aliandrews

Mine was worried and didn't want me to have the surgery either. Now she is very happy about. Proved her wrong.

73 lbs down!! My husband and I went out last week with a few other couples and I have always been so self concious. I've always been the "fat" wife out of all the wives and girlfriends of our friends and hated going places. For the 1st time I haven't felt like the fat girl at the party. I didn't feel uncomfortable or out if place, not that our friends ever made me feel that way. They never have in any way and are fantastic but you have to be happy with yourself first. I have a little ways to go but I do believe this was the best decision for me!!

I posted that I ate half a Big Mac and still eat a crispy creme donut if I crave one. Several people gave their opinions.and how I didnt care about my health.....but several more sent me private messages, 11 different people to be exact, that wanted some advice because they had kids and the grazing and snacking was getting the best of them, but were scared to ask for it on this forum because of the tongue lashing some people give when your veer from the HEALTHY path. Everyone is not the same, our needs, wants and lifestyles are different. There are people reading the forum who are intimidated by your perfection....give us who arent as perfect a break.

How many excuses can you come up with why you will not or have not had Weight Loss Surgery? Aka (WLS).
I am a failure at everything I have tried why will WLS work for me? I have been on every kind of diet there is out there.
I don’t have the money for WLS
I hate myself I can’t do this because I know I will fail at this too.
I don’t want to fill out all the papers only to find out that my insurance will not pay for it and I have to go through the appeal process
I am scared to death to do this.
Are you crazy, you want me to go to Mexico to a doctor I have never met and have surgery.
Is it safe to go to Mexico? And is it clean in their hospital? Do they speak English?
How do you know what doctor is the best for WLS in Mexico if you are going there?
My doctor doesn’t think I need WLS; I should be able to lose the weight with diet and exercise.
My family does not support me in the fact that I am thinking about having WLS.
I will just wait until they come out with the “little magic pill” and all this fat will fall right off me.
Maybe I can get on the “Biggest Loser” and lose all my weight! LOL!
I can’t take time off work to have the surgery and time for recovery.
I like to eat a lot of food and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I what WLS.
I don’t like the foods that you should be eating after having WLS.
I will have too much extra skin and then need more surgery.
I HATE to exercise and they say I should exercise.
I am an emotional eater, what will happen if I have WLS?
WLS is the easy way out and it won’t work for me.
It will cost too much for all the special foods I will need to buy
My family will not eat what I have to eat and I don’t want to cook two different meals.
It is easy to hide behind being fat and I don’t want to face my emotional problems.
I am in denial and I don’t need to lose weight so why should I have WLS?
I have very low self-esteem and can’t do this.
Who cares if I am fat, I am happy!
I have a very slow metabolism and this will not work for me.
I am too old and to have WLS.
I suffer from depression.
I am too obese and they won’t do WLS on me.
I am scared I will die during WLS.

I can give a reason why you should have WLS for every one of these excuses that are posted above. I am the person who had a lot of these same excuses for many years. 4 years ago I had WLS and was very successful. I lost 105 pounds and have kept it off. My insurance would NOT pay for it and I was lucky enough to have some money to be able to pay for it myself. I made the choice after about 6 months of asking questions to go to Dr. Aceves in Mexico who I highly recommend. I feel he was the very best doctor for me. He is highly skilled and has done many “sleeve” WLS with great success. He does the surgery in a top rated fully equipped hospital and not a clinic. You do your recovery in the hospital. I checked him out in every way I could.
STOP giving days away of your life. Become healthy and love and care for yourself enough to want this for you and NO ONE ELSE. Losing weight is ALL about you and NO one else.
This is just a thought. You may have heard the saying “What I do today is important because I’m trading a day of my life for it.” But have you ever really thought about what is means? It’s probably impossible to plan every 1,440 minutes of the day. But, give it a little thought. What can you do part of that time to make your life happy, healthy and how can you benefit from your choices? Life is so very short and so make the most of the day that you are trading of your life for. We all stumble and fall along the way, don’t beat yourself up over it. Move on and have a better day the next day.
If you have any questions please ask away. I am here to help and support you and answer any questions that you might have.
Hugs,
Suzanne

I fail to see where Iggy has been a bully at all.
Yes, she has an opinion of the surgery that is tainted by her experience, but I believe all our experiences have influenced our opinions.
Yes, she posts her views often. There is nothing keeping anybody from posting about their experiences right along side of hers.
Really, the only limitations placed on these type of posts are basic common courtesy. Things like don't personally attack each other & don't be offensive just to get a reaction. I will admit, I am a bit partial to Iggy, partially because I was here to witness the hardship she went through, and see how level headed & non judgmental she remained as she was going hrough the whole ordeal. And really, if I would have gone through 1/2 of what she did, I'd be telling anybody that even considered WLS that it's the worst decision they could make.
Fortunately for me, my experience was quite the opposite, as is true for most of he people here. The overwhelming majority of us have had great experiences, it's not Iggy's fault if we don't say it enough.
I come here and support people in their decisions. As do most people that are more than a couple months post op.
I ask of everybody, if you believe this forum has an overbearing dark feeling to it, bring in some light. Tell your good stories. If someone tells of a bad experience, put yourself in their shoes for a minute, and ask yourself how you would act if you had their experience. Attacking someone for posting advice based on their bad experience is not going to make this a better place, it will simply push more people away.
Here is another thing to consider. This forum needs people like Iggy. Without her, or other people like her, what would we have? A forum full of positivity? Absolutely not. We'd have a site that anybody coming here would think s a contrived promotional tool. Showing the good & the bad together is a big part of what lends validity to our little community here.
I truly hope we can all just accept each other for who we are, and let go of whatever animosity we might be holding within.
This is a great place to come to, and it will continue to be.

I'm in that third week stall and was starting to get discouraged by the number on the scale. I dragged out my handy dandy measuring tape and boom! Despite remaining the same weight, I've lost three inches from my waist, one and a half from my hips, and half an inch from my bust.
Take your measurements! Don't be a slave to the scale. I promise it'll be encouraging when the scale won't budge.

I don't have time to go to the gym or take Zumba class at a gym cuz I work to jobs that y I wanna do The Zumba fit at home u feel me

Looking forward to the day when a small amount of high quality cheese, a few escargot or a bite of pâté will be enough. Quality and not quantity baby!

A real stall is three weeks or more at the same weight. I had two of them and both were nine weeks long. Both started out as "natural" stalls, something you should fully expect post VSG. But like many of us, after about a month at the same weight I fell back into bad habits and had to address the bad behavior before I could get back on track.
It is perfectly normal to have stalls and it is perfectly normal to have a less than perfect journey. If we had all of the tools we need to lose weight effortlessly, we'd skip the surgery and just join Weight Watchers again. The sleeve is that extra tool that helps us do the head work to overcome. So, expect stalls and expect some measure of frustration and expect that you will need to put effort into adopting new habits permanently for long term success.
As for what month you stop losing there's no such thing.
Really. I'll say it again: NO SUCH THING.
Your sleeve is just about as large as it will get at roughly one year post op. Your capacity afterward is tiny compared to pre-op, even if it is considerably larger than immediately post surgery. We're talking about fitting in between 3/4 to 1 and 1/2 cups of food somewhere between one and two years post op. And that's it - forever - unless you try your very hardest to stretch your sleeve (though pain and real effort) what little it will stretch.
So what does all of that mean? It means that there is nothing stopping anyone at one, two, three or even seven years post op, from picking up the pieces if they fall into bad habits and regain. The sleeve was and will remain a restrictive tool to help you lose weight and maintain that loss if you make the right food choices.
Expect that the lower your body weight and the closer you are to your body's happy place, the harder it will be to lose weight. So yes, weight tends to come off more quickly in the beginning and to come off more slowly the closer you get to goal. That does not mean it's more difficult to lose weight. You'll use the same exact techniques and tools to lose. It's just harder for your body to give up those final pounds. I was six months to lose the last twenty. That's a bit excessive, maybe, but I was a slower loser from the start. But everyone slows down near the end - it's natural when your body has less to give up.
And in my experience, people need to feel in control so they fiddle with their diets any time they don't see a drop on the scale every day. If you're tracking your food and you're not eating an extra four hundred calories a day all of a sudden, it's doubtful that your diet is the culprit. Everyone's body reacts differently but in more cases than not, the thing that shakes a real stall is upping the calories and carbs in your diet, not slashing them. Or you could just wait it out. Because with time, it'll pass and it's part of the journey.
~Cheri

