How Quickly Will I Lose Weight With LAP-BAND?

We all seek instant gratification. We want what we want immediately, if not sooner. Not so with the LAP-BAND. A great strength of the LAP-BAND compared to early forms of obesity surgery, such as stomach stapling, is that weight loss occurs in a sensible way.

We have control. The band is adjustable. We set the effect on satiety through adjusting the band. We tailor that setting to achieve a steady progression of weight loss, not a sudden drop. With surgeries in the past, such as gastric bypass and other forms of stomach stapling, we had no control of the settings after we had finished the operation and left the operating room. What was set during the stapling procedure had to be correct forever.

It had to be loose enough that the person could eat and drink in the days immediately after the procedure and yet still act as an effective restriction on eating 10 years later. This is just not possible. The body changes, it adapts and what was initially quite tight becomes looser. In order to seek some long-term control on weight, the settings were often made very tight on the start, leading to a very rapid weight loss during the first 6 months. There was a loss of considerable amount of muscle as well as a loss of fat. This is not at all what we want.

There was some further weight loss for up to 12 months but generally that was all. Whatever you had lost at 12 months was about all that you were going to lose. As a result, it was often a tough first 12 months, with good weight loss but not a good quality of life, with very little food intake and plenty of vomiting. The weight then tendered to remain stable for 2 or 3 more years. After that there was a slow progression of weight gain and there was not much we or you could do to stop it.

We do not seek this pattern of rapid results with the LAP-BAND. There is good evidence that rapid weight loss is unhealthy. We are seeking changes for a lifetime and we prefer to attain these changes steadily over at least 18 months. For some people, there is a more rapid results and, as long as there are no problems, such as vomiting or severe limitations on eating, we do not interfere.

But we are not going to push you to achieve that by further adjusting while the weight loss is progressing. The adjustment is determined largely by the weight scale. If you are progressing well with good weight loss, with no negative symptoms and you are not feeling hungry or eating too much at mealtimes, we see you as being in the green zone (see Chapter and allow you to progress. If, however, the results are slow, you are getting hungry and eating too easily, we see you as being in the yellow zone and in need of further adjustments.