Understand YOUR band!

I have been banded for 10 months - 10 very hard months...
It has taken me this long to understand my band and understand all the details of how it works with me.

The best advice I have been given is... "Do not compare yourself to other bansters." Well this is hard to do because if you follow more than 1 blog like I do then Im sure you have favourites that you admire and wish you could do what they have done. It's human nature...

Well I have had a rough start with my band. Learning what foods I cannot eat (pork, potatoes, bread, sandwiches, shrimp, pad thai :( ..... ) and can eat (turkey slices, cheese and water) and what happens when Im sick and what happens to my band during my monthlies and how I need to change to meet the changes that I cannot see or feel until often its too late and Im running to the bathroom. I was internally beating myself up when I was not meeting my goals that were not really MY goals. The worst of my difficulties was my own fault as I had thought the emotional part of my head would automatically listen to the signals from my band - I did not think the band would be magic but I was really hoping... and when it did not - well that took me for a loop. I kept on testing it and testing it and I kept being disappointed. I really thought that my emotional eating would be curbed by my band - that the pain from being stuck would be an automatic shut down switch to my emotional eating but sadly no...

You see when you understand and learn your band as I have in the past 10 month you also understand how to cheat and get away with things... it felt good at first when it was only once in a while but then when I realized that Im just letting the emotional eater win - again.  Its like some evil Jekyll and Hyde with a dress living within me pushing my bad girl to eat that chocolate and adapt my food choices to get those emotional needs met in the exact same way that I did before my band but with slider foods because my crazy Jekyll and Hyde chick really does not like being stuck.

I was so emotional about the cheating, about the getting stuck, about the weight not moving that it was a vicious circle that needed to stop and my body stopped it with a scare that really brought perspective back to this journey.

The greatest thing about the band is that you can make adjustments to your journey and if you're having a rough time as I was you can always restart your journey where you left off. I know that without my band I would have gained all my weight back and then some when I went into emotional mode but now I am exactly where I left off - no gain - no loss and ready to move forward on a different path but towards the same goal.  Now that Ive gotten through that huge learning curve and am armed with a better understanding how my band works with me I can recognize when Im eating to stuff away my feelings and lying to myself and not rely on my band as I did to get me out of those situations and rely on myself to get the hell away from food.

Its funny... I thought I had all my ducks in a row when I started this journey - I thought I had researched enough and talked with everyone I could and I probably did but until you are in it you cannot know what it is like because everyones journey is different and everyones bands are different and although I love getting inspired by the bloggers I follow I now know that I cannot walk in their foot steps even though we may all be heading to the same place.