We’re very happy to release our latest clinic promo video. Please feel free to share with your family and friends!

(Tom Saridis: CEO & Founder of CIBO Clinic)

I own a clinic – a CIBO clinic. I battled obesity my whole life. This clinic was modeled after what my life was like and how there was no dignity provided to obese people in society. It’s the last prejudice that’s allowed.
(Current CIBO Lap band patients)

My name is Nisrine. I am 39 years old.

My name is Jody, I am 41 years old.

My name is Linda. I am 42 years old.

My name is Michelle. I am 28.

My name is Mike. I am 44 years old.

My name is Kori. I am 22 years old.

Kori: Everybody made fun of me but it’s behind me now. You have to look forward and be positive. A lot of people in this day and age tend to give up: “I’m overweight and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Well there is. This is it. This is the only thing that’s gonna make you become the person you want to be. This is the only place that’s gonna make it happen.

Mike: There was a time for me in my life to make a change. I came in here to the initial consultation. Took all the information home with me and made the decision to move forward as they say. I haven’t regretted it one iota. The last time I got on the scale, I was down roughly 106, 107 lbs. It feels great

Linda: I’ve never been successfully at keeping weight off. I was pretty impressed. Impressed enough to give them a call then I thought, “Oh, what the heck? It’s just a drive to Toronto. Why don’t I go and see what’s going on.” Once I got here, once I met some of the staff, some of the healthcare professionals here, no question. I was in the right spot. It all happened very fast after that. The energy level is unbelievable. My confidence level is right through the roof now. I tried not to pay attention to how I look. Because I figured I didn’t look and I didn’t see very few pictures of me while I was heavy.

Jody: I had given up all hope that I would ever lose weight again. CIBO clinic was designed and built as an obesity management centre first and foremost. Everything from the way the halls were structured and the chairs were designed. The door widths were planned. Everything was designed so you can come in and feel comfortable. You’re not trying to fit into a world that doesn’t fit you. Everybody that comes in understands what you are going through and they acknowledge what you are going through. Everybody offers a little bit of insight because they’re either going through it or they’ve been through it themselves.

Nisrine: I use to live in a world where 295 lb girls live. It’s a very different world from the world that I live in today. When we’re very large, we tell ourselves that we’re not that bad. We stopped looking mirrors and my favourite things were to seat at home and watch TV. My friends were people who like to seat at home and watch TV and snack. As I lost weight and I felt better about myself, I like shopping for clothes and I like going out.

Kori: You can’t give up on life. You have to be happy with who you are and the only way you will be happy is if you make yourself happy.

Michelle: When I came here, it was frightening. They were just giving me information. They were telling me what they do and telling me how it could fit in my life.

Jody: They just want what’s in your best interest to happen.

Kori: You have to look forward. Be positive because it doesn’t matter about the past, it matters about the future.

Tom: My story might be a little different for the next person but at the end of the day, we have a common goal here. That is to provide people dignity and self-esteem. It makes all the difference in the world.

Hi. It’s been a while since we had a talk and I guess that’s cause life just passes by so quickly. You blink and it’s been a month or a month and a half. I will talk about where I am and how things are going.

Things have been going good but I’m not gonna seat here and make it seem that everything has been perfect cause it hasn’t. Things get hard. After the initial large weight loss, it slows down. I’m probably losing about 5, 6 or 7 pounds a month which normally is amazing and I couldn’t imagine that. But once you’ve been losing 5 pounds in a week and you turn around and you’re only losing 6 pounds a month, you think you’re doing something wrong. It just seems that it’s time for you to change your routine or add something new or take something away. I think the hardest part now is living with the band. I really do feel full so often. Everything I eat really sits in my stomach and I do feel satisfied. The main problem becomes is that you have to convince your brain that you’re not hungry. Even though your stomach feels full, your brain is constantly saying: “Go to the kitchen. What’s there?” While you’re sitting at home, watching TV at night you have to fight that battle. When your brain from so many years of conditioning of getting up and sitting on the couch, eating all night. Even though your stomach is full, your brain is still saying: “What’s in the cupboard? What could you get? Try this. Have some of this” and really you don’t want it. So it’s a weird battle of brain and stomach. I’m trying and sometimes I win the battle and occasionally I lose but that’s life and life is full of battles.

My great therapist, she’s amazing. She came with all this stuff [about] the surgery and she says to me and I said [when] I came in one day, “I feel really crappy, I had a horrible day. I feel really bad” and she said to me, “Michelle, it’s not about not being bad because you can not be bad in life. There is always gonna be something that you ate that you didn’t want to eat or something that you did but probably shouldn’t have done. It’s not about avoiding those things, it’s about managing them and she said “When you have ups and downs in life, your ups and downs go up and down and up and down when you’re sitting on the couch and eating all these horrible things for you. Your ups and downs are substantially larger. Once you learn to manage those, she said, “You’re ups and downs becomes so steady that it almost feels like a straight line even though there’s ups and downs. That is what life is really about is learning how to manage your ups and downs and make them containable so that you don’t feel this horrible feeling when you eat something. This is not a diet. This is not a way of life that I have to live now where I can only eat salad. I can eat whatever I want well I should be careful when I say that cause I can’t eat whatever I want because the band limits you. Technically with all of this, you can still eat some of that crappy stuff. I could still have a cookie or a small piece of cake. All of that will still go down and it’s about controlling it from my end and learning to do that – fighting the battle. I find that the way that I beat it is by keeping myself busy and trying to do things that I may have not normally done like if I feel like I need to eat something [then] put little bit of laundry or go out and visit a friend or drink a herbal tea. Any of these things they’ll keep you from doing something hurtful to what you have done.

