crosswind

You know...if you kept that up you'd be down a hundred pounds in five months...

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

LMD that makes sense. I don't have access to long term data but it's what I would have expected logically. Usually with major weightloss there's a "bounce up" of some percentage, sort of no matter what you do. Rebound weight gain usually has something to do with people riding the bounce way too far for way too long. But with the sleeve you just really can't get those whole pepperoni pizza binges and triple sundaes packed in fast enough-- or that's what I kind of figured.
Otherwise...if there was a danger of a huge regain, why do it?

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

Yesterday I decided not to weigh myself. I had been a little obsessive the past few weeks, kind of obsessive, and sort of endlessly disappointed the way I always am on the scale. You know there is that after-party feeling you get when you've just gotten weight loss surgery and even the loss of 30 pounds in three weeks somehow doesn't satisfy.
It's the death of the fantasy-surgery in which you fly back from Mexico suddenly weighing 135 pounds. I mean it was weight loss *surgery*, right? Medical Magic? Where the hell *is* my flying car, by the way?
I know there are people who give you this advice anyway. The Weight Watchers lady, the Jenny Craig lady and the Diet Center lady were all prone to the same advice and now thinking back on it they might have all been the same lady. Remember her? Skinny, size zero dress with a tiny waist and no sleeves, huge grin on her face and at least en years younger than you perkily dispensing dictums about how one should comport one's self in life. I swear she was always the same girl. And as far as I knew I was listening to a person who was subsisting on styrofoam and black tar heroin.
Jenny Craig was probably the worst diet ripoff I ever encountered -- five hundred dollars "registration" fee and then I would come to get "my food", as they called the minsucule globules of prepackaged crap frozen dinners and "snacks" such as two thumbprint sized, elven lemon butter muffins.
Jenny Craig is owned by Nestle Corporation. They are in the food business. The whole thing is designed to sell a vulnerable, aging and overweight population of females their crap food at an astronomical markup. It's all like this, all of it.
All of it.
What I keep thinking about still is all the lies and nonsense I paid for to try to lose a hundred pounds for the third time and I just knew I never would. I would just *keep buying products* as some sort of offering. Sure I was overweight. But I was doing something. I was spending thousands of dollars a year in extra shit I never used or got satisfaction from because those thousand dollars represented some kind of hope but then....after a while..it's just what you do. You're fat -- this is not a condition but a demographic, a role, a llifestyle. Your market speaks and your ears perk up right away. The salesman in your living room gets you to part with only six payments of 59.99 for some Chinese appliance wih moving parts you are supposed to press or move or kick; or some tape or "plan*.
I will never regret the money I spent on weight loss surgery. What I regret is all that *other* goddamned money.
Tangent, sorry.
I decided to stop weighing myself because I am trying to save myself from the feedback loop I seem get sucked into with the scale. I know it's "stall week". I know I'm going to "stall". I would just rather not hear about it from that appliance. Because what it doesn't know is that I barely have a stomach anymore and I am eating less than six hundred calories a day on average so it's very *likely*, I mean one could *project* that I am losing a shit-ton of weight here.
I'm sticking with that for the time being. For as long as I can stand it. It's very zen of me.
And today was much better than yesterday. Special K went down with joy and peace in its heart; and then around 4 I went to Culvers and got a cup of bacon and potato Soup to dissect and pulverize. It also went down like a sleepy baby and gave me a nice, rounded, carby buzz. I had some juice in my veins today and did not cry, although I did get way too interested in mineral makeup products and at-home microdermabrasion which I had to force myself not to buy. I don't look all that great for a person who just lost thirty pounds. I look tired and kind of sucked-in and gray, which is what I hear happens to people who've . had surgery recently. But I decided it was not time to worry about that yet. It's really unlikely I'm going to look like Heather Locklear tomorrow no matter what I purchase online.
A little more new normal today. And no scale, which to me should be the most normal thing of all.

Hi there:
Just want to follow up here on my own thread from two years ago and say that I did get my sleeve from Dr. Aceves in March of 2011. I had NO complications, no complaints, no problems whatsoever. I did not reach my goal of 155 but I am holding steady in the high 170s and I have done so for about a year.
One thing I had to watch for was supplementing Iron and B12, which got me into trouble at about 18 months. But this had nothing to do with the surgeon or really the sleeve -- I just needed more of it to begin with, anyway.
I do not regret my sleeve, or my choice of surgeon, at all so far.

