CowgirlJane

I am not one that believes counseling solves everything but I think it would be helpful. It is a big decision and it does impact your life. I worry about thinks like your resistance to hydration (water)because post op that is a big issue. I was banded and then revised to sleeve. Band really impacted my life due to the vomiting and food restrictions. Sleeve I eat very normally (petite portions but I can eat all foods) however I avoided social restaurant events probably the first year post op. I am twice your age and had the patience for that. I was obese pretty much my whole life. In my mid 20s I weighed in the 200# range and I remember how awful I felt about my body and looks. Trust me, you judge yourself way harder than others do. U are more than your dress size or looks and counseling might help you see that.

I had heard good things about it but as a single woman I wanted feedback from someone my age range. It was very very negative. Like deal breaker for the two guy friends I asked. Sexist reasons but it gave me pause.

I was thinking about getting something else pierced on my 50th. I asked a male friend what he would think of that in a "new relationship partner" and got very negative feedback so I didn't do it

It is thought that smaller sleeves might increase certain risks. I dunno... mine was a 38 ...I lost a lot kf weight and been keeping it off 2 years now. I think that overtime your efforts become very important regardless of your bougie size.

I find if I just go back to basics (no need to go liquid diet) and eat clean my hunger drops and suddenly my sleeve is "small" again. It isn't really smaller. ..it is simply the sensation of restriction is stronger when you eat a certain way.

Queen I had much worse skin and so it was very worth it but reconstructive plastics is no freaking joke. I planned it for mid October so I wouldn't lose a riding season. The pain was not the issue and I had no complications but recovery was slow, I was hunched over for weeks and yea, it was hard. No one can decide for you, but the way you describe it...probably not worth it. For me, I'd do it again but glad I don't need to.

I am not sure if this will ring true for you - but i will share my experience. None of this came out preop because my deep emotions were largely drowned by the obesity. That lethargy and physical misery of being morbidly obese was a predominant "feeling" and alot of my other needs and feelings were not really clear and known. when I no longer carried all that "weight" - both literally and figuratively - suddenly I had emotional space for other topics. Like, damn, am I living the life I want? Guess what - I wasn't! I didn't feel like I had much of a choice before, but now I do. I would go so far as to say I didn't even REALIZE how much I was missing out... how much the years of obesity robbed from me. About 8 months or so post op, I went through the doldrums. My weight loss slowed alot too. I had to look deep inside and ask myself if i was content losing ALOT of weight, but still looked kinda matronly, or if I was going for "trim". I had to think hard about some of that - all irrelevant when I was super morbidly obese, but was a big issue during the journey. I have gone through a major transformation, and much like an iceberg, the part you can see is really just the tip of it.

My advice - wait. Losing weight is such an emotional demanding process Divorce is also such an emotional, demanding and at times devastating process. I personally think spending some time just being "you" might not be a bad thing. I am 3 years post op and eat petitely but nobody guesses i had WLS. Skinny chicks eat small... and nobody cares.

3 years out... very happy and maintaining at less than half my former size. My life is so much fuller and richer! I do have more tummy upsets, but nothing that is a big problem. And lets be honest I felt like total crap when I was super morbidly obese, so this is nothing.

I feel the need to correct statements that are often made and are not correct according to the FIVE plastic surgeons i consulted with. While staying hydrated, working out, using lotions and dancing a rain dance are probably all good things to do - they don't shrink extra skin. What happens is your skin gets stretched to the point where it is damaged and it just cannot recover. The degree to which that happens depends on many many factors - age, amount of weight lost, genetics, how many times you have lost and regained... luck? So, considering my lifetime high weight was in the 350 ballpark, and I currently weigh in the 150s ballpark, it is amazing to me that i didn't look like a wrinkly prune everywhere! My face has recovered shockingly well. I carried the bulk of my weight in my midsection and you can be sure my extra skin there was pretty bad. since I did have good health and very toned under that loose skin, once I had procedures done to remove it, I got GREAT results. Before I had plastics, I looked fine in clothes, the use of spanx etc really helped. Still, I love that I did it, I am so proud of my body... I feel great about it. I warn anyone though that you need to get your head on straight about this. You will be trading extra skin for scars - I wear them like badges of honor, but if you have bad self esteem you will despise them. I am single and I completely understand the low self image issue but trust me, plastics will NOT fix that.. might even make it worse. Once you have one thing fixed, suddenly everything else looks really bad. Example, for me, I have extra skin on my back/sides. I am NOT getting an upper body lift which is the only fix for that. Since my arms, lower body, breasts are awesome... it is easy to look at that skin and imagine it is the ugliest thing on the planet. Truth is, as long as I wear my bras a little loose, i can hide that skin and wear very form fitting clothes no problem!

I was an outpatient at a surgical center very near a hospital... like, same parking lot. The theory is that they have fewer issues with resistant bacteria, don't have sick people there and their surgical team just does bariatric surgeries all day so are very "tuned". I had sleep apnea so they had me and two other ladies spend the night at the surgical center. It was a very good experience, i hate hospitals so this was terrific for me. I felt safe and had no problems. The care was outstanding and very personalized to a bariatric patient.

Every surgeon has their own recommendations, i just know that I could not handle milk in the early months. Even now, I am intolerant of it to some extent which was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was an ice cream junkie and now IF I have it, it is tiny quantities and makes me feel kinda icky so it is no longer a temptation. I also have a personal belief that adult humans are not really designed to consume alot of milk. It is very high carb. A doctor once told me that cows milk is designed to turn a little calf into a big ole steer really fast... and it does the same thing to some humans..ha! Anyway, I still suspect it is the lactose. I have no idea what Protein is available in the UK, but we have premixed ones that are lactose free and taste fairly decent for a Protein Drink. I think whey protein source is a good choice.

people do have dumping with the sleeve. I had it happen when I added Peanut Butter to a Protein drink at about 2 weeks out. Ugly. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21647622 So why are you consuming so much milk? That is alot of carbs and just hard to digest. I did develop a lactose intolerance post sleeve and while yogurt and cheese are fine, milk and ice cream are not.

Could it be they had underlying self image issues? When I was researching plastics I talked to several people over the phone about their experience. I came to a stunning conclusion, some people are never happy even with amazing results. I made an effort to accept myself WITH the skin so once I did have the surgery it was awesome. These forums are full of people who are living a full, active, happy,healthier life even with excess skin If I had chosen to stay a bit heavier the excess skin wasn't too much of a problem.

View food and water as prescriptions you take because you have to. Pleasure in food will come later. You can do things like buy bento boxes and premake the mini meals so it's easy to eat the right things.

This is the only rational explanation I can fathom for the troll... I like your scar pic.. does that make me weird?!

We don't have BJ Market...I live near Kirkland, the home of Costco! When I started this thread I was focused on Protein but I love their produce too. Love the blueberry,raspberry or strawberry boxes. Also avocado, tomato ... you can g e t a six pack of romaine lettuce for 3.49. Did you know romaine is heavenly grilled?

No worries, Alex has granted some people host title...and while they are working on a fix to the glitch there are a few of us tirelessly deleting duplicates everyday! Anyway, I think it's normal to grieve the lost time (or whatever) because frankly obesity stole aspects of my life for decades. I didn't realize what I was missing until I was no longer packing around an extra person in body weight. My god, it's really terrible to add up the self abuse that was...but it's behind me now!

I feel that you must have misunderstood - you are a FAST loser compared to most women. Could it be that it is slowing down and he is trying to give you advice how to keep things going? The reality is that it is easier to lose the first 6-12 months post op and for those of us that started higher BMI, we want to maximize our changes of getting to goal. anyway, I think you are doing epically awesome! I went from 308 (BMI of about 51) and now maintaining a normal weight/single digit clothing sizes. So exciting!

No shame, you did what you did, that is the past... now do what you need to do to get on track. Everyone of us has backslid in one way or another. Maybe it was a 5 pound gain or maybe it was a 50 pound one... but it is real life to tackle it and go back to basics. I am 3 years out and finding that things have changed... yet again. It is much easier to regain and harder to relose them then it was previously. Its real life and we are all in this together sisters and brothers!!!

I take nutrition seriously. i try to eat healthy but i also take Vitamins. Conventional vitamins make me sick too - even 3 years out. for multi vitamins I can take gummies or do the liquid vitamins like Eco Drink. Calcium - I can't handle the pills but I can handle the chewables. Vitamin D are small and don't make me sick. I take sublingual vit B complex drops. No sick tummy and i only need to do it a few times a week. I have at least one premier Protein a day and that has quite a few vitamins in it too. You can lose weight without supplements but you risk your long term health in my opinion.

Okay, a follow up crazy ass story. When I decided to try again recently I emailed a couple of prospects on a dating site (I keep a hidden profile so I don't have to deal with the nutty guys, or so I thought!). Anyway, one of the guys I emailed and planned to have an initial meet and greet started sending me CRAZY emails. We hadn't even met yet and he accused me of being a player, cheating on him etc. I thought maybe it was a joke, or maybe the message was intended for someone else. Nope. He was "stalking" when I logged onto the dating website. I would respond to messages etc and so was logging in once a day and apparently that was not acceptable to him. THANK GOODNESS his crazy came out before we met. I blocked him but it SHOOK ME UP.

