I can’t find the first installment of this series, but it’s about Karen Miller, a 26 year old woman, in Bridgeport, Connecticut who had a Lap Band procedure performed by Dr. Timothy Ehrlich. Like most future Bandees, she had lots of different health problems - frightening when you’re only 26. Those have gone away, and now she’s feeling (as a friend of mine put it) down right evangelical.
She said she’s actually had to stop herself from suggesting the procedure to others, for fear of seeming rude.`I don’t want to offend anybody,” said Miller, a law student at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass. “But I want to let them know that this is an option. Before I had the surgery, I didn’t even know it was out there. I wish I had known sooner.”
And her health problems are now better:
Her enthusiasm is understandable, given her response to the surgery. Before the procedure, she weighed 247 pounds. She also had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which led to a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, irregular glucose levels and irregular periods.
The syndrome also made it difficult for her to lose weight, even though doctors urged her to do so.
On the advice of a friend, Miller, who works in the medical records department at St. Vincent’s, decided to explore bariatric surgery. However, she wasn’t interested in the more highly publicized gastric bypass surgery. That surgery, made famous by high-profile patients such as “Today” show weatherman Al Roker, involves rerouting part of the intestine.
Unlike gastric bypass surgery, lap-band is minimally invasive with few risks. Gastric bypass surgery, on the other hand, is a more complicated surgery that carries more risks, including possible death. Another benefit to lap-band surgery is that, unlike the bypass, it’s reversible.
Miller was deemed a good candidate for the lap-band, which is most effective for patients aged 18 to 65 and having a Body Mass Index of 40 or higher. Before surgery, Miller’s BMI - measurement based on weight related to height - was 42. Her health problems also made her a good candidate for the surgery, so she signed up.
Since the procedure, Miller has gone from 247 pounds to 175 pounds. That’s obviously garnered a lot of reaction — most of it positive — from friends, family, strangers.
And she finds herself being cheered on.
Throughout the past year, Miller’s life has changed in many ways, but the thing that surprises her most is how supportive everyone has been.
“People are getting more and more cutthroat these days,” she said. “But when people see me doing this, they’re just so encouraging. I’m very happy.
It’s a good story - always gratifying to see someone decent have things go well. In the last installment, she’s about 20 pounds away from her goal weight - and wouldn’t we all like to be there.
Becca has now lost 60 pounds since February, and she looks fantastic. This clip is about how much her life as changed as a result of having Lap Band surgery. She rides bikes without worrying about the tires deflating, she plays the piano without problems and she can even cross her legs now and yes, there are some before and after pictures.
Anyway, good work, Becca! Congratulations on your triumphs.
It’s always easier for men to lose weight, we know. This is a video from True Results with their patient Andrew S. He’s being interviewed while a make up artist is getting him ready for a photo shoot. Anyway, take a look, guys. At the end of the video, you can see how trim he is now.
And for those of you who haven’t clicked on Robert Morgan’s 250 Pound Weight Loss story, do it now. He’s a sports writer, who weighed over 500 pounds when he finally had a Lap Band procedure.
And I got that way by following the standard American diet. With a busy family and a job that keeps me constantly on the move into the evenings on most nights, I ate a lot on the run – McDonald’s, Chicken Express, Wendy’s and other such food.
I remember there was a time when we ate out more than we did at home. And I remember thinking at one point that I was getting healthier because I switched to Taco Bell. At that point I was getting burritos with lettuce and cheese rather than quarter-pounders. And boy, I thought that was a huge improvement.
But deep inside I knew better. I could not stand the pain shooting up the heel of my foot or that I was out of breath walking back to the car after a football game. Better yet, I knew I was in trouble last April when I was at Odessa’s Ratliff Stadium for the regional track meet. This massive, college-size stadium has no elevator and hauling a wide load up 50 flights of stairs several times a day about gave me heart failure.
I felt doomed to die of a heart attack by the age of 32, but I didn’t know what to do. I don’t overeat so I figured eventually it would all go away. I was certain that putting on a few extra pounds was something that happens to everyone when they hit their 30s.
