Motivation...

One thing I wish that I had done with my lap band is focus more on weight loss in the first year after surgery. In my first 18 months after surgery I spent well over 6 months travelling for work and pleasure, which in hindsight was not the best idea. When I wasn’t travelling I was great at losing weight, but when I was away from home I stopped losing weight and tended to gain (due to my fondness for room service and mini bars).

I am now a couple of months away from being two years post-surgery and I feel like the more time that passes, the more lazy I get with the lap band ‘rules’ and the harder weight loss becomes. I read a lot of your blogs where I see you guys following all the rules and advice your surgeons gave you religiously. My surgeon didn’t actually give me any advice, he basically took my money and put the band in and I haven’t seen him since. I do obviously do my own research and I know what I am supposed to do, but I just hate following rules…

I was good for the first year at serving myself a small portion of food on a small plate. I would eat slowly and stop when I felt satisfied. I ate two small meals a day and I didn’t ever snack in between meals. I didn’t eat bread, pasta, rice or most red meats because I didn’t want them to get stuck in the band.

These days I see my portion size creeping up and if the food is on my plate, I will continue to eat it, even if I am not really hungry any more. There are days where I will eat so much that I am in physical pain because my band is telling me to stop, but my head doesn’t want to. There are no foods that are off limits to me because of the band, as long as I eat slowly enough, I know pretty much any food will go down.

I think the way I eat now is still healthy (most of the time) and I think I’ll be able to maintain my weight with this lifestyle. The problem is that I still have 10 kilos (22 lbs) that I would like to lose and this weight loss thing gets a whole lot harder when the motivation is dwindling and I’m not strictly following the lap band rules.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to lose weight and I am more than ready to have this chapter in my life over. I just have to try and keep focused to get these last 10 kilos off and be done once and for all.