Lmom1980

Hey Jenn, I love the "wogging" My sister and I call it "jalking" I just wanted to say I am still working on my 5k goal. I can SLOW jog a mile outside now. I have a way to go, but I have come a long way from where I started. I walk 3 miles on Fridays. Jog 1 mile and walk 1 mile on Wednesdays, and the rest of the time I just train on the treadmill or eliptical. It feel so good to be really active again! Such a big change from last summer when I was Fat, Pregnant, and miserable. I did read about the couch to 5k. I took a couple ideas from it, but I am kind of doing my own thing. PS I can do a mile in under 12 minutes now. FINALLY!

I am having a hard time getting more then 40-50 ounces of water in a day. Do you think the 8 oz of skim milk I have everyday counts as a water serving?

I'm loving my plication today! Got full really fast on small amounts. still at about 1100 calories today. But I feel great!

Thanks for posting. It is nice to hear some posative experiences. It sounds like you are doing great. Keep us posted!

This is very interesting, Thanks for sharing. I wish you a very good and speed recovery. I DO NOT TRUST THE OCC. THEY DELETE POSTS ON THEIR FORUM ALL THE TIME. THEY DELETED MANY OF MY POSTS. I ALSO KNOW FOR A FACT THAT THEIR SURGERY NUMBERS THEY QUOTE PEOPLE ARE A LIE. Every surgery has complications. It can happen to any patient and any Doctor. When I posted in the OCC forum about complications that one of Dr. Watkins patients had, they deleted it. When I asked about it, all Lori would do was say how this only happened because the Dr. did it wrong and he had not had proper training, blah blah blah. I don't doubt that Dr. Ortiz is a good Doctor, but I find Lori, and the other people who run their forum to be very unprofessional. They like to say that they don't have any complications and all of their patients are doing great. I started to ask them how they would know that since they don't have any follow up care at all. weird!

Yesterday was my 3 month post plication date. I have lost 33 pounds since the day of surgery. 16 pounds the first month, 8 pounds the second month, and 9 pounds the third month. I was hoping for faster weight loss in the first three months, but I am feeling pretty good about everything. I feel restriction, but I have to be careful not to eat snack foods like chex mix. I can eat A LOT of that stuff and not feel full at all. If I can keep loosing at least 8 pounds a month until I hit goal, then I will be happy. I am still working on my 5k goal. going a little further each week. thanks for reading.

I don't want to seem negative, but from what I have heard on the OCC (Dr. Ortiz) forum, they are now suggesting the traditional sleeve gastrectomy for former band patients. I read that plication is best as a first time WLS, or band with plication. They have found that people that are used to the hard stop feeling that they got from the band, are not satisfied with the full feeling that plication gives you. If you cant have the band with plication, I think I would just revise to the VSG. plication surgery is the first and only WLS I will have. Overall I am happy, but there are times when I wish I just had the VSG.

I just wanted to let my plication friends know that I am training for a 5-k that I will do in September. I want to be able the jog the entire thing. NO WALKING! I don't care about my time as much as just being able to jog it. I have been able to jog on the treadmill 1.5 miles, then walk the rest, but it is so much harder outside! I just wanted to post this to give myself some accountability. I can't give up now since I am posted my goals for all to see. I also think it is good for my mental health to have health and fitness goals that are not related to my weight/scale. KWIM? What are some of your non-scale goals?

I have been taking multi-vitamins daily for about 10 years, so it's nothing new. My Mom swears that her flush free niacin has helped her drop weight, so I started to take that too.

Weight loss helps with diabetes, no matter what you do to achieve that weight loss. Even dropping 10% of your body weight has been known to improve your health..

Everything in this article was familiar to me exept he part about the "greater curvature folds get smaller over time." What does that mean? I hope it means that my stomach will get even smaller! I get so nervous about it stretching out.

I don't really notice my scars because they are so small and they blend in with my stretch marks. Booo! I'll never wear a bikini no matter how flat my tummy gets.

good for you! Keep up the good work!

Hey R, Yes, It would not have cost much more to stay here and have my surgery with Cottam. I don't regret going to Watkins though. It was a good experience. If Dr. Cottam would have been faster to respond, I probably would have went with him. I found it very aggrivating that it took 3 weeks just to get a phone call. It also seemed like they were going to make me jump through hoops even though I was a self pay patient. I didn't travel all the way to Ohio just to save $600-$700, I am just an impatient person, and I appriciated Dr. Watkins and his staff being so prompt. I do think Cottam is a great Doctor, and I hope he will see me if I have any needs in the future. I did get an email from Dr. Watkins wife. He has continued researching and meeting with other Dr.'s about GPS. He is going to continue doing GPS, but making the upper part of the stomach plication a bit loser to help prevent any blood flow issues. (at least that is what I understood from the email.) Thanks for your posative words! We are moving in the right direction, and it feels good!

