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.
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.
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
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.
While grabbing the embed code for Lorraine’s clip, this popped up as a similar clip. It’s a video clip of a doctor performing a fill on a patient. You can see the whole process is very quick and easy.
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”.
In this video, Lorraine Kay talks about the first month after surgery. Lorraine had congestive heart failure and wrestled with a tremendous amount of edema - which largely disappeared the first month. Her legs had been so swollen that she couldn’t bend them to walk up stairs. Now, she could walk and felt like a different person. She didn’t need pain pills but she was kinda hungry.
BiBi is a YouTube blogger who had a Lap Band procedure a number of weeks ago. She’s got five videos up on YouTube documenting her progress. She went in for her first fill this week and talks about that process. She says she’s going well, but we haven’t seen photos yet. Anyway, here’s BiBi!
Last week, I posted a link to a young woman who had posted a video on YouTube about her 2 week progress with a Lap Band. I was interested in her video because she showed her incisions and I think we’re all curious about what that’s like. While she remains anonymous, I’ve named her BiBi for our purposes because of her YouTube moniker.
She states in the video that she started off weighing 132 kilos. For the metrically impaired amongst us, that 292 pounds. She’s lost 10 kilos and is now down to 268 pounds. Here’s her new video.
