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I don't really know what to tell you. But, I do feel really bad that you are going through this. There are so many answers to your question, yet really there are none. Know what I mean? Everybody is different. I was banded 3 weeks ago and I haven't really had any head issues yet. My best friend will be banded in November and we talk every day on the phone regarding HER head issues. Therapy has not worked for her either. This is what I told her, from a non-professional bandster.... : 1) Meal Planning. It totally helps me. If lunch time approaches and I don't know what I'm going to eat, I stare into the fridge blankly and see all the food that I CAN'T have and want to scream. So, now I meal plan. Just one week at a time. It's really fun and saves me money at the grocery store. It takes the question out what I will eat, and I now don't have to think about my meals 2 hours prior. It's freeing... REALLY! 2) Habits. It takes 6 weeks to create or break a habit. If you can't go one week without cheating, you need to rethink your stragity. Start with meal planning. Head down, and plow through 6 weeks and do what ever you have to do to not cheat. See what habits you've developed and broken. 3) Have an answer for everything. For me, I love food and wine, and actually have made a career out of it. That's what made me fat! I have a ton of critics at work (restaurant) and they ask me all the time stupid ass questions. But, I always have an answer to questions like, "But, you love oysters!" and "Want a bite of our new German chocolate cheese Cake" and "Hey, you want a beer, I'm buying"... I have an answer for everything and this helps me with peer pressure. 4) Support. You are in the right spot for support. This website has helped me so much with everything. Knowing that it's OK not to be perfect, but it's important that I try. 5) Remember why. Make a list of the top 10 reasons WHY you had lapband done. Post in on the wall in front of you toilet in your bathroom. That way you read it several times per day. It's a reminder. We need reminders. (Kinda like how children are a reminder of birth contorl! lol) I hope this helps a little. Use the tools that your doctor gave you. Stay strong and develop your own way of doing things. Maybe my tools wont work for you, but maybe they gave you an idea or two how to develop your own key tools. Well, gotta go. My kid is stuck in his toy! AAAAHHHHHHHHHH Dana

Ice cube trays to make post-op jello and pudding in. It is the perfect 4 bite size for when you are on the first 2 weeks post-op. Then at the dollar tree they have these like 3oz packs of 10 plastic containers with lids. Get a few of those I use them all the time. Again a perfect size to divide cottage cheese, tuna, or anything for when your back to work for portion control. Good Luck on your procedure...….

Today I am 10 mos and 1 day out of surgery. I've lost most of my excess, having 20 lbs to go to goal. I am losing slowwwwly at this point, but heh, still getting there. I think it is time. Somewhere at work my husband must be sensing this and he is jumping up and down. He has been encouraging me. He actually wants to pick out the boobs but I really think we have different ideas about the boobs. I want petite, high, round, tight and he I think wants implants. NO MORE BIG BOOBS FOR ME. I want to have a day or two in my life or heh, the rest of my life, where I can not wear a bra and look decent and not like my nipples are dangling around my waist. lol I sent inquiry to local surgeon referred to me by another VSG survivor. I read about the body lift often performed on weight loss surgery clients. WOW. It pretty much covers from my thighs to my breasts. I like that. I will be very scared though I'm sure. But I like the idea of one recovery, one big bill to pay, and looking good on my summer vacation. I have NEVER had cute boobs. They are big, and they hang. I have never worn a cute neglaje' (see, I don't even know how to spell it!). I think THIS surgery though, I will keep a little quieter. I wasn't shy about the VSG but I dunno...kinda regret that. So this one I'll tell just people very close to me. Could I possibly look good naked? I couldn't imagine getting this surgery a year ago, but heh, I'm going on a cruise and my butt is sagging for the first time in my life. My watermelons have melted into some sort of healthy zucchinis, and my tummy still has a cottage cheese roll on the bottom. I AM GAME! I guess I have to pay for it, but what else is new? I had to pay for VSG too. Such a shame I don't fit the profile, ever, for a free ride. WHY IS THAT?.

