Tomo

Wow, that is wonderful and inspiring. So true that those little Snacks and drinks can add up. Especially those slider types that make us wonder if our WLS isn't working anymore.

Here's to many healthy years to you and your hubby. [emoji3060]

Sleeved in my mid 50s, revised to RNY in my 60s.

Wonderful and inspiring!

281 lbs vs 175 lbs 🖤

Hello! Just wanted to say hello and thank you all for sharing all that you do and tell you it helped me so much during this process. I may not have written much but just seeing your before and after pics often helped keep me motivated and happy I was getting surgery. I feel ok. Just need more ways to get Protein in that I can stomach. My tastes have changed SO MUCH! It's crazy. LOL. Like I woke up in someone else's body. Haha. Amber said to do coffee with collagen and Protein Shake so will start that soon. I kinda just don't want anything at all sometimes. But get some bites in daily. I've haven't thrown up at all. I hate to so I stop when I'm near full if I do eat something I like a lot. But nothing is that appealing. I do get hungry though. Some say they never do. Or rarely. So just maybe not feeling satisfied by what I'm eating but everything tastes very different now. LOL! But will keep going and it'll work itself out. I was cleared to begin weights now. (Had hiatal hernia repaired so was not allowed to for 6 weeks.) So I went today and am writing down the days I go and if I do my list of tasks... hand weights, machines, treadmill, etc, and all of what I listed for leg day and then tomorrow is upper body day, then I check it off. So far I still love grapefruit and cucumbers and my tea with Stevia and lemon. Lol!
I am enjoying reading up on here. I hope to have time to keep coming in here to read. Will be working more hours starting tomorrow so will see. But feel free to message me any time. And I'll respond when I'm on here! Have a great day!! 🤗

I love crispy air fried pork belly dipped in a vinegar/garlic/black pepper dip. I can't eat too much of it or I'll feel a little off hehe but I have had it off and on. Looks good!

I love crispy air fried pork belly dipped in a vinegar/garlic/black pepper dip. I can't eat too much of it or I'll feel a little off hehe but I have had it off and on. Looks good!

My minister at church very concernedly asked if I was ok obviously worried I was sick. A neighbour, after congratulating me on how good I Iooked, ‘suggested’ I not lose anymore. My uncle commented I looked like death. I had people I’d known for decades not recognise me & then make a fuss even though I was only obese in the last 5 or 6 years & was often a healthy weight in the years they knew me. And so on.
We talk about our body dysmorphia but I believe others experience it in how they see us. They have an image of us being obese and they find it very difficult to accept us not being obese. So you get told you’re too thin, wasting away, you’ve lost too much, you must be sick, or just plain rude and unkind comments. Some of those are from people who are jealous or bitter b**ches. Some are from people who feel more comfortable seeing you as obese and want you to stay in the fat friend box. And yes, some come from people who want to be supportive but can’t express it in a way that doesn’t come out wrong (critical or hurtful).
In time you won ‘t get those type of comments. Eventually, people start to see you for how you are now as their perception changes. I haven’t had anything said to me for about 3 years now (well except for my sister-in-law’s cow of a mother last Christmas but I hadn’t seen her since before my surgery).

I see were I'm getting off track and my mindset has changed since early recovery.
Thanks for reminding me of the basics of the "whole" reality of having this done.
A reset is in order and a mental one is most important.
Thank you!

First: All because you can doesn’t mean you should. It takes around 8 weeks to fully heal. That includes all nerves that were severed or damaged to be back firing again & sending accurate messages to your brain around, hunger, satiety, damage and your restriction. It’s why sticking to the portion size recommendations you should have been given is so important during the healing stage. (If you didn’t get them ask your team for some guidance.) You don’t want to damage your healing tummy either (all those sutures and staples holding your tummy together).
Secondly: Do you need the next bite or just want it? There is a big difference between needing to eat and wanting to eat. Stopping to think about each bite you take is part of mindful eating and reflecting on your eating vs. mindlessly shovelling food into your mouth. If you just want the next bite (to make you feel better, out of habit, or other head hunger related desires) put your cutlery down & sit back from the table. Sometimes you may take another bite after a few minutes, other times you don’t have any more. The goal is not to eat until you are full but until you are satisfied and have had enough for your needs (for your body to function effectively). It takes at least 20 minutes for the message you’re are full to get through. If you are eating quickly when the message gets through, you’ve eaten more than you need and are over full. The goal also shouldn’t be to eat until you feel the restriction. If you feel your restriction you’ve eaten too much, or too fast or food that is too dense. The restriction fades in time so you can’t rely on it as a long term maintain e tool.
The two axioms have been very important to me and helped me stick to the plan I was given in the losing stage and then to maintain in the years after. I’ve often shared them & I hope you may find them helpful too.

Excellent Point!!!!
Lots of us who were/are obese seem to have the habit of chasing the "full" feeling. As @NickelChip alludes to, we would be waaaaaaay better served to think of the cue to stop eating as "no longer hungry" vs. "i'm stuffed and done now"

Looks yummy. I love chili. OMG, I cannot keep my hands off the Walker mini-short bread star cookies in the cupboard!!! You are so disciplined with two. I have been eating five at a time. 😕

My sweet tooth is still alive and well..I guess that's why I never had issues with the Protein Shakes during this journey. Today I am making a bariatric friendly homemade Peanut Butter cup/cashew butter cup. So good!

Finally I have something new to share:
A Gochujang tofu poke bowl. I ordered it without the rice base (which always throws people off, IDK why) and it was perfect

been on a sugar binge the last couple days.
1) yesterday's afternoon snack: 1 cup of silken tofu with 1 tbsp of maple syrup: 235 cals, ate it all (no dumping effects)
2) yesterday's dinner party's dessert: 64g NY cheesecake with 1 tbsp of salted egg yolk puree: 236 cals for it all, ate about ½ the cake, and all the yolk (dumping effect: fell asleep on couch for 45-60 mins and went to bed early to promptly fall asleep again)
2) todays first food of day (i was lazy AND hungry, ha!): 1 homemade oatmeal cookie my niece made and 1/2 an apple fritter: 265 cals, ate it all (dumping effect: tbd...)
mr. always chastises me for eating sugar and asks me why i do it if i know i'll likely be put out of commission...my answer: because its DELICIOUS, and because i CAN (sort of, ha).

Great job! I know you went through some trying times with health issues , I hope you are past all that.

Awww Thank you!!! It's been a long journey, but now I just have to build some muscle so I can stop sitting on bone when I sit down.

No! No! No! Besides why would you? Let’s be honest. We enjoy eating. The smell, the textures, the flavours, the look and sometimes the sound of food ( like the crunch of an apple) is appealing & gives us pleasure. We Celebrate with food. We share food with loved ones. We give thanks with food. Why would you sacrifice that to drink a Protein Shake for every meal?
Yes, you may be prescribed shakes in your pre surgical diet and you will be prescribed them for usually 2 weeks after surgery. The pre surgery shakes are to increase your weight loss to improve your surgical success odds & to shrink your liver so the surgeon can see the surgical field more easily. Post surgery it’s to support your healing & not strain your digestive system (remember all those sutures & stables holding it together). Short term reliance on shakes.
The goals of the surgery include you changing your relationship with food and establishing a healthy, nutritionally dense, sustainable way of eating. Drinking shakes for any extended period of time is simply not sustainable. It’s not nutritionally sound, only gives more power to cravings, creates new bad relationships with food and will highly likely result in weight regain & poor health.
Key word here is supplement. If you are struggling to get your Protein in via the real food you eat, sure a protein shake can be beneficial as a supplement to your earring. Same with any Vitamin or supplement. If your body is lacking in specific vitamin or minerals, sure take a supplement but they should never be what you totally rely on to get the nutrients your body needs to function unless you have a specific medical condition that means you can not eat real, solid food.
I never touched another shake after I began purées (start of week 3). My goal was always to get all the nutrients I needed through real food. And I do. I don’t even take Vitamins now (except in winter when I have a dip in my Vitamin D - I feel the cold so hibernate in winter & rug up if I have to go out so little sunlight for me then).
Ask your nutritionalist, surgeon & GP. I bet they agree with all of us.

No and no doctor would support this without extenuating medical circumstances. Even then it would be a nutritional/total meal replacement drink.

On this site we don’t support dangerous behaviors.

My weight seems to be holding steady at 180. I was hoping to get to 185 or even 190, but at this point I'm just glad I'm not 170 anymore. I'm a size 8/10 now (and I fluctuate between Medium and Large, depending on the brand). I noticed I don't have a lot of strength anymore, and I need to figure out how to build some muscle. But I have to not really work out, because as soon as I do, I drop weight like crazy. I wanted to try lifting weights again, but I don't have the strength and endurance anymore. And I'm ALWAYS tired these days. I'm on my feet all day at work, so I was told not to really work out if I don't want to lose more weight. So I'm kind of stuck.
But anyway, I'm proud that I dropped so much weight, and I love my new numbers (blood sugar is 93 before eating and 122 after eating, A1c is 5.4, blood pressure alternates anywhere between 102/60 - 106/64, my total cholesterol is 143) but my Iron is still too low and I have to have 3 iron infusions (blah). I've always had an issue with anemia, so this is no real surprise.

Went out to dinner to a Michelin star Cantonese restaurant. What we ordered (dim sum, Duh!)


We were served wagyu, scallop, prawn and lobster dim sum. I had the Wagyu, scallop and lobster ones, my dinner companion polished off the rest.

Pecking duck. Which was good but not great, I’ve had better. My pretty rolled duck pancake (I had two).


Spicy curried shrimps. The largest shrimps I’ve seen, they’re XX jumbo. I had two and regretted it because I was uncomfortably full.


Dessert was this delicious bomb with a crispy praline exterior, stuffed with a large scoop of praline ice cream and drizzled with hot chocolate and hazelnuts, and a vegan mango pavlova that was phenomenal. I had two small bites of each dessert and felt extremely stuffed (hate it). Overall this dinner was a 10! I’m so grateful I get to enjoy eating out and order a variety of dishes and get to experience everything (in moderation)

Man that is exactly how I feel! Like a bottomless pit on my cycle.

Looks delicious. Was it for your birthday @Lilia_90? If so, happy birthday.
I had Chinese last night too for my nephew’s 7th birthday. Not as fancy as this though. Just from the local takeaway. LOL!

inspired by this post, and prolonging the acorn squash love fest, i went and made these stuffed acorn squashes tonight!!!
the stuffing was bread cubes from old dinner rolls, with the insides of a couple spicy Italian sausages, dried cranberries, apples, onions, more acorn squash, vegetable broth, butter and seasonings.
they are quite delicious! and huge! AND sooooo filling!!
Mr. and i shared 1 of the halves for dinner and we were done (he ate most, natch).

And saving the best for last, Flammekueche!