missjenny

I get artic zero from Walmart 1/2c has 37 calories 0 fat and 3.5 Protein. It is also lactose free. I love it only problem is I can eat the whole pint and it is pricey.

@@Prudence Ticknor
the new way i emotionally feel about life
my self-confidence
being able to talk to you guys (that can be challanging )
wearing a size 6
walking anywhere from the malls to the grocery stores with my head held high
(hurt my neck sometimes )
all the meds i no longer need to take
my appearance (remember i'm cute as a button )
the joy i feel waking up each and every morning
life is good
kathy

I do have sagging skin. The worst is in my stomach and my boobs are really bad - long flat and hangy! My arms have hangy skin underneath, but I can live with that. I do need surgery for my stomach and boobs, but I need to put on some weight in order for it to be done. Yes, I do get craving, and it is almost always for something sweet - ice cream or grappa chino, which makes me mad because I never had a sweet tooth prior to surgery. Salt is what I craved pre- surgery. I crave things that are crunchy.
I don't get hungry too often. I make myself eat at least four to five times a day in order to get in my nutrition. I do get head hunger, but find it happens more on the weekends when I have more time on my hands. I do try to fight it as hard as I can, but if I feel like I have to chew or eat something, I will chew a piece of gum, have a sugar free crest or Popsicle. Trust me, I have given in a few times.
Just remember that this is a lifetime journey and commitment to be healthier. Always hang in there, never give up on yourself or your goals, and every day is a new day.

I'm 33 and 5'6 surgery was April 30, 2012. My highest wt was 283, SW 235 and current wt 110 and doctors want me to put some wt on but it's been a struggle.

I do have sagging skin. The worst is in my stomach and my boobs are really bad - long flat and hangy! My arms have hangy skin underneath, but I can live with that. I do need surgery for my stomach and boobs, but I need to put on some weight in order for it to be done. Yes, I do get craving, and it is almost always for something sweet - ice cream or grappa chino, which makes me mad because I never had a sweet tooth prior to surgery. Salt is what I craved pre- surgery. I crave things that are crunchy.
I don't get hungry too often. I make myself eat at least four to five times a day in order to get in my nutrition. I do get head hunger, but find it happens more on the weekends when I have more time on my hands. I do try to fight it as hard as I can, but if I feel like I have to chew or eat something, I will chew a piece of gum, have a sugar free crest or Popsicle. Trust me, I have given in a few times.
Just remember that this is a lifetime journey and commitment to be healthier. Always hang in there, never give up on yourself or your goals, and every day is a new day.

I had to wait until I was three months out.

I have type 1 diabetes and I take about 85% less insulin then I used to before surgery. So thankful for this tool.

It depends largely on whether you are Type I or Type II. I have Type I, which can't be cured, but my insulin levels have dropped drastically, and it has become very easy to control. If you have Type II, it is likely you will not need control meds at all, as insulin resistance drops tremendously and your body still manufactures insulin.
The best thing I've ever done for the treatment of this disease!

I have type 1 diabetes and I take about 85% less insulin then I used to before surgery. So thankful for this tool.

I have type 1 diabetes and I take about 85% less insulin then I used to before surgery. So thankful for this tool.

I have type 1 diabetes and I take about 85% less insulin then I used to before surgery. So thankful for this tool.

Congratulations!! That is awesome!!

You Choose: How Easy Do You Want Losing Weight to Be?

Weight loss surgery is a substantial step in the battle to control your weight. It is proof of your long-term commitment to eating better and becoming healthier. Research clearly shows that weight loss surgery can be far more effective for significant long-term weight loss than diet and exercise, so why don’t all weight loss surgery patients achieve their goal weights after weight loss surgery? Why do some people find the journey easier than others, even though both sets of individuals are motivated to follow the weight loss surgery diet?


The big losers do not necessarily have more willpower or desire. The important difference between the big losers and the re-gainers may be how easy they find the journey to be. Surprisingly, you can control a large part of how easy or hard it is to lose weight. The weight loss journey is not just about changing your digestive system through surgery. It is also about changing your entire lifestyle to facilitate weight loss.