I think it's a low-cal, low-carb diet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405506

Hi there:
Just want to follow up here on my own thread from two years ago and say that I did get my sleeve from Dr. Aceves in March of 2011. I had NO complications, no complaints, no problems whatsoever. I did not reach my goal of 155 but I am holding steady in the high 170s and I have done so for about a year.
One thing I had to watch for was supplementing Iron and B12, which got me into trouble at about 18 months. But this had nothing to do with the surgeon or really the sleeve -- I just needed more of it to begin with, anyway.
I do not regret my sleeve, or my choice of surgeon, at all so far.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5.
When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing.
I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon.
The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure Protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds.
Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about.
There was no way I was getting a Tummy Tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out.
So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions.
1. Dry skin brushing.
There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an Amazon affiliate link:
http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2
You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is:
Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated.
2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system.
3. Topical exfoliation.
You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers.
4. Copper Peptides.
Skinbiology.com.
After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially.
5. Pilates
When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen.
Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position.
6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations)
The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these.
7. Exercise the wattle.
Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be:
Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day.
8. DMAE for small areas.
DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline.
9. Slow down.
If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds.
10. Lose more weight.
A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem.
11. Time and time again.
If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself?
Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

I went to get a consultation with a surgeon this week. I was asking him for the Mommy Makeover -- first because of my stretched belly that never snapped back after pregnancy, got worse after gaining a hundred pounds and is now hopeless after gaining and losing a hundred pounds again.
I also have a pectus carinatum -- this bone that protrudes from my upper chest. I have hated it my whole life and now this surgeon says that with a lift and implants he could make me look more like a normal woman.
I can't begin to describe what these two things have done to my confidence over the years. When I was a girl it seemed like everyone pretended I didn't have the carinatum but I was always self conscious, I knew I was shaped wrong and the other problem was that no matter how skinny I got I always looked a little bigger than most girls ( I am anyway at almost five ten) because of the circumference of my chest.
Then my belly, which got ruined with my first pregnancy and made me feel terrifically ugly since then -- which was twenty years ago. I didn't think I could ever afford to fix these things about my body; and then I had this sort of moral idea that you just had to tolerate what was ugly about you because everybody had something and if I gave in to surgery it would mean admitting I was unworthy of love the way God made me.
So now I'm 47. I'm at a stable weight. I'll never be fat again, obviously, and I am *now* seriously considering this.
But my first question is -- and I really want your opinions about this because I don't know what to think --
Am I too old to do this?
Does it even matter now?
I mean obviously winning the Miss America pageant is pretty much out. When I talked to my ( fired) therapist, who was seventy, about this, she said, well what's the point? Who's going to see you in a bikini now?
And I sort of thought...well...I don't know....I don't know.
Then I'll think: would this change your opinion of yourself? Would you feel more confident, sexier, would you feel freer?
And i think YES I WOULD.
But maybe it's just stupid vanity at this point, and indicative of misplaced insecurity when I should be working on my inner strength instead of still lamenting over my ruined belly. Is this something that a 47 year old should just give up on at this point, forget having a sex life or wanting to be a little beautiful?
Also, if you've had a tt and a breast lift -- how are your scars? I'm riddled with stretch marks but I don't have any scars on my body and I wonder if the tradeoff really makes a difference.
What say you, sleever board?
Too old for all this?
Or is there still enough time left for this to be worth it?

Yeah, see, the other thing is I'm not scared of complications, pain, drains -- any of that. *I went to Mexico and had my stomach cut out.*. I was prepared to throw up endlessly and have my stomach blow apart six times with complications. I was on an airplane drinking apple juice out of *another country* two days after my stomach was removed. I don't care about that.
I don't even care about the money. I *have* the money. I mean I suppose I should be investing it in something more practical like gold bullion or long term care insurance or some annuity for my old age but....okay, let's face it, we should all be doing that, right? Accepting ourselves completely and working towards not being a burden to society in our old age and all that.
But the thing is one thing people spend A LOT of money on also is the attractiveness of their bodies. I don't think this is an industry that preys on our insecurities anymore, I am starting to think it's a human need, like the need to feel useful and loved. How silly is this really?
I'm in a place in my life where I have to start everything over. I know it's vanity but at the same time it also means I'll be able to walk around knowing I look pretty good to other people. When you have to start over -- that really, really helps, is what I'm thinking.
And I also keep thinking, well, listen, I'll just take care of this one last thing and *then* I'll concentrate on the loveliness of my soul and so forth. Then, like, I *promise* I will.

Yeah, see, the other thing is I'm not scared of complications, pain, drains -- any of that. *I went to Mexico and had my stomach cut out.*. I was prepared to throw up endlessly and have my stomach blow apart six times with complications. I was on an airplane drinking apple juice out of *another country* two days after my stomach was removed. I don't care about that.
I don't even care about the money. I *have* the money. I mean I suppose I should be investing it in something more practical like gold bullion or long term care insurance or some annuity for my old age but....okay, let's face it, we should all be doing that, right? Accepting ourselves completely and working towards not being a burden to society in our old age and all that.
But the thing is one thing people spend A LOT of money on also is the attractiveness of their bodies. I don't think this is an industry that preys on our insecurities anymore, I am starting to think it's a human need, like the need to feel useful and loved. How silly is this really?
I'm in a place in my life where I have to start everything over. I know it's vanity but at the same time it also means I'll be able to walk around knowing I look pretty good to other people. When you have to start over -- that really, really helps, is what I'm thinking.
And I also keep thinking, well, listen, I'll just take care of this one last thing and *then* I'll concentrate on the loveliness of my soul and so forth. Then, like, I *promise* I will.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

Well, that's true, NannieG. I've had a couple similar things happen to me over the past eighteen months. You *can* make the scale start to climb. I can remember two instances where I thought...hmmmm...I seem to be a little puffy. This had more to do with how I felt than what I weighed. I did check on the scale -- four or five pounds up one day. Could be Water weight, could be...not.
So that's just a question of cutting back a little. The thing is, the issues just aren't as extreme as they were. I gain four pounds instead of twenty before I even notice. It's not a huge sacrifice to cut my calories back.
. I imagine that's how normal people do it.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.

