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I'm bearing my soul and body here. I couldn't be more proud of how my body has changed. I've lost exactly 70 pounds since my surgery. Today marks exactly 24 weeks ( 6 months ) since my VSG surgery. There's good, bad and ugly about VSG. A lot of days, I cried and wondered why in the hell I had this surgery, and what in the hell ive done to myself. Throughout this process, I haven't been able to REALLY see the changes. In my mind, I always see a 268 pound fat girl. Granted, I have seen the changes, seen the smaller clothes sizes, but still struggled with my self image in my head. But today that all changed.... I realized today as I was getting dressed that I had on the same exact underwear as the day I took my pre-surgery pictures. Then I realized that today marked 6 months since surgery. So, i decided to take pictures. I haven't taken pictures in this process because of the absolute shame and disgust I feel towards myself. Shame and disgust are understatement words for how I feel about myself. Until today... Today, I feel proud. For the first time, I can honestly say that I don't see "that fat girl" in the mirror anymore. It may not be pretty, it will never be perfect, but it's mine, and today I'm owning it, and FINALLY for once in my LIFE, I'm feeling proud. It's NOT an easy decision to post these photos of me in my underwear. I feel absolutely vulnerable and exposed. Please be kind. It took all the courage I could muster to do this. The current pictures are not the best quality but the best I could take of myself at the moment. All you new VSG-ers, stay the course and have faith. If you have body image issues as I do, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and you are not alone in the dark! Much love from me to you all! [emoji173]️[emoji173]️[emoji173]️ DOS: 12/13/16 HW: 268 SW: 256.6 CW: 186.4

Today I had an "ah-ha" moment. It took 4 years, but I think I get it! It was triggered by this before photo popping up in my facebook memories from 5 years ago, (coupled with my most recent post-op photo taken last week, down 120 pounds since surgery in 2013). (attached below) ....And then reading the following quote on a friend's post: "Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't you so you can be who you were in the first place." I've struggled for years since losing the weight after surgery with questions of "is this the 'real' me, or am I just pretending and the 'real' 'fat' me will resurface sooner or later?" "Can people really change long-term?" It felt like the obese, sad, self-hating "me" was a monster waiting just below the surface to re-emerge. Give enough time and the right circumstances, the "real me" monster will rear it's head and I'll find myself back at nearly 300 pounds. Guys! I get it now! It's not about change. It's not about the "sticking power" of change. It's not about willpower or determination. It's not even about counting carbs, protein, calories, and ounces of water. Sure those are tools that help. But it's not about that. It's about doing the hard emotional work to figure out why I was hiding myself behind 150 excess pounds. It was about allowing myself to have a voice and using it. It was about demanding self-respect and respect from others. It was about leaving behind, painfully as it was in some cases, the toxic people in my life who emotionally damaged me. It was about processing the feelings that I didn't allow myself to feel for 18 years. Once I realized this, once I did this work, I could little by little shed the layers that hid who I was. I don't hate myself anymore. I'm not even angry at myself for letting myself get to be 300 pounds like I was when my journey started. I realize now that I was coping. I was doing the best I knew how to do at the time. I look at that person in the "before" picture below and I feel compassion because I know she did her best. I'm able now to let go the "fear" - and trust me, it's a literal fear - of that "real me" monster re-emerging from just below the surface. I can let it go because I realize, this is the real me. It was actually opposite. It was all the hiding I was doing under the emotional eating and the 150 excess pounds that was hiding the "real me." So I have to on some level disagree with those who say this is a process of change. Sure, you have to change your behavioral choices with food and exercise or none of this will work. But for me it was not "becoming a new person" or "changing" who I am as a person. For me it was about simply allowing myself to feel and allowing myself to return home to who I was before I was hurt and who the universe intends me to be. Feel free to check out my blog linked in my signature for more of my journey!

93lbs gone forever!!! Highest weight: 280lbs Current weight: 187lbs Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I feel like crying guys! What an amazing journey of discovering myself and learning how to love me again [emoji173]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this app. I just want to say to everyone post wls, you are successful. Take this journey and make it your own. Be selfish. Put yourself and your health first. Hold yourself accountable and trust the process. Surgery doesn’t make the emotional eating goes away. It doesn’t make it bad to eat those things that aren’t healthy. I fell into that trap of thinking I was exempt and could slide by. But I got myself together and I began to focus on healthy living. I hope this picture inspires you to go forth and become a more healthier you. Take advantage of this new lease on life. Envision how you want your journey to be and make it happen. HW: 399 SW: 385 CW: 168

I can't believe it guys! I really can't! I am seriously crying tears of joy. When I started this process I was 540 pounds (I'm 5'10) and I wore a size 36/38. As a lot of you know I had my panniculectomy on June 5th and they removed 15 pounds of skin. Before my panniculectomy I wore a size 22 bottom and 14/16-18/20 top. I had bought smaller sized pants before my surgery because most of my pants were held up by my extra skin flap. Guys...I fit into a size EIGHTEEN!!! And I look super good!! I'm attaching some before and after pictures for you guys to enjoy! I can't believe this is real life! My stomach is flat!! (Please excuse my one drain in my one picture!)