I was 199 when I decided to be sleeved. I'm 5'2". I've been fighting my weight battle for more than 10 years. I was extremely depressed and unhappy. My knees hurt, my back hurt, and I was pre-diabetic. I've lost 20-30 and gain 40+ more times than I can count. Both my parents are extremely morbidly obese. I could see my future in them and it wasn't pretty. I could guarantee that my weight would only continue to escalate so I decided to be proactive rather than reactive. Why wait and waste more of my life? I needed a weapon for my weight battle, and the sleeve was it.
Today I am 138 and feel like I am living for the first time in more than 10 years. I feel healthy, mentally and physically.

emily bites wonton cupcakes- a ton come in a pack for $2.50 & you can freeze them. Lasagna, taco, cheeseburger, french dip, buffalo chicken, you can make whatever stuff you have in the fridge with them, top with cheese and bake til crispy. Love those little things.
Mini turkey burgers. Add unsweetened applesauce and a little dry lipton onion Soup mix, cook small patties on a pancake skillet, open a can or cut up some fresh mushrooms & cook on skillet with a lil worchesterchire sauce. Top on burgers. Another favorite.
Split pea Soup with ham, chili with chicken or any meat can be frozen-chicken stock can stretch it but I strain all my Soups to get more food bite and less juice.
Eggs- eat them every day. Breakfast foods are cheaper than lunch/dinner.
Lunchmeat- I love cracked pepper turkey breast from the deli. It's like $3.50 for 1/2 a lb & it can last me a whole week of lunch just eating it by itself. Add a .25 string cheese and microwave and you got gourmet .
Spaghetti sauce is another good one to stretch. I make it different every time. Onions, minced celery, carrots, zucchini, squash, spinach, mushrooms, ground turkey, ground beef, jarred Ragu, homemade sauce, all fair game except for noodles. I usually make mine very meaty. The sauce can also be used with some italian seasoned ricotta or cottage cheese in the bottom of a wonton cupcake, then sauce, then mozz cheese, sooo good!

Try freezing any flavor Isopure like Alpine Punch or Grape in ice-cube trays then using a Ninja blender (that's what works best for me) to make an awesome slush. Put a few cubes in one of the single-serve cups, add a little cold Isopure drink, pulse away and you have a slush as good as anything you can get at Sonic. Never gets watered down because it's ALL Isopure. Add a little Splenda or Truvia to taste if you want, then enjoy - one sip at a time. If you pour it into a Thermos cup, it will last a very long time in the slushy state!

35 also and never felt good about myself until now.

Possessed!!! so I am 10 days out post op and have been really trying to not weigh myself everyday but like anyone post op, im really excited and really cant wait to see the number on the scale. Soooo the first week, my scale says 297 and then three days later it says 292 then a day later it says 289 lbs. I just find all of this so hard to believe. Now I am following my post op 3 weeks of liquids diet and have been getting in as much Protein as possible and adding it to my watery strained Soups and Crystal lite etc so I do know that I should be loosing weight but I just cant believe its happening so fast. I mean like 2 pounds a day!!! Shut the front door! I am in denial. However, I can fit my clothes again and that's awesome! can I fit my "skinny" clothes yet, no but I was a size 24 and now I can fit my 18-20 size pants so that's nice.

New position for us: He picked me up, pinned me against the wall rocked my world.
New position for us: He picked me up and bounced me up and down on his thighs.
Love this whole cave man thing with him picking me up and tossing me around. That wasn't going to happen when I was fat nomatter how comfortable I was with the extra padding.