It hit me like a ton of bricks this year, and I have one immature, rude, disrespectful Decatur High School student to thank for it. I was at my first volleyball game of the season in late August when I walked by the student body section. I noticed in my peripheral vision as I approached the group that one boy in particular kept staring at me. Just as my family and I passed, he quickly turned to two of his buddies and said, “Did you see how fat that dude was? What a freak!”
Well, that would definitely be a wake up call. I got one of my own the other night. A young friend came by and saw a photo on the wall that my husband had taken about ten years ago. It’s a black and white shot of barefooted me in a long dress and denim jacket sitting on a stone bench. My hair is long and fluffy at the time. My hands are folded in my lap and my legs crossed. He looked at it for a second and said, “Wow, that could almost be you only much younger”. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
on the right side of the page, is filling up nicely. If you haven’t had a chance to do so, I’d encourage you to spend a few minutes today looking through. There is a tremendous amount of wisdom packed into the various blogs as to what the process of losing weight with a Lap Band is like.
For those of us here in the US, today is Memorial Day when we remember those whom we lost in war. To all of you who have lost someone in war, my kind thoughts go out to you today.
Nice blog update. Jaime, of Jaime’s Journey, went to the doctor the other day and has officially lost 50 pounds! She started off at 350 and her doctor is now teasing her that she’s just melting away. She has before and after pictures up as well - pre-surgery, 1 month post and 2 months post.
Lise the Loser came back from her weekend at Langley, Washington to discover that she has officially lost 30 pounds and now weighs - dun da da da! - 199. She is in Onederland to stay!
Achieving Me has bought herself a fabulous black ruffled dress (it is dreamy) for the Winter Ball she will be attending this July! She got it in a size 8 (12 for our Aussie friends) so that it fits in a few months.
Lastly, I think Gwen has some new photos up of herself in her photo carousel.
Happy Mother’s Day to all. A documentary I co-produced a couple years ago on the training of opera singers is being screened for the board of the organization we worked for tomorrow night. I’m excited about that. My darling 29 year old son may, or may not, be aware of Mother’s Day but you know, a mother’s hope springs eternal.
This video is from a Fox News Affiliate in Florida with Dr. Joette Giovinco who is doing a weeklong series on weight loss. She’s profiling Lap Bandee Bette Gashler who has gone from a size 22 to a size 10. Best of all, Bette is now pain free. And in regard to the poll that I linked last night about whether bandees regret their choice, Ms. Gashler says she doesn’t regret it at all and that this is the smallest she’s been since her daughter was born. It’s a two minute video - very quick. It does have good, clear close ups of the Lap Band as well.
I’ve had Ashley’s Lap Band blog, The Band In Me, linked on my blogroll for several weeks now. She’s a twenty-something Lap Bandee in Seattle, Washington who has amassed a pretty amazing series of videos on YouTube. She starts 1.5 weeks before surgery. She weighs 235 and has just lost five pounds.
Cut to a year later. Here she is two weeks ago, talking about her progress.
The amazing thing is that she has a total of 51 videos online in addition to her blog. Here’s the link to her channel at YouTube where you can see all of her videos. Ashley certainly doesn’t pull her punches on the complications of a Lap Band but talks about how worthwhile she has found it to be.
FYI, she had her surgery done at Northwest Weight Loss Surgery in Everett, Washington. These people have a great site with a lot of information available to prospective patients although a lot of it is applicable to everyone regardless of where you’re having surgery. Here’s their page on how to approach your insurance company for coverage. They have an active study going on about adolescents and Lap Bands and accept teenagers for surgery starting at age fourteen. They have offices in Yakima, Bellingham and Spokane as well.
There’s a lot of information here. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Becca, Indiana Lap Band video blogger extraordinaire, has a new episode up in her Lap Band video blog. She lets us watch her adjustement. She comes back a week later and talks about how she feels. Her physician is Dr. Keith McEwen - whom she obviously adores. Always a good thing.