I would like to know this as well Mary. I had a reduction about 10 years ago - from a 38F to a 38D. Am about a 38DD now but don't want to lose it all, adn the threat of the dreaded "sag" terrifies me. That's why I didn't go smaller during the reduction...

10 days... and I was doing all the work. lol No problems or pain! My doctor told me I could do it as soon as I felt up to it, as long as I was careful.

FUNNY.... I HAVE BEEN WATCHING N.Y HOUSEWIFES FOR THE LAST TWO SEASONS, I LAUGH SO MUCH WHEN BETHANY TELLS IT LIKE IT IS....>>YES I FEEL MY BRAIN GETTING SMALLER RIGHT NOW<< HAVENT HAD A CHANCE TO WATCH BETHANIES NEW SHOW. aNYWAYS... I ALSO BECOME A PMS MONSTER. UNFORTUNALLY FOR EVENYONE AROUND ME I START FEELING MOODY 10 DAYS BEFORE MY PERIOD, AND I CRAVE CHOCOLATE. I ONLY WORKED OUT ONCE THIS WEEK... O PLAN ON GOING EVERY DAY NEXT WEEK...... YEAH HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Yep - happened to me. Got mine the morning of the surgery. I did the pillow-pad thing and there were not COOL netting underoos!!!??? I got jypped! Anyway, it went all ok and it wasn't the most embarassing moment of my life but it did rank in the top 10 events. Good luck!

I feel as if I will be doing this alone. Not that I chose to, but my family is very judgmental so when I got the courage to tell them I was waiting on the insurance approval for WLS they (my mother and younger sister) said they didn't Agree but would be my support system. Less than an hour later I overhear them talking about me in the kitchen about how drastic and unnecessary this is and they will not condone it or help me through this. I am a single mom with a 19 month old and I will be hospitalized for 2-3 days. My daughters dad is in the army on a field exercise for a month and my surgery is in 3 days. I had to go to his parents to keep my daughter for me while I'm in the hospital and to help me with things at my apt post op. For about 4 weeks I tried to talk to my mom about it because I was hurt but her response was always "I don't want to talk about it" well when it came time for my liquid diet, her response was "surgery?!?! Next week?!?! How come you are just now telling me?!" Seriously woman??? So my good guy friend (kinda boyfriend) and a few coworkers are seriously my only support system (oh and my exs parents).

Agreed! There's a difference between abusing them and letting them help and be responsible for stuff.....man I used the no lifting >10 pounds for six weeks rule the entire 6 weeks when my son was around HW 312, pre-op (lap-band) 294, pre-op (RNY) 255, surgery date 2/11/13, goal weight 154, current weight 225.8

dont worry, all of us have been through it and you will too. It takes about 10 days until you start feeling like yourself again. Hang in there

If the pain is about 2 inches to the right of navel then I am having it too. I am 9 days post op. I am hopefully going to see my surgeon again this week to discuss it. I was told it is port suture(s) that holds it down, but why would it be 3 inches below the port? The one who told me had very foreign accent and seemed in a hurry to see next patient and I didn't get the full discussion I wanted. So I am going this week to discuss it again with my surgeon, not his subordinate. It hurts me when I get up and down and is extreme, like a 9 out of 1-10 on pain scale. It's fast then goes away. Like being stabbed. It's really messing with my plans to walk, so now I'm not smoking, not eating ,can barely drink and not have pain messing with my mobility. Geez. Oh yea, no caffeine or cokes lol. I'm still swollen and bloated from surgery and only lost 3 pounds since surgery lol. I know it will get better but I could cry

