female only Tight band keepers.

[StephanieF 1]

:smile::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

[zimmersdreamer 0]

I have not started my journey yet, or rather I am just taking baby steps. I have to talk to my Dr and get insuirance to approve...yadda yadda yadda... anywho I will be a tight bander, I plan on exercizing because I love to work out but I also know that this is a tool, I will use it to the fulliest of my abilities! I havew 150 lbs to lose and by George I dont want to take 3-4 years to do it! I want it off in a year. I will have my Dr follow my progress but I will let him know that for the part of the time that I am losing weight, I want it tight... now are you going to loosen it eventualy? I guess that question makes since. I mean after you have reached you weight loss goal, will you loosen it to the point your maintaining weight loss and not loosing any more?

Edited December 28, 2009 by zimmersdreamer
needed to add to post.

[StephanieF 1]

Zimmersdream, you remind me to bring up a good point. It took me 3 years to lose this 115 lbs. BUT, I've never gone backwards. I plateau, get fills, unfills, events in my life keep me more distracted from eating than others. I can only attribute the fact my skin has adjusted as it has to the slow weight loss. I kept a very close charting of my progress, and in the first year I lost 60 lbs, next year like 25, past year another 20. All of a sudden I drop another 5 lbs and another size every few months. Looking at other people's progress I was a slow loser, and I didn't really get good restriction until maybe 6 months into it. My doctor was very conservative with the amount of fill, but very liberal with how often I could come for a tweaking. I was going every two weeks. One week I went for a fill, an unfill and a slight fill. He thought I was nuts when I would say I want .1 cc today, but it always did the trick. (I have an old school band of 4cc, so my sweet spot was somewhere around 3 cc). I don't plan on loosening it. My body has adjusted to this level of caloric intake and if I loosened it it would once again be up to my will power and control to make good choices with food and exercise, which again, is not why I got this band. The thought of even gaining back 2 lbs is something that is not going to happen. At size 6, 2 lbs is the difference between the jeans fitting and not at times, lol. Plus note, I am one cheap date.

I've been debating whether I should infuriate the masses by revealing my diet and the one food that I lost 60 lbs eating daily, but I haven't decided if the "judges" can handle it. Stay tuned, lol

[kee123 0]

StefanieF.... Please do tell...... I want to hear your diet for losing the 60lbs. Piss the judgemental people off....

[Humming Bird 275]

I've been debating whether I should infuriate the masses by revealing my diet and the one food that I lost 60 lbs eating daily, but I haven't decided if the "judges" can handle it. Stay tuned, lol

Amen about the judges! I have been slapped down by the judges/experts as well. The funny thing is they jump up on thier judge/expert soap boxes sometimes even before they are banded, or shortly there after.

Hey, you have lost a huge amount of weight, so don't let the judges bother you.

[gemini1465 0]

Again, please, no judging or lecturing here. I'm just asking an honest question. Who is doing this the tight band way? and if you are doing it that way, you know who you are. Not everyone can deal with the gym and calorie counting. For some of us the quasi-starvation method is what works best. Of course there are obvious side effects and issues with a tight band, but I would love to chat with others who got to their goal like me, with a tight band.

this is what i want, my doctor for some un godly reason will not tighten my band so i can lose my weight, he seems to think i'm doing fine, but right now i've had a setback and trying to get back on track

[gemini1465 0]

I've been debating whether I should infuriate the masses by revealing my diet and the one food that I lost 60 lbs eating daily, but I haven't decided if the "judges" can handle it. Stay tuned, lol

Amen about the judges! I have been slapped down by the judges/experts as well. The funny thing is they jump up on thier judge/expert soap boxes sometimes even before they are banded, or shortly there after.

Hey, you have lost a huge amount of weight, so don't let the judges bother you.

i would love to know what that diet is

[gemini1465 0]

StefanieF.... Please do tell...... I want to hear your diet for losing the 60lbs. Piss the judgemental people off....

i'm with you, i want to know

[PrincipalsOffice 16]

I am so happy to be reading this post.... I was banded Nov 18. I lost about 10 pounds on pre op and only about 5 post op. I haven't lost anything in 3 weeks. I go tomorrow for my first fill. I KNOW I will need to be a tight bander. I HAVE to have the power taken away from me, because I can not do it on my own. I do go to the Y 4-5 times a week and don't mind exercising, but I don't love it either. I get soooo bored on the treadmill and bike... UG.

Anyway, as I said, I know I will need to be a tight bander because if I can eat it, I will. That's been my life and what got me to 290 pounds to begin with.

[keith40201 0]

Time for the guys to crash the party. :thumbup: I was wondering what you are able to eat? I'm guessing liquids and maybe some mushy foods? Do you need Fiber supplements? With liquids, what are your limits as to amounts? I can handle about two cups liquids and just wondering if that is normal for a tight band. Thanks and good luck on your journey.