I didn't mean to sound so negative in my post. I am happy with my plication so far. I do feel restriction. Somedays I feel it more then others. Before If I ate around 1200 calories a day, I would feel so deprived. Now it feels normal to me. It is just my personality to be worried/skeptical about my choices. I do wish I could lose at a faster pace, but I don't have any regrets yet.

Hi, So we have our own Forum now. I guess that is cool, but it is a shame that people can not access all the old posts and info about GPS. I had my GPS on March 9th by Dr. Watkins at Cincyweightloss in Ohio. He is a great Doctor. I hardly had any pain at all, and my incisions are not even noticable. I am still not sure if I made the right choice with plication. I wont know until about 1-2 years from now. I will not be confident with my choice until I have hit my goal of loosing 110 #'s (hopefully in just over a years time) and feel confident that I can maintain that weight loss. I have lost about 23 pounds since the day of my surgery. I do feel restriction, and I eat a lot less. Overall I am happy, but sometimes when I feel like I have been able to eat too much, I do question myself, and wonder if I should have got the Sleeve. I will let you know in about 2 years if it was all worth it. by the time I paid for my plication, hotel, car rental, and airfare the cost was about $11,500. If I don't reach my goal weight in a reasonable time, and keep the weight off, I will be beside myself with disapointment, grief, and guilt.

Very cool! I want to do a 5K too. I can do it on the treadmill, but I want to get a little faster and brave enough to run/jog it in public. Thanks for sharing!

You are doing great! I think you should be happy with 1-2 pounds a week @ the weight you are at.

I would check out Dr. Corvala in TJ Mex. Dr. Cottam in SLC Utah told me that Corvala is the only Mexican Doctor I should consider. He is very experienced and doesn't use the "car salemen-ish tactics" that I felt the OCC uses. Also, check out Dr. Cottam. He uses the endo-flip. I think his price is 12K.

Stay strong and don't be too hard on yourself. You will do fine.

Hey, Thanks for the kind replies. I also wanted to add that I am getting in some cardio, and I usually have anywhere from 900-1200 calories a day. I am finding it hard to get my Water in since I don't drink with my meals or for an hour after my meals. I also find it weird that sometimes I feel like I can eat regular portions, and other times I have about three bites and I am stuffed.

Yesterday was my one month "surgiversary" I am down 16 pounds since surgery and 27 pounds since pre-op diet. I was hoping for a little more weight loss in the first month, but I feel good. I get full on small amounts of food, and don't have the junk food cravings that I did before. I never had any pain or nausea to speak of. My incisions are tiny, and I don't notice them at all. I don't have any heart-burn. I attribute this to Dr. Watkins fixing my hiatal hernia. I am a happy girl, and I am hopeful that I can reach my goal of dropping 100 pounds in one year. I think I lost about the same amount of weght when I was on weight watchers, but the difference is that I am going to actually keep it off this time!

:rolleyes:no kidding.....you can't even mention that there are known VSG risks and problems without someone giving her 2 cents. If a surgery nearly killed me, I am pretty sure the normal reaction would be to think "what the hell have I done." Oh no....we can't say ANYTHING negative about VSG though. Geeesh, that's a little ridiculous!

Nobody who decides on plication plans on getting it reversed. Obviously you would gain weight if you reversed it. The benefit is that if you decided on another WLS in the future, or needed a bigger stomach for some strange reason, you have not burned any bridges. No doctor or patient does plication thinking that they will reverse it though. I am not 100% sure that I made the right choice with plication as I am only 2 weeks out. I don't have any regrets yet though. I bet people with VSG who have had leaks or absorbtion issues are not 100% sure that they made the right choice either. It is a hard choice with pros and cons for both. Best of luck on your VSG!

You will do fine! I know is is scary though. I think I got about two hours sleep the night before. I was in the hotel room dry heaving all morning because of my nerves. I was so happy when they called and moved the surgery time up just so I could get it over with. One of the nurses told me that when I was coming out of the deep sleep, I was saying "Can't you just let me sleep a little longer." Ha Ha! Keep us posted when you are feeling up to it.