Fiddleman

The Cereal marketing executives are at it again and have finally figured out that moms are no longer buying lucky charms for their children because of the recent healthy mind set being adopted. According to the following article, 40% of lucky charms cereal is eaten by adults: Breakfast staple when we first got married. We were young, carefree and impressionable, especially when we were both moderately overweight. That was before I went head over heals for Fiber One cereal (clearly an adult cereal, right?). Have you observed this shift in target audience from children to adult women in the last month or so? Those sneaky executives; they know how to press the right sentimental buttons with their cloak and dagger commercials.

I may be wrong, but I do not think vanity sizing applies to men's Levi jeans unless you consider specifically buying a skinny jean or a relaxed jean. A 32 is still a 32 as it was 15-20 years ago. I do find myself wearing some skinny jeans now only because I like a jean that fits right.

I "skinny" up to Starbucks about once a month and order an iced vanilla or hazelnut latte during the summer. I definitely drink less SB now then I used to, say, 5-6 months ago when I was about 5-6 months post op. no real reason. I just do not feel the need to so much any longer. Enjoy your skinny drinks!!

Great job man at your success and hard work. Super impressed with smacking down the weight in just 5 months. Fitting into size 32 is validation of being a success. Want to share your secrets with everyone? I am sure they would appreciate it.

As an aside - I have been watching the hodge twins on you tube and have to say those two crack me up every time in their bro science meat head explanations on supplementation and other topics related to body building. Not that I take them as scientifically accurate, but I tune in to them for good entertainment value and bro science. you watch them? Hilarious.

You are welcome!

Hi - I just posted a response to this question on another thread. Copied here for your convenience: Essentially, you alternate between 2-4 different body weight exercises in an all out sprint for 20 seconds and then rest 10 seconds. Repeat for 4-8 minutes. You give those 20 seconds as intense focus as you can with as much strength as you can while maintaining perfect form. At home, my Friday workouts follow the Tabata protocol, but tend to last about 20 minutes instead of 4 by stacking together 4 routines with 30 second rest in between. I do it with body weight exercises like jumping lunges, mountain climbers, star jumpers, bouncing push ups and dive bombers. These build incredible strength and fitness over a relatively short period of time. For me, I have been doing these workouts at home for about 10 weeks now and the results speak for themselves. I plan to continue working out this way going forward and it is very easy to create new programs by choosing different body weight exercise combinations. On Monday and Wednesday, I do body weight exercises for about 20 minutes, but not in the Tabata protocol format. On those days I do timed sets and ladder sets. Both are still really effective workouts when compared to Tabata and, again, only about 20 minutes long. Sometimes my trainer has me do this Tabata protocol at cross fit (we do it about once a month), and again, it lasts about 8 minutes and leaves me with tunnel vision afterwards it is so intense. We do 20 second sprints followed by 10 second rest of body weight exercises like burpees, pull ups, box jumps and jumping lunges. This is just an example list of body weight exercises. There are 100s you can choose from. Cross fit for me is Tuesday and Thursday. Try it out and see what you think of it. It is hard at first, but as you get more fit, it becomes more fun to do and gives you incredible fitness and focus. Highly recommended!

Syntrax nectar and

Essentially, you alternate between 2-4 different body weight exercises in an all out sprint for 20 seconds and then rest 10 seconds. Repeat for 4-8 minutes. You give those 20 seconds as intense focus as you can with as much strength as you can while maintaining perfect form. At home, my Friday workouts follow the Tabata protocol, but tend to last about 20 minutes instead of 4 by stacking together 4 routines with 30 second rest in between. I do it with body weight exercises like jumping lunges, mountain climbers, star jumpers, bouncing push ups and dive bombers. These build incredible strength and fitness over a relatively short period of time. For me, I have been doing these workouts at home for about 10 weeks now and the results speak for themselves. I plan to continue working out this way going forward and it is very easy to create new programs by choosing different body weight exercise combinations. On Monday and Wednesday, I do body weight exercises for about 20 minutes, but not in the Tabata protocol format. Sometimes my trainer has me do this Tabata protocol at cross fit (about once a month), and again, it lasts about 8 minutes and leaves me with tunnel vision afterwards it is so intense. We do 20 second sprints followed by 10 second rest of body weight exercises like burpees, pull ups, box jumps and jumping lunges. This is just an example list of body weight exercises. There are 100s you can choose from. Cross fit is Tuesday and Thursday for me. Try it out and see what you think of it. It is hard at first, but as you get more fit, it becomes more fun to do and gives you incredible fitness and focus. Highly recommended!

I had a very good circuit strength training workout in the am and then spent 2 hours cutting my hedge with a gas trimmer in the afternoon (about 200 feet on both sides of drive way). Let me tell you that holding a gas trimmer in your arm for 2 hours gives your upper body a good resistance workout and my shirt was soaked from the effort. Goes to show you that exercising can be done in non traditional ways.

Mark-Actually, I have decided not to go down this route of hgh because the risks are just not worth it. I like who I am and what I have accomplished in terms of strength in the last 1/2 year. If I am not destined to be super strong, then so be it. However, I do think anything is possible with the right training, hard work and dedication. I already have excellent nutrition and a well thought out fitness plan working in my favor, a trainer who cares about my training goals and success in addition to an excellent support system. And discipline is my middle name. That is enough to stay motivated to fight the good fight every day.

Even though this experience was bad, never say never! It will be hard to eat certain foods over the months, but eventually you can eat anything, even spicy chicken. In fact, today I had shredded spicy buffalo chicken for 2 of my meals without any issue at 13 months post op. By month 6, you should statistically be able to eat just about everything. Some struggle with a few items after hat, but it is not the norm. If in doubt, be sure to take your Prilosec before eating something spicy again. You might wait a couple months before trying spicy chicken again. One type of food I struggled with at month 3 was eating beef (hamburger meat and pot roast). Made me throw up. I tried again in 2 months, but still an issue. Between month 5 and 6, my issue with beef went away and I could eat a burger ( without the bun) and pot roast. So, moral of story : never say never.

As Lynda states above, the cold does indeed vanish after awhile. I remember being cold until about post op month 7. Boy do I remember how cold it was, needing a space heater in my home office and later wearing hoodies and gloves doing normal things like grocery shopping or walking around the mall. I must have looked strange wearing gloves inside. Today I do say that I am not so cold any longer. It just kind of dissipated at some point; it is hard to point to a precise time when the body started to be used to loss of insulation.

A note to the OP on Ramen - watch out for the high fat and sodium in those. They are somewhat good for tight budgets if you cannot afford anything else, but if you can, there are much better nutritional choices from low carb protein bars to small amounts cheese to apples with nut butter to Ostrim sticks to beef jerky to...

laura - I see your 4 boxes of pepper Ostrim and raise you 5 boxes of teriyaki Ostrim. Yup, the motherlode just came in yesterday. that stuff is gold for VSG snackers. I bet kristi made like 5000 dollars in rewards from all our VST orders last week !!

The good news is the sun is back out today in Seattle and I am feeling much more cheery. Dark skies during the day must bring out the moodiness in me. And the munches ( had two protein bars, including a quest - those are so good!!). And yes I did turn n the glow light yesterday. It helped.

Seriously, you are moving up north? That would be great to visit and meet you. Portland is a 4 hour car drive away. Northern CA is a bit harder and is an all day, coffee infused drive from Seattle. I am going to swing through northern CA on a small road trip in early November and hopefully I will run into some VST friends.

Any thoughts on if this would good for the sleeve. my question applies to a person who is at least post month 6 in order to be past all healing. I used to eat Fiber One cereal all the time (read: every morning) pre op and just loved the original flavor with very little added sugar. I am wondering if there are any unintended side effects like too much swelling, etc. I would love to eat this again as a digestion regulator ( read: fancy smancy for guaranteed daily BM - lol). This would be as a replacement long term for the chia seed / miralax I take daily now, which, by the way, is a good digestion regulator also. One bowl provides approximately 57% daily fiber. Thanks all for your responses.

Laura, you are always welcome in my threads. wait a sec, that sounded kinda bad...lol.