Before I had lapband surgery back in December of 2007, I was told that post-surgery I would feel full after eating about 4oz of food. Unfortunately for me, I never experienced that. After several months of dealing with condescending nurses and no results I got fed up with the system and quit going to the doctor. As a result I never finished having my lapband properly adjusted. Up until last month, I could eat almost as much as I could eat before the surgery, the only difference being I sometimes (but not always) found myself getting clogged on dense foods (like bread). Everything else got through just fine. 4oz of food? I could eat a 16oz steak with no problems — plus a baked potato, and usually a few dinner rolls to boot. For three years I’ve been the laughing stock of the weight loss surgery community. <\/p>\n

Four weeks ago, I switched over to Susan’s doctor. The first thing he did was look at my band and inform me that, at the setting it was currently at, it couldn’t possibly be giving me any restriction. I agreed, and so he gave me a “fill” (an injection of saline that constricts the band). After that, and really for the first time since I had the lapband, I began feeling restriction. On a two-week long protein-only diet (liquids and bars), I lost 17 pounds. Then, the two weeks following that, I moved back to eating regular foods (just less of them). Although I was still eating more than 4oz of food at a time, by making good choices and with some restriction, I managed to lose another 6 pounds. <\/p>\n

At the doctor’s office last week, Doc said “You’re still eating too much,” and he gave me another fill. Boy, did he. When making good choices and eating the right things now (2\/3 meat, 1\/3 veggies) I’m pretty close to being full — stuffed, actually — on between 4oz and 6oz of food. Of course different foods and textures affect the lapband differently. I was able to eat at least 12oz of chili one day this week; then again, tonight, I was only able to eat about four or five bites of a chicken salad from Quizno’s before having to stop. Thanksgiving (food-wise) was pretty boring, but I was reminded that while I can only eat a few ounces of Turkey, I can eat an entire piece of pumpkin pie. The lapband does NOT make good choices for me — I have to do that myself!<\/p>\n

Suddenly, it’s all coming together. I’m making good food choices, and the band is there to limit quantities. The family and I visited a Chinese buffet over the weekend; I had four pieces of shrimp and four pieces of chicken (hardly worth the price of admission). <\/p>\n

The “average” patient loses between 85-100 pounds after lapband surgery. Right now I’m only about 30 pounds below my pre-surgery weight. I’ve got my eye set on that 100 pounds down mark, and don’t plan on stopping there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I had lapband surgery back in December of 2007, I was told that post-surgery I would feel full after eating about 4oz of food. Unfortunately for me, I never experienced that. After several months of dealing with condescending nurses and no results I got fed up with the system and quit going to the doctor. As a result I never finished having my lapband properly adjusted. Up until last month, I could eat almost as much as I could eat before the surgery, the only difference being I sometimes (but not always) found myself getting clogged on dense foods… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}