DesertRat

Great post CowgirlJane. All of these issues have been on my mind too. I don't know what the long-term effects will be but I think that the basics make sense. A smaller stomach and less ghrelin to trigger hunger makes sense. I don't expect miracles but am hoping that it will help to level the playing field. Something is wrong with my metabolism and always has been. I gained weight too fast as in infant. I have craved carbs as long as I can remember. When I was a very small child I swiped a cake mix from the kitchen and hid it in my room, eating it a spoonful at a time. I don't believe for a moment that as a pre-school child I had a complex neurosis that made me crave sweets, i was a happy kid with a wicked sweet tooth,I believe that I craved sweets for physical reasons. When I had my appendix out I lost my cravings spontaneously and lost forty pounds. It took effort, but at least it wasn't like scaling a shear rock face. For sixteen years I had fairly good control over my weight. My BMI was 26 most of the time with one excursion to 30. Then, at the age of 32 the weight started coming back and the same eating habits that had worked for 16 years were putting weight on me. Twenty five years hence my BMI is 36.3 and I'm having other problems. A year of low carb couldn't reverse the trend. My choices are three: give up and be a diabetic in another year or two, starve myself brutally or have WLS. For today the sleeve seems the way to go. Even if it only buys me ten good years that's better than nothing but I'm guessing that I'll make the most of it.

I'd be more inclined to believe the BMI chart than the 180 pound idea. If you took a look at me you could say that I'm a big Scandinavian man but, at nearly 5' 11" i've weighed as little as 147 pounds and I was not suffering a bit from being too thin. I doubt that the 57 year old me will ever be as slim as the 25 year old me but that won't keep me from working hard to lose as much as I reasonably can.

I wonder about all of this myself. The first meeting with the nutritionist is another 12 days. I love coffee, unsweetened, no creamer. I like tea too, especially Earl Grey. Once again, unsweetened, no creamer. Living in the desert I drink a lot of water, especially in the hot weather but I also drink unsweetened Iced Tea at times. I'll do whatever it takes to make it work but I hope that when all is said and done I'll still be able to enjoy a hot cup of coffee in the morning, even if it's decaf.

I'm not an old pro at WLS but I'm an old pro at dealing with weight including, in my younger days, some very successful weight control. I feel a kinship to anyone that is fighting to get their weight under control and I imagine that all of us know the feeling of being treated poorly because of obesity. I don't know why, but there seem to be a lot of people that believe you can say anything you want to someone that is overweight. We're all in this fight together.

Don't give up. Nature dealt you a rough hand but you took action and are improving matters. Next, you just need some support. Start with the basics, eat your Protein first, veggies and hopefully you'll be full before the carbs come into play. Exercise, live to drink Water and reward yourself with healthy rewards that don't involve food. Find support somewhere. Check and see if there's a local VGS support group. There's a site call Meet Up that people use to organize meetings of people with similar interests, maybe you can drum something local up through that. Online support is great too. This forum is filled with support.

You look great. Hang in, fight the fine fight and don't get discouraged. You've succeeded marvelously.

I know it's pretty bad. I've never been much of a cook, too afraid that I would overindulge in my own cooking. Maybe with some help from the sleeve I can turn this around and eat more healthfully by cooking my own food.

While I have not been sleeved as of yet I have had the experience of going from life as an obese person to life at normal weight and can say that my experience was quite a ride. People will react differently to you and you will react differently to yourself. I spent my childhood being teased and ridiculed and had a defensive attitude because of it. I didn't like the way I looked and I was ashamed of myself. I didn't feel like dressing up when the person under the clothing didn't look good. It took some time to adjust and it was continuous for a while. It did get easier. The matter of running to food as an escape was also an issue but I got over it. At a healthy weight taking a walk is a lot more fun. Likewise, there are any number of non-food-related activities that will benefit you. Find something you've always wanted to do and go for it. Besides that, you are going through big changes in your body chemistry. The hormonal changes directly associated with surgery are only part of it. Adipose tissue is a great place for toxins to hide so you can experience some problems from that but they will pass. Your body has probably felt like it was starving for a long time and now it's not feeling that way anymore. You probably have changes in your insulin levels, perhaps lower blood sugar than you've had in years and with things in flux you are bound to have some ups and downs. It may be that some friends will not know how to react. When I lost weight as a kid the biggest change was my social life. I felt like I fit in for the first time in my life and I had adjustments to make. Sometimes I came on too strong because of my newfound social confidence. Other times I interpreted the actions of others negatively be cause I had been so accustomed to being treated badly. It tiook a while to learn the new rules of facing life as a fairly normal-sized person. It will get better.

