I might have to join that FB group now that I see its a closed private group... can your friends tell that you are in the group by looking at your info on FB or is it COMPLETELY private?????... I have friends and family that I did not tell I was banded (5 years out right now WITH A SLIP found at my first ever Fluoro last week)... and I didn't tell them for good reasons. NONE OF THEIR BUISINESS.  Plus less people to tell why I am not losing well and less people to EXPECT me to be a certain weight.

Anyway... I am thinking of removing myself from OH permanently.  I cant even get a comment about my slip in a thread that I posted about it two days ago.  Apparently a lot of the helpful people who were here 5 years ago jumped ship too.  This place is not the same anymore.

Hi Steelerfan 1... Thank you for your response... my other reply must have crossed yours because I went temporarily insane when the first response I saw was someone suggesting DEXATRIM... Sorry... I just get irate when I hear anyone on here suggest any type of diet drug/pill as a "temporary" fix or whatever it is to get me over the hump... been a long damned hump I tell you that.  Anyway... That's what my rude response was to Jo... not the incredibly helpful one from Steelerfan1.  Thank you for that and sorry if I upset anyone else.

I didn't get a band so I could take diet pills that dont work.  Remember, most of us who have a band have done IT ALL and it didnt work.  I'm not looking to go back to any of that.  I just have to get back to the basics with this band and start making it work for me again.  Get out of my own head about things and stop letting it control my eating/exercise habits.

Anyway... I dont come on here daily and saw responses in my email that I had missed and just wanted to thank you for responding, it was very helpful and my other response that was not so nice was not directed at you at all... I didn't even see yours until just now.

This was a great post to read. It's been ages since I dare darken this board because I just have such a "negative" feeling about my band. The one thing the band does not do is cure emotional stress eating. I've had a lot of stress over the past year or two and gained back at least 20# of what it took me FOUR YEARS to lose and have NEVER reached my goal weight. I am just a terrible eater with no will power when I am under stress. It's my own fault. I dont exercise regularly or when I do get on a good kick with it all it only lasts a short time and then the stress slaps me down again.

I just feel like I should have gotten to my goal by the 1 year mark and then just tried to maintain. That was the plan. Never happened. I wonder often now if it is to late. Have I worn the band out? Does it really work at all anymore? I mean I feel it... but I can eat (have figured out how to eat rather) many things I should not be able to. I'm afraid to have my band tightened again until I've at least gotten what I have gained back off. I tend to get reflux if I go any tighter than I am now and for now it's comfortable and I dont get reflux unless I do something stupid like eat before going to bed... if I mess up and do that I take a pill to prevent it. Anyway...Yes, as I mentioned above I have fallen into the nasty trap of eating around the band.

I just dont know how to start fresh anymore. I have no motivation and I need to get it back... quick... summer is coming and none of my clothes fit from last year. It just makes me so mad that I'm still fighting the same battles with my weight that I did pre-band. I wouldn't go back to not having one because at least with it, I KNOW that eventually I can tweak my eating back into the right direction and start to lose again. But yes, the honeymoon is over here... has been for years. :(

... Oh yes.. and please dont look at whatever ticker is on the bottom of this post... its all lies at this point... I wish I had only that much to go... I WAS ALMOST THERE AND HAVE BLOWN IT! Looking at that makes me SO angry with myself. I really feel like a band failure.

I totally relate with what you are saying.  Especially in your last post where you said you just feel like you do so much of it on your own.  That is EXACTLY how I feel and I have felt for a long time that I'm not really sure I LIKE my band.  Never have.  Not in love with it for sure.  Have never felt the love some people do for their bands.  I would not go back and change my mind and not get it though... so therein lies the dilemma right?  Not in love with it wouldn't want to live without it.  I just know I'd have NEVER gotten this much weight off without it.  Even though I still struggle to get to my goal after almost 3 years.  Just this year a light bulb finally went off in my head that "well, this band is obviously not going to do it for me so I better do it for myself".  All it seems to be good at is keeping me from eating to much of the healthy stuff.  It never keeps me from eating to much of the bad stuff so I'm completely alone in my struggle with that.  So back to "dieting" when it comes to stuff that I know I shouldn't be eating.  I do refuse to completely cut out everthing fun to eat.  I know I'll never stick to that long enough.  So I've resigned myself to moderation and finally exercising daily.  That's something I didn't do regularly before this year.  My last pounds are not going to come off easy.  I've finally made peace with that.  With some helpful words from some of the band grads on here I've finally made peace with the pace at which my body is going to let this weight go.  Decided to stop setting time limits on my goal to and just be at peace with where I am when I get there.  Because when I get to that day and I dont make it there I feel like a complete failure and resent my band even more.  I have to stop doing that to myself.

I totally understand how you feel too about "only" having 90 lbs to lose..  I started off with under 100 lbs to lose... and I say to myself  "you cant even lose 83 pounds in 3 years you failure... look at those who lost that much in just months...you suck".  Not a good way to talk to myself or feel about myself.  Then I listen to others around me who say "wow you lost so much weight" and then I (knowing I have NOT lost that much weight really) considering I had BARIATRIC surgery to do so I feel like a failure.  I can't seem to take the compliment and be proud of what I have accomplished because I continuously let myself down by not getting the weight ALL off in a specific time frame.  Like right now I struggle not to set myself up for yet another time goal failure if I dont have these last pounds off by the time I go in for my 3 year post op visit on June 9th.  I even think, awesome, that gives me 9 extra days to get there (my surgery was May 30, 2007).  Anyway, I'm really in an internal struggle with myself right now to just do my best and not let the number on the scale and how fast it goes down right now set me up for feeling like a failure in a month when I go to that appointment.  I have to stop it. 

Anyway well this was longer than I intended it to be.  But I totally understand how you feel and if you want to chat more let me know.  Maybe we can encourage each other to just keep going and figure out how to like our bands a bit more than we do. 
~Heather

 I would never try taking any gigantic pills with my band.  I have to take several tiny pills weekly for arthritis and I have to chew those so they don't come back up on me.  OR I can let them melt a bit by taking them with hot tea.  I also take a daily pill that is smaller than an aspirin and if I didn't bite it to break it up I would be barfing up the pill along with the water I took to swallow it.  Have always had this issue with pills no matter what my fill level is.  So I'd be careful.  Definitely invest in a good pill cutter too.  Be safe.  Good luck.  I cant imagine how any band doctor can think it would be no problem to swallow one big pill whole never mind FOUR of them at a time?  OMG.  Sigh.  Anyway.  Just be careful.  You dont want to get a pill stuck. 

Hello,  It's so interesting to hear how no matter what we do we really do have to watch it, the band is only a tool.  I'm finally coming to grips with that after almost 3 years of painfully slow loss and the majority of the fault of that is on me...for eating to much.  Pushing my band to do things it shouldn't.  Now I find even with doing a strict low cal diet it is like pulling teeth to get every ounce off.  Frustrating too.  Anyway, You know, I betcha if you just change two things you'll see the scale go down... quit the Starbucks... not sure what kind of coffee you are getting but if you like the ones with the syrups in it and cream... that's TONS of liquid calories you can cut right there...and of course it's needless to say you should cut the cupcakes down naturally.  Stress could be a factor and it sounds as if that could be a lot of it with your lay off.  So try and take it easy on yourself and just cut things out that you know you are doing wrong gradually.  I betcha you see the scale start to turn around.  It's good that you are exercising too.  I found finally after amost 3 years of not doing anything regular that it's helping me to break the cycle of not losing and yo-yo'ing up and down in weight.  :)

Good luck.

Thank you Kate!  I needed to read this! These things have all been a struggle for me at one time or another. 