Weight Loss Surgery is a Weight Loss Tool, Not a Cure

Weight loss surgery is a tool. It can make you less hungry by reducing the size of your stomach by inserting a band around your stomach (Lap-band), removing the majority of your stomach pouch (vertical sleeve gastrectomy) or folding or stapling away the majority of your stomach pouch (gastric bypass, duodenal switch, and sleeve plication). The vertical sleeve gastrectomy reduces hunger by reducing the amount of ghrelin, a hunger hormone, that your stomach produces. The gastric bypass and duodenal switch reduce nutrient absorption.

All of these surgeries can help you eat less and lose weight, but none of these surgeries are fail-proof. You can “cheat” by eating high-calorie foods, drinking high-calorie beverages, drinking beverages while you eat solid foods, and eating without measuring your portions. Successful weight loss requires good choices on your part, and making good choices is easier if you focus on your entire lifestyle, not just the part of your digestive system that was changed with surgery.

The Influence of Your Surroundings on Your Weight

Think about this scenario. You leave home without Breakfast and order a muffin and ice coffee at the drive-through on your way to work. You grab a doughnut at your morning meeting, and go out for lunch with your friends. You order the lunch special with a salad, breadstick, fettuccine alfredo and cheesecake. You nibble on some chocolates from your secretary’s desk as you make your way to the vending machine for a soda in the afternoon. You pick up a pizza on your way home because you know that there is nothing else for dinner.< /span>

Now compare it to this second scenario. You wake up early to meet your friend for a walk before you get home for a breakfast of scrambled egg whites and spinach. You drive to work and have yogurt and some fruit at your morning meeting. Lunch with your coworkers consists of a green salad with canned tuna, and you have a hard-boiled egg for your afternoon snack. You are able to get dinner on the table quickly when you get home because you only need to defrost the meals that you prepared earlier in the week.

Which scenario do you think you can help you lose weight? The second one, of course. So why not make it a reality?

Do Your Surroundings Encourage Weight Loss or Weight Gain?

You have battled your weight for years, if not for your entire life before weight loss surgery. In all likelihood, your environment was set up for you to eat. Take a good, hard look at your environment. Is it more like the first scenario or the second one described above? You have the ability to make it more like the second one. Notice the following items from the two scenarios.
Exercise was automatic in the second one because you planned to meet a friend – so you couldn’t back out.
Preparing your dinners ahead of time meant that you could eat quickly without going to a fast food restaurant.
Packing your own Snacks meant that you did not have to eat a doughnut in your morning meeting or chocolates in the afternoon.

Make the “Right” Choice Automatic

The fewer tough choices you have, the less likely you are to make poor decisions. Set up your environment so that the healthier actions are easier.

To make healthy eating easier:
Prepare plenty of meals ahead of time so that you always have a ready-to-eat, healthy option to prevent you from opting for take-out.
Throw away the take-out menus that you used to store in the kitchen. The extra time it takes you to look up the phone numbers and menus online may be enough to let you come to your sense and realize that you don’t want fast food.
Keep your kitchen stocked with all kinds of healthy foods, so that no matter your craving, you have a healthy answer.
Do not keep unhealthy foods at home. If they are not there, you cannot eat them.
Make sure that the healthy option is the default option. For example, measure your cheese and cut and wash fruits and vegetables ahead of time so that it is easier to snack on them than on Cookies.< /span>

Also consider these ideas:
Meet your friends for walks or shopping trips instead of for meals at restaurants.
Park your car a few blocks away from work so that you have no choice but to walk those few blocks again at the end of the day as you leave work.
Do not drive past drive-thrus if they are too tempting. Also, do not keep money in the car, and consider removing your car’s cup holders so that eating in the car is no longer an option.

All weight loss surgery patients have their own struggles. Far from being wimpy, removing these obstacles rather than fighting them is the best way to overcome them. The weight loss journey path will always have speed bumps and potholes, but it will be a lot smoother if you set up your lifestyle to promote better choices all day.

