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Thank you, thank you, thank you---your post was JUST what I needed. I'm a very slow loser and always have been. I thought the lapband would be my answer and the pounds would fly off. Not so. I am going to try every hint you gave. I can hardly wait to stop at the store on my way home and get the "proper" groceries. You've renewed my hope! A Washingtonian!

Since you're self pay, if you have time, why don't you check out Dr. Sonny Cavazos at Texas Bariatric located at Northeast Baptist Hospital? He's a wonderful skilled surgeon. He's very approachable and knowledgable.

Has anyone heard of Dr. Cavazos at N.E. Baptist Bariatric. I have not found anyone who knows of him and am coming from Austin to have my surgery. Luckily I have family in San Antoino.

Hi all - I am a newbie in that I am not banded but new to this forum. I need to lose about 110 lbs and I'm sure like all of you, have tried every darn diet known to man, and lost the same 40 lbs over and over again, and gained each time afterwards. The last thing I did was go to BMI (Bariatric Medical Center) here in Ottaa. The people and doc there were great and I learned how to track calories, etc but ultimately gained back everything and more. My knees are aching and I am having trouble staying on my feet for long. I'm seriously thinking of banding but I am terrified of getting it and having it not work... and of course getting more weight gain. do any of you regret doing the lapband. Is it worth the money? Anyone in Ottawa do the surgery? (I haven't found anyone.) How about the clinic in Montreal? I'm sorry this is rambling. Any replies would be appreciated.

I won't have my first fill until January 15th. I don't get physically hungry very often, but the head hunger has been making me crazy this weekend. Now that I look back I can see where I ate something stupid that would naturally bring on the sugar cravings. (Honey) I'm telling myself that it will pass. Not every day will be like this. Reading the success stories helps. I've made a renewed commitment to measuring and weighing what I eat instead of eyeballing it. What a surprise I had today when I started measuring. OOPS! Maybe it's no co-inky-dink that I haven't lost any weight in the past two weeks!

i'll be having my surgery with dr. sherrod from southwest bariatrics. he seems very nice and i've found that he really listens to what you have to say rather than giving you canned answers. i've got a very high bmi so i've had to have quite a few pre-op tests (sleep study, ekg, echochardiogram, exercise, nutrition, and blood work) so i've been just sort of plugging away getting things done. i just finished the last of them on friday, so i'm just waiting for the results to make it to dr. sherrod so i can schedule my very last pre-op appt. with him and schedule this dang thing!

As a dietitian at a Bariatric center, I usually recommend decaf coffee durning the full liquid phase (post-op week 1-2). Of course you should try to limit your intake to 1-2 cups/day WITHOUT SUGAR

The one thing that tipped the scale for me and led me to me surgery was the number of people in medical fields that have bariatric surgery.

Now see...I think your refusal to acknowledge and respect these people....is as offensive as you find women who post in the men's room. World is an interesting place, isn't it? If you'd like to be educated about them, look up the term genderqueer or non-binary gender identity. But again...I don't care what Alex does about these rooms. Ultimately, I think he'd care a lot more about them if they produced LOTS of sales of bariatric products. LOL:) By the way, have you tried the Flapjacked Mighty Muffins? They're amazing:)

Thanks to those who responded kindly and respectfully. I should have been more clear: I was not looking for medical advice here, but rather to know if different plans allowed different things. The bariatric community seems to be a large one and there are always differences in plans. My question was if this was one where everyone agreed or were there some of you out there who had a different approach given by your doctors before approaching my dr/nut with my question. Obviously I'd never dream of harming myself by not following medical orders. But reading these responses I see there is no point in even giving them a call, bec there seems to be a unanimous approach to this in the greater community. Thanks, all.

I would like to know if anyone has experienced IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) post Bariatric Surgery. I had the Sleeve Surgery in Oct 2013. When I transitioned to solid food, I started to have extreme abdominal pain. This condition has continued off and on since late December 2013. I ended up hospitalized in January 2014 because the pain of eating anything even water was so bad, I could not eat. I became dehydrated and was admitted to the hospital where they did "a million dollars worth of tests" (my own term) and found nothing wrong. These tests included blood tests, stool samples, a 2nd upper endoscopy, and an abdominal ultra sound. All were negative. I was released from the hospital after being rehydrated without any answers. After a while the pain went away, but two months ago it started again. I was given more tests: blood, stool, untra sound and again everything was OK. I decided to do my own research and IBS seems like the likely candidate. Has anyone else experience IBS post surgery?

My current employer's insurance carrier doesn't cover any bariatric surgeries. For two years, I've been after them to get on board, but it's just too expensive, they said. I asked again a month ago if they thought there was any chance that Aetna would offer coverage for bariatrics this year. They said they really didn't think so. A month ago, sick and tired of being on the fence for so many years about it, I decided to just withdraw $10,000 my from retirement (ouch!!) (of which I only realized $7500 due to taxes and penalties), and I paid down my outstanding bills in anticipation of being a self-pay in MX (which I would also finance). I researched surgeons, prowled boards, viewed YouTub vlogs of other sleevers. And finally, last Thursday, I pulled the trigger: I chose Dr. Ariel Ortiz, OCC (who had a high American profile, the lowest complication rate, operated at a Center for Excellence, and who could see me soonest). I scheduled the surgery for April 30. I submitted the down payment ($500). I bought the pre-op diet Meal Replacements and Vitamins ($240). I booked my flight from NYC ($400). And I told my employer that I would be out 2-3 weeks for surgery. Then yesterday I get a call from HR - "We wanted to let you know asap.... we MAY be switching to an insurer that would cover bariatric surgeries. We'll know next week." Wah-Waaahhh.... So the dilemma, if there is one: IF the company DOES switch insurers, should I cancel with OCC (and probably lose the down payment?). If I change the flight (for vacation, etc.), I will lose $200. Also, I don't know if the new carrier would make me jump through all the old hoops that I had jumped through 3 years ago (waiting six months, etc.). I don't want to wait.... But I also don't want to finance my surgery ($6000), either, if I don't have to.

It sounds like your bariatric team let you down by not informing you better about your options and consequences. Well, you can't undo your sleeve, so you may as well hop on for the ride. The first month is tough. Not only are you healing, but your body which has been used to indulging itself, is now being told "no" or "let's find an option for that". Hopefully your surgeon gave you a meal plan to follow that will graduate you from liquids, to purees, to soft mushies, to regular cooked food. For many of us that takes four to six weeks. You will feel so much better when you start soft mushies and may start to get some energy back. The foods that you have to leave behind are the ones that really weren't food at all. Instead of nutrition for your mechanical human body that your soul lives in, you were probably eating mostly factory edibles made from highly processed ingredients. Now you can focus on what it takes to keep a human being alive. You will find that the human body does not need nearly as much food as we thought it did to thrive from day to day. As the pounds drop off, you will feel more encouraged that maybe you did do the right thing and will have a better quality of life because of it. Worry is a waste of time. Poo poo happens in this life, whether it is spraining an ankle or getting reflux, or something more tragic and heart-breaking. Hang in there kiddo. You have already made it through two weeks and lived to tell about. Keep coming here for encouragement. I wish you good luck and good health.

I'm scheduled for Feb 9th in Tijuana Mexico- with Dr. Lopez from ALO Bariatrics so ready for this!!!!! Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

It's ok to have a freak out moment. Maintaining and eating more calories is a whole new mind set. Your surgery restriction is still good at 6/7 months out. Your restriction may feel less after your first year. Check with your dietician and see if they would approve liquid sources. I drink liquid carbs to increase my intake for distance running. look into body building weight gain/muscle mass protein shakes. The macros are much different than bariatric shakes. (Read the nutrition fact labels)

Ah, the head work, the emotional work, the mysteries of why I'm the only one in my family to have severe issues with weight. I'm finally in therapy about these issues, but don't have any woo-woo answers yet -- other than the obvious ones of a) I drew the short metabolic straw in my family, I love food, c) I don't love exercise, and d) my chosen work / lifestyle has become increasingly sedentary. My VSG surgery will finally happen in mid-August. I've been seriously considering and investigating WLS as "the ultimate solution" since July 2013, when I attended an introductory WLS lecture. That it's taken over a year to get to this point is partly due to my slowness in getting here and partly due to my local bariatric center being overwhelmed with patient applications. But a part of the truth is that a year ago I wasn't fat enough for this surgery. I recall my weight was 212 when I went to the intro lecture -- a BMI of just under 35 and considerably lower than 40, the BMI that would net me a slam-dunk insurance approval. I hate to admit that I spent the last year gaining weight to have WLS, but in some ways that's part of my truth. I also apparently (?) needed to spend this last year meditating on how miserable my future life would be if I didn't have WLS. A year ago I already knew I was unwilling to diet to lose and regain 45-50 pounds even one more goddamn time. I had demonstrated clearly that I could lose weight -- and that I could regain it. Looking back, it seems my regain phases were always preceded by some "perfect storm" of life changes and stresses. Needless to say, it was severe life changes and stresses, e.g., caregiving for an Alzheimer parent, to name only one, that drove me to this current mess I'm in. I knew that life's changes / stresses are never going to ease up, and at my age they're going to get more frequent and more severe. So, rather than acting insanely (doing the same thing over and over, hoping for different results), I realized I needed to try something different. Three months ago, I started gathering my strength to prepare for surgery. I've lost 10 pounds, am now exercising, have surely added important muscle mass, and have tripled my daily steps. By my standards, I'm still in pitiful shape, but not nearly as pitiful as I was. I would encourage anyone who's now waiting for WLS surgery to try now to change some things. Move more. Drink more Water and less coffee. Use My Fitness Pal. Buy a Fitbit. Do what you can do, no matter how little it is. Next week, you can do more. It's amazing how quickly you will improve. The sleeve part -- that's something I can only talk theory about. It's coming soon. And I'm as nervous as anyone else here is / was pre-op. We're all newbs together.

Honestly, I am not at all sure what she was expecting from us. I know this much, when I went to schedule my very last appointment with the team psychologist, he did not have a single appointment available for over 2 months. I was completely peeved that here I was at the end of my 6 month supervised diet and this guy decided he wanted 1 more follow up before he would sign off. I had never changed or missed or was late to a single appoinment in that 6 months because I was so ready to go and bummed that I had to wait so long. Given my commitment to moving forward, My surgeon, nut and bariatric nurse team tried to get him to do a last phone interview instead and suddenly his schedule opened and he found 15 minutes for me. I still had to wait 3 weeks but it was better than 2 months. I cried for a whole day because I was so sick and so ready to move forward. I just wonder how many of his patients did not bother to show up during that period of time. My appointment lasted 15 minutes and in my opinion was a complete waste of time. He just needed to feel important, I think. I ended up getting a different psychologist post surgery. Anyway, I have a very hard time feeling sympathy for people that don't follow the program. If you want a life altering change, you have to be willing to change. Or wait until you are so others that are ready can move forward.

I am not here to beat a dead horse. I do agree with much of what the previous respondents said. Your reaction was an overreaction but - BUT it felt/feels real and absolutely true to you. I am sure I am not the only one to recognize some of myself in your post. I most likely would have had a similar reaction a year and a half to two years ago while I suffered from very low self-esteem and major depression. We all embark on this journey expecting to lose weight; but this is not just a journey of just weight lose but a journey of the mind, body, and soul. Most of us achieve major weight lose along with a huge helping of self-discovery and an emotional roller coaster which can be quite nightmarish at times. My suggestion to you is to start seeing a counselor if you do not already do so. This counselor does not need to be through your bariatric center but should be someone familiar with bariatrics and bariatric surgery because many challenges still lie ahead. I wish you all the luck on your journey since it truly is your journey and your journey alone because everyone's journey is different.

I think you need to stop googling stuff. Seriously. I could go out there and put up all manner of scare tactics and inflated ridiculous stories about why this or that is super scary dangerous and you are going to regret doing X, Y or Z. But you know what? It's all crap unless you know the site is reputable. That site is a Blogspot. You do get that means it's some joe schmoe that has no accreditation or even paid for their site (it's a Blogger site - ANYONE can make an "official" looking site on there!) And you're throwing yourself into a panic because they found a nearly 10 year old study that has been discredited already and was lacking randomized trials and included all deaths of patients - including the ones that died from suicide, drug overdoses and other obesity related events that were set in motion before they had WLS. In other words, the study sited is flawed. And did you read the invited critique of that study the website sited? It says not only was the study not done to look at bariatric surgery in real randomized trials but found... "Collectively these data suggest that the operations are not dangerous and that it may be a greater hazard to not induce weight loss for morbidly obese patients with concomitant medical complications" http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=400686 Please call your doctor first thing Monday morning and ask for help. You need counseling STAT, and get in and see the doctor and tell them you are in a state of panic and need to get answers to help calm you down. It is going to be okay, really. You did something good for your health. It will work out in the end. But you have to stop focusing on bad things and panicking yourself. Stop looking on the web for stuff - you're only going to make yourself feel worse. Get real help from your doctor and from a therapist that you can speak with face to face. It will make a difference.

Mine said "any multivitamin will do" when I asked what he recommended. So I don't even need to take special bariatric vitamins, except I do coz I want to make sure. I take a once-a-day capsule (UK brand), plus Celebrate calcium plus OTC iron (Galfur), plus biotin and chromium. Can't remember why I'm taking the chromium, I'll probably stop once the bottle runs out. Sent from my SM-G930F using BariatricPal mobile app

Thanks everyone, for the information and the possibility that I can appeal and perhaps win. I am excited and anxious to meet with the surgeon in a couple of days to find out if he will support the decision to request a VSG in his letter to BCBS. I do remember him saying at the informational meeting that he believed in the future, the VSG would become the gold standard of bariatric surgery. I am a pre-anticipator (just made that up!) and am already mentally skipping ahead to either a "no" or a long battle with no assured outcome regarding insurance coverage; meanwhile, I feel strongly that I want to proceed with the surgery sooner rather than later. My weight continues to creep skyward (42.2 BMI) and I feel strongly that by next year I will have developed Type II Diabetes (I'm two points shy of it according to March blood work). When I think about traveling to Mexico to have the surgery, I don't worry about the surgery or going out of plan but about follow-up care afterwards and the possible attitude of my PCP (who does not know I am pursuing surgery--it's not required that I meet with her to get approval so I went straight to the bariatric center). I don't know what type of follow up is involved after the surgery. Do stitches need to be removed? I guess I'm afraid of being judged by my PCP. And at this point I'm making it all up in my head. LOL. For those of you who have had the surgery done outside of the USA, what has been your experience with your local PCP? Thanks!

