SKCUNNINGHAM

PNW - your tenacity is incredible. Congratulations on winning the battle - twice! It took me a year to jump through all the hoops and get my approval. It only makes the success sweeter somehow. Good luck with your sleeve! With the focus you have shown on getting your approval, I know you will ROCK your sleeve once you get it.

You look beautiful in your picture. Congratulations on a successful 1st year. You are AMAZING!

Costco sells a ready to drink chocolate shake that is reasonably priced and tastes almost exactly like the EAS chocolate.

I am still sitting at 10 pounds away from my goal. The goal was kind of arbitrary on my part. I may stop when I lose another 5. I haven't lost any for a month - with the holidays, a 3 day trip to a family funeral out of state, and now a really bad cold/respiratory infection - I haven't been my most diligent. My goal is really the same as you. I want to wear 10/12's and medium tops. I am 5'4" and that bone size test said I had small bones. My bone structure isn't really small - like some members of the family - but it is on the smallish side I guess. I am broad shouldered, not very buxom (a C cup) am pretty straight up and down from the waist to the hips, and have a flat butt. I said I wanted to weigh 135 dressed on the doctor's scale - right now I would weigh right around 145 on his scale. If I don't lose any more before my annual date (2/22) and I have been diligent with my food and exercising six days a week, I may come to the conclusion I need to stop where I am. I know I would lose the 5-10 pounds I want to lose if I could get rid of the excess skin around my waist, belly and bat-wings. Are you considering plastic surgery at all?

I had some of the same goals already listed - fit into an airplane seat when I traveled - be able to shop for nicer looking clothes. Here are some that were mine that haven't been listed yet: - Weigh less than my husband - DONE - Wear my wedding rings again - DONE - they are now loose! - Be smaller than my husband's ex wife the next time I had to see her at an extended family gathering. - DONE - Be able to select from a wide variety of positions to put my body in with ease and grace - I'm really enjoying this one - Not be the "Fat" sister at the Christmas celebration - DONE - Have formal portraits taken with my husband, son, daughter in law and two grandkids - DONE - Not have anything in my closet that is too little to wear - Almost there - still have a few to go - Get rid of any clothes that don't look terrific on me - I am no longer settling for "it fits, it's OK" - this is a continuous process during the weight loss phase for me. I need to do another sweep of my closet and get rid of more things. I want to live in two closets - one in season, one out of season. No more clothes of every size squirrelled away all over the place.

Joiebean - you are doing wonderful! And what a great thing to be able to do with your father - he sounds like an award-winning dad. Good luck as you move through the pureed stage. I did really soft chicken salad and tuna salads, thick soups, yogurts, cottage cheese and applesauce and protein smoothies. "Real" food is right around the corner for you!

Ouroborous, I am proud of you, and happy for you. You have made an impressive journey - I'm glad you are enjoying yourself now. You have to tell that critic that lives inside your head to take a hike - or he needs to learn a new line of chatter - the old stuff doesn't work any more. I hope you enjoy all of the female attention and are lucky to find a woman that deserves you.

Five weeks was way too early for me to eat beef - I waited until 3 months. I tried it about the time you did, and had the same result. After 3 months, I loved a pot roast cooked in the crock pot. Mindless eating (even the "right" foods) is a trap I still have to avoid at 11 months. It is my life-long solace - my "crutch". I have to be vigilent to keep from slipping into that trap.

I agree that the emotional part of this journey is as hard as any other part of it. It is sad to see relationships change just because we are now smaller than we were. I can see a friendship changing if it was only based on going out to eat mass quantitities of food together - but a well rounded friendship SHOULDN'T change - it's just sad to find out the basis of the friendship wasn't as rock-solid as you thought.

I, too, am always cold. I have invested in sweaters, hoodies, long underwear, camisoles, and warm houseshoes. No more walking around my house barefoot!

I bought several bottles of different flavored protein drinks - most of which I thought tasted nasty. I passed my unopned ones on to a friend who was having surgery. I did the same with a tub of protein and all of the chicken soup protein packets that I had ordered. I should have ordered one of those sample packets before I ordered anything in quantity. The other thing I would do different is do more work on my head in addition to making my food choices. The food stuff was easy for me early on. But now that I am normal and eating mostly how I will eat from now on, I realize the psychological stuff that led me to have a bad relationship with food is still there. I don't do the bad behaviors (mostly) but it's like an alcoholic taking it one day at a time. I wish I had started working on this stuff 6-10 months ago.

My challenge to myself is Zumba six days a week (Monday - Saturday) and use my elliptical six days a week. So far last week I did the elliptical 5 days and each morning this week. I have Zumba'd Saturday, Monday and Tuesday so far. The exercise is helping me towards getting these last 10 pounds to go, and is firming ups the jiggles and sags. It is also helping relieve the stress of looking for a job!

These past two weeks, I have really been focusing on exercise. I have an elliptical and have worked up to 23 minutes continuously in the mornings. I really had "jelly legs" starting out when I would hit the 5 minute mark. Once I get to 30 minutes continuously, then I am going to start doing the challenging programs on it, rather than a continuous level of resistence. I am also doing ZUMBA in the evenings and Saturday mornings. I have gone Saturday, Monday and Tuesday so far this week (6 X per week is available). I am currently doing a job search - so the exercise helps me in two ways. It is getting me closer to my goal (those last 10 pounds) and it is helping me with my nerves / mood swings due to looking for work. Coops, I wish I had a boxing gym close - I used to do a boxing routine with a trainer and loved it. Sounds like you are a fierce competitor with boxing! Way to go!