A very distinguished gentleman asked my a very important question. Do I keep a food log. Now before I answer that , please let say a few things.
I can not stress enough to the Pre-Op's and newly Post-Op's, how important it is to keep a food log!! it is your ACCOUNTABILITY scale. If you don't know how to count calories (I didn't and still don't) keep a log anyway. It will show you just how much or how little of what you are putting into your body each day. Some days will be better than others. Some days will make you see that you need to 'Start Over' and reevaluate what your doing. The Food Log is not to make you feel like a failure or a champion..its there to keep you accountable!! it really works. I do have a calorie count book and I have looked at it numerous times, so I do have an idea of what or how many Cals are in a particular food I eat everyday. Because I weigh 115 lbs, I am allotted a 1,300-1,800 calorie a day intake. Look yours up, the net is full of sites with this info. I know I'm sounding a bit 'High Horse-ish' but it's only because it is such and important part of this journey.
Now I'll step down from that Horsey, I have vertigo..To answer the gentleman's question. Because I am 4 years out, I pretty much can see visually what's on my plate, and know that I have 4 oz of meat, 1/2 cup of berries, and 1 cup of vegs. I have been doing it for a long time now. So NO, I do not keep one anymore. But in my head I'm always aware of how many cals might be in a particular food, before I veer off into strange (food) territory. Its the nature of this surgery to be always conscience of the foods around you. Thank you for listening, and Im now firmly on the ground, and have put my High Horse away for the night..AND SCENE!!!

Dannon has some new flavors of light and Fit Greek.

Caramel Macchiato

strawberry Cheesecake

and Cherry chocolate

They are amazing, as well as all the other flavors!! Can't decide which I like better
http://www.lightandfit.com/light-yogurt/light-and-fit-greek/cherry

My list usually looks like this: Almonds, Peanut Butter, almond butter, beef Jerky, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, string cheese, baby bel, lean beef, turkey brat, turkey, salmon, oatmeal, Protein Bar, carrots, green Beans, bananas, red pears, apples, sf Jello, hot chocolate and lite cool whip.

Do you know when to stop eating? To learn the when, you must pay attention to your “stop eating” signals.
How do you know when to stop eating? Do you eat until you're full? No, you don't. You should never again try to eat until you feel full, not just because that’s how you became obese enough to qualify for bariatric surgery but because if you’re like me, your stomach (or soul) is an endless void that no amount of food will ever fill. You’re going to have to figure out a new stopping point.


As mentioned in Satiated vs Stuffed, satiety is not quite the same as being full. Full means your upper stomach has reached its maximum capacity: that you have overeaten again – an old habit that made you obese enough to qualify for weight loss surgery. Satiety happens on your way to being full. With a properly adjusted band, you will be comfortable if you stop eating when you're satiated, but you’ll experience discomfort if you eat until you're full.
This third article in the Satiety 101 series discusses the signals your body gives to tell you you’re satiated, but that’s only half the battle. The other half involves heeding instead of ignoring those signals. That subject could fill a book (which that I might write some day). Today we’ll focus on recognizing your own unique Stop Eating Signals.
Because of its anatomical position (near your diaphragm, and pressing on the vagus nerve at the top of your stomach), the band’s presence (but not your band itself – which we must remember is an inert piece of plastic without any magic at all inside) can give you quick feedback about your eating behavior. The feedback is written in a language issued and understood by your brain, with assistance from your endocrine and digestive systems. Even if you were lousy in your high school French class, you will have to learn how to get directions in that language, so you won’t end up on Weight Gain Road instead op Weight Loss Avenue. Those directions come in the form of what I call Soft Stop and Hard Stop signals.
To understand those directions, you’ll need to slow down and pay attention while you eat. It takes 15 to 20 minutes for satiety signals to reach your brain and to be broadcast to the rest of you. If you usually eat with a crowd (family, friends, coworkers), you might need to try eating by yourself for a few meals so you won't be distracted. Stop signals can be subtle and they can come from unexpected parts of your body. It's better to heed a gentle reminder than wait for a hammer to hit you on the head.
SOFT STOPS are your early warning system, gentle reminders from your body that it's time to stop eating. Because they don't hurt much, they're easy to ignore. They include:
· Mild queasiness (an icky, but not about-to-vomit, feeling)
· Fullness or pressure in the back of the throat
· Pressure in the chest or just below the breastbone
· Throat clearing
· Some difficulty swallowing
· Burping (or the urge to burp)
· Taking a deep breath
· Mild coughing
· A sigh
· Hiccups
· Watering eyes
· Runny nose
· Left shoulder pain
· A sneeze
· More saliva in the mouth than usual
· A sudden distaste for the food you were enjoying a moment before
As soon as you notice one of these signs, stop eating! I don't care if your stubborn mind is insisting that it's okay to continue (because it thinks you have room for just one more bite, or the food tastes good, or you haven't cleaned your plate, or you deserve the food, or whatever's going on in there). If you go on eating past this point, you won't be changing your eating behavior and you're likely to get into trouble…that is, a hard stop.
HARD STOPS are the equivalent of running into a brick wall. They can happen without any apparent warning, but usually you have sped heedlessly past a soft stop before you hit the wall. Hard stops are the painful and sometimes embarrassing reminders that you have eaten too much, too fast, in bites that were too big, without chewing enough. They include:
· Chest pain and/or painful pressure or tightness in the chest
· Feeling like you have a rock in the back of your throat
· A burning sensation in the throat
· A “stuck” feeling, as if the food you’ve eaten has nowhere to go
· Productive burps (PB's) – regurgitation of food, kind of like the way a baby erps up milk
· Sliming (excess saliva and mucus that's so profuse, you have to spit it out)
When you experience a hard stop, STOP EATING! It's not at all a good idea to keep eating after you experience a hard stop, even if the discomfort goes away and your plate of food still looks appealing. You may feel fine and may in fact be able to eat some more, but you should not eat more. The hard stop has irritated your upper gastrointestinal system. Continuing to eat will just perpetuate the problem, getting you into a never-ending cycle of eat-hard stop-pain-eat-hard stop-pain. Cycles like that tend to turn into complications like band slips and esophageal and stomach dilation. That’s the reason for my next piece of advice: follow a liquid diet for 24 hours after a hard stop episode, then transition carefully back to pureed then soft then solid food.< /p>
If you’re like me, you did not have WLS in order to live on liquids for the rest of your life. That’s yet another reason to learn how to prevent hard stops in the first place, so that you can eat and enjoy real food at every meal.
Now here’s one last chunk of information before the bell rings and today’s class ends. You may not experience any or all of these stop signals any or all of the time. At Breakfast you might get one signal and at lunch, an entirely different one. At dinner, you may notice no stop signal at all. As time goes on and you lose weight and the amount of saline in your band changes, your stop signals may change as well.
All that can be frustrating, but it will force you to go on eating slowly and carefully for the rest of your life, and that’s actually a good practice for anyone, banded or not. That plate of food before you is a blessing that some people in this world can only dream of. Those small portions may look puny to you, but would be a feast to someone else. So treat your food, and your body, with the care they deserve.
Learning to recognize satiety over and over again is an ongoing process because our bodies are not statues made of marble. We are all marvelous, unique, and complex creatures who change by the minute, every day of our lives. Click here to read about how those changes can affect soft and hard stop signals. http://www.bariatricpal.com/page/articles.html/_/support/post-op-support/restriction-riddles-r93

This is the third and final article in the Satiety 101 series of articles.

I've lost over 200 pounds and I feel incredible. I'm so happy I decided to have this life changing Operation done. For many years I felt that I gave up and I was passed the point of no return finally after having the surgery it gave me my life back now I work out every day I eat right and I am so excited that I can go into regular department stores and get the clothes that I want, exercise the way I want, it truly is amazing. whenever you feel that you can't do it anymore you can't give up. One thing that I really regret is that I gave up and lost 10 years of my life feeling that I wasn't good enough for anything. I can't get those years back but from this point on I look at it as a new chapter in my life to where I can move on and really enjoy the things that I've always

I have a 20oz SF LF vanilla latte with whip cream everyday. Don't think I could get through a day without my latte.

I stuck with my surgeon's plan to a T. Too much at risk and took a lot of work to get this far. It is only a short amount of time. Do not give in! You are strong!

I crave greek yogurt, apples, bananas and Peanut Butter. The weird thing is I hated pb before surgery.

Hey everyone! I am 1 year and 5 days post op! I am sitting here wearing a size 4 Calvin Klein jeans!! Hope everyones doing well and kicking obesity's ass!

I know for me it depends on the day. Some days, I am hungry and I eat all day. I can get down quite a bit, especially if I really chew up my food! No matter what, I've learned that in the end it is still up to you. You will have to push that plate away, you will have to say no to certain things. The surgery helps with that, but like they say, "its a tool" they gave us a smaller stomach but it's still in the same person. Just keep on going, and hey! you did great...you made yourself avoid eating another thing. That's control! Kudos!

I have lines on my face that I did not have before I lost all my weight. But I would rather look older then be over 100 pounds over weight.

This is like a marriage. There is no going back for me. I will always need to be diligent and not allow myself to snack or graze. I love the 5:2 plan and it helps me to maintain my skinniness.