So, the sweet spot – what’s it all about then I hear you cry?! Well, it’s a mystical place that bansters all aim for but often dont reach. The sweet spot is the perfect amount of fill (saline solution) in your band that takes you to a point where you no longer feel hunger or cravings and you can eat small healthy portions of food and lose weight consistently. Sounds good eh? It is but it’s extremely hard to get to and even harder to maintain.
The main problem is fill providers. As with most things of this nature the fills are being provided by people who do not have a band. I’m not saying every fill provider needs to be a bandster but I have a feeling it might help. Bands come with various volumes – mine takes 10 mls. In general the fill process is slow and expensive with most prividers charging anything from $150 up for a fill but generally only putting in 1-2 mls at a time!
The second problem is the lack of understanding just how sensitive the band can be. Alot of providers will only do 0.5ml fills or 0.25mls if you’re lucky where the experienced bandster knows that sometimes when you are close to the sweet spot it can take a mere 0.1ml to get you to the right place. At this point in time a 0.25ml fill could and would likely take you to dreaded ‘overfill’ !
Overfil is nod step past the sweet spot and for some people it can mean not being able to swallow your own saliva. Most reputable fill providers won’t let you out like this but sometimes you think you’ve hit the sweet spot but your band will spontaniously tighten within a few days of a fill and at that point – Houston we have a problem!
Personally I’ve hit my sweet spot only once and it was amazing. No hunger, no cravings, sustained weightloss and ultimately hitting my weightless goal…..but buyer beware, it often doesn’t last…..
More about that next time!
So, I get back from Belgium, sore and mozzie bitten but raring to lose weight. Now, for the first week you have to stick with liquids and sloppies to let the band settle. This is harder than it sounds and by day 5 I’m so sick of clear soup and yoghurt that I’m letting chocolate buttons melt on my tongue while telling myself they count as liquid this way! (clearly you know understand how I got myself into this overweight predicament in the first place). I progress onto the joys of the inside of a jacket potato on week two and when I stand on the scales I have lost 9kgs! Hurrah! Cause for celebration but not a cream cake in sight. Amazingly enough I’m not hungry but I am suffering what I later find out is called ‘head hunger’ – it’s that feeling of fancying something yummy. This is a tough one to control but I manage at first.
I survived the first few weeks with the support of fellow bandsters who have been there and done that. I go for my first fill. This is where they access the port via your stomach and a large needle. It’s uncomfortable but not agony. The first shock comes when you try and eat too fast or without sufficient chewing and food gets stuck. It esentially feels like you have a golf ball wedged in your chest and the only way to relieve it is what is affectionly known as a ‘PB’ which stands for a productive burp! Lovely, it basically is undigested food stuck in your oesophagus that comes back up again. It’s like throwing up without the stomach acid and can on occation be agony dependent on what’s coming back up. Ideally you shouldn’t have this happen too often as you may tear your oesophagus. Again lovely. As you can imagine you don’t want this to happen but when ‘head hunger’ strikes it’s hard to deny…..especially when you have overindulged all your life.
The learning curve is around 6 months – you learn what you can and can’t eat, your portions etc and by 6 months you will have had at least 3 adjustments to find the ledgendary ‘Sweet Spot’….
Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!)….so, I’ve always been fat. According to my mum I was even a greedy baby, I’d drink a bottle of milk, throw up and drink another one! This theme continued through childhood and teens, although thankfully a growth spurt made me more curvy than fat in my older teens so I was never short of a date! Into my 20′s the real problems started and I got bigger and bigger and tried more and more diets until one day I woke up a size 20 and weighing 106kgs (which at 163cms tall is HUGE) and decided that something had to give.
Hence….the decision to have a gastric band. To be honest I didn’t do as much reseach as I could have but as with my general theory on life, it seemed like a good idea at the time! So, off to Belgium I waddled and without further ado had my band fitted.
The most painful part of the proceedings was the fact the nurses left my window open as it was a warm night and I for eaten alive by mozzies!! That and having the drain pulled out. Yuck!
For all those reading this with a puzzled expression – a Laproscopic Gastric Band (to give it it’s full title) is essentially a choke chain for your stomach. It restricts what you can eat by way of a silicone loop round the bottom of your oesophagus that can be tightened or lossened from a port that is attached to the wall of your stomach and accessed by a large needle. Sounds fun eh?!
