From time to time I like to share the communications that I have been having with some folks. Here are a couple that might be of help.

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Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 8:56 AM
Subject: Contact Todd

Hi Todd,
 I was trying to find a few answers to some lap band questions and ran across your blog.
 I’m not a blog person, but found your site informative. I am new to lap band, Sunday will be 4 weeks.
 Congratulations on your amazing success. I was wondering if you would please take the time to answer a few questions for me.
 A friend of mine had surgery in December of 07. I was asking her how you know if something is blocked. She said you feel it and she makes herself throw up. That if you don’t you will have to have the Dr. remove it. This scared me.
 I have never made myself throw up. But I felt sick for about 2 days, the only thing that would go down was broth or cream of soups. Well, the only thing that felt good going down. I ate a little yesterday, and now I have that feeling again. So how do I know if anything blocked ? Please don’t say, ” You’ll know “. Can you explain from experience how it feels ? What to look for ? Will it eventually go down if it blocked ?
 By the way, where are you at now in your weight lose ? Have you reached your goal ? Did it take 1 year or longer ? Did you usually lose the 10 pounds per month?Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Have a great day and a wonderful 4th of July.
Keep up the blog, your site is a tremendous help.
 Thanks in advance, Vicky

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Thank you for the congrats… Congrats to you too for making the step and 4 weeks.

You friend is right. You do know when you have something stuck in the band. It is a heavy uncomfortable feeling that, for me does not require me to be forced to purge it. It is hard to describe the feeling. For me it basically triggers a heavy panic that my body handles by purging without being forced. I am not sure I agree that if you don’t a doctor will have to remove the stuck though. It is just food. As the body digests the food the band will be unclogged. If you swollow stuff that the body cannot digest, like gum, that is an issue. When I have had food stuck I never get to the point where my body digests it to remove it, my body always manages to trigger the vomiting. They call it a productive burp or PB, which means that it will dislodge the small amount of food that is stuck. It is not like before the band where vomiting means everything you ate is regurgitated, it is a small amount of food. If you have ever eaten peanut butter or a lot of dry crackers without drinking and had it get stuck in your throat it would be like that only further down. If you sip some water after you feel the uncomfortable feeling and the water does not go down then you are probably stuck, although that is not a good practice but it is a test. The right thing to do would be stick to liquid foods and continue to let the body heal. If after your checkup you still cannot get any solid or soft food down then call your doc as it may be too tight, but since you have not had a fill it may just be more time needed for your body to adjust. As you lose weight the band will loosen. There is fat stored inside your body too, so when the body uses the excess fat around the stomach the band gets looser. As time goes on you will find a place where you are comfortable with the band and the band if working as designed.

If you are eating and feeling sick then, what you are eating, how fast you are eating, how big the bites you are taking, or how much you are eating my be an issue. If you have soft food that is chewed well enough and you still get the heavy feeling then give yourself more time. It will get better.

I am now about 231lbs. My personal goal is 200, but it is slow now. I was losing about 10lbs a month the last 30 are the toughest they say. Tip: always listen to your doc and follow the eating habits and exercise they set. My problem where I have slowed, I am not following the 4oz diet, I drink when food gets stuck, I am loose so the band is not as effective right now. I am exercising a lot more though so I have no gain in weight but still over do it. It took me a year to lose the almost 100lbs. After the 4^th I will be getting the fill I need to help me get that last 30 off.

Todd

My doctor wrote a book about getting the last 30 lbs off. I am not sure what is says but I probably should read it. Hello again and welcome. I have unfortunatly hit the plateau. Here is what I know, I am floating within a pound or three on a regualr basis. My weight is about 231-234. I know that I am eating more now that is what is keeping me from the last 30 lbs I wanted to lose. The deal is I don’t care much about the last 30 lbs as I do about the fact that right now I am at the place where my body will fit some large shirts and some xl shirts. My pants, depending on the brand are 36 or 38… I hate being at that point because it makes shopping a pain.

I have been hitting the weights, 3 times a week. I am lifting 50-100 repetitions for about an hour or so. I am gaining mass so the pants are starting to fit better. I am still losing the fat just not as fast which is annoying. None the less I am very pleased with the progress.  After the 4th I will have to consider if I want to get an adjustment. I want a little bit added so that the hunger after 2 hours is subsided, but I  like having the freedom to eat (more than I should)… I am torn right now. I have plenty of hiking and camping planned this summer, so I will play it by ear and decide in July.

I hope your journey is going well! Here is the latest photo.

This has been a wild year. Yesterday was officially the 1 year anniversary when I became banded, and let me tell you I have no regrets. I was hoping to see 100lbs in 1 year, but that goal fell a little short. There was no specific reason for 100 lbs in a year other than the fact that it just rolls off the toung nicely. As of May 6th my weight was 232.5. That make it 97.5 lbs gone since I started my banding. I feel great knowing that I started wearing a size 50 – 52 pant. Today I bought size 38, which fit nicely and size 36 that I will grow into. One thing that I learned being banded is that clothes go quickly. Don’t buy because you love something, buy because it fits or fits tight. Between the sizes 46 to 42, I was losing very fast and buying clothes every month was starting to really tax the budget. I learned the best way that I found to deal with the rapid clothing change is to buy when you find them cheap. I started shopping eBay for used “Lots” of jeans, shorts, and pants. I was able to buy pants for much less than the cost of them new. I would then wear them and when done I sell them back on eBay. When I finally reach my goal, I will invest in the clothing that I will wear for the long term, so from my opinion, buy what works for now and then upgrade when it slows down.

A bit of my shopping comes with some wishful thinking, where I buy the next size smaller then the day that they button, it is like a treat. It makes me feel good to remember the clothing not fitting the day that I am able to wear them out of the house.

For all of you enjoying your journey, I wish you the best, for those seeking information, I hope you find some useful data in my blog.

God Bless,

Todd

Hello,

Welcome to My lap-band blog. I have just a short progress report. As of this morning I was 239.5 lbs. My starting point was 329, so I am close. As I said before in the last couple posts the weight loss was slowing down, so I was going to start excercising more and trying to cut calories. It seems to work be working, the weight is coming off faster again than I had seen in the past couple months. I joined a free calorie count tool to help me measure my calorie intake. I was amazed when I stared counting them, how many calories there were in the food I ate.  http://caloriecount.about.com

For exercise, I have been mainly walking/jogging the dogs around the neighborhood and working around the house. My golden retriever is on a bit of a diet. It is funny that after an hour of jogging and walking the dog pretty much has to be dragged home. She is getting better though, she is just not used to jogging with me. I went to look at a home gym but decided to wait for a bit to figure out what I really want. For now the exercise and keeping my intake to below 2000 calories seems to be doing the job. My goal is by Sept. that I would like to see 199lbs. The calorie count tool projects the date will be Jan 2nd, 09.

Kind of off the calorie topic. I had the thoughts before, so if I have this then do I become fragile, where any minor slips and falls would put me in the ER. I am unhappy to say that I have been testing that lately and happy to say it is not really an issue. If you could do it before with being damaged badly then you can do it now without being damaged badily. I say this having taken some hard shots when I went riding quads over the past couple months and jet skies in the past. When i went to the lake for a company event, I went on the inner tube behind the boat with my belly down and I had to stop because my arms were tired from a long ride, not because my belly even felt different. The funniest thing is that at that time I did not even think about the fact that I was banded. this also comes on the heals of going quad riding at the dunes over the last month. I took a couple hard shots when the quad threw me and again no real issues. The port area did feel a little sore to the touch for a day after word, but when you run into handle bars, I am pretty sure that would have been the case anyway, just happens to be a port there.

Hello,

Thanks for stopping by. I finally got around to a scale. I have been a little worried about what I was going to find when I stepped on the scale. I figured the weight would be flat or a gain, but I was pleasantly surprised. I am now around 244lbs. Which mean that in the last month or two I have lost about 8 lbs. I am happy to see the weight is still on the decline, slower but steady.

While I was traveling I was listening to Dr. Simpson’s pod casts. One of them he discusses how the Metabolic rate works. I found it to be note worthy. He has a tool that allows you to compute a calorie per day intake required to reach a certain weight. I have never been a fan of calorie counting, but I want to get to 212 lbs by the beginning of this summer, so I am going to give it a shot for the next few months and see what happens. Based on the tool I need about 2000 calories a day to get to 200 lbs. Have a look, it is fun to play around with the numbers.

