The lap band does not come with brain surgery. Your brain does not automatically know how to work with the lap band. You will make mistakes. You WILL crave things. There will be days you can eat a lot and there will be days you don't want to eat anything. There will be times you will try to stuff yourself full to the point you will be uncomfortable and you will throw it up. You will be embarrassed. It will happen at home, in a restaurant, in front of friends, in front of family, in front of your kids... it will happen.
The first thing you have to come to realize is being overweight is ALL about personal accountability. Weight is what I eat, not something imposed by an outside force. If you want to be in charge of your weight you have got to measure what you eat. Not only the calories but the serving size. You have to find out what does and what doesn't work with the lap band. Certain foods stick in a bad way, you either learn to avoid them, or you will have some bad experiences. Some of the top foods that get stuck in the lap band are: breads, tortillas, pastas, sticky rice, rubbery eggs, chicken. Sometimes these foods will pass but most often they will become stuck. Today I learned through other people's blogs that even though I thought I was the only one, a lot of people try to put thing on these foods to make them flow easier down the lap band. Things like butter, fatty dressing, gravy, ketchup, pasta sauce. This, however, leads to calories added to your daily diet which becomes fat.
Chicken is one of the healthiest meats for you but most often when it is made it is way too dry or too tough. Lately I find myself eating it as a fried chicken leg with extra potatoes and gravy. Yep that's healthy and calorie free let me tell you... I'm one of the people who finds the loop holes!
Bread is something I learned VERY quickly it is not worth it. It just becomes mashed up dough that sticks in my stomach and ends up back in the toilet. Pasta 90 percent of the time. Same exact thing. UNLESS I cheat and get extra sauce. Which is really healthy for me let me tell you. This is dangerous. If you vomit all the time it can cause your band to dislodge or slip in such a way that you will need another surgery to either replace the lap band or you will have to have it removed. You can damage your stomach or esophagus and rip or tear it causing excessive bleeding and die! Seriously it's not worth that for a piece of bread... not to me.
Another food I was shocked to find in my blog searches today was ground beef. I thought I was weird but I could not find 1 person who could eat ground beef. Thank God because I was really feeling like I was strange!
Now knowing what to eat is one thing but learning how to eat it is quite another. Even though you know what foods work and which foods don't, there will still be times when foods get stuck even foods you eat every day. This comes from eating too fast or taking too big of a bite. When you eat, do it slow, small bites! I always use a small fork and a small spoon, my family thinks I'm weird but even another blog I read today they suggested to do that. LOL!! I almost died when I read that! AND doctor suggestions for all lap band patients is three meals a day... SMALL meals, lap band quantities. That is all that anyone needs to sustain.
So with all of this said we will visit how I am doing with my lap band surgery. In October of 2011 I weighed in at 193 pounds. On Tuesday I weighed in at 139 pounds so in 11 months I lost around about 60 pounds give or take a few. This brings my total to 136 pounds lost. I did seem like a lost a lot of weight over the summer but in reality I only lost about 20-25 pounds since February. I think maybe my weight just shifted around a little or I lost it from different places and my pictures look funny. I have argued to the point of yelling with my family members. I have cussed and screamed. If you look at the weight loss over the span of a year 60 pounds really isn't that much. I am not anorexic. I eat. You don't see me eat because if you look at the list above of the food that a lap band patient really can't eat and you look at what we eat when we all get together you see why I'm not eating when we are together. If you take me to TDO and sit with me to eat a Pork Chile plate, I'll clean it up. You have to give me the right food to eat. I ate a POUND of crab legs 3 weeks ago. A POUND. It's not that I don't want to eat you guys... it's that I can't eat what you fix. I don't complain. I don't want you guys to always adjust your life around me. BUT, please remember my feelings too. When we go out of town and we are talking about where we want to go eat, when I suggest something, take a minute to think about the fact that maybe it's because I think there might be something there I can eat. Please remember I can't eat french fries. I can't eat a hamburger on a bun. I can't eat a tortilla wrap, I can't eat all that stuff you can. I am limited. This is NOT your fault, it's my choice but I am asking for your help. PLEASE please. If I agree to go somewhere you suggest, don't look at me in pity and tell me I have to eat something or I'm going to be sick because there is nothing on the menu that won't make me throw up. Just let me be and let me snack on unhealthy stuff until we get home to my fridge please. I know it's hard and I know you love me but I'm really trying and I'm healthy for the first time in my life. I feel good, I can walk around and not have a heart attack, I can play sports, I can run and play with my kids. I don't care what I look like. I want to live a long life. That's what matters. Please remember that when you judge me and please trust my doctors. They have done this for years and they have success under their belts. I'm not their only patient. I appreciate your concern, I do. Let me have just a month to be happy please... The doctors just told me 2 days ago I was one of their biggest success stories. Let me have the smile on my face about that for just a couple days. I didn't even get to have it for a couple of hours before having a fight. I just want to be happy with what I've accomplished. It was hard work. It was painful, until you have gone through it you just don't know.
This pic is a pic from January to August. I am only 10 pounds from my Doctor's goal then I am finally done!