Thanks for reviving this thread from the dead @bikrchk So, the man I was dating at the time i responded to this is now in my history file of ...one more mistake. Do disappointing. We mutually agreed to end it because we didn't really fall in love. On my side, I found him to be constantly, but subtly critical. I tried to influence it but at some point I realized that I would always feel critized by him - I experienced that on I think our 3rd date (we went dancing and I wasn't doing it right). I should have ended it then, because how a person makes you "feel" is really key. He is also a heavy drinker and it influenced me - I found myself drinking more than I should and gaining a few pounds. He dreamed of being active (talked a good talk) but in reality wasn't physically capable of keeping up with me so it made me sad ... alot of our time together was just sitting on our butts. It made me sad to end it but even sadder to visualize my life with him had we stayed together... I took a couple months off after that ended and I decided to start up again but a whole new angle about a week ago. I hit it off with someone on a glass of wine and dinner date last week Friday. Normally, it seems that would follow up with another "going out" type thing but I have come to recognize that is not real world. You don't really get to know a person sitting around talking at happy hour - it is all superficial. This man seemed pretty smitten with me, he is super outdoorsy (more than me even!), he is smart, well spoken, world traveler and normal and I figure... I am 50 now - I have zero reason to waste time with what other people think dating should be... so I invited him to go horseback riding on Saturday! He was shocked, wowed, excited and game to do it! We had a fabulous ride, and he went up about 100 points in my estimation. He is not an expert rider, but he "Gets" animals and my lifestyle and seems to genuinely like it and respect it as my hobby. (He didn't ask the question I always get "aren't horses too expensive?" - I have a policy any dude asks that on a first date and there is no second...haha). We had a late lunch, went for a walk, did a tasting at a local distillery... and watched a movie. During all that, he met a couple of my friends and a few aquaintances. I feel so brave for letting someone new into my world like that, but I am just so tired of thinking I met someone cool only to find that we really aren't compatible once we exit the coffee shop or restaurant. He is being brave by talking about an aspect of his life that is a real issue for many women. This guy is an AVID hunter. It is a lifestyle, a family thing - his mom is in her 70s and still goes after elk and all that! The lifestyle aspect is using all the game and waterfowl and fish as food sources, habitat restoration as volunteer work etc etc. It is a complete lifestyle (outside of his high tech job) - and one that doesn't exactly match mine. However, as I thought about it, I can totally live with this.I don't want to go hunting, but I like a man with a passion and I like his ethics around this topic so I think we could be compatible. Besides, he won't mind as much me being gone for 8 hours on a horse related adventure if he is busy hunting and cooking it. I am complex in some ways and perhaps being with someone that has their own, compatible version of "complex" works for me. Only time will tell, but I am going all in this time - really early on doing activities together that will make compatibly much more clear. And he is doing the same. Talk about exposing yourself, one of our next dates is for me to visit him at work - he is a high ranking guy at a prominent company but he wants me to meet his team since he mentored most of them and is very close to them. Wow... that's brave and tells me that he thinks I am worth the risk - and I feel the same about him. I promise myself if I am uncomfortable early that I will listen alot closer to my gut and end it sooner. I can't fathom being in a permanent relationship with someone who I felt constantly criticized me (whether he did or not is besides the point, the man I dated last fall made me feel that way). Yes, dating sucks, but maybe 1 is out there that doesn't suck and it is worth the gamble. In the meantime, I am having a hoot of a time being single, going dancing, hanging with gal pals and driving my own freaking remote control.

Plain and simple - FEAR I had the lapband and failed. I felt the sense of failure with the band and with all previous attempts (I could lose alot of weight, but never get to a normal size, and always regain it) like a weight on my shoulders. Like evidence of how weak/awful/damaged I must be. The thing that shifted my view about this was hearing from a woman who ran a non surgical weight loss program that i wanted to try. She explained to me the metabolic disease of obesity and why I had been trying to canoe upstream without a working paddle. She told me I needed the sleeve or bypass - i would not succeed in her 2 year lifestyle program because my obesity disease was just too advanced. Then she said something magical "I know you will succeed with the sleeve, beyond your wildest dreams because in spite of everything - you never give up" that was a completely different ways to see my failures. Everytime I failed, I tried again. Like running into a brick wall, but I kept trying. All that "try" paid off big time with the sleeve. So, sometimes, seeing things through a different viewpoint can really be a positive thing. Now, 3 years post op, maintaining a normal body weight for the last 2 years - for the first time EVER, I mean I was chubby as a baby/toddler/preschooler and was obese by 1st grade - so truly first time EVER. (I got slim when I was in my 20s but only maintained for about 2 weeks, seriously) Can you imagine reaching your late 40s and finally having this dream come true? It is possible.

It is sad. I mourned the "ruining" of my body caused by obesity. I grieved it for awhile, but then I had a few epiphanies. I have a skinny minny, itty bitty girfriend (has never weighed over 100#) and she had to have knee replacement at 47. I am 50, i have a bum knee from being obese... well, clearly there are lots of causes of knee problems. I still have some joint pain, but oesteoarthritis runs in my family and there is a genetic component. My other co-morbidities DISAPPEARED when the fat does, so that is the good news. Be positive, think about how much you are improving your own health by losing weight. I no longer have sleep apnea, my blood pressure is excellent, my blood sugar is incredible, my cholesterol is off the hook great. My resting heart rate is 59 - considered very fit for a 50 year old woman. BTW, due to a system glitch, your message posted about 12 times. I tried to delete the duplicates, not sure I found them all though!