http://drsimpson.net/06_weight_loss/BMR_calculator.htm

Greetings. I don’t have a weight update because I have been travelling for a month or so and did not bring the scale. I received an email today and after I got done replying I thought I would post it here because there were some good questions. Mellisa Writes - Hello Todd,I just read your blog and feel a little more knowledgeable about the Lap Band Procedure from a “real” person point of view.  I have been researching the procedure for some time and am now at the point of no return.  I am scheduled for my first orientation visit on Wednesday, February 27^th.  I am really excited and scared!!   How long between the time you decided to go through with it and the actual surgery did you wait?  I would really be interested in how long it took you for recover and any helpful tips (diet and exercise) that you could pass along.   Thanks and best of luck to you!Melissa  

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Hi Melissa,

First off congrats on making the decision. It was not an easy one for me, but I am only regretting not getting it done sooner now. I had looked in to gastric bypass about 4-5 years before I had the surgery. I did not do it then because I was certain I could get the weight off, and I did but it came back with a vengeance. When I saw the TV ad in Nov, I decided to pursue it. At that time I was 320lbs and was experiencing lots of low body pains. I was being challenged by simply walking up my stairs to bed at night. I went to the orientation late November 06. In late December I decided to move forward with it. So in late Dec I paid the money that my surgeon needed up front in order to submit the insurance approval. During the Nov and Dec time frame, I was getting psych evals, getting physicals, and pulling my medical history which was needed for the insurance. I was approved in Jan-Feb, and scheduled it for May since I was traveling in March and April. It took me about a week to recover and then I experienced headaches for about a week after that, my guess is it was caffeine withdraw. I went back to work 3 days after the surgery but was in too much pain without the medicine. Plan for a full week if you can it just is nice to have some time off to recover. The pain is not very severe it is just a mild constant ache for the first few days. I have never had a surgery before, but others say it is the more mild surgery they have had. 

Hmm, diet and exercise. As my surgeon puts it the word diet does not really apply. You eat what you want, but only 4oz. The goal is to get protein first and then veggies. Avoid high calorie foods like ice cream and sweets and anything too mushy because it will not sit on top of the band like it should for 4 hours. At first they really don’t care how many times a day you eat just that when you eat it is because you are hungry and you eat 4 oz at a time. Similar to the science experiment that I posted on my blog, is how you eat at first. Then as the band is adjusted you don’t really need that mid-day meal. Exercise is something they want you to get at least 30 minutes a day walking. To each their own, I have begun doing some hiking and stuff that I enjoy. I am sure they would want me to exercise more than I do, but changing the eating habits is a great start, I am starting to plateau in weight loss now, so I am going to have to step up my exercise to lose more, and to counter some of the lose skin I am getting a weight set for my home. I hope to build and tone while burning more calories. Like Dr. Simpson says, the body is a perfect calorie counter. I either have to get more restrictive in eating lower calorie foods and/or I have to get the exercise level up.

 Hope that helps! Good questions and good luck.

This video is of the trip which I took on my Sabbatical when I was in Austin Texas. What an awsome day that was and what a great guide we hired. Brian, his friend Morten “Corkey, the nickname was given to Morten by the guide because he sat for hours without saying a word and without even a nibble with a cork bobber”, and I had contacted Capt. Mike Segall when we found his business online. We had booked the trip for Feb 16th, and Morten flew in on the 15th from New Mexico. A few days before the 16th the weather forcast predicted rain and storms in Freeport, TX. After contacting Mike, he said with the weather what it was we would have to cancel. Saturday when we were supposed to be fishing we sat around doing nothing. Saturday night as we were heading out to dinner, I asked Brian and Morten if they want to just take a chance and head down Sunday and see what the fishing was going to be like. They said yes, so we called Mike. Within a few minutes he called back and said we could try bay fishing but with the storms it could be a bad day of fishing.

So with just a couple hours of sleep after dinner we headed to Freeport and met Mike. We got in the boat and on our way and as he said it would be the fishing started out tough, very tough. The wind was pushing our boat and lines all over the place. He would have us cast in one place for a while, no fish biting, then we would move. As the hours went on and we moved from one place on the bay to the next I could just sense the concern in his voice that because of the evening storm Saturday, we were going to have a very very tough time. We fished for hours with only a few small bites in, one small fish, and a crab that grabbed my line and let go before I could grab it.

While it was starting to get late in the day Mike moves us to another one of his secret spots. Within just a few casts, WHAM! Mike’s reel got hit with a nice bite. So one of us reels in the fish and it was a nice size flounder, just too small to keep. After seeing that reel get struck I immediatly switched to the setup that Mike was using, because the fish did not seem to like the live shrimp I was using.