I got on the scale today and it said: 179.8.
I'm making this announcement because I want people to know that so far, my year-long experiment with sleeve eating has not been a failure. If you've ever read my posts before, you know that I am not dieting with the sleeve. I am not lowcarbing. My calories are not at starvation level and they have not been since I got my surgery last April. My actually surgery was March 29, but I mostly count it as April 1 just to round everything out.
Okay so the thing is, there is research out there that says that people typically lose sixty percent of their weight in the first year and that's all you get. There is research that says that you will "stretch" your sleeve after six months or so, lose your "honeymoon" with your sleeve, stop losing and get stuck. There are surgeons who say you *have to* be on a lowcarb diet of 800 calories for the rest of your life or you won't lose the weight, and they say that you need to exercise like a demon *while* you're eating that 800 and you have to stay like that forever or you'll get fat again.
I want to tell you that in my experience this is not true.
What I want to tell you is that I got the sleeve because I was 46 and SO FAT -- I weighed 289 -- and I was at the end of my rope. I had dieted before and gotten the weight off only to regain it and the way I did that is pretty much to follow all the instructions above. Eating 800 lowcarb calories a day will get you to goal weight, there is no doubt,but in my opinion that's just no way to live and it's impossible to sustain. It also creates such intense anxiety about eating and your body and your food that it creates a horrible unending complex about fat, and feeding yourself, that the cure is worse than the disease.
I got my surgery in March. I was *severely* depressed and the reason I was depressed primarily was because I WAS SO FAT. I really hated myself. But I decided that the fat was emotional mostly and so what I was going to do was this. I was going to lose weight without dieting by having a surgeon remove eighty five percent of my stomach. And knowing that was taken care of and I had done the most *extreme* thing I could possibly do to solve my weight problem, I was going to let it come off naturally, eat normally and not push myself or punish myself because obsessing over my weight has basically been my career since I was 13 years old.
I had this thought once when I was watching Oprah Winfrey. All that woman ever talked about was her weight. All she ever did was look at the scale. Every time she lost fifty pounds it made the freakin national news and when she gained the weight back she made this weird confession and apology to everyone in the world. So obviously she was obsessed but what I really thought was holy crap, really? Imagine what Oprah could have accomplished with her life if she was not spending seventy five percent of her time obsessing over her pants size. Imagine what *I* could do if this was NO LONGER A PROBLEM for me and when I say NO LONGER A PROBLEM I mean I NEVER HAVE TO THINK OR WORRY ABOUT IT AGAIN.
So really....I was looking for more than weight loss. I wanted to be healed. Completely.
So the weight has come off really slow. In August of last year, I weighed 237. In November, I weighed 222. In January, 209. On April 1, my surgiversary, I weighed about 190. I've gone on vacation, I've drunk numerous glasses of wine, I've eaten cake and Pasta and carbs, I've avoided cardio really for the most part -- but my calories are *naturally* way under what I would need to sustain these weights and so....slowly....it's coming off. And it's still coming off and it has now been *over* a year.
I think I'm going to hit goal eventually. This will be without dieting, without worrying about the "honeymoon period", and without forcing myself to do ninety hours of cardio a week. And when I get there there's not going to be some freakout/rebound where I now have to figure out what "maintenance" is and be on the verge of shooting myself in the head because I had a piece of birthday cake or a piece of gum with sugar in it.
So this is what I want to say:
If you're just starting this project ( I refuse to say journey -- UGH) then realize that patience is required. Plan on a year *or more*. Even if you believe the honeymoon thing you're not going to drop all your weight *inside* your "honeymoon" so think about it...what are you going to do when it's over? Because you're still going to have to lose a lot of weight and you're going to have to sustain whatever you're doing for the rest of your life. It's frustrating that such an extreme solution is not instantaneous, but it is NOT, so prepare yourself. You're going to be working on this for at least a year. A year is a long time and you can't just not be alive for a year while you get thin. I didn't have that year to waste and you don't either.
If you're just starting this project, consider what you want your life to be as a thin person. Not a "formerly fat" person. Not a constantly dieting, obsessed person. This is what you'll be free of when it's done, so prepare by starting now and living your life.
And finally: Prepare for the idea that you may not lose all your weight in the first year. But remember this post by me and realize that you *will* very likely get exactly where you are going by the end of the second one and forget all that stuff about first years and honeymoons. This is not magic, it's science. It's mechanics. The mechanism that uses energy that is your body will continuously be operating at a deficit *even after* the honeymoon, *even after* the first year, and that means you *will* get there. You *have to*.
This requires patience, and then more patience. That's really the *only* think you need going into this. The rest, I really promise you -- will take care of itself.