Thanks for the recommendation. I bought a Kindle copy before I even finished reading your post. Over thirty years ago I worked in a convenience store for about two months and I was appalled by what I saw. At the time I was probably the most slender I had been in my adult life, perhaps 160 lbs, and that was the result of hard work, exercise and saying no to all sorts of things. People would come in and buy absolute garbage and eat it all the time. Because I was the one selling it to them I quickly became aware of how much junk food some of these people were consuming. It was nothing to see a teen buy a huge frozen slush drink or a 32 oz Pepsi plus some sort of pastry. Some of these kids were in several times a day and bought junk every visit. Our biggest sellers were Miller Beer, Pepsi and Marlborough cigarettes. It's no surprise to me that the same age group are now fighting obesity as an epidemic.

That's the kind of sleep dreams are made of.

Congratulations Lissa! You continue to inspire us.

With any decision of lasting impact it pays to write down the pros and cons. One of the very first things I did when I started looking into WLS was write down my reasons. It goes far beyond vanity, it involves my long-term health. In my case the triggering factor are the words pre-diabetic. I know where that can lead and is likely to lead; I don't want to go down that road. As it is today, I can hop on a bike and ride without exhaustion and I can even make good time. I take a hike around the block nearly every day and where I live, around the block exceeds two miles. I feel good most of the time and have very little restriction upon my activity. All that having been said, I want to preserve that for the future and hopefully make things better. I'm tired of having a CPAP machine and I'm tired of taking prescriptions. If I look at my medical history over the last ten years it seems that every year or two I get one more prescription. If I get off of all of them it would easily save the cost of surgery within a year; an incentive I intend to use if I have to fight the insurance company for approval. Now, I'm giving you my reasons for two purposes; to remind myself of why I am pursuing this and also to help you remember the thought processes that have taken you up to this point. Your reasons may well be different than mine but I'd be surprised if they were any less thorough. The only other thing I will mention is this; as the veteran of several surgeries I can state that it's never easy to face, even when the surgery is a simple, low-risk arthroscopy of the knee. It's rough to face on your own, I've been there myself having been dropped off at the hospital by a friend and picked up later in the day for a ride home. My advice to you would be to call upon whatever sources of emotional support you have available; people that will really help and that really want the best for you. Then, do what you think will be best in the long run. Whether or not to go through with this surgery is a decision only you can make but be advised, you are up to the challenge if you choose to go through with it.

I was heavy as a kid but when I was 15 my appendix ruptured and I lost about 40 pounds putting me at a fairly low BMI. I remember having to adjust to being slender for the first time in my life and loved every minute of it.

JMO. People are going to find out and, these days, anyone that loses a lot of weight will probably be subjected to rumors of WLS no matter what. I just decided to tell most people and let them deal with it.

What I find amazing are the people that could eat anything and not gain weight. Even when I was at a normal weight I had to watch it. I'd see people drinking soda and eating Hostess cupcakes and I couldn't comprehend how they were getting away with it. That was then this is now. Flash forward a few decades and obesity has become a terrible epidemic. When I was in high school we wore tight clothing, now fashions have changed and are unlikely to revert because the proportion of overweight teens has increased so dramatically. There was one truly obese girl in my high school, which had 1,500 students. There was one truly obese boy that I remember as well. There were a handful of kids in the 30 - 34 BMI range but many more in the 20 - 25 BMI range. Thing sure have changed. The two truly obese kids I remember from school wouldn't even stand out in today's schools but the slender kids would definitely be in the minority. I fear for the kids of today. When they hit their 40s it's not going to be good.

Reading through some other threads I ran into something that seemed familiar. The OP had eaten some carb-rich foods on vacation and was now experiencing hunger issues. I know that I have to avoid sweets and other high carb foods completely, especially in the morning, or I will crave them all day. I'd love to hear the experiences of experienced sleevers with regard to this phenomena.

I've had some moments of doubt but at this point I am favoring having the procedure mid summer. Losing any tissue is a matter for serious concern. I don't give up pieces of myself lightly and, other than my wisdom teeth, an appendix, some bone spurs and a meniscus I've managed to hang onto all of my various parts for 57 years now. Unfortunately, even though I'm physically active I have several co-morbidities. Hypertension (controlled with medication), apnea and an HA1C in the pre-diabetic range are the big ticket items. I fear diabetes and do not want to go there if at all possible. According to all that I've found in my research, the VSG seems like the safest bet. If I have the sleeve there is a possibility of regret but if I don't take some decisive action there is a much greater possibility of regret.

I'm really appreciating this thread. I'm doing a lot of soul searching right now about this decision. For me, the issue has always been portions. I can relate to eating too many slices of pizza or just too much of anything, even healthy foods. During my years at normal weight I had to watch the scale but I could, at least, eat fairly normally. Nowadays I have to be ravenous to lose weight slowly and one lapse can undo a lot of work. Reading how others have dealt with similar issues gives me confidence that I'm making a good choice.

I'm very happy for you, both that you are doing better, and even more so, that you have a great partner in life. These can only be good things. I put on weight after I got married and didn't want sex. I felt ashamed of myself, too fat to be desirable, etc, etc. Too bad this option didn't exist back then.