The very first cast with my new lure, WHAM. The biggest fish I had ever caught was hooked. It was an awsome feeling to fight that fish that would later turn out to be one of the smaller Red fish that we would catch.

I cannot say enough about what and awsome time we had and Captian Segall really made us all feel like we had been friends with him for years. He was cool from the beginning of the trip to end end when he invited us out to a local restaurant where they cooked part of our catch. I lost so many lures because of some sort of drag where we were fishing, that I expected him to throw me over to get the next one I lost, but he did not. I cannot more highly recommend if you are looking for a great fishing guide in South Texas, you must give him a call. We are already planning our return trip for this summer. You have to say a lot for a guy who, on one of the worse fishing days in the bay with high wind conditions, recent lightning storms, and heavy rains, can get us in on a catch like he did. No one that we talked to or saw on the water was pulling any fish of any sizes, and here we are pulling mutiple species including two red fish that were oversized(over 28″) and had to be tagged with our licenses. It was funny as we pulled up to the dock and got ready to unload our catch. One of the other guides in the area came up to the boat and with an obvious hint of sarcasim said to Mike, “so do you want me to get you the ‘big’ cart Mike?” It was funny to see his reaction when we started to throw in these big bay fish that we had caught on a day like it was. The best comment that Mike has was when this guy asked, so where did you catch these at? Mike’s immediate response was “In the mouth mainly”.

What a great time! Mike thanks again for a great memory, we will be seeing you again soon! Be sure to check out the video below and check out my photo album for more pictures.

If you would like to download the movies click here. The un-edited files are there also.

Encoded for high speed internet (40MB file)
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Large file (100mb, if the video stops often try the smaller one, or download it from the link above.)

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The weight loss has finally slowed down. I am still losing but slower. I am around 80 lbs lost to date. Last weight was around 250.

I have no regrets. I still am very thankful that I made this decision. I feel great about my weight.

Hello. Welcome, hope your holiday was good. Thanks for the emails that I recieved since the last post. I am glad to hear that this blog is helping some of you understand what the band experience is for me and possibly for you.

Well, it has just about been 8 months now and I am almost on par for the 10 lbs lost per months. According to the scale I am 251.5 lbs from the 329 start. That pretty much amazed me considering the month was December and I ate my fair share of junk food. I thought it was going to be tougher for me than it was this month to not over do it and gain weight or not lose, especially with my emotional eating tendencies, but I managed to eat pretty close to my 4oz food requirement. I was probably eating 6 oz – 8 oz, per meal with a snack once and a while, but I still eat plenty slow which helps get you to “feel” full quicker. Which reminded me I was going to comment on an experiment that a friend of mine had helped me in a few months ago.

I was at work a few months back and a co-worker had asked what I was doing, he did not know I had the band. So I told him, but I made the statement, “but the band really is just the tool that helps, the real change was how I viewed food, how I eat my food, how quickly, and of course quantity”. So he asked me what I meant. I told him that in the beginning of the band I still was able to eat as much as I wanted without being inhibited by the band and still lost weight, it just took a change to the way I ate versus as much at that point. So being a very curious and big boy he asks for more info on how this first couple month change in eating happened to cause me to lose weight. So I asked him if he wanted to try an experiement for a few weeks  

So the basics of the experiment is this: through out the day you eat exactly the way you do now. You just do it differently than you do now. The way that you eat is go to the restaurant of your choice order anything you normally do. When you get back to the table with your food, take one half of it and throw it in a to-go bag. Now the change comes with the pace and the drinks. Try not to drink with you meal or immediatly after, if you can avoid it, but drink before you eat. Drinking with the food causes it to be digested faster, thus you get hungry sooner. Take a bite of food, chew it a few extra chews than normal, the intent is to make that 1/2 portion last ~20minutes. Now with the second half of your meal take it with you and make note when you finish eating. When you start feeling hungry try to push through it to at least 2 hours past your last meal. Around the hour past your last meal or when you feel hungry you should be drinking something, water is preferred. The reason is that drinking after your food is digesting helps you to stay “full” longer. That was the trick that my Doc explained is that the body uses the same “hunger” feeling when it is thirsty, good to know. Plan you last meal of the night to be around 2 hours before you would go to bed, so you are not hungry at bed time. That is it.

