Weight Loss Information |
LapBand Surgery. The Rules of the Road...Part 1
When you begin the decision making process to have Weight Loss Surgery (WLS), and specifically LapBand Surgery, it is vital that you fully understand the changes you must make in your lifestyle. WLS is never the magic pill. It is something that you must work at to be successful. There are several rules and circumstances that a "Bandster" must follow and understand to see success and have a high quality banded life. Drinking Before and After Meals By far this is one of the most important things to learn and is vital to your weight loss success. It is also one of the most challenging. You should stop drinking all liquids at least 30 minutes before your meal. This allows all that is in your pouch to drain through to the lower stomach. Therefore your pouch is empty when you eat allowing the food to fill you up properly. During your meal you want to forgo all beverages. This is one of the hardest habits to break. Drinking during your meal simply flushes the food through your band and the band is unable to function properly. For most of us we will have 2, 3 or even 4 glasses of a beverage with our meals. Servers in restaurants, trained to keep us happy, will keep our beverage full throughout our meal. As bandsters we need to stand up for ourselves and ignore the strange looks we get when we say, "Nothing to drink for me." You must also not drink for an hour after a meal. The main reason is the same as drinking during your meal. Liquids wash the food through the band defeating its purpose. Another reason not to drink after a meal is if your pouch is full the beverage might not have anywhere to go?except backwards resulting in a spit-up. Suffice it to say that food and liquids making a return visit is not satisfying. Start practicing this new behavior today. Start at your next meal. This will get you ahead of the game and help your success instrumentally. Smaller Bites. More Chewing. Slower Eating. If you watch most Americans eat, including myself pre-band, we don't chew our food, heck we barely taste it. In my case a big bite, 4 cursory chews, and down it went. The next thing you need to start getting your mind around and practicing is what a Bandster Bite is. At your next meal look at your bite size. Look at the amount of food on your fork and remember it. Now, cut that bite in half. This is your bite size after surgery. Now, cut that bite in half. This is the size of your bite after your first fill or adjustment. Each fill your bite size will get smaller until each bit is as if for a toddler. The reason for this is so the bite can be chewed completely to a liquid before swallowing. This brings us to the next point, chewing. It is very important that your food is completely chewed. Before you swallow you want to make sure the food is a liquid. As you progress through this journey the opening from your pouch to the lower stomach will be getting smaller. Therefore you need to chew more thoroughly. If a piece of food is too big to go through the stoma, or opening, it will get "stuck". Let us just say it is painful and you do not want this. Finally with the smaller bites and the more thorough chewing comes the inevitable slower eating. Just slow down. If you eat too fast the bites get too big, you don't chew properly and we are back to the food being stuck. Over a year in and I still find myself falling into this trap. We get excited, chatting with friends and just forget. The quicker you create these habits the happier you will be in your banded life. A Bandster's Eating Order As a bandster you have a specific order in which to eat your food. It is important that we get enough protein in our diet to keep our bodies moving properly. Therefore, you will need to make sure you are eating your protein first. As WLS patients we need 40-60 grams of protein every day. We can get this in a variety of ways. Protein shakes, cheese, fish, beef, chicken, soy. The challenge comes when we can only tolerate certain foods. Also, it is important that we get as much "hard" protein (chicken, beef, and fish) as possible. We shouldn't get it all from protein shakes and cheese. When we sit down to a meal we need to eat our protein food first, vegetables second, and carbohydrates/starches last if there is room. Proteins last longer in the pouch and take longer to process through the band allowing us to feel full sooner and maintaining our satiety longer. As it turns out hard proteins are sometimes the most difficult to work with for a Bandster. The hard proteins need to be more moist, more tender and chewed more completely than any other type of food. Generally, but not exclusively, the proteins are the foods that get stuck the most and cause spit ups. The reason for this is simple. The bite isn't small enough and/or we haven't chewed it to a liquid before swallowing. For the record?Beef is generally the most difficult for bandsters. Beef is one of the most difficult foods for humans to digest. It can take several days for a piece of steak to actually work it's way through the digestive track. And that's on an unbanded person! So, if you eat a piece of steak and you don't chew it up completely, which is difficult as steak is so fibrous, it can sit in your pouch for an extended about of time and your stomach acids are not there to help break it down. Eventually, this piece of food can fall over your stoma and get stuck. This piece of steak that you ate two days ago can still be in your pouch and you can still spit it up at this late date. Remember each and every person is different so you will have to test your own waters. I'm not here to tell you what to eat or what not to eat. Some Bandsters have no trouble with beef whatsoever; others won't go near it. Trust me you will figure out what you can tolerate and what you can't. Trust me too when I say these things change. One day ground beef is fine and the next you realize it isn't any longer. You must be willing and able to adapt to sudden changes. Robin McCoy was banded on February 3,2004. She has reached her weight loss goal of 110 pounds. Robin is Vice-President and Senior Writer for Lapband Lifestyle, a resource and support group for LapBand patients. http://www.lapbandlifestyle.com robin@lapbandlifestyle.