Lap Band

I think you're downright inspired!! The power and good feelings you will earn from this will be life changing.

I don't know much about the band, but if it basically forces you to eat "this" and avoid "that," you'll lose weight, but if you haven't learned how and why to eat healthy, your emotional triggers, blah, blah, blah-- then when all is said and done, it would seem to me it would be too easy to gain it back.

We're here-- this is a great place. You'll learn lots, and learn the importance of logging your foods, et cetera. Some really great people here will keep you going in the right direction--

Nope, I don't think you're crazy.
You're going to have to run your life without the medical intervention at some point, might as well be now.

Here's what I would do in your situation: go out and buy a pedometer -- a good one, preferably an Omron (WalMart has them cheap and so do some other stores -- pay about $25), and then walk a MINIMUM of 30 minutes every day. This will generate a couple hundred calories of burn, maybe more depending on your weight, etc. The Mayo Clinic wants everyone to expend 10,000 steps a day -- that isn't easy to do, but if you did it you'd probably lose weight no matter what. In any case, the Omron pedometer will track your steps and convert to calories, etc., that you can log into My Fitness Pal, showing the calorie burn.

Then once you have a base level of exercise every day, track your food intake carefully. I'm doing that exhaustively every day, and it doesn't take a lot of time because I eat the same things over and over. In my case, I buy cheap frozen dinners like Lean Cuisine or Amys on sale, and eat them for lunch and dinner, sometimes with a salad. They are about 250-350 cals apiece. So if you did this for 3 meals, you'd still be well under a thousand cals and you could subtract your exercise calories from it.

Of course, this is just my system, and you have to find one that works for you. Not many people, I suppose, could slavishly eat frozen food at every meal -- but I figure if people can do Nutrisystem, I can do this.

Back to the subject -- the point is that if you exercise some every day, even walking 30 minutes or more, track the exercise, and log the exercise and the food intake diligently, you'll have a handle on your eating, and you'll lose this weight. You should probably lift weights a couple times a week to make sure you are building, and not losing, muscle.

You probably need to allow yourself some cheating, too -- I had a friend who lost a lot of weight, 80 pounds over a year, and he was very compliant with his diet, ate very carefully, 6 out of 7 days per week. Then he allowed himself one day of craziness where he ate whatever he wanted. The next day he would go back on the "wagon" so to speak. I think you need a release valve if you are going to have a big project like losing a lot of weight. I suppose this technique also teaches you not to lose hope if you cheat -- you just pick yourself up and get right back on the program the next day.

Congratulations on being brave enough to have tried the surgical intervention (which scares me) and successfully carrying it off! This new weight can be handled without going back to extreme measures.
Buena suerte!


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