Like I mentioned last Friday, we filmed a patient’s gastric band adjustment, or “fill” as we often call it, for those of you who want to see and understand how an adjustment is done.Below is a video of one of our patients, Ericka, with one of our physician assistants, Brian, undergoing a simple, five-minute fill.
We’ve also created a video of Brian demonstrating an adjustment on a model of a lap band and port for a more detailed explanation.If you have any more questions about gastric band adjustments, please post them here, or call the office at 702-384-8446.
Today we filmed a patient’s gastric band adjustment for those of you who have never seen an adjustment done and want to know how it works. You will soon be able to check it out here and at our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/LVGBIpatients. Stay tuned!
Have you seen the infomercial for the weight loss product Lipozyme?“Clinically proven at a major university” to help patients lose weight is their claim.Like ALL nonsurgical weight loss commercials there is tiny fine print on the screen.Usually it says “weight loss not typical” or “your individual results may vary” like it does for Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and Dexatrim.
The Lipozyme ad says in fine print that the average weight loss was about 3 lbs.So, if your BMI is 40, or about 100lbs overweight, the average patient could lose about 3% of their excess body weight, hardly enough to have a dramatic improvement in health.After weight loss surgery, the average patient loses 50-75% of their excess body weight and the exceptional patient loses it all.If you are considering these types of products, remember to ALWAYS read the fine print.
If you have any experiences with using Lipozyme, or similar weight loss products, please feel free to share them with us.
“Clean your plate!”We all grew up hearing it, and I think this phrase is largely responsible for our growing obesity problem.We should be teaching our children to eat until they are no longer hungry, then stop.If the alpha wolf or king lion ate until all the food was gone, the pups and cubs would starve.But as humans we have conquered our environment so these laws of nature no longer apply and we now clean our plates so all the food is gone.
Part of the lifestyle change required for our patients to be successful is to eliminate those thoughts we learned during our upbringing that make us feel guilty or wasteful if we leave any food on our plates.By limiting food intake, patients that have undergone weight loss surgery realize that it is OK to leave food on their plate.Here at the Gastric Band Institute, our psychotherapist, Rachel, and our dietitian, Prudence, can also help with their Mindful Eating classes.For more information on when these classes are taught, please call 702-384-8446.
Please share here the infamous lines and techniques your parents used to coax you to eat.I bet this sounds familiar: “Just three more bites!”
Because the Gastric Band Institute has overseen the surgical weight loss of several thousand patients to date, I’ve been able to observe unique patterns common to very successful patients as well as those patterns common to less successful patients.This information may be helpful to potential patients trying to decide if a surgical weight loss procedure is right for them.
Patients struggling with their weight loss tend to look at their gastric band as something which should physically stop them from eating that one extra bite.They tend to “challenge” their operation, sometimes almost to prove that they can eat past their latest adjustment. As a result, they get food stuck more frequently and tend to have their bands tighter and have more problems with reflux.
The successful patients tend to look at their band as a tool which helps them stop themselves from eating more than is necessary to satisfy their hunger.They stop well before the last bite, they have more “eating margin” as described in a previous blog, have less reflux and don’t need to have their bands adjusted as tight.If you have questions about how to utilize the band for weight loss properly, please leave me a comment and I will reply, or contact Brian or Melissa, our physician assistants, at 702-384-8446.Also, if you have any advice or testimonials of how eating with the band correctly has made your weight loss successful, please tell us about it.
