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well i started my preop diet early, i've been working on it since october. I gave up chocolate, alcohol, and cigarettes. Though I've only been banded 2 weeks. I know that I have 2 new addictions. When stressed i used to eat. . IT was my comfort. Now that I've been losing weight my new addiction is sex. and the other one is checking myself in the mirror. I feel kinda vain though for looking in the mirror so much.

I joined eharmony at the weekend and have already found a guy I think I really like. We've been talking lots and he has asked if I would like to go for a drink. Obviously I have said yes but I'm so scared! I'm only a week and a half post op so I won't be able to drink alcohol and I don't feel like I've lost anywhere near enough weight for him to be attracted to me when we meet. I don't know whether to tell him about my surgery. What would you guys do? And if you would tell him, would you do it before you met him or not? Argh this is so bloody difficult!

I thought giving up diet pepsi would kill me, now I don't even miss it. It's ok to drink alcohol you just have to watch the calories and be careful because it will affect you much quicker. As for the 8 pounds needed to get insurance to pay, just strap on some ankle weights and leave on your shoes!

Hello all! I've been gone for a minute but I'm back with a whole heap of "issues" for someone to fix. First, the most aggravating and STUPIDEST thing I've done lately...my husbands decided he was going to start dipping again but "just for a little while" he didn't actually come out and tell me I found a can of dip in his man purse (cooler). The next day he brought me home a pack of cigarettes. I can only assume this is a lets be stupid/bad together since I quit smoking over a year ago. I wasn't going to smoke them and then mistake number two happened, I had a mixed alcoholic beverage. Now, before anyone freaks just remember Elode is human! Mixed beverage along with lack of good judgment making skills = smoking cigarettes. Ok, so that's that. The pack is gone after two days and I haven't had any and refuse to go down that horrible path again so I'm not buying any and threatened physical harm to him if he brings any in this house. I've noticed that all day today I have been snacking, constantly! I believe it's from lack of having cigarettes so I'm pissed about that! On to the next issues. I have spacers in my teeth..FINALLY!!! I have a very narrow upper palate that I've been wanting fixed since I was young. We have started the long process of fixing the teeth for a "beautiful smile". Next week we are putting in a palate expander followed by braces. I'm so excited but my orthodontists is recommending that I have SARPE surgery (surgically assisted rapid palate expansion) since I'm an adult my upper palatal bones have fused so it would be faster and "easier" to have surgery AND maybe have my lower jaw moved back. I won't know until January so I'm pre-worrying as usually. I will have to have my mouth wired shut for up to 6 weeks. Blessing for my husband not so much for me. I'm worried about being on liquids for that long and looking sickly. Now I don't know if I should stop actively trying to lose weight or take my chances? Well there you go! One weeks worth of drama!!

Hi, Caffeine is also listed from my surgeon's office as a "no-no" because caffeine can irritate the stomach lining in addition to the list of reasons mentioned in a previous post. Like alcohol, using caffeine may cause the irritation and thus weaken the stomach, thus causing band problems. I'm not a doctor, but that is what I learned in my classes/support groups. I drink decaf every morning (just one cup or half a cup) and when I really "party" I do have an iced tea just for a change of pace. I don't do that much, tho. I got used to it right away, and I was a big coffee/tea/Diet Pepsi drinker in my previous life!! Cheers! Rose

Does anyone have a glass of wine or a drink on a daily basis?