1. Drink before meals not during or immediatly after
2. Half your normal portions and eat one half now and one half in ~2 hours pushing it out as long as possible.
3. Eat slower. The stomache is kind of like a gas guage (which is why the band works so well), as you fill it to the top it registers full because you can see the gas spill out, but if you only put in half a tank it takes a few seconds for the gas guage to register the gas that was added. If you don’t know what I mean leave the key on and watch the gauge as the car is filling. If you eat slower by taking extra bites, or talking more during meal, or putting down your fork between bites or whatever, it give the food guage time to tell the brain, “Hey brain, we are good, we have food in the belly”.
4. Drink fluids on the hour after you have eaten, and during cravings, and anytime in between (water preferred by docs). The additional fluids that you add to this experiment cannot contain sugar or the effects will not be favorable, probably.
5. Plan to eat no later than 2 hours before bed, drinking fluids usually help me get there.

OK, so now we have the expirement guidelines, back to the expirement. So he says, show me how you eat. So we go to lunch a few time that week and I observe him as much as he observes me. He says after a couple time teach me, so I lay out what the guidelines for him. A week or two goes by, I had went to lunch and knew exactly what was going to be the results of his experiment before he gave me the report. But a couple weeks later he says dude, your expirement sucks I gained 3 lbs this week.

So I said to him, Jeff, let me show you what I saw. When we usually go to Wendy’s or where ever you get a number meal and a frosty or something similar. The last few times this week, you got the meal as normal, but the last time or two you added on a baked potato or salad or a single/double. And then you half that. Remember guideline 2, “Half your normal portions”? Have you been being honest to what your normal portions were at home too? He smiles and says, well, let me try this again.

So the following couple weeks we go out I observe him getting back to the experiment this time with a real “normal” portion and much to his surprise he has lost the few lbs he gained and a few extras, and he cannot understand why.

I am a computer geek and certainly not a doctor so don’t ask me to explain the how and why of the body, but it makes sense when you think about it, and without being gross if you notice the waste is less in the restroom the days following. But as it has been explained in the easiest terms, if you eat more food than the body needs it assumes you are stocking up and so it stores fat for energy. By simply halving the portions and eating them at different times, your body will not have the excess calories to determine what to do with, so in 2 hours when you are eating again and your body needed energy, you are making it work for it by converting the food down again, not to mention those mid meal cravings that I always used to statisfy with that candy bar. Over time as Jeff has changed his habits he has noticed he cannot eat as much, which makes sense also, you eat smaller portions, your stomache will grow and shrink according to what quantities you eat. If you eat less at each sitting but more frequently then you will have a small stomache capacity overtime because it will have shrunk. The goal is then to lose more weight, reduce your normal portions.

Anyway, Jeff has managed to lose a few more lbs and keep it off, but it is a life style change that you have to be willing to make, which is the same that any bariatric surgery is. If you expect not to change your habits after the surgery it is probably best to save your money and not risk complications of band slips and etc, just because it does still take some work.

Why the band? The band is great at taking the “normal” portion size of about 16 to 30 OZ of food per meal and dropping it to 4-6, not to mention it really helps to cut out the eating every 2 hours. on 4-6 OZ I am usually good for 4 hours and mid after noon snacks are FAR less frequent.

Be well. Until next time!

T

What an interesting 5 days this week has been. I have finally concluded that last fill was just too much. I could not keep any solid food in my body. I have been struggling with eating anything but soup since Friday. I was trying to give it time but I just really felt bad after this fill. I had 2 successful meals that stayed down and did not get stuck in the band, not a good average for 5 days. Finally Tuesday I call the surgeon and said I needed an un-fill. He was not doing fills during the week only Monday, Thurs, and Friday but he was kind enough to take time between his surgery schedules to come and take some out.

The key that this experience taught me is just listen to your body. It is nice to have the band a little tight so you are not as hungry as often, but I have learned to error on the side of too loose rather than too tight. I am not sure why I had a fill done in the first place, after all I was still losing about 10lbs a month.

The doc did seem a little annoyed that he was having to remove some fluid, but if you cannot eat, you cannot eat. I even told him I can wait until Friday, but being too tight is a risk since throwing up food makes the stomach swell and can cause for issues. All is well now. I have finally been able to eat my lunch without having to run to the restroom.

Man oh man, lap band 101 is a tough class to learn. I can tell you this going forward, I will know when I need a fill and when I don’t. If food sits above the band at all, then no fill for me. He did say when he removed some of the fluid, “well you did need a small fill”, but based on the fact that I don’t think even 1CC was added after the fact, probably not enough to waste the 100$ for this fill.