It's after lunch, so everybody is full. Then, in comes a luscious chocolate confection. The sight, the smell—even the sound of the word "cake!"—stimulate the reward-and-pleasure circuits of the brain, activating memory centers and salivary glands as well. Melinda Beck asks the age-old question: Do you eat to live, or live to eat? Scientists, it turns out, have learned much more about how appetite works in the brain - and the findings have major consequences. Those reactions quickly drown out the subtle signals from the stomach that are saying, in effect, "Still digesting down here. Don't send more!" Social cues add pressure and permission to indulge. Soon, everybody is having a slice—or two. Scholars have understood the different motives for eating as far back as Socrates, who counseled, "Thou shouldst eat to live, not live to eat." But nowadays, scientists are using sophisticated brain-imaging technology to understand how the lure of delicious food can overwhelm the body's built-in mechanism to regulate hunger and fullness, what's called "hedonic" versus "homeostatic" eating. One thing is clear: Obese people react much more hedonistically to sweet, fat-laden food in the pleasure and reward circuits of the brain than healthy-weight people do. Simply seeing pictures of tempting food can light up the pleasure-seeking areas of obese peoples' brains. Two Reactions to Cake Two conferences this week on obesity are each examining aspects of how appetite works in the brain and why some people ignore their built-in fullness signals. Scientists hope that breakthroughs will lead to ways to retrain people's thinking about food or weight-loss drugs that can target certain brain areas. In a study presented this week at the International Conference on Obesity in Stockholm, researchers from Columbia University in New York showed pictures of cake, pies, french fries and other high-calorie foods to 10 obese women and 10 non-obese women and monitored their brain reactions on fMRI scans. In the obese women, the images triggered a strong response in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a tiny spot in the midbrain where dopamine, the "desire chemical," is released. The images also activated the ventral pallidum, a part of the brain involved in planning to do something rewarding. "When obese people see high-calorie foods, a widespread network of brain areas involved in reward, attention, emotion, memory and motor planning is activated, and all the areas talk to each other, making it hard for them to resist," says Susan Carnell, a research psychologist at the New York Obesity Research Center at Saint-Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University and one of the investigators. Similar brain reactions occurred in the obese subjects even when researchers merely said the words "chocolate brownie"—but not when they saw or heard about lower calorie foods such as cabbage and zucchini. Reactions were far less pronounced in the non-obese subjects. More such studies are being presented in Pittsburgh this week at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. In one, neuroscientists from Yale University's John B. Pierce Laboratory had 13 overweight and 13 normal-weight subjects smell and taste chocolate or strawberry milkshakes and observed their brains with fMRI scans. The overweight subjects had strong reactions to the food in the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—whether they were hungry or not. The healthy-weight subjects showed an amygdala response only when they were hungry. "If you are of normal weight, your homeostatic mechanisms are functioning and controlling this region of the brain," says lead investigator Dana Small. "But in the overweight group, there is some sort of dysfunction in the homeostatic signal so that even though they weren't hungry, they were vulnerable to these external eating cues." Studies have found that a diet of sweet, high-fat foods can indeed blunt the body's built-in fullness signals. Most of them emanate from the digestive tract, which releases chemical messengers including cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide and peptide YY when the stomach and intestines are full. Those signals travel up to the brain stem and then the hypothalamus, telling the body to stop eating. Obesity also throws off the action of leptin, a hormone secreted by fat tissue that tells the hypothalamus how much energy the body has stored. Leptin should act as a brake against overeating, and it does in normal-weight people. But most obese people have an overabundance of leptin, and somehow their brains are ignoring the signal. All these findings beg the question, which came first? Does obesity disrupt the action of leptin, or does a malfunction in leptin signaling make people obese? Similarly, are some people obese because their brains overreact to tempting food, or do their brains react that way because something else is driving them to overeat? Researchers at Yale and elsewhere are turning to such questions next. "It's possible that these changes reflect how the brain has adapted to eating patterns in obese people, and that could create a vicious circle, putting them at risk for even more disordered eating," says Dr. Small. There are plenty of other metabolic mysteries, too: Why are some "foodies" who get intense pleasure from eating able to stop when they're full and others aren't? Is the tendency to eat way past fullness genetic or learned behavior, and how much can it be changed? The answers are still elusive, but neuroscientists and behavioral experts are finding some tantalizing clues. Some fMRI studies have found that while tempting food stimulates the release of dopamine in obese people, they actually have fewer dopamine receptors than normal weight subjects do, so they may derive less pleasure from actually eating, setting up a craving for more. Curiously, several studies have shown that some forms of gastric bypass surgery can actually create changes in the brains of formerly obese people —and not just because their stomachs are smaller and fill up more quickly. Levels of leptin and glucose tend to drop in bypass patients, ending diabetes for many of them. PET scans also show that bypass patients have more dopamine circulating in their brains, which may help control appetite as well. Bypass surgery seems to make food less tempting, too. In a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last month, Swiss researchers had 123 severely obese, 110 non-obese and 136 bypass patients take a test that measures vulnerability to hedonistic eating, known as the "Power of Food scale." The bypass patients and the non-obese had scores far lower than those who were currently obese. (Exactly why is still unclear, but some experts think it could relate to "dumping syndrome," in which high fat and sweet food creates nausea and dizziness in bypass patients. They may have learned to associate such foods with discomfort rather than pleasure.) Some of the most intriguing imaging studies have peered into the brains of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off through diet and exercise alone—although researchers say they're hard to find.