Had my visit with my PCP today.....first a little background. I see my PCP every 4 months...used to be every 3 months, preceded by complete lab workup 1 week prior to each visit, for the last 5-6 years!!! ...reason was, we were desperately trying to get all my medical issues under control...everything was completely out of whack...and each visit he would adjust or change all my medications trying to get thing in balance...when one thing was brought under control, another thing would go off the scale...all the while my Diabetes was getting worse and worse....while all this was going on, Cardiac issues were discovered and I had to undergo cardiac surgery... Seemed like there was no hope, and I could read the frustration in my Dr....knowing that other complications were to develop..... Fast Forward.....as a LAST RESORT...I had Lap Band surgery 3 yrears ago...I did not like the idea, but I wanted a "Cure All" to my many medical problems... Today...all my blood work is right down the middle NORMAL !!!....and that is without the help of any drugs...I am no longer taking any meds, other than Cardiac Meds which I will for life because of Heart Attack.... My weight has not changed in 2 years, and fluctuates within the same 5 lbs...today was the lower end of the 5 lbs making it that much more sweet! My weight is the same as it was in High School, over 40 years ago! My Dr. said when he saw my name on the chart, it drew an image of who I was...but when he walked in the exam room, he thought either I was the wrong person, or he was in the wrong room...took him a minute, and he said it "Blew his mind" after he put 2 and 2 together... THE ONLY Blip on the radar, was my Fasting Glucose was HIGH, and my A1C was at the top of normal...he laughed it off, said after the holidays with all the partying and alcohol, whose blood sugar isn't going to be high? He would think differently of me if it wasn't (a Joke) Now everyday I can pat myself on the back, after getting on the scale or putting on normal fitting clothes, etc... BUT THIS....This makes it official....I have been examined and tested medically, and have passed the test!!! I am Bonifide!! I have my annual Nuclear Stress test in March...I CAN'T WAIT!!! I had them talking around the office last year...This year I'm gonna show them what this 62 year old man can do....I have been running my butt off - LITERALLY...5 days a week......my PCP says considering the strides I have made, I should ask to be taken off the Cardiac Meds...I'm not your usual cardiac patient.... My visits to the Bariatric Center are pretty much the same....they ask me one question.."Any Complaints?" I say "No", they weigh me in, then it becomes a 1 hour social visit with the staff talking shop.....I go back in May, and I think as an inside Joke, I'm going to bring them a couple dozen do-nuts for the break room.... Days like today...it just cannot get any better than this...what can happen that would be better??? It is a confirmation that everything I have gone through, and everything I am currently doing has been "Spot On"..at least for me...I would not, and will not change a thing....this type of affirmation will carry me for quite a while.... I am also on firm footing not to let the Negative Naysayers get to me....no possible way am I going to get sucked down.... I will NEVER make excuses or back down from what this surgery has done for me...never rationalize it away, never make it more difficult then it actually is, only confusing and clouding the issues..... I'm happy right where I am at....and I have no intention of ever changing that no matter what others may say....they have their success stories, I have mine, and that's all there is to it....Happy happy, Happy....Everybody's Happy. i HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBTS.......I'M WALKING ON AIR.... PS; I realize that many, the majority, of people here are just starting out, so I know I have to be careful of what I may say so as not to mis lead anyone....all I can say is follow your Dr.'s advice, and learn to THINK about what is happening.....and ask WHY....

Ok I'm clearly having a rough night and just need to vent. I feel like I have been jipped (sp?) out of this surgery so many times. My mom worked at ADP for 6 years with UHC and they covered it...but only if I was 18...then when I was 17 and 7 months she changed jobs to Key Payroll online and still has UHC but they dont cover it!!! Gah just my luck. Then 6 months ago she got a credit card for 20,000 but it is maxed out now cause she took alovely trip to Arizona....Then she refinanced the house and spent 20,000 on our kitchen alone (more than the cost of surgery) and normally she has great credit and could get financed for a surgery here in the USA but now her debt to income ratio is too high because of her new stupid southwest airlines credit cards. So basically I have been told oh yeah this will work...Siiikk! too many times. I feel like I am so close yet so far. I have been researching this for 5 years now ever since They had that girl from wilson phillips on TV for the NWWLS commercial (if u live in WA im sure you know what I'm talking about). I just feel like my time is never going to come. And I have applied at ADP (the place my mom use to work, which I know for sure covers the surgery) for receptionist and admin jobs for over a year now and they just won't hire me.<br>I just wonder when my time to shine is going to come<br>Sorry to vent I just feel hopeles....and today I was crying and my mom told me "It's not my responsibility to pay for your stupid weight loss surgery...I didn't make you fat." All I could think was uhm...maybe if I had some emotional stability when I was a child and didn't have an alcoholic father I'd have felt more loved and not needed food to comfort me. I know most of you bandsters on here are older than me and maybe are parents too....but it's very difficult when both of your parents were bombshells and popular in high school and never been overweight...I mean my mom simplifies it to "Why should I finance a surgery when you can't even pay your cell phone bill." I duno I just think she needs to take a step back and realize that spending $20,000 on new kitchen isn't as important as your daughters lifelong happiness, health and success. Maybe I feel like it is owed to me because I truley feel like she should have provided more stability in my life. I rememebr beign in 3rd grade and beign called fat for the first time...and I didn't realize that I was different until then...I just know that if I saw my kids gettign chubby I'd enroll them in basketball or some form of fun exercise and have activites for them to make healthy Snacks....like celery and Peanut Butter with little raisens on them. I wouldn't wish beign 275 on my worst enemy....and just can't figure out why my mom didn't fight harder for my health when I was so little.