[Humming Bird 275]

Time for the guys to crash the party. :thumbup: I was wondering what you are able to eat? I'm guessing liquids and maybe some mushy foods? Do you need fiber supplements? With liquids, what are your limits as to amounts? I can handle about two cups liquids and just wondering if that is normal for a tight band. Thanks and good luck on your journey.

Good question .... hmmmm I never measure my liquids.

Now that I think about it, I never measure anything.

My band is tight, so I have trouble eating anything very solid ....... like meat. I eat things like yogurt, Soup, chili, cottage cheese, oatmeal ...........

I am very tight in the morning, so sometimes I can not even eat a 1/2 portion of oatmeal. I drink a Protein shake on my way to work. Some of the Protein Bars are even too solid.

My big meal of the day is usually lunch. I can sometimes eat a small chili from wendy's. Sometimes I can only eat half of it. I take Soup to work sometimes.

[StephanieF 1]

LOL..we're like the evil bandsters. If this was easy everyone would do it! A friend of my mom's got banded and lost 20 lbs. She had one fill and couldn't handle the feeling of not being able to eat everything she wanted. She is seen eating pastrami sandwiches regularly and whining she didn't lose weight. I'm sorry, but there is a certain amount of misery involved in such a sweet end. They have a chart in the docs office which I can't believe I found online from three years ago, it tells the tale.

So, what did I eat...well...nachos! I swear. The crunchy chip and the mushy Beans and guac and sour cream and cheese all went down. I couldn't eat a quesidilla cause the soft flour tortillas get all gummed up. But a hard taco shell and ground beef, all good. I used to be able to get a salad and if you take a pizza slicer and run it back and forth a couple times you get perfect chopped salad. If I could have brought my Cuisinart hand blender with me and stuck it in everything everywhere I went I would have, but my boyfriend said he would laugh at me. But I swear. I used to go for mexican food almost daily and then I would get the components and make a small plate of it in the microwave in 1 minute. But this isn't taco bell. It's corn chips, and preferably the solid ones and not the crumbly ones, guacamole, sour cream, pinto/refried Beans and some cheese...I'm salivating thinking about it. Eventually I just got sick of it. There were days the band was just mad at me, and I endured about three weeks before an unfill, during which time I lost about 17 lbs, but all I ate was vanilla haagen daaz. Hungry Jack potatoes with heinz fat free chicken gravy..yum. At one point oatmeal was too heavy for me, but cream of rice with butter and salt, yum. Okay, I'm getting hungry and there is no eating at this hour or I'll be sitting vertical for the next 4 hours. Lately it's fried cod/fishsticks, or this place makes mashed potatoes with spinach, or yellow rice. Brown rice torments me for days, but yellow rice, I dunno. I now have to deal with the how it's going to go down and come out aspect since getting the IBS, so my choices are more limited. But since shortly after being banded I was not able to eat apples, peaches, pretty much fruit. I haven't eaten a sandwich in 3.5 years, or more than the tiny triangle at the bottom of the slice of pizza in as much time. Late night munchies after drinking, um, no thanks. Munchies after getting stoned, OMG...just make sure you aren't alone. Let's be real, we all know how to PB when we need to. There have been times I will just NEED to take a big ass bite of something I know won't go down and I just chew it out and spit it out. That is rare, but do what you gotta do. They're gonna ban my ass for being a bad influence, don't listen to me! :thumbup:

[StephanieF 1]

Ooooh, oooh, more things. Lox rolled up with cream cheese :thumbup:

If you have any shabu shabu restaurants like Gyu Kaku around you the paper thin steak slices and zucchini slices worked too. Meatballs work. Oh the campbells southwestern corn Soup was a staple and the progresso Pasta e fagiolini with a few second with the hand blender was divine. Froot Loops worked great til they went and added fiber. the wawa thin crip wafer crackers were a great vehicle for stuff like really creamy tuna salad. but what are we talking about here? A single meatball, a handful of frootloops with a squirt of milk, one cracker with tuna. No matter what you eat, you aren't eating a lot of it, bottom line.

[StephanieF 1]

Ooooh, scallops!

[JosieK 120]

hi stephanie,

this is a good honest question. and i know what you mean about people "judging" or jumping at you/me when we say something they dont agree with...it's the one downside of this site.

when i was banded...

i kept my band tight for many of the reasons cited on this thread. i lost my weight in 10 months. i did exercise but i believe 85% of my weight loss was related to calorie intake (or not taking in ha!)

i didnt obsess over food because frankly i wasnt hungry most of the time because of my band. it wasnt easy to do it this way but i was determined to be successful finally since i had tried and failed at umpteen diets before.

i did have 1 issue when i was too tight and didnt realize it was too tight. i PB'd at night. i ended up with aspiration pneumonia because i ingested food in my lungs. ended up on antibiotics to cure it. that was not fun and i did learn my lesson on what not to do.

i'm coming up on 3 years being banded. i am now completely unfilled (my choice) because i am working on maintaining for life. it is a leaning curve but very doable.

anyway just thought i would share my experience. up until now i've been a "closet" tight-bander ha!

josie