I just watched FAT: What No One Is Telling You - a PBS documentary about obesity and weight loss surgery. They interview Dr. Lee Kaplan extensively and it’s always good to hear what he has to say. He does discuss just how complex weight gain is and states, for the record, that only 5% of people who have gastric bypasses get all the way down to a normal weight. Very interesting. They also interview Dr. Michael Gershon who talks about the gut being a second brain for our body. He even composes poetry to the intestine.
As a young man, Michael Gershon, professor of medicine at Columbia University, went against the wishes of his father and the advice of his professors who urged him to study the brain. Instead, he set off on an exploration of the bowel. Intrigued by some long-forgotten 20th century scientific discoveries about an independent nervous system in the gut, Dr. Gershon’s research uncovered how this sophisticated physiological wiring functions essentially as a “second brain.” The gut, it turns out, has a mind of its own and plays a major role in deciding when and how much we eat. When the brain in the head says eat less and in moderation, the “second brain” in the gut can override the brain in the head and propel us to eat more and without restraint.
Obesity expert Dr. Lee Kaplan and his team at Massachusetts General Hospital compare the body’s hunger drive to the human body’s response to running up six flights of stairs. You can force yourself to breathe slowly for a few seconds, despite this exertion, but ultimately your body will demand more oxygen and you’ll breathe faster. When it comes to decisions about how much to eat, a similar battle occurs between your conscious will and your subconscious. And if your subconscious brain wants more food, it wins and you eat more.
A study of gastric bypass surgery has led Dr. Kaplan to a compelling discovery about how the body regulates food consumption, and the hope that someday surgery can be avoided altogether. Dr. Kaplan has found that weight loss in surgery patients is not just a result of making the stomach smaller. The surgery actually reduces the feeling of hunger by cutting some of the nerves in the bowel, which changes the signals that flow between the gut and the brain. It also alters the way the hormonal system gets its information from food and sends it to the brain. “By manipulating the gut, even in a small way, we end up changing the communication to the brain and the brain acts differently to manage our weight and metabolism,” says Dr. Kaplan. His goal now is to completely replace surgery by developing medication that alters these intricate circuits in the same way that an invasive operation currently does.
They follow a handful of people who are losing weight - one of whom has a gastric bypass and loses 150 pounds over the course of the shoot.
A familiar face on television, actress Mary Dimino’s battles with food and dieting are the hysterical heart of her stand-up comedy. As the documentary opens, we see Mary sweating through one of her daily three-hour gym sessions on the treadmill. Acknowledging that it’s a lot of exercise, she explains, “I have to work just as hard, even harder, just to maintain this level of chubbiness.” Like many people who struggle with weight control, Mary has persistent fat cells in her body that were added during years of overeating. Now the weight may come off, but the cells remain — always hungry — constantly crying out for more calories and defying Mary’s willpower.
“There was something haywire,” says Rosie Delhi, whose words confirm the suspicion every fat person has from trying and trying to lose weight. A retired school principal, her bariatric surgery was, until now, a secret from everyone but closest family members. “You can’t believe how awful it is,” says Rosie, who yearned to play on the floor with her grandchildren and be able to get up again. “If I didn’t make a change, I was headed for a death sentence.” The rewiring effect of the bariatric surgery, which Dr. Kaplan has identified, seems to be helping Rosie to sustain her weight loss by helping to suppress her hunger impulse. Now her disciplined effort to maintain a healthy weight has a shot at success.
As a senior in high school, Rocky Tayeh utilized his budding talent as a journalist by producing a radio documentary on his battle with obesity. Raised in Brooklyn, Rocky laments the everyday temptation of food available in his neighborhood. “If I’m hungry at 4:00 in the morning, I just have to walk a block down,” says Rocky. “There’s a Dunkin Donuts here, a McDonald’s here, a fast food restaurant here, a Chinese restaurant and they deliver.” Despite the disapproval of his family and his own doubts about “taking the easy way out,” Rocky makes a decision to have surgery, loses 150 pounds and faces the prospect of a new life in college without the embarrassment, shame and stigma.