Oh my word amazing words!! And so true. I stopped telling people after some huge negativity!! I was weak.. Cheating.. all I need is willpower!! And a good gym! Ha if only my eating habits were that easily controlled!! I was looking into amphetamine based appetite suppressants (with the risk of all the major side effects) and I was like "Rachel what are you doing?!!"" I encountered one person yesterday ( I told my 3 closest friends here) I felt I had to as we eat out so much and knew they would be suspicious. 2 of my friends said how brave I was.. Very encouraging. The other one said not one single word & tried to change the subject!! I am still shocked & upset by this. We sleevers are brave and committed to giving up something we had a relationship with all our lives! We have made a decision to break an unhealthy habit which would eventually give us heart disease... Diabetes.. High blood pressure etc! How can this be the easy way out?!! It's not. I was also a daily consumer of alcohol (2 glasses every night!!) I am not missing this & I have never gone 4 weeks without! So I agree whole heartily that we are very very brave & it's not the cheats way out!!

I deduct the fiber and use net carbs. I don't subtract anything else (sugar alcohol), just fiber.

I am now 10 days into the full 3mg dose. The side effects, if any, have been minimal for me. I have had some general sour stomach, other than that, not much negative from it. My appetite has decreased substantially, but my late night cravings for a sweet snack have not left completely. With the medicine, I've also started the intermittent fasting, not eating anything until 10AM. Once I eat my lunch, I am ready to eat dinner at 6PM and typically the late night cookie or jello cup goes down. Overall I feel good having dropped 26 lbs in 6 weeks, but most of the loss came in the first 4 weeks with the new medicine and reduction in alcohol. I'm still having a glass of wine or two, but not the daily 2-4 drinks prior to the new year. Overall, I like the appetite suppressant....yet it's the lifestyle change that has me wanting more.

It's no biggie, other than the calories. Beer could be problematic, since it can stretch your pouch... But non-carbonated alcohol is no problem as far as the band goes. Just limit yourself so as not to put too many calories.

I saw my dr today and he told me that my 25 pound loss in 6 weeks is perfect. I had a Lapband before and he said that x-lapbander tend to loose a little slower but that's okay. I'm 2 pounds away from my lowest on the band. Woo hoo. He also reminded me that 25 in 6 weeks is significant and keep doing what I'm doing. Protein and water are the key he said. We also talked about alcohol. He said anything carbonated is out. A little wine is fine but to never drive even if I have one because absorption is so much quicker and higher that I may feel sober but would blow way over the limit and would probably be more impaired then I realized. And it's empty extra calories. As far as vitamins. Chewables or gummies. I have Chewables at work in case I forget my gummies in the mornings. I feel like they've really helped with feeling tired. I had some overcooked chicken nye and ended up vomiting it all plus up. It was hard to eat anything the next 2 days. Dr said when that happens revert to softer foods for a day or too. Baby my tummy basically. I feel like sometimes on forcing myself to eat. Need to stop that. Other than that all is well.

Thanks for your message! Yes, you say it perfectly...unlike drugs/alcohol, we need food to LIVE, so it's always going to be there, always going to be around. It is completely up to me to know when to stop...it's just so easy sometimes to put it off until tomorrow...which is why I'm as unhealthy as I am. Good luck with your recovery and with the rest of your journey! I hope that everything works out great for you

BTW....post op wind pain can be awful. In the Alex they give you peppermint tea but it doesn't work. From getting home I got peppermint cordial (from tesco in the alcohol aisle). A warm glass first thing in the morning got rid of any wind for the day and really helped getting fluids down. I still have a glass every morning. Sent from my SM-G935F using the BariatricPal App

I had a rough night last night. Family holiday dinner and SWEETS galore. I mean, it was ridiculous! My drug of choice is cookies and there were literally six different kinds and it took every iota of willpower and determination not to indulge. I hope that at some point in the future I can be an eat-one-cookie-and-be-fine kind of girl, but I'm not that girl today. It would've been like an alcoholic saying, "I'll just have one drink." I was feeling sorry for myself last night, but I'm proud of myself today.

josygirl- Stop everything and go on liquids. Your poor little stomach can't handle food right now after all that pbing. The second thing I'd recommend is to get yourself to a counselor. Bulimia is one of the only things that will stop you from even getting the band- most doctors won't touch you with a ten foot pole if you have a history. You can do some very serious damage. I would strongly recommend that, now that you have the band, you get some help. Getting the band is a highly emotional event that can trigger relapses in things like eating disorders, alcoholism, and obessesive excercise. Hang in there, and be kind to yourself. Megan

hello, I do drink only wine and coctails, but nothing bubbly. I havent waited too long to drink alcohol again like a month or two:-)but I dont drink much like once or twice a month, but then its usually at a party so I drink like 4 glasses of wine. I once tried bubbly wine and I got bad stomach cramps since the bubbles were going from the lower stomach back again to my pouch. It really hurt so since then I dont drink bubbles:-) But as I know some people tolerate beer pretty well.

Take it from a former diet soda queen. Remember TAB, the first diet soda EVER to come out in the 70's or 80's. I used to drink SOMESTIMES 6-12 of them daily. Now, I am perfectly content with my decaf tea & crystal lite. I, personally, do not drink alcohol so I don't really know about BEER. I guess BEER is carbonated, right. When I went to my information seminar, I'd never seen so many FAT people in all my life! One table in the front row was vacant so I took a seat there. You'll be fine.

I would just add that at around 6-7 weeks pis top I had my first beer, wasn't a good move as I continued after that. The result being that the bubble expanded in my sleeve and stretched my sleeve, now I have surgery coming up on the 29th May for what is called an Omega loop bypass, which is a mini bypass including a resleeve, I would seriously urge anyone to stay away from alcohol, I learnt the hard way. As for smoking, we all know the down side, but remember it hits your lungs not your sleeve Was supposed to say post op not pls top lol

True, however they should maybe tone it down a little. Just like if I drank and the were an alcoholic I would go easy on them and not just drink everything that I can. Sent from my XT1585 using the BariatricPal App

There is great advice here. I will gain weight eating 1000 calories a day from sugar and starch. My tolerance is basically nil. Your liver produces 300g of glucose for basic body functions everyday regardless of what you eat, so eating more carbs on top of that can be a recipe for disaster. Fructose (half of the table sugar [sucrose] we consume is glucose, the other half is fructose) Is unique in the way it interacts in our body. Fructose crosses the blood/brain barrier, in a similar way to highly addictive drugs like opiates, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The result is extreme cravings, withdrawal symptoms and very high relapse rates when trying to give it up. Many of the most addictive food products that people crave and can't give up are made with high fructose corn syrup, which is even more addictive than table sugar because of the higher fructose content. I have read studies that report it is harder to quit sugar than smoking, heroin or alcohol addiction. The difference, of course, is that we recognize those are dangerous, deadly and addictive substances and have rehab programs set up to help those addicts. Fructose is passed out by the fistfuls to children at Halloween, Christmas, Easter and readily available dirt cheap on literally every corner store and restaurant everywhere you look.