Bellabr - I couldn't eat beef or pork until at least 3 months after surgery - and it has to be cooked moistly (think crock pot) or ground meat cooked with mositure (meat loaf). I could do chicken, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt and SEAFOOD. Shrimp and scallops and tuna and salmon are my saviors.

Soon you will begin your pre-op diet (I assume). You have probably said goodby to everything by now, right? Plot out a schedule between then and the start of your pre-surgery diet - after this day no more fried food, after this day no more complex carbs. It will give you something to focus on and will make it seem like you are already starting your new life. Good Luck. My surgery was on 2/22 last year. Best day of the entire year for me.

Pych yourself up! THIS IS HARD, BECAUSE THE BENEFITS YOU WILL RECEIVE ARE SO GREAT! You need to have a very clear vision of the you you want to be when you get to your goal. What are you going to look like? What will you wear? What will you be able to do then that you can't do now? Make the "future you" so real to yourself that it is all you can think about. To get to that person is going to take some serious, hard work. If you want that "future you" bad enough, the hard work will seem easier and you will get through it. Weight loss surgery is not for the feint of heart or the weak-willed. It is not (contrary to what some non-WLS people say) the EASY way to become a smaller, healthier you. Good Luck. Sharon

I agree with Forensikchic - don't put a paid for surgery off on the possibility of having kids with your mythical perhaps next husband. We obese people have put our lives on hold so often, waiting for that perfect future. Well, there is no guarantee that tomorrow will come - perfect or not. Make today as wonderful as you can. Carpe Diem! Good Luck with the marriage and with your decision.

Like Oregondaisy, I stopped getting those notification emails long before the outage - I don't know why. I have a verizon.net account - and my emails from here do not show up in the SPAM folder. If you could tell me why it no longer works, I would appreciate it.

This is what I do Breakfast at 6 am (proein smoothie or high Protein oatmeal) Snack around 10 (baby bell cheese or a piece of beef Jerky with maybe a few raw veggies - carrots or snap peas) lunch around 12:30 or 1. (protein and veggies) Snack around 4 (same as morning snack) dinner around 6:30 or 7 (protein and veggies) If you still need protein, have an after dinner snack of sugar free pudding cup with a little Protein powder stirred in - or a little greek yogurt with some protein powder stirred in.

What will happen after you finish your six month diet and any other requirements your insurance plan requires is this - your surgeon's insurance coordinator will file all the paperwork with your insurance carrier. You will get a letter back from the insurance carrier either turning your request down or approving you for surgery. Once you have the approval letter, you will schedule an appointment with the surgeon. At that time, you will schedule your date. I got my approval letter on January 2nd. I had my surgeon's appointment about 10 days later. I scheduled my surgery for 2/22/11. It could have been sooner, but I was scheduling for my convenience at work. You will need enough time between your appointment with the surgeon and your surgery date to complete any kind of pre-surgery diet that he/she will require of you. Good Luck!

It will get better the longer you are out from surgery. Any kind of surgery / anasthesia is upsetting to the "poop" system. Compound that witht the radical change in our diets pre-surgery to post-surgery, and no wonder our systems are out of whack for a while. The more liquid and soft your diet going into your system is, the softer and looser your stools will be coming out. And I agree with jhwkgr's doctor - I had a diarrea / constipation thing going on for a while. Then I had to figure out what my system would take to be regular after I got onto regular food. (Plenty of liquids, Benefiber and Miralax). I know at 18 days out, I had to be very cautious about passing gas (or what I THOUGHT was gas). Good Luck - hope things settle down for your soon. Sharon

You look great in those jeans! You are going to be TINY when you get to goal. Make sure and keep a pair of jeans from when you started out, so you can compare them to the size you get to be when you are at goal. Great job working your sleeve - keep up the good work. Sharon

Here is an article I saw on MSN this morning. Doesn't surprise me. It would be interesting if some university would do a study of formerly obese WLS patients to see what our CD36 gene profiles were. I am going to see if I can find the entire study and read it. Sharon Your Taste for Fat May Reside in Your Genes Individual sensitivity might influence what and how much you eat, small study suggests -- Robert Preidt MONDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Variations in a certain gene can make people more or less sensitive to the taste of fat and affect their risk for obesity, researchers report. The team at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied 21 obese people and found that those with a particular variant of the CD36 gene were far more sensitive to the taste of fat. This is the first study to identify a receptor on human tongues that can taste fat. The finding was recently published in the Journal of Lipid Research. "The ultimate goal is to understand how our perception of fat in food might influence what foods we eat and the quantities of fat that we consume," senior investigator Nada Abumrad, a professor of medicine and obesity research, said in a university news release. "In this study, we've found one potential reason for individual variability in how people sense fat. It may be, as was shown recently, that as people consume more fat, they become less sensitive to it, requiring more intake for the same satisfaction. What we will need to determine in the future is whether our ability to detect fat in foods influences our fat intake, which clearly would have an impact on obesity," Abumrad noted. Previous research found that rats and mice without a working CD36 gene no longer had a preference for fatty foods and that animals that can't make the CD36 Protein have difficulty digesting fat. It's believed that up to 20 percent of people have a CD36 gene variant that's associated with making significantly less CD36 protein. This, in turn, could make them less sensitive to the presence of fat in food, the researchers said. SOURCE: Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, news release, Jan. 12, 2012 http://health.msn.com/healthy-living/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100283382

Do a search here on the forum and look for LilMissDiva's post on how to get back on track. It is her version of the 5 day pouch test. It has worked for a lot of people.

It isn't wierd to be having dreams related to your surgery or your sleeve. Perfectly normal. A lot of dieters (sleeve or not) dream of food, or dream that they are "breaking" their diet. You are having the sleeve variation of the dreams. Good Luck. Sharon