Well BP FAM , I'm back again with a rant. My husband and I were talking last night and he made comments in how he wished I never had this surgery. He stated that my butt has gone almost away and he felt all unneeded to do was tone up and lose my belly initially. Well, first of all, I don't know how you tone up 242 lbs with BMI 0f 39( which was my initial weight and BMI). So.... he proceeded to run his mouth about all the things I can't do like drink gallons of sweet tea, eat cake and Cookies, go to restaurants and eat appetizer , entree and dessert.. You know all of the healthy stuff that led me to be 242 lbs in the first place. Well, I was really hurt by his comments. My rebuttal was how much healthier I am , I am a lose size 10 as opposed to a tight size 16, I am no longer out of breath with walking 20 feet and I am able to exercise. I like how my body has changed and I told him I love my size. Well, he said "you don't have to be attracted to you, I do and you only needed to lose a little belly but now your butt has gone down tremendously " well needless to say I was pushed to my breaking point. I was like if you don't like what you see, go and find you a thick chic with a donkey's ass. I'm not even at goal yet so I'm gonna lose more and just ticked that he would say that to me which made me feel a lil insecure about my looks. Then I snapped out of it. I have posted pics on my other forums but I will put my last one here as well. Not tooting my own horn but I worked hard for these results . I had surgery in Dec 2016. I am just like dang I can't win for losing .i really thought I was doing good . My pics show one week after surgery on left, middle is 1 1/2 months post op and last pic on right was about 2 weeks ago.

So I'm going to just address the naked king in his new clothes standing in the middle of the room. IMHO, you are both maintaining. You are NOT stalled for 4 months. You are eating the amount of calories along with your surgery that allows you to maintain. But beware. You are both approaching the end of the honeymoon period within the next year or 14 months ish. Then those same calories you're taking in right now, will quite likely cause you to start creeping up on the scale. It's impossible to help you. You're not giving us enough information. I could come to you and ask the same question. But because I track every bite of food, good and bad, I can present samples of my day, I can present an excel spreadsheet showing the relationship of macros in a month to average weight loss. I have a LOT of data to look at and tweak. You don't have any of that, even a food log. How can you possibly know what it takes to lose weight? You've no earthly idea. This is not magic bean surgery. It's WL surgery. It's SCIENCE!!!!! You HAVE to count sh*t. The End. And any RD who says you don't has a butt-load of peeps keeping her in job security who never forking make goal!!!! I read yesterday that this surgery is 40% surgery and 60% you. I don't know if that's the exact ratio, but the reality is, weekly cheat days are just that...weekly events that derail your progress. They can do nothing but create a GHDWL situation (Ground Hog Day Weight Loss=where you gain and lose the same 2lbs over and over and over again until you want to chew your own leg off to see a drop on the scale). Go back to basics. For me, and from a lot of vets, the ideal losing phase is a caloric intake average of about 600-900 cals per day. Maintenance is personal--anywhere from 1000+ depending on so many variables. Go back to no eating or drinking 30-30 Water >64oz per day Vitamins every damn day Exercise (walk) every damn day--don't go cray with working out right now Weigh and measure everything (60-80g protein for the day; <30g of carbs daily; around 30g fat for the day; <10g naturally occurring sugars for the day) Log EVERY bite that goes down your piehole If you're drinking alcohol--stop that sh*t right now!!!! Eat 3 meals a day + 1 snack (no grazing, no crap foods, no slider foods) Eat your meals in a window of 15-30 minutes Protein (dense) first 3oz per meal Veggies next Healthy Fats next If any room leftover then low glycemic fruit/berries (but if you have more room, fill up on fibrous veggies) Accept that you are gonna feel like jack sh*t for about 2 weeks. You're eating carby crap and sugar. What do you really expect. Sadly it WILL be fuc*ing hard! You don't have the excitement of the looming surgery, you've got diet boredom, you've lost faith in your tool, and you're being self-indulgent and going back to bad habits. It's gonna hurt and you WILL have to force yourself to get over that hump. Get mad! Do it! Suffer. And do it. In 4 days it will get easier and each day after. If you do those things, I can ALMOST guarantee you will both start losing again. And remember, you can NEVER out-exercise a bad diet. Oh and get your butts to the counselor (someone who specializes in bariatrics). P.S. And I "get" that you want to have a normal relationship with food. I "get" that you want to eat intuitively like all the other skinny girls in the world. But what you don't realize is that many (maybe most) of those skinny girls are secretely limiting calories, fats, sugars, foods or worse, purging, or anna stuff to "effortlessly" look like they are naturally skinny girls. If we were capable of having normal relationships with food, we would have never made it to the obesity ball in the first place. If we didn't have seriously, and I mean SERIOUSLY broken metabolisms, we would never have become MO. Once you are MO, the "normal" rules of skinnydom no longer apply. You can not take the set of rules for naturally skinny people and apply them to the subset of MO and formerly MO people. You just can't. It's like trying to feed a lion a peanut, or trying to feed an elephant a dead gazelle. It's apples and oranges. DUE to our disease, we will ALWAYS have to be more vigilant, try harder, do more, and live differently if we EVER want to maintain our weight loss.)

I am a little less than three months out and am down 40 lbs from my highest weight!! Only 100 to go! Left pic is at highest weight, right is last weekend. HW 285.8 SW 272.8 CW 246.4 GW 140 Sleeved 11/23

Hi everyone, I was sleeved going on a year ago and am at my desired goal weight 135. Ive lost 75 pounds and am very happy about it. Im a size 8 and am the size I was in high school. Most family and friends give me compliments but some people are starting to tell me now that my face is looking too thin and then they go one to talk about how when they lost weight their faces started to look sickly and sunken in. They have all gained weigh since then. I don't really feel that this is the case for me-sunken face-,and quite frankly i can be very critical of myself on my own. It actually hurts my feelings because there is nothing I can do about it. Its not like im going to gain weight just to make them happy! Im so grateful that i had the opportunity for this surgery and that it was a success. Normally when people tell me about my face looking small, I say "if that's the only repercussion to this surgery- Ill take it.!" Theres a part of me tho that wants to get angry and lash out and critize them and their looks, but I do not. Im grown and know better, and respect others. I honestly don't like people who think its ok to criticize others on things they cannot change. those are not my kind of people. However , some of these people Im very close with and are family. Has anyone else had this problem and what did you do? Here are my before and after pics.