I had the same problem... and let me say from experience...YES IT IS THE WINE if you are drinking it regularly.� LOL.� I had to quit the wine all together and I only drank it on the weekends... BUT when you are the only one in the house who likes wine you have to drink the entire bottle....o fcourse...ha!� So that added loads of liquid calories and ALSO helped me to eat easier thus taking on a lot more calories.� SO, I quit the wine.� That alone didnt break the cycle.� I had to go get my band tweaked a hair... just a tiny bit... like .1 cc at a time.� I also finally added in regular exercise...walking... at least 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week...just this February...before that I didn't do anything regular.� I've cut my calories ... started tracking what I ate and cut them down to 1200 per day.� I'm losing again.� I�intend to just keep tracking until I get into a habit and just know what I'm doing finally and get to goal... 145 is goal and I'm on may way again finally.� Since I started paying attention and adjusting what I'm doing I've finally let go of 10 pounds.� I too had that yo yo problem and stuck in a five pound range.� Ya just have to adjust eating habits and add exercise.� The band just wont do it all for us unfortunately.� Took me three years to get that one through my head.� LOL.� Good luck. :)

P.S. The Health Tracker on your MY OH page here works great for me to keep track of everything. :)

Did they put you on full liquid or something for your pre-op diet?  I never did broth.  My pre-op diet consisted of Slim Fast and Lean Cuisine.  They allowed us to do 3 shakes a day plus a Lean Cuisine or the 3 oz of meat and 1 cup of veggies at dinner. Had to shoot for no more than 1000 calories a day.  It was easier for me to just do all the prepared stuff than to hassle making sure I didn't eat to many calories of the other stuff.  I know every doc is different with the pre-op phase.  So why do you have to do broth anyway?

The problem you are having is that your eggs are likely to fresh.  Week old eggs are best for boiling.  For some odd reason the older eggs will easily let go of their shells when boiled.  Freshly bought eggs tend to hand onto the shells making it impossible to get them off without taking pieces of the white off with them.   I eat a lot of egg salad and never have trouble with the shells as long as the eggs are a week old.  So I always have two cartons of eggs going...one from last week to use now and the one from this week waits until next to use (for boiling anyway).  Also, the best way to boil is to put the eggs into your pot with COLD water and bring them to a boil.  Turn heat down enough to keep the water at a rolling boil (but not so much it boils over) for 10 minutes.  Done.  Perfect every time.  Putting them into the cold water first keeps the shells from cracking open while boiling.  Brings them up to temperature slower so as not to shock them.

Man that was a long speech about egg boiling.  AHAHHAHA!  Hope it helps. 

Heather...  my name is Heather too by the way...  So it seems like you and I are proportioned about the same.  I'm just a tad shorter... 5' 3.25"... somehow I shrunk 3/4 of an inch since high school.  Sigh... I must say it excites me to think I could wear a size 6... when I was in high school and weighed 119 I would wear a size 9 too.  So they have definitely messed with the sizes of stuff... still I wonder if it depends on the brand.  Hard to believe I can go from a comfy size 14/16 (where I am now) all the way down to a size 6 or so in just 21 pounds.  In any case if I look as great as you do when I get there I will be absolutely THRILLED with myself.

Thank you for not being a chicken like me an posting your pictures.  I posted a few of mine on my profile.  I need to put a full body shot of me on there now as I haven't done that since I started three years ago.  I actually just looked at it yesterday and I couldn't believe it.  I definitely look different now so it's time someone took my picture... I'm always the one behind the camera around here. 

It is nice being more able to play with the kids isn't it!  I took mine for two walks today and have energy to spare! 

 

You sound like me.  Mornings are hardest for me to eat and generally it takes a couple of cups of coffee to ge prepared to eat.  I'm tightest in the mornings, always have been no matter what the level of fill is.  I also cannot eat with a lot of stress around me...noisy kids...etc.  Slams the door shut to my stomach. 

As for the pain I'm not sure if that coincides when you are trying to get solid food down when you are tight or if it is just painful all the time.  If it's when you are trying to eat then that would be normal if you are not chewing well, taking to big of a bite, etc.  So I guess the answer to the pain is still open for more discussion, it wold depend I guess.  :)  Hope some of this helped.