My daughter and I have started this journey together as a team. Both of us need to lose about 60 pounds a peice. My daughter is having her surgery done on 9/28 in Fresno by Dr. Higa. She had no pre-op diet. My dr. is Dr. manuelli in VisaIia I start my pre-op liquid diet on 9/30. I am really nervous I keep thiking of the postiveness of this step. Yet I am scared of the what ifs. I keep second guessing this. We are bothi n excellet health just chunky. She is 25 and I am 42. I am proud of her because she is gung ho and ready to make this big sep. I am too but I feel a litle nervous. I read the blogs and there is alot of great expereinces. This excites me and I know I will go through with the procedure becasue I need it. I am just jittery. Any suggestions?

Glad all is well. My surgery with Dr. Nick went very well too. I am 10 weeks out and feel great! Keep sipping and walking. Try and get some Isopure in you as soon as you get home. It will help so much with the healing from the inside. Stay ahead of the pain, and sip, sip, sip and walk, walk, walk!

Hello again all. I have been extremely frustrated with my weight loss. I had my surgery on Feb 5 2014 so I am a little over 2 months po. The first month from the time the Dr recorded my weight until he seen me 1 month po I dropped 34 lbs. I was ecstatic. When I went in for my 2 month check I only lost 7 lbs taking me down to 226. That was on April 7. Since then I have dropped 8 lbs in the last 2 weeks. I work out at least 5 days a week doing 45 mins on my elliptical and then lifting 10 lb weights on top of it to get my arms in shape hoping some of the skin will stretch back. I eat healthy getting 60 grams of protein daily and plenty of water though sometimes I may be a few grams short on my protein and a little short on fluids. Why am I not losing more weight then I am? It just doesn't make sense to me. My Dr was upset with my at my last visit for not dropping enough weight. I see so many people hitting the 100lb mark before a year and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I plan to start tomorrow walking 4 miles a day like I was before I got the elliptical a couple weeks ago on top of everything else I'm doing. Can someone please help me or guide me so I can increase my weight loss?

@@Polarbearwifey I am trying to add it to things to beef up the Protein. For example, back then it was Egg Drop Soup. These days it is Wendy's Chili. That is working very effectively. But not yogurt. I eat that just by itself. I am supposed to get between 80-100 grams of protein in a day. 11/11/16: HW 380 11/28/16: Duodenal Switch Surgery 11/28/16: SW 374 lbs 12/19/16: CW 346 lbs

as little as possible. travel toothbrush and paste some comfortable pj's if you hate hospitals gowns and well nothing else unless you are scheduled for more than a day. i slept most of day of surgery and spent the night walking in circles around the 3rd floor. and went home around 10 a.m. the next day after surgery so i needed nothing. Some people spend longer in hospital so needs might change. Also i am a guy and we just dont care what we look like or wear most of the time so there is that. LOL