I think you are doing great. I lost 21 the first month and then 8 lbs the next month. I stalled the end of the second week after surgery. So, I think you are right on track. You're dr doesn't know anything if he is going to chastise you. My surgery was 12/7/2011, last year, and I have lost over 100 lbs with many stalls. SO don't let anyone get you down. Just keep doing what you are doing.

I think you are doing great. I lost 21 the first month and then 8 lbs the next month. I stalled the end of the second week after surgery. So, I think you are right on track. You're dr doesn't know anything if he is going to chastise you. My surgery was 12/7/2011, last year, and I have lost over 100 lbs with many stalls. SO don't let anyone get you down. Just keep doing what you are doing.

I use PB2 instead of oat flour. This ends up at about 200 calories and 17 grams Protein.
My teen son likes this as much as I do (or possibly more). It tastes like a warmed up no bake cookie!
Lately, instead of spreading it on a plate, I've just been leaving it in the bowl, microwaving it, and enjoying it.

19 days Post-op and hit 32 lbs down today!!! Im so excited about the future!! Merry Christmas Everyone, hope you had a great one!!!!

You guys are so helpful...thank you... My doc has the bedside manner of Dr. Gregory House... I dont like him at all, but he is the guy my insurance covers... I weigh every Monday and saw a loss today and feel better... This is HARD... Anyone who thinks this is an easy solution has no idea of how hard the behavior modification is... I throw up if I eat one bite too much...and right now, dont always recognize the full cue.

I agree that you are moving along at a good pace. I am considered a "lightweight" but I have tried very hard to lose as much weight possible. I take all my Vitamins, eat 60 grams of Protein daily, and most days I get in all 64 oz. of fluids. I have not cheated on my diet plan once, and I am six weeks out. I have only lost 15 pounds! If I get where you're at in two weeks, I'll be celebrating:) Keep it up, and don't second guess yourself. It took time for us to all get where we were, so it's going to take time to get where we want to be. Best wishes to you friend!

SERIOUSLY?? Omg! What a jerk. You are losing weight at a perfect pace. I am continually stunned at how awful and unprofessional doctors are these days. What on earth is going on that they treat patients w such disrespect? I am sorry that happened to you. Hugs!

Some doctors are really stupid. You are doing great! Sounds like you are right on track and in many ways ahead of a lot of us! Great Job! You are going to keep losing- especially since you are trying so hard but don't get discouraged if you hit plateaus here and there- we all do. Keep up the great job- that's what your doctor should have said! Good grief- I think I would either have cried when the doctor said that or I would have told him to stick it. I am sorry that the one person you feel you should trust through this journey has let you down. Keep coming back here!!!! We'll support you!!!!!

Hi, Strangefruit. My surgery is Thursday (getting scared ) but I think your surgeon is nutty. That is almost 5 pounds a week. If your profile is right, it is almost the same as mine and with luck on my side, I can't expect better than that. Hang in there and just keep losing at your pace. Don't let him get you discouraged. I know what that can do. Good luck.

I must say I'm a little taken aback by the number of posts I've read on this forum recently by people who seem genuinely surprised that you can gain weight after having surgery. Whether it be Water retention during that first month (3 week stall) or simply 9 months down the line and someone is eating crappy foods and not following their plan anymore....it is most certainly possible. In fact, no matter what type of WLS you have, a person who is determined can eat around it. This is why most of us are forced to have a psych eval and see a NUT several times before surgery...so we understand this is not fool proof.
This is not meant to be a criticism of anyone here. My real concern is why aren't your doctors and NUTs driving these points home with you before surgery? My surgeon made me sign a document stating I understood I had to eat right and exercise for the rest of my life or the surgery wasn't going to help me.
If I could say one thing to everyone it would simply be that the surgery will not do everything for you. You have to eat the right things, and you need to exercise. The sleeve helps initially. But as time goes by the sleeve does less and less, and you have to do more. The people I've seen here who have been successful are those that embraced those changes and learned better eating habits while they were still in the honeymoon phase, so when their capacity to eat increased they made better, healthier choices and maintained their goal weight.