Also, do you guys count your carbs by the full amount on the ingredients list, or do you deduct the fiber & sugar alcohol content, like people do who do Keto (counting macros)... When I say I eat less than 20 carbs - I am calculating it with the fiber & sugar alcohol subtracted.

My brother is a highly intelligent man. This was proven decades ago, when IQ tests (performed while his teachers and parents tried to figure out why he was a miserable little bugger) showed a genius level IQ. I know that sentence sounds unsympathetic to my brother, but we were all miserable - our parents, his teachers, me, and my brother. The decades that have passed since then haven't given him any more common sense or made him any less miserable. A good example of that is his reaction when I first talked with him about my weight loss surgery. This highly intelligent and (by then) well-read man said, "Wow! So, you have the surgery, and then you eat anything you want and you still lose weight!" Well, no, I told him. Not really. In fact, nothing like that. During the 6 years of my weight loss surgery journey, I have (over and over and over again) witnessed bariatric patients who came out of the operating room after surgically successful procedures still wondering why they couldn't eat anything want and still lose weight. Their disappointing weight loss was and is a perpetual puzzle to them because somehow they had not grasped that behavioral change is required for weight loss success. It's easy to label those patients as stupid or ignorant or deluded, or to blame their bariatric team for failure to properly educate those patients about what would be required of them both pre- and post-op. All of those things could be a factor. In March 2012 I attended 2 sessions of a required pre-op nutrition and education class. My BMI then made me obese, but not morbidly so. I had gained weight after a complete unfill and was preparing to say goodbye to my beloved band due to medical problems aggravated by my band, planning to revise to vertical sleeve gastrectomy in the same procedure. The dietitian leading the class was a perky, pretty 20-something girl, adorably pregnant, who had clearly never struggled with her weight before. Her slightly condescending attitude was hard to take, but about halfway through the class I thought I could understand her attitude. She had just named a long list of foods we should not eat after surgery (including fried foods, candy, baked goodies, soda, alcohol, salty snacks, etc.) when I heard a woman nearby say bitterly, "I don't know. That seems like an awful lot to give up." Since I had known the before and after of WLS, I was strongly tempted to respond to her, but I held my tongue (wisely, for once). I don't know just why so many people think that WLS is magic, that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight; that you don't have to give up a single food or behavior or attitude in order to succeed. Maybe we can blame that kind of thinking on the media, or maybe we can blame it on the deeply-entrenched denial that tends to go along with obesity. But the fact is, you can't eat anything and still lose weight unless you're dying of cancer or AIDs or some other fatal disease, and probably don't want to eat a single bite of anything anyway. And I'd trade dying of cancer for WLS sacrifices and success any old day, wouldn't you?

Day 3 here. Definitely not getting enough protein. Only bought vanilla premiere protein and can barely get it down because of the aftertaste. I ordered protein powder online Thursday and because of the holiday, will not receive it until Mon/Tues. I'm waiting on my husband to get home so I can do some liquid food shopping. Took another test, negative and have cramps so that is the last I will be writing about that. Went out last night and brought my crystal light with me. Did not miss the alcohol; but had major food cravings. There were snacks all over the place. My toddler has been having tantrums all weekend. He's non verbal with limited vocabulary so that's how he shows me he's upset. Despite that I've been trying to give him as many hugs as I can besause I will not be able to hold him for a few weeks. Ive been having creamed soup for 1 meal each day and its the only thing that holds me if only for a couple of hours but I feel like I'm cheating, each can has 9g of carbs plus the 1% milk I use. So I'm looking for alternatives. Oh and I have had no BM in 2 days. But, I'm down to 281 Sent from my SM-G930T using BariatricPal mobile app