Thanks for the article @Matt Z. I saw this study a while back and was convinced that daily weighing could stay. I think it really helps me. It can be a head-trip when the scale makes me its little bi*ch, but I just have to suck it up and get on with life. I do think it holds my feet to the accountability fire though and for that I'm very grateful! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4380831/ @Green_Tealael, this study used men and women... Methods Study Design As previously stated, we present a secondary analysis from the WEIGH study. A detailed description of the study design, intervention and report of the main outcomes has been previously published.9 Briefly, eligibility criteria included adults aged 18–60 years, body mass index (BMI) of 25–40, Internet access, and no medical conditions that might affect participation. Participants were recruited predominantly from the Chapel Hill, NC area. Following eligibility screening, informed consent was obtained and baseline measures were collected. Participants (N=91) were then randomized to a 6-month daily self-weighing intervention (n=47) or a delayed intervention control group (n=44). All participants were reassessed at 3 and 6 months. Data collection occurred from February to August 2011 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill institutional review board approved and monitored the study. Measures Demographics At baseline, a variety of demographic variables were collected to help characterize the sample including age, sex, race/ethnicity (American Indian/Alaskan Native; Asian; Black or African-American; Hispanic, Latino, Portuguese, or Cape Verdean; White; Other), and education [Grade School (6 years or less); Junior High school (7–9 years); High School (10–12 years); Vocational Training (beyond High School); Some College (less than 4 years); College/University degree; Graduate or Professional Education].

That's great news! You did RNY? That makes me hopeful. Also, I woke up this morning and didn't feel hungry like I did going to bed last night. I'm down 12 pounds since my surgery three days ago! I'm sure it's mostly Water weight, but still it's nice to see the scale moving. Keeps me motivated! Yes, sit tight, it will be all good. First weeks are the hardest. Congrats on your weight loss! oh and yes, I had RNY. Loads of us feels the hunger, and I do not talk about head hunger, but it is actual painful hunger. If you feel hunger drink first. Then wait half an hour and if you are still hungry then eat. (I don't know when will you start pureed stage, I was lucky and my doctor progressed me fast, on day 5 I was on pureed, day 10 solids, and thank god for that!)

My very recent experience with "relaxing" for four days has robbed me of the ease I previously felt walking away from foods that hold no nutritional value. For 10 weeks I was able to look at sweets and think, "that looks good but I don't feel like I have to have it" and walking away. I know I'm a newbie in comparison but I really thought I was in better control already. I thought a few bites of dessert and breads over four days would be no big deal. It took me two days beyond those four days to realize I was craving and thinking about sweets for the first time since surgery. I personally wish I hadn't even gone there.

The fact that your doctor even asked you about a sandwich is a shock! Bread is one of those things I was told was off the list. Very dry crackers or such are ok, but bread is a no no. I was banded on 10 Feb, not too long after you. I have cut what I eat by at least 2/3. Sometimes I do get a little hungry before it is time to eat again, but I try water first and if that does not help then I go for a bite of something to hold me over. Please do some research here with others who are more knowledgeable than I am. I would say you need a different doctor. How long has he been doing bands? I was reading someone who says that it can take up to a week for you to feel the full effect of the fill. I don't think you are giving yourself enough time and I too worry about you being overfilled. Good luck and keep us posted. You would be surprised at how many people here care!

I am one week post op as of tomorrow. I had to do 10 days of a high Protein liquid only pre-op diet. It was very difficult the first 3-4 days, but it did get a little bit easier after that. It wasn't ever a walk in the park, but what kept me on the "straight & narrow" was the fact that I had heard/read that some surgeons won't do the surgery if they get in there and realize you didn't do the pre-op diet. That would really stink to go through the getting on the operating table and waking up in recovery only to find out they couldn't do it. The reason I was told they want people to do the pre-op diet is to shrink up the fat around your organs so it is a much smoother operation and recovery. I know not all surgeons seem to require a pre-op diet, but a lot of them do. Hang in there! It will be worth it! In the bigger picture of life, this will be such a small part of it, you probably won't even remember just how bad it sucks right now.

Thanks for this post. I was so wondering the same thing. Mine was 10 days early:cursing: