so hungry. But because I was eating slowly, after a few bites I felt like I'd had enough and I didn't need to eat more. In my pre-banding days I'd have been so afraid of being hungry again soon after completing the meal, I'd have continued until I was stuffed. So this sensation is pretty new, and it's not a bad feeling at all. I'm learning how to eat right, after many years of eating wrong. Yes, the band is making me feel satiated with less food. If I eat according to the bandster protocol, I can go three or four hours between meals with no hunger, no cravings, and no desire to graze or cheat. I do try to eat about every four hours or so, to keep the satisfied feeling going, and so my blood sugar doesn't crash. I don't feel deprived, nor do I feel like I have to overeat in case I don't get the chance to eat a big meal soon enough later on. I'm losing my longtime fear of being hungry and unable to satisfy my appetite. That's new for me, and I feel the band is responsible. I don't feel that I'm feeling this way because I've put so much into the band and I'm just now listening to my body. My body is sending me very new signals, and they're very different than ever before. This is all new since banding, and it's very real. It's also a comforting feeling, since my greatest fear pre-banding was of being hungry, and having no way to satisfy my hunger. I love that the ball and chain shackeling me to the refrigerator or fast food drive thru are slipping further and further into the past. For me, banding was truly life-changing, and it's not just in my head. As I've said before, my biggest regret of getting banded was that I didn't do it years ago. Dave

Jack, you're absolutely right. What I meant was that I felt I no longer wanted to eat. I'm still learning a new vocabulary, so to me "full" is the same thing as "no longer hungry." In my pre-band life, if I'd stopped eating after so few bites, my stomach would still have been rumbling, and I'd have felt myself to be still quite hungry. Yeah, I'm liking the band. It's a challenge, but it's a good fight, I think. Dave

Well, thanks for the support, Ladies. I do appreciate hearing it wasn't just me. The attitude and pack animal behavior of the people in that room that day still gives me the creeps. I'm a road-weary 57 year old, I have seven grandchildren, and I spent 20 years in the Navy, so there is very little I haven't heard. I've also been an IT professional since the early 70's, and I've been in and around online communities since the 80's. What threw me about the chat room experience here wasn't so much the frank sexual nature of the chat, it was the idea that it was completely outside the realm of what the chat room was supposed to be for. There was no warning about it being an "anything goes" situation, and there could have been underage people in the room - nobody would have known until they got in there. I'm not a prude or anything, but it struck me as being just plain wrong. (Then again, the comments someone made in another thread here the other day about a 70 pound 12 year old boy masquerading and posting as an obese adult woman comes to mind. I can see him getting his jollies by hanging out in the chat room, pretending to be a sexually frustrated woman, and enticing other [real] women to help solve "her" sexual problems, or give her tips on how to have a better sex life. It gets to be kind of sick when you think about it. And if that 12 year old boy was really a 40 year old man, it gets even sicker.) I don't need or want the chat room in my life, so it's not a big deal. The bullying and rude behavior of these presumed fellow weight loss patients left a very sour taste in my mouth, and makes me wonder what the site Moderator is here for. I wonder if the chat room is under any sort of jurisdiction and monitoring. It sure wasn't that night. I'll stay out here in public where things are much more civil. Even if the band IS just a tool... Dave

Ask for a to-go box when your meal is delivered. Put everything you expect to NOT eat in the box, and set it aside. Leave your meal portion on the plate. Eat it at your own pace while socializing with your dinner companions. When the plate is clean, you're done eating, just like everyone else at the table. No more "I'm not very hungry" embarrassing questions, or making your companions feel weird while you sit with a mostly uneaten meal watching as they eat. Dave

As mentioned above, the band is a MECHANICAL helper. (If that makes it a tool, then so be it. ) I have tons of willpower. I can diet with the best of them, and lose like crazy. But as soon as something in my life changes, and I'm unable to continue that process, the weight comes flooding back. It's happened to me lots of times. I got tired of the roller coaster, and decided I needed some assistance. I'm not planning to ever go back to the way it was before. Now that I'm banded, things are different. I am not able to "forget" about what I'm eating. Willpower has little to do with it. I make the conscious choice of what I'm eating, and as long as I pay attention, the band limits the general amount of whatever that meal is. Real world experience: Last night I was starving after a hectic day where I was unable to eat on schedule. I'd gone about nine hours since a modest lunch, and I was ravenous. I was out of town with a friend, and we dropped into a Thai restaurant recommended by another friend. The food smelled awesome. I ordered a chicken and vegetable dish, and waited like an impatient kid till my meal arrived. It looked amazing. The presentation was perfect, it smelled amazing, portion was enormous, and I couldn't wait to wolf it down. I deliberately took my time, because I wanted it to last. I even used chopsticks, to slow down my eating. The first bite was wonderful. I savored the taste as I chewed the chicken to the right consistency. Each bite was better than the one before. I was so hungry, it was a fantastic meal. After several bites of chicken and several more of vegetables and a bite or two of brown rice, my ravenous appetite just clicked off. I was suddenly and completely full, and satisfied with what I'd eaten. I couldn't believe it. I was mentally prepared to eat the whole plate, but my band said, "Um, nope. We're done here." When I looked over at the dish I was serving myself from, it had about 90% of the meal left on it. I asked to have it boxed up, and now I have a ton of leftovers. It was one of the first times I've eaten Asian food and not been hungry a short time later. The lesson I learned is that it's not always about the hunger. It's about the process. My band helps keep me on track, even when I want to do something else. I like having that sort of helper. Dave

That's amazing, but more typical than it might seem. A lot of forums are like that. They have their core of frequent posters, and anyone who goes against the grain, or who doesn't sit quietly in a corner until learning the perfect way to post a question is given nothing but hell. A number of car enthusiast forums I read are like that. Heaven help you if you should ask a quesiton that someone posted previously, or if you have a misunderstanding about the finer points of owning a certain kind of car. The "regulars" will eat you alive. But you know what? The same exact thing happened to me, right here on this forum, in the chat room. Several months ago I dropped into the chat room to see what it was about, hoping to learn more about what it meant to be banded. There were about a dozen women there, and only one other guy. The chat was extremely graphic sexual talk among the women, who were discussing very frankly about their sexual activities, which personal sexual devices they preferred, and graphically describing how they performed sexually for their husbands and boyfriends. It was pretty shocking and completely unexpected. After several minutes of this kind of thing, I tried to send a private comment to the other guy in the room. All I said to him was "I'm getting tired of reading all this sex talk." Well, due to my inexperience, the comment wasn't private. It was posted in the main chat room. The women went CRAZY. It was a feeding frenzy of open, hostile harrassment. They all went way over the top, and completely humiliated me in front of everyone else. They openly laughed and ridiculed me to the point that I left the room and haven't been back since. It was completely uncalled for, and showed a complete disregard for the point of the chat room, which I (mistakenly) believed was to discuss weight loss surgery. Silly me! The larger lesson is that it showed me there are a lot of aggressive, angry, low-life people in that chat room who are no better than the common bullies I went to school with. They should be ashamed of themselves. Dave

I think different forums are run by surgeons/companies that promote certain kinds of surgeries. The primary posters on such forums are going to be advocates of that type of surgery. It's only natural they'd bash anything or anyone who disagrees with their particular type of surgery. When I started my journey I was going to have the sleeve surgery. I found a forum for that, and I spent a lot of time there. I read lots of posts bashing banding, and bragging up how the sleeve was the only way to go "because banding doesn't work." Oh. Okay. So when my insurance gave me the bad news that they don't pay for sleeve surgery at anywhere other than a military hospital, I was left with banding and bypass as my choices. I selected banding because I felt it was a better fit for me. So far, I've been right. I've not been back to that other forums since finding this one But even here I find some posts that bash banding. Just because one person has a problem, whether it be a faulty band, their inept surgeon, or the person themselves being unwilling to work within the guidelines, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with banding. So I thnk you need to read between the lines. For all the posts here, negative or otherwise, there are thousands of bandsters out there who aren't posting at all. What is their experience with it? If it was failing, they'd be posting somewhere, asking for help. So I have to presume silence equals success. And if those silent bandsters who aren't having trouble are out there living life to the fullest, it makes a kind of positive post by them not posting at all. The reason I think some people post negative things is often to either try and gain support for their feelings, or to cause a ruckus among the readers. It's easy to say something negative. And we all know misery loves company. Dave

Sliming is an unpleasant side effect of getting stuck, where your salivary glands produce massive amounts of saliva, trying to lubricate your esophagus so you can fully swallow whatever it is that is stuck. The increasing amount of saliva builds up, till you cough and spit it out. It's nasty. After you manage to pass through your band whatever is stuck, the salivating stops, and things get back to normal. But the entire experience is unpleasant, since it's easy to panic when something gets stuck. Eating smaller bites, and chewing thoroughly will decrease the chance for that happening. I've only had one sliming incident, but it was enough to get my attention. I don't want to do that again. Eating till you get full may not happen the way you think it will. The band may offer a degree of restriction, but it won't prevent you from eating. food only stays in the pouch for a few minutes, if that, and then it passes through to your lower stomach. If you want to feel what being stuck is like, eat huge bites, swallow without thoroughly chewing well, and eat very quickly. If you have enough in your band, you WILL get stuck. And it's a painful, unpleasant thing to do. I don't recommend it. My weight loss to this point is hovering right around sixty pounds. I'm having a bit of a plateau at the moment, so am evaluating how and what I'm eating, how much I'm exercising, and how much sleep I'm getting. That's part of having a band - the "rules" change as you go along, and what worked for awhile needs to be adjusted to keep things working. I'm fascinated by how much I'm learning about how my system works. Dave

Nelly, if you have just 5cc's in your band, and if your band happens to be a 14cc capacity, it's unlikely you will feel restriction. And it's also unlikely you'd get stuck with that little in the band. I'm at 7.2cc's in a 14cc band after two fills, and I didn't experience being stuck or sliming till after my second fill. I don't get stuck often, but if I eat too fast or take too large a bite, I can just about cause it to happen. You need to understand that banding is a process. It's not instantaneous, nor is it exact. What one person feels is generally not the same thing another will feel. You need to learn how you and your band work together, and adjust what you're doing to suit your particular situation. It'll come with time. Hang in there, work the plan, and be aware of what you're doing to/for yourself. The rest is just details. Good luck! Dave