Rootman

Generally as you lose wight the amount of alcahol that is required to make you drunk will DECREASE becasue your body mass is less. There is also the fact that possibly more raw alcahol is being dumped into your intestinal tract becasue the stgomach holds less.

Kewl! Keep up the good work, it only get's better from here!

Either that or simply create a bookmark in your browser.

DOH!

As stated but remember Protein is still CALORIES, and too many of them will not allow you to lose as much weight. The liver is principly involven in matabolizing protein and it can only handle so much at a time so so when presented with WAY too much it will just not process it and allow it to be passed in the waste.

Well I'm going on 2 years out and the initial pain is fading into the distant memory. I guess they had me pretty doped up at first, the overwhelming feeling I had was just a crappy feeling - something I almost always feel post anesthesia. I don't really remember any real pain at all other than just feeling crappy, drug out, tired and nauseas. I had my surgery Monday and was back to work Thursday so it wasn't that bad - and believe me I'm a wuss when it comes to pain and discomfort. And NO I don't recommend going back to work so fast, I had no vacation or sick days I could schedule for the weeks immediately following the operation because of everyone else squeezing their own vacation into that same December. I had just enough money on medical expenses that I needed to have tis done in December to take advantage of the tax break - something I seldom have any more - so waiting till January or later was not feasible.

You can never be on TOP of the world if you allow the weight of the world to rest on your shoulders.

Hi Chris and welcome! Just jump in and ask questions and contribute - all are welcome.

Congrats! It's won't be long till the 20's are baggy too!

This has come up a lot before and I say IMHO that the "no straw" rule is total BS. The fact is that when you suck on a straw you suck the Fluid up the straw and into your mouth where you typically exhale through your nose and minimize the air in the liquid and then swallow, so I would say there is LESS chance of getting more air with a straw then with drinking with a regular cup. If you chug the liquid through a straw then MAYBE it's not for you. Do what you want, I started out drinking through straws and have been for the almost 2 years post-op with no issues.

While I swim I appreciate the silence. When I bike I like the sound of nature, my day is so full of sound from work I appreciate the time of quiet.

Most likely it's ketosis. If you know about cars think of it as an engine that is burning oil producing a cloud of smoke out the tail pipe. As we start to burn a lot of fat rather then the more clean burning calories from food our body goes into ketosis. The "dirty" fat that we burn produces "smoke" and we taste it in our "exhaust" - our mouth. It slacks off after a while - how long depends on your caloric intake and metabolic rate and needs - so anywhere from weeks to months. Bad taste, bad breath and stinky sweat are some of the symptoms. Here's some more info about it at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis

Mine too at about 10 months and has taken a few leaps since then too. Sometimes I really scare myself. For lunch last Saturday we got two of those new Arby's BLT's and I all of mine along with 1/3 of a large curly fry order and a cherry turnover. I was shocked at how much I ate. That morning I didn't have anything more than a Kashi bar for Breakfast and had just ridden my bike 20 miles so I was hungry. I ate a bag of popcorn for dinner too so the whole and was good AND bad

Yeah, wait a few months. For most popcorn is a slider - that is it slides right through the sleeve and if you don't watch it you can eat a LOT of eat and never get full.

I was on a roller coaster ride too, so it affects the guys as well. As pointed out, stored hormones in the fat, caloric limitations and ketosis all effect your blood chemistry and therefore your brain and mood. On top of that I was on testosterone replacement therapy and had to cut WAY WAY back on my dosage as I got smaller. It too contributed to my frustration level. If it's real bad go see the doc, perhaps an RX is in order. It DOES seem to level out but so far at closing in on 2 years it hasn't totally evened out for me.

Same here, at about 10 months and 160 pounds gone it slowed way down and stopped at one year. I got down to 202, pretty far from my original goal of (pretty unreasonable in retrospect) 180 and my second (more reasonable) of 190. I got down to 202. Since then I have put on about 7 pounds back up to 209. I suspect MOST of it is muscle as my clothes fit as good or better than they did at 202. I've been biking and swimming a LOT this year.

No, just pedantic, I really like to KNOW things rather than just guess or assume them.

Wow, I'm with you there. 2 years ago I was picturing being showed and buried in sweats because I would be too fat to wear anything else I had in the closet. I also imagined the undertaker having to postpone the funeral while he special order a "fat" casket to fit me. It's funny the stupid stuff your mind thinks up when pressed with something like this.

Yep, nearly all of us were there too. At one point I could not imagine life without, as you say, filtering all my life's experiences through my "fat me" filter. I just couldn't fathom exactly WHAT I would even think about. I'd look in the mirror "Gee, I'm fat", Try and sit somewhere "Geez, my fat ass barely fits in this seat". See someone I thought was slim and fit "Man, I wish I were even CLOSE to that". It's a never ending conversation with yourself because of being fat. In a few months I'll be two years out. I never reached goal but I am far, far closer than I have been in my entire adult life. I now see things totally different. I now think "I CAN sit there", "I CAN do that now", look in the mirror and see a thinner individual staring back - I'm still surprised at times by my new "me". And oh, by the way, those people whom I admired before? Turns out most of them are a bit tubby too, they just didn't have mounds of fat suffocating them the way I did and in my "fat" eyes they looked thin back then. Make no bones about it, it's a big change PHYSICALLY and PSYCHOLOGICALLY.