I went to overeaters anonymous recently because I was fighting the battle of brain versus stomach and I find that they say it’s really about doing something different and keeping yourself busy. I work with kids for so many years and I always say that boredom is what gets kids in trouble. Boredom is what gets kids in jail. I look at it now and boredom is what makes people fat and boredom is what ends up killing people and ruining their lives. That’s not what I want anymore. Although it’s a struggle, I lost about 60 pounds now which feels amazing. People are starting to notice now. People at work are like, “Are you watching what you eat?” and I’m always saying, “I’m trying. I’m trying” because that’s all I’m doing is trying. I’m lucky that I found something like the band that was able to guide me to where I needed to be. Although I have all this new found strength, I’m able to go through with it but really the band is my backbone. It’s my partner. It’s what keeps me on top. I’ve had my fills maybe around 5 or 6. I’m sitting at about 6.2. My band’s max is a 9. Everybody’s different so it doesn’t really matter what number you’re at. It’s just giving a rough reference.
I’m really sorry that I haven’t blogged in awhile and that’s just because life happens and it’s hard. In the beginning there’s so much to talk about. It’s all so exciting. Everything is great and you’re on top of the world and everything is wonderful. It’s been 3, 4 months and you’re at a point where you’re like, “Okay, I’m still going” but there’s not that exciting stuff anymore and now I’m convincing myself to keep on pushing because I deserve it and I do and so do you.

I have a cousin and I’ve been trying to get him on top of things and make him intuitive. I see where he’s at and I realize to myself that it makes me realize that you can’t force anybody into this stuff. You have to be ready. I was totally ready and I am dedicated to this for the rest of my life. Whether it happens in 6 months or a year and half whatever the case may be. I’m ready and I’m willing to stick out that time and let it happen. I, of course want to rush it. My sister is getting married in August and I would love to be a beautiful, thin, flourishing maid of honour. We’ll see how that goes. I will keep in touch and hopefully I can get there.

Finding things to motivate you and give you that little push a little bit further is important. Whether it be a wedding or for me, I really want to do yoga but I’m unable to get into some of the positions yet so that’s a motivating factor for me. I want to get at that point. One more exciting thing and as silly and stupid as this sounds, I said to my boss yesterday who’s my good friend by the way, “I can cross my leg.” and she was like, “Couldn’t you always do that?” And my response was, “No”, I couldn’t. I couldn’t sit with my legs cross and now I’m at a point where I can comfortably cross my legs and sit down. It’s still a little pull but I’m there and I’m comfortable. Baby steps towards where I ultimately where I want to be. That’s what I’m doing and that’s what I hope everybody is doing is taking baby steps whether it’s towards weight loss or towards getting a career or towards finishing school or whatever it is. I hope that you can find the inspiration to continue moving forward to whatever it is your goal is. I hope I can do the same and let’s keep on tracking. Thanks so much and I promise it won’t be so long till the next time.

Hi! It’s Alex Again! I’m here to talk about my experiences with CIBO Clinic. I found CIBO after I made the decision to have Lap Band Surgery. I found CIBO Clinic online when I was doing my research on the different clinics that were available to me, to help me out. And I went and visited with five of them.

I decided ultimately to go with CIBO Clinic because of a number of reasons. The first was Nisrine Shammas. I went in there and had a consultation with Nisrine and it was truly that, a consultation. She talked to me about what I felt my issues were and what the lap band can do for me and what CIBO can do for me. She didn’t really push me into any kind of sale. There was one clinic that I went to where I felt as if the guy was pushing a used car on me. It didn’t make me feel comfortable at all considering that his is my life and that this is the rest of my body’s health on the line. And Nisrine did a really good job of making me feel comfortable at CIBO Clinic and not treating me just like a customer. I don’t feel like I’m just a customer at CIBO.

After talking to Nisrine and having an initial consultation on the general procedure and what it’s about, how much it costs, how much time it will take and all that good stuff that Nisrine walks you through, I got to meet the surgeon. His name is Dr. Dennis Hong. He is a very cool guy! I have to say. When I originally met him, I thought that it was a joke as the guy seemed like he was 22 years old but he’s a doctor. I checked it out. Apparently, he does a really good job. He made me feel really comfortable.

The next stage with Dr. Dennis Hong was to go get some blood work done to make sure that I was healthy enough on the inside as well as the out to get the procedure done. I’ve completed that stage and that was relatively simple. You just take a form with you to a separate blood clinic and they run the tests and send it over to CIBO so that Dr. Dennis Hong can look over your chart and see if you’re okay and good to go. So far, it looks like I am good to go for the surgery.

I look forward to talking to Nisrene again and having Dr. Dennis Hong work on me!