I am a 'recipe collector' - I tend to graze at night and my way to get out of that habit is instead to look for new recipes and drink more Water. I keep a notebook of new recipes and once we have them, if they are deemed 'do overs' then they get transcribed to a 3 ring binder that is going to be my 'go to recipes.' Some great sites for recipes are: http://www.emilybites.com/ http://theworldaccor...e.blogspot.com/ kalynskitchen.com skinnytaste.com cookinglight.com myfitnesspal.com (look in the community section, they have recipe threads and suggestions there) and any weight watchers sites - just be cognizant of any non-bariatric site, that you have to pay attn to the carbs and what not. I have some other sites bookmarked in my netbook, but I hope some of these will help you! Feel free to add me on MFP and I publicize my diaries. Anything you see on there, I'll send you the recipe if you want it. And many ppl who said "food is just blah/nourishment only to me now" yes, I agree with you. I struggle with it many a times, but let's change that perspective. Challenge yourself with new recipes, new plates (hey alot of eating is the environment/appearance of things), new cooking utensils (who all has a wok? who knows how to really use it? can you make a sludge? eggface introduced me to that!). It's all about perspective people. When you are feeling blah, it's time to reach out for motivation and we'll pull you out of that as we have to eat every day. Let's make it fun, low calorie, healthy and move on to goal! Best of luck! xx

I was banded in 2007; it worked lovely for me, I lost almost everything I wanted in 1 year -- then I got pregnant & it broke, gained it all back, had a baby, revised band -- lost it all again, got pregnant again & it broke again -- gained it all back again, had a baby, revised band. Worked again, but slower... broke again.. gained it back... this has continued on and on.. I have had a total of 2 replacements & 6 revisions. The last revision didn't take, I don't feel the same as I use to, and that revision was early 2015. This is between 2 surgeons. Back to my original 2007 pre-op weight, my band has been bothering me... Found out it is slipped & has to go. They had to move my port from belly, chest, belly... port has flipped 4 times... port disconnected once... tubing broke once... and now slipped. Keep in mind, since day 1 I am self-pay, so I could have bought a house by now with all I have paid. Doctor said we either revise the band again, remove it, or convert it. I refuse to revise the band again, I hate the booger at this point. It will be $9k to remove it -- $22k to revise it to a sleeve. I am too afraid of GP, even after all this time as a bariatric patient. In 2012 I wanted to convert to the sleeve, but the price difference was too much to justify everytime I had to go under the knife (if I only knew how many more surgeries I'd be paying for since then because of the band!!). This time, I decided -- remove it, and be done. When I can eat 'normal' again for the first time in years, I'll work on eating things like fruit, veggies & salads -- which I can't eat now. I thought a little more & talked with family, and we've all decided I should just take out a 2nd mortgage and bite the bullet, because I'm not healthy anymore and would very much like to be, and if I decided later on I want the sleeve, it's going to be another 20k+ the 9k I pay now. So, I have it all scheduled now. Surgery first week of January 2017 (for tax purposes, I asked to wait until the new year). I've been absent from the forum for years, feeling that I have nothing to contribute as a lap-band failure, and the great friendships I made through this forum, I talk to all the time. But I am back, now that I am going to be a 'newbie' in the sleeve world. I am very excited now that I've gotten over the initial shock of how much money I'm going to be shelling out..... again. Here's to my new success, and good riddance to the band!!!!

This is the first time reading this post and I'm very glad to hear your turning this into a positive. Your going to make the best Bariatric nurse and help so many people and find love again and someone to treat you the way you should be treated. God Bless you Sent from my Bat Phone using the BariatricPal App Thank you so much BigJohn58 for kind words. I appreciate it. I am going to try to be best nurse I can & yes hope to find love again for someone to appreciate me. Merry Christmas. Sent from my SM-S902L using the BariatricPal App

I have three friends who are each 10 yrs or more out from RNY. They have all had incredible success long-term. Two of them did get WAY TOO skinny for a while, and had to re-adjust to get good nutrition in. They all have to take bariatric Vitamins for life. But they eat "normally" just small amounts, chewed really well, and they have to focus on Protein and nutrition when they choose their foods. That is not to say serious malabsorption issues don't happen. Just that it's not a given. And of course, if you choose the sleeve, malabsorption isn't an issue. If you don't take multis and eat healthy food, you run some risks of minor malnutrition, but stuff that's easily fixable and avoidable.