Guys, the Bougie is a tool used by the surgeon. Its a tube shaped long flexible rod that's pushed down your throat and into the stomach and through the pyloric valve into the very first part of the intestines. It is held there through the stapling procedure in order to provide a guide for the surgeon to use - and also to prevent them from accidentally stapling the stomach closed. Because once the surgeon pulls the trigger on the stapler the excess is cut off and it's PERMANENTLY SEVERED. YES, the difference in sizes is slight, but the surgeon is not pushing the staple tool up tight up against the Bougie inside the stomach, they generally just follow a line from where the stomach drops away from the pyloric junction to where it joins back to the esophagus. The Bougie sits there loosely, not jammed tight against the staple line. So NO the Bougie sizes don't mean a whole lot as the sleeve is formed so loosely. When all is said and done the difference in capacity of a sleeve loosely formed around a 32F isn't much smaller than around a 40F, maybe as previously stated a few teaspoons difference in capacity. You are more at to get a smaller sleeve by just being genetically disposed to having a shorter stomach than by the Bougie size and even then we're talking teaspoons size difference not cubic inches difference.

Luck!

Thanks guys, you really made my day reading the posts. I guess cause they seem so much more logical with he straight tube rather than the angled or curved tube. I see MANY women on the trails riding "boys" bikes. Since I seldom see a rider in a skirt the need for the "cutout" isn't really there any more. Every place I've seen has mostly men's styles and a few token womens bikes for the die hards that just insist on having a "real" girls bike. I didn't look real hard but I looked at a few shops. You can get a decent bike for a few hundred $$$, you can get a GOOD bike for about $500 and there is no real reason to get a real high priced bike unless you're really going gung ho. I paid $430 for mine, it's a Giant brand ( http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us/ ) and I got it at my local Lewis and Clark Outfitter. Get something that has a suspension on the front forks and a suspended seat post (piston in the tube). I've been told The rear suspension bikes with a big shock on the rear don't really work that well and are more of a gimmick and they waste a lot of energy by bobbing up and down as you peddle. I don't know for sure but that's what I was told by a few people who really appear to know bikes. I'd go to a bike shop and be measured for a bike rather than just guess and pull one off a rack that looks "right" at a department store. Generally the more speeds the more the flexibility, you don't go through all of them in sequence and generally keep the front derailer in 2nd or 3rd unless really climbing a hill. Everyone has their own cadence (peddles pumps a minute) that just seems to work out and is most comfortable and the more gears it has the more likely you are to stay in that sweet spot and have the most energy hit the ground per revolution. Mine is a 21 speed. 6, 7 or 14 are popular. There are a lot of different types, the type I got was called a hybrid, not mountain bike not comfort street bike but a combo. It has a large diameter aluminum tube frame for strength and lightness and larger tires for grip and comfort. Lightness is key as the more the bike weighs the more energy it takes to just move the itself, let alone your body too. Really expensive ones are made out of carbon Fiber and cost thousands and have narrow little tires and hard seats. Not advisable unless you are really skinny and plan on putting hundreds of miles a week on the bike. If you're really not sure about biking being for you get a cheap department store bike and try it for a while. If you really get in to it then sell / give / donate it away and go get a better one. I'll try and get a pic tonight.

Well congrats on the loss, more will come and getting your head back on straight certainly makes things easier - don't ask me how I know

Yes, as stated in earlier posts, wait about 2 or 3 weeks for the incisions to heal before undertaking ANY exercise, it's important to let the incisions heal from the inside out to insure you don't have any weak spots or ruptures. Then have at it. I swim 3 or 4 days a week about 2 miles a day, then go home and bike for 10 miles on the same day. Last weekend I was celebrating getting a new bike and biked over 60 miles. It's amazing what taking a ton of fat off your body will do

I splurged and bought a new bike on Saturday, got a lighter weight 21 speed aluminum frame bike that is a LOT easier to peddle than my old steel frame 6 speed Schwinn. 2 years ago I used to bust out in a sweat in making the effort of getting up and going to the bathroom, now I'm peddling a bike for 10 - 30+ miles down our city trails with not much more effort. I'd do more in the evenings but the durn sun sets too fast for me! I leave work and hit the city pool, swim for an hour (120 25 yd laps) and then head home, grab a bite and hit the trails on the bike. If anyone asks 'Was weight loss surgery worth it?" The answer is YES , it was worth it. It was worth the miserable pre-op diet, it was worth all the money (I'm self pay), it was worth the misery post-op, it was worth the hair loss, it was even worth the kidney stones I got from too much Calcium and not enough Water, it's worth the saggy skin and other weird things. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. If you're reading this and haven't done it yet or are just considering it, my advice is to DO IT. Believe me, it's worth it. Edit: 9-3-12 So finally a pic, not very flattering but it'll have to do: