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Dr. Tells me clear liquids for two weeks. So please tell me what this means? I am sipping water, crystal light, and flavored water and clear chicked broth Can't imagine doing this for 10 more days. Am weak, and dizzy and shaky. They tell me to get up and move around but I am too weak. Banded Sept 11

Its been a journey since March 9th until now my weight loss has been slow and steady now I feel stronger, lighter, able to concentrate more on short goals. My workouts change every day so that helps me to stay focus. My current weight is 160 lbs from 245 lbs, now my size is a 10 from a 20. One thing that is my encouragement is that I bought a Fitbit to keep going and to motivate me every day you should see me talking it like it's a real person, lol. Sent from my SM-G955U using BariatricPal mobile app

I need to loose 10-15lbs. Already lost 7lbs.

im 3 weeks post op and I will I can eat anything.. only pureed food im eating is my Protein shake. I am able to keep protein meat down like grilled chicken, pork, and soft veggies. I eat fruit as in grapes I do get full I dont over eat. I have lost 10 ibs already. im just scared im overdoing it Sent from my SCH-I545 using LapBandTalk

So I finally decide that getting banded is the best possible thing for me now. I have been diagnosed with Apnea, I am well in the severe range on my BMI. However I have BCBS of TX. They have strong stipulations on the approval process. I have the 5 year history of being over weight. But they also want 12 months of a documented lo-cal diet and exercise program initiated by my PCP. My question I guess would be does anyone know of a work around for this or am I going to have to wait another 12 months to get banded!? At this point I am so fustrated, I have been denied already once due to "Not having enough medical info". I am seriously considering quiting my job of 6 years and paying high insurance prices and not getting anything out of it, just to apply for Medicare. In the last 6 years I have paid well or $70,000 in insurace and seriously have used it maybe 10 times. Why is this so difficult????? Is there any hope at all for a work around. There seems to be some people on here with knowledge of working the system, just thought I would put this out there to see what I can do to fight this. Buddy Lee:help:

I'm 10 weeks post op today. Down 48 lbs I was wondering if I can start taking pre workout before the gym?

I had my surgery 8/19 and I cant drink cold or hot.. pretty much room temp for me right now. I have gone through almost every glass in my house until I found a glass that allows me to sip not gulp.. the gulping pain is gas/air. also dont be scared to ask a pharmacist for some medicine cups and drink out of them until you get the hang of it. I wasnt getting enough liquid so found that chicken noodle(less) Soup is it for me 8oz,. I have it for lunch ( i kept the veggies but ditched the noodles) I add one scoop of Protein powder unflavored to it. It takes me several hours to get through it but its liquid and protein.. I struggled after surgery with the Protein shakes. This week I have had three days stomach pain free.. remember you are healing inside

Just wanted to let you know how my fill went. It took me 2 hours to get to Mills Peninsula Hospital, First I saw Dr Foster, she didn't feel I was ready for a fill, she has her patients wait 2 mos. and from what I described (that 2 wks ago I had severe chest pains after eating 4 bites of mac and cheese, which I shouldn't be eating in the first place) but that shows restriction. Also my port seem to be alittle tilted down. I wanted to go ahead and try to get a fill for allot of reasons so she wrote the orders for the fill. Dr. Lee who preformed the procedure was very professional and funny, He claimed he's filled band from all over the world. Once a lady who had her band procedure done in France came in with her own container of fluid for her fill, he said what's in there Chardonnay? He's done other Dr.Sanchez patients and that Dr Sanchez does good work. So while laying on a table a large "live" x-ray machine is placed about 10 inches over me. Immediately I see my port no problem getting to it. He says with massive weight loss the ports sometimes flip, very common, mine is flat. Then he numbed the area and placed a 4 inch needle about 1/2 inch into the port, alittle pressure but no pain. Then he placed 5 cc into the band, I choked the pain in my chest was unbearable, that's the esophagus he explained and my band was completely closed off. He let 1 cc out and had me drink some barium, I almost vomited. He let another cc out as we were looking at the screen we could see the barium but it was not getting thru and I was still choked up. Drank some-more barium which was hard to do and took out another cc. Finally saw a trickle pass about the same size of the needle, I said let alittle out to be on the safe side. I got a total of 1.75 cc and we were done. A half hour total for the whole procedure. Dr. Lee explained that my band holds 11 cc when not around a stomach but that everyone's different and my total is 5 cc. his last words "chew your food well". I was amazed that its such a small amount. Do I feel different? no. I'm back on fluids but ate 3 small bites of chicken last night and I did feel it about 5 minutes later, kind-of full feeling. I'm scared to eat knowing the opening is smaller then a pencil but I feel great. I'll see with time. Vera:cool:

Hi my name is Joanne and I had the LAP-BAND® done on Feb 15 2010, I will go for my first filling next week. My surgeon is Jorge Rabasa. I have lost 10 pounds so far.:blushing:

I mixed mine with 10 oz of water so I had a plastic cup with a strainer in it - traditional protein shake glass. Good luck to you!!! You sound very excited and that strong positive attitude will take you far!

there have been a few times after eating that i feel like i need to burp. when i try, i can feel a llittle bit of food come up in the back of my throat. this usually happens 5-10 mins after i'm done eating i do not vomit - in fact, i have never vomited. but i'm curious - is this a sign that i ate to much? i do not feel full and i'm not in any pain or discomfort. has anyone had this happen to them?

I am 16 days post op. It took me about 10 days before I could get fluids down more easily. It would take an hour just to get a 4 oz Protein Shake down, and I was pushing myself to get the protein in. Water was the same and it still takes me a while to get down, but improving. I don't know why, but a protein shake goes down more smoothly than water. Weird.

I don't like it either. I like consistency! When I was in high school weighing anywhere from 130-140 I wore a size 10 or 12. Now, I weigh about 205 and I can get into 16's. Now that is crazy. At this rate, I would be in a 12 by the time I weigh 180 or so. Also, if you ever look at vintage stores or even on ebay, the sizes back in the 60's and 70's and probably even 80's were wayyyy smaller than today. I mean, if it says size 10, it is probably a size 4 nowadays. I bought a vintage rock concert tshirt on there and it was size XL and it was about the size of an XS in today's clothes. I knew this beforehand as I read the measurements. Just crazy that we need that perfect "number" to make ourselves feel good.

10 Things I want to do when I am free from this weight: 1. Wear a dress without my upper thighs rubbing raw. 2. Wear a bathing suit in public (I always wear pants to the pool) 3. Participate in family activities, such as playing basketball, bike riding, going on walks and hikes, going swimming, going to the gym or taking a fun exercise class- all without people staring :thumbup: or feeling so winded that I have to stop within a few minutes.:svengo: 4. Wear clothes that I want to wear, not just the clothes that will fit me. 5. Shop in "normal" sized clothing stores. 6. Paint my toenails myself. 7. Sit on the floor and be able to get up with ease. 8. Fit into airline seats without encroaching on the person's space next to me, also not bump people with my hips when walking in the isle on an airplane. 9. Not have people stare at me so much! (I live in the O.C., where the standard size is 0) 10. Be small enough so that my husband can pick me up! :seeya:

10/10 wow it's almost here I'm happy and scared but with all the encouragement I can do this Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

It boggles my mind that for all the people who go to Mexico, we could PAY for the surgeries at the waste that is in here. Just sickening. I'd go for people paying for the plane fare, but we could pay for the costs of surgeries, including plastic surgeries down there. That would take some punch out of "surgery mills" up here. Bet they would get their act together too, some of these ones are just money hungry here in the states. Jumping into it for the money. Really torks me. We could support good docs across the border, our own American people, and get them healthier. Any one else agree? I feel a better use of our dollars is giving that and say a limit on plastic surgery after bariatric surgery ($40K limit, must be 1 time for loose skin removal). http://www.realitybase.org/journal/2009/10/12/the-dysfunction-and-corruption-of-our-healthcare-system-its.html

How many of us have been "on a diet" for most of our lives? Too many, in my opinion. Not just because it's bad for our health or because diets don't work. It's bad for our mental health too. It leads to something I call "Dieter's Mentality." If you have Dieter's Mentality, you need to cut it out because it's going to sabotage your success. This is true whether or not you have had Weight Loss Surgery, are on your pre-op diet or are doing it the traditional way through diet and exercise. Diet Mentality is evil and it puts you in a bad place! What is Diet Mentality? It has four major components: 1) Putting food into Good and Bad buckets First of all, food is not Bad or Good -- it's just food. Some food is a better choice than others, but even then it's really just all food. If you are getting in enough of the essential nutrients and you account for your calories each day, you are doing good no matter if you have a bite of dessert once in a while or not. All food is bad food if you eat too much of it or only eat one kind. It's just as unhealthy to eat nothing but Protein as it is to eat nothing but birthday cake. A healthy diet is balanced and can even include a certain amount of junk food as long as it's a small amount and it doesn't trigger you into bad behavior. 2) Judging your worth by what you eat Making bad food choices does not make you a bad person. Your self-worth shouldn't be tied up in what you eat. Good people make bad choices all the time. Instead of beating yourself up when you make a bad choice, hating yourself, seeing yourself as a failure and otherwise engaging in destructive behavior, just figure out how to make a better choice next time. It's not easy to be dispassionate about your own behavior, but telling yourself that you made a bad choice and next time you'll make a better one is a good start and much healthier than telling yourself you are a bad person and you'll never lose the weight and you hate yourself. 3) Judging your worth by how much you weigh/how much you've lost this week The scale is just part of the picture. If you get too tied up in the scale, you get a distorted view of the world. Weeks where you lose are good weeks even if someone close to you died. Weeks where you don't lose are bad weeks even if you got a big promotion at work and did everything "right" in terms of diet and exercise. One of the dangers of measuring everything by your weight on the scale is that you can convince yourself that making bad choices is okay because sometimes you can make bad choices and still lose/maintain. You can also convince yourself that making good choices is pointless because some weeks you make all good choices and the scale doesn't move. But clearly making more bad choices than good will lead to weight gain in the long run. Anything thinking that leads you to conclude otherwise is destructive thinking. 4) Waiting until you are thin(ner) to start living Stop waiting until you get to goal to start living or loving yourself. Love yourself now. Live your life now. It's easy to fall into "when I lose 25 pounds, I will start..." type of thinking. It's a fine line between thinking about how you will reward yourself when you meet certain goals and putting your life on hold until you meet certain goals. Many of us have had the experience of thinking we were so fat back when we were in HS or college or a young adult and not being happy. But then we got even fatter and we look at those pictures from back then and we realize that we were actually pretty hot. In fact, we'd give anything to be "that fat" right now. Why not love yourself now while you're living your life instead of waiting until 10 years later to tell yourself how good you had it back then? What happens when we stop "dieting"? One of the best things I ever did for myself was to decide I was never going to diet again. It really allowed me to examine my relationship with food and to start listening to my body and figuring out why I eat what I eat. That would never have happened when I was caught up in "Dieter's Mentality". One of the things I found is that my approach to food was that of a child. I wanted people to make me or bring me food because I associate being fed with being loved. So I got myself to a point where all my meals were either quick things that require no cooking or can be zapped in a microwave or are made by my husband -- who does all the cooking -- or were purchased. In other words, other people had complete control over what kind of food I ate and how it was prepared! I never saw anything wrong with this until I decided to grow up about food. I realized that by approaching food this way, I was giving up tons of control over what I ate. Someone else buys the groceries so it's not my fault that there aren't healthy Snacks in the house. It's not my fault that I had that ice cream cone -- there was nothing else to eat and I was HUNGRY. Once I saw this pattern, I vowed to change it and start being an adult about food. I now plan out what I'm going to eat before I go to work. If I'm going to work late, I bring extra food so I'm not eating out of the vending machine. I don't eat lunch at the Cafeteria every day so my food choices aren't limited to what they want to make for me. I have healthy snacks in my drawers at work so if I do end up working late without having planned ahead, I'm eating a Protein Bar instead of a Snickers bar. This change in attitude and behavior has made a big difference. Which is not to say I haven't got much farther to go ... I still don't cook and I still eat way too much prepared food (because I don't cook). But I'm much better than I used to be and it's great to feel like a grown up! You may relate to what I said about having a child's approach to food or you may not. Not everyone gets fat the same way or has the same issues to work through. But one thing I can guarantee is that once you throw off the shackles of Dieter's Mentality, you will have the brain cycles available to see your relationship with food more clearly. You will be on the road to having a healthy relationship with food.

I'm 3 weeks post op and ate some sjreded meat today (ok per my doctor). 10 minutes later I felt really horrible, and the pain stuck around for about 10 minutes. I also did a lot of spitting and felt nauseated. Then I retched a few times, and ultimately threw up some clear goo. Should I be worried that I damaged my stomach or sleeve? This seemed a lot worse than just sliming. Has this happened to anyone else?

Hi B-52 I was so happy with your story. I was banded in March lost 52 lbs in the 6 month pre opt program only lost 14 lbs sense surgery having a hard time maintain ing what I have lost. I go in for my 3rd fill next week 4 months post op. I was getting really discouraged because I feel like I have no restrictions. I have 5 cc in 10 cc band. I have 43 lbs to go to get to goal weight. Sent from my ALCATEL A564C using the BariatricPal App

I'm a little later than you.. 10/22/18 size 60 pants to now 50 6 x to 3 x 114 lbs since surgery.. 134 since I started the journey. Hw: 496 Sw:476 Cw:362 Sent from my SM-G955U using BariatricPal mobile app

I am banded since 14-02-2012 and have had my last fill in january under x ray, the DR said this should be the last fill. From time to time my colon irritated plus my port area, and the band became tighter,I also feel a pain (1 out of 10) around the port area and a pain in my abdominal when I swallow food or liquid ( only with irritated colon symptoms appear). I can eat very well and have no problem with food. When I said irritated colon I mean I have a lot of gas and don't go toilet often and hear the gas noise in the colon area. I went to my GP last month when this symptoms appears, as my surgeon lives in another city. The GP said my stomach seems to be soft, he rang my surgeon and the surgeon advised for two days liquids as he thought that I have an irritated port or band. I followed the surgeon advice and went to a liquid diet for two days which it doesnt seems to help a lot, however the symptoms goes better day after day and only the port area pain remain there. Yesterday I am having the same symptoms again but much less than before. I assumed the colon problem is causing the pain around the port area because I believe there is a pressure of gas around me and looking for a way to go out but all blocked ! Please need your thought and advice. Thanks and sorry for the bad English

Pictures and nutritional facts at: food, especially when the desire to eat pumpkin pie is strong within you. It’s not my usual, start-from-scratch recipe. There are a lot of cans and packages being opened, but by golly, it sure tastes good. Makes 10 servings. Ingredients 1 can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix) 1 container sugar-free cool whip 2 packages of sugar-free cheesecake pudding mix (1 oz each) 1.5 c of skim milk 2 scoops Syntrax Vanilla Bean torte Protein powder (or other vanilla protein that you like) 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice Method Combine all ingredients and whip together with a hand-held mixer, or in the bowl of your Kitchenaid mixer until smooth and creamy. Let it chill for a few hours and enjoy.

You will do great! Remember, we really don't need as much food as we were eating before this surgery and your health will improve 10 fold! CONGRATS! I live my Chocolate Premier High Protein shakes! Can't wait for you to Rock your sleeve!

I just finished my 6 month supervised with PCP, but nurse will not schedule surgery until A1C is 10 and under. 3 months ago met with endocrinologist and she changed my medication A1C went from 9 to 12. I need to get this down before appointment on 6/2. Went to PCP had it checked just to see where I'm at it's a 11. What to do.....HELP!!!!