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Yoga As An Aid To Weight Loss Yoga is wonderful for nurturing a state of mental and physical well being . It promotes a balanced and healthy lifestyle, and yoga techniques can be applied also to removing excess weight, thus bringing you an extra benefit, that is if being overweight is a problem to you. Hollywood Weight Loss Secrets - Movie Star Personal Trainer Tells All! In the early nineties I had the opportunity to work with some of the most famous movie stars in the world. As a manager and personal trainer of Kathy Smith's health club I experienced first hand the secrets to the stars. Struggling with Weight? - Get a Dog Just about every one of us struggles with our weight on some sort of level. There are usually two basic factors in weight control. Law of Attraction Resolves Diet Controversy Who'd have thought healthy eating could be so controversial? Lunching at my girlfriend's house one afternoon, I held my tongue as her neighbors who'd joined us argued the virtues of their respective diets. And not like nice girls would!Shelli is an avid high protein diet fan, while Debra is a food combining aficionado. Fitness through Exercise for Life - Principles that Keep You Going for Life! ATTITUDESIT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!Exercising has so many physical benefits that most of uscan relate to, but what about the emotional andpsychological benefits it brings? Physical fitness, Ibelieve, touches far more than just our arms, arteries andwaistlines. It touches our very soul. Tips to Help Control Food Cravings Food cravings can be triggered by various things including low blood sugar, stress, and other emotional triggers. The best way to take control is to understand how to balance your meals and snacks to avoid the traps that trigger food cravings. Empowerment and Self-Control - What it Really Takes to get Control of your Weight Chant the following each day, several times. They are mantras that will save your life -- The choice to do nothing is still a choice and yields nothing. Body Composition And Weight Loss: They Are Related! The world today has more obese and overweight people than any other time in history. The reasons are simple too much bad foods and not enough exercise and weight training. Be Aware Of Your Reasons You have decided that you want to lose weight and improve your health. What is the first step? Start by asking yourself what your reason(s)is for wanting to make this change. Obesity Shortens Life Expectancy Steady gains made in improvement in life expectancy may be brought to naught by the increasing waistlines in America. Obesity has become a killer disease and shortening the life expectancy of Americans. Fat Burning Secrets For Cardio Workouts Lets face it, most of us live pretty busy lives and the amount of time spent exercising does eat up what little free time a lot of us have. I don't like to waste my free time anymore than anyone else so if I am going to use it up on an activity, I feel the rewards of the activity should out way the cost. Dieting Tips For Fast Weight Loss - How To Jump-start Your Diet Do you want to lose weight fast? While there is no diet that will allow you to eat as much as you want and still lose weight, there are things you can do to speed along the process. Good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle are the most important aspects of any diet, but there are appetite suppressants and diet aids designed to help you burn fat and increase your metabolic rate. The Culprit of Obesity in Children - Inactivity It was bad enough hearing almost daily that obesity in adults is a growing problem, now our children are the focal point. Yes, moms and dads, the research is in. Cross Training One of the biggest misconceptions about exercise is that there is "one" program that works for someone all the time. People think that they need to get on a particular workout program and just keeping doing that program over and over again. Close Kept Secrets to Weight Loss Lesson #12 Are you just exploding with the presence of light all around you? Isn't it awesome when you take time out for yourself, how amazing you feel? Just keep believing in yourself and the miracles will keep happening. The right people will show up and the right opportunities will show up. Weight Management Secrets That My Mother Never Told Me There have been endless numbers of fad diets over the years, each one promising to free you from the bulge. You see numerous infomercials on the next so called proven weight loss strategy such as diet programs, supplements, and fitness equipment. How To Burn Fat Fast: Go For Speedy-Burn, Not Crash-Burn How to burn fat fast is a question that burns anyone who has any weight to lose. Two ways to burn fat fast are: speedy-burn and crash-burn. Calcium - The Key To Quick Weight Loss Are you dieting your way to bone loss?Are you aware that the diet you follow may be depleting your bones of essential nutrients and increasing your chances of developing osteoporosis? Popular diets may promise quick weight loss, but calcium and other important nutrients are often missing from the menu, which can lead to bone loss.And women who consistently limit what they eat to avoid gaining weight may undermine the health of their bones, according to a study by ARS researchers in California. High School Algebra Finally Pays Off: The Body Fat Equation When approaching your goals for a better you, every game plan needs to start with determining where you are, and where you want to end up. We're going to talk about some ways to assess where you are -- right now -- so that you can make sure that the goals you have set (or will set) are reasonable. Give up the Diet If you're thinking of going on a diet to lose those extra pounds think again. Long-term weight control through dieting is near impossible, for the simple reason is that diets promote only short term solutions not long term. |
home | site map | contact us |