Carla Hurd has gained about 120 pounds over the last twelve years in her job as a marketing executive at Microsoft. Carla and her overweight husband David signed up for a comprehensive weight management program funded by Microsoft. Even with the no-holds barred support of all the best personal trainers, doctors, dieticians and psychologists and a profound motivation to get pregnant, her success in the battle to lose weight is elusive. In videotaped diaries, Carla tracks her uncontrollable urges and her struggle to resist the comforting temptations of food that calms her stressful life.
Public health nurse Pat Lyons, who describes herself as a professional fat woman, knows there is very little justice or sympathy for fat people. Pat’s mission is to uncouple the idea that physical fitness and activity is only useful in regard to losing weight. She believes everyone should be active, regardless of size, aiming to be as healthy as possible whatever weight you are. “There are happy, healthy people of all shapes and sizes,” she points out.
It’s broken up into little clips. The longest is about 10 minutes and the shortest about 4 minutes long. It’s easy to get through.
Cruising around YouTube today, I found Becca’s video blog. She’s only got two videos up, but she’s very well spoken. She’s lost, I think, 50 pounds in the past few months and has gone from three chins to one.
And here is her second video where she talks a lot about the process of having a Lap Band. She only needed Tylenol to deal with the pain - nothing stronger. She had her surgery on Thursday and was back at work on Monday. At the very end, she shows you her scars and I know there are a lot of questions about that out there.
Her surgery was performed by Keith McEwan at the Indiana Obesity Center.e.com/watch?v=V1VG824lr6M&hl=en]
Anyway, enjoy.
In some ways this is my favorite clip in the entire series. The interview was over and we were packing stuff up to leave, when I finally remembered to ask Lorraine about her career change. She talks about becoming a script supervisor and how she never would have done that when she was heavy. And she also talks about her life as a professional musician and performer and how that has changed with her weight loss.
Here is the link to Lorraine Kay’s MySpace page where you can hear some of her music:
http://www.myspace.com/lorrainekay
I just stumbled on Gwen’s WLS Journey blog this morning. She’s an RN who is studying nurse anesthesiology. She’s been banded for a year and she’s very thoughtful about the process and her relationship with food. Her entries aren’t short so if you’re looking for pithy little blurbs, she’s not your writer. Her slide show with different images of herself at different stages of weight loss is really nice.
She has a new physician who is advising her to increase her protein intake. I haven’t read anything quite like this before:
So anyway, I see Dr Pennings, at last. He didn’t seem super impressed with my weight loss at 1 year, but he saw I was within 20 lbs of goal. He liked how much I am exercising. They did a Tanita body composition thingie and determined that I had 120 lbs of lean mass, and he used that number with his personal number of 1.5 gm protein per kg lean body mass to determine that I need 90 gm of protein per day now. Um, what? How am I going to do that, without protein shakes? I think 75 gm might be more doable. My “people” at the Portland office told me 45-52gm, which I have been going by for the past year. Pennings believes that my weight loss will pick up again if I get 90 gm protein in per day. I believe he might be full of crap. But anyway, I’m trying to increase it some.
One useful tidbit he did give me was the calories-per-protein-gram rule. He told me to check labels on foods, and “gravitate” towards foods that have a ratio of 15 calories or less per 1 gm of protein. This seems reasonable and simple to do
Anyway, check it out, if you’re interested. I’ve added her to the Lap Bandee blogroll so you can always find her.
Los Angeles Lap Band patient Lorraine Kay shows us a couple items of clothing from her pre-weight loss days. I like her whole thing about skinny clothes versus fat clothes - she’s right. Skinny clothes are so much more fun. She says it’s been 25 years since she wore anything smaller than a size 16.
Los Angeles Lap Band patient Lorraine Kay talks about a few different things in this clip. She talks about exercising, her husband’s reaction to her weight loss, and most importantly for most people thinking about getting a Lap Band, she talks about the process of having a fill. Doest it hurt? How long does it take? What do you do?
I like this clip - it’s purely practical. Lorraine talks about what food she can eat and how much she can eat. She also talks about when she eats too much and gets “in trouble”.
