mistysj

It's not cheating because you are not getting an advantage out of it. Call it choosing to second-guess the surgical team that you are trusting to cut out most of your stomach. You chose them for a reason so why would you do that? If you get a leak or have a complication won't you always wonder if it was your fault? What will your spouse tell your kids if you don't make it and you were disobeying your surgeon?

CONCLUSIONS: In this long-term report of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, it appears that after 6+ years the mean excess weight loss exceeds 50%. However, weight regain and de novo gastroesophageal reflux symptoms appear between the third and the sixth postoperative year. This unfavorable evolution might have been prevented in some patients by continued follow-up office visits beyond the third year. Patient acceptance remains good after 6+ years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20622654/

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Obesity/40490 "Obese patients who have laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy keep the weight off in the long run, researchers found. In a single-center study, patients who underwent the procedure lost an average 57.4% of excessive body mass index (BMI) over 5 years, Ralph Peterli, MD, of Claraspital in Basel in Switzerland, and colleagues reported online in the journal Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, first developed about a decade ago, "was initially intended to be a primary intervention in high-risk patients before laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or as the first step of biliopancreatic diversion duodenal switch," the authors noted in their introduction. But evidence has been mounting that sleeve gastrectomy itself is an effective surgery for weight loss."

I've had fun with this the past two days. I'm making the best choices I can for every meal and snack, then logging at the end of the day. My goal is to have at least 90 grams Protein and less carbs than protein. Simple! And it's a small sample size but I have hit it both days so far. Also I am logging in MFP and MND to see which I really like better. It seems silly to double-log but it lets me try MND without losing days in MFP. Now that I am back at work and in my normal routine, I am going to make it a habit to pack my morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and "emergency food" every day, in a way that makes my food goals easy to meet. I had gotten lax about bringing my lunch and just grabbing something near work. Wasteful and usually not the best choice I could have been making. But mostly expensive! I even bought a better lunch bag and ordered some new tupperware to help me out.

Fiber doesn't get absorbed by your body at all so it doesn't have calories that are usable by your body. Soluble fiber turns into a goop that helps things go through and insoluble fiber adds bulk to your stools and keeps your colon health.

+1

You can't spot reduce. You can build up the muscles under the fat and wait for them to emerge. I'm built the same as you. I still have fat under the skin in those areas. When it is mostly deflated skin, that's when surgery might be able to help.

Where/how are you tracking your protein, if I may ask? Just in your head using the labels?

http://consumerist.com/2014/01/03/9-things-we-learned-from-vanity-fairs-article-about-the-dangers-of-nuvaring/

Ok this will sound dumb but I think the juice got me accustomed enough to the texture that I can handle it with just Water now. I put it in a lidded tumbler and shake it up, leave it alone for a few minutes, shake it up again, and drink it. I have over a cup of water and maybe that dilutes it enough or maybe it is waiting a few minutes for it to mix with the water more. But it is tolerable. I've been using juice once a day and having it plain the other two times in the day. Also it is definitely working!

I think people who are at the beginning of their journey or people who are watching someone else's journey tend to be conservative. "I could never weigh that, I would look ill!" But the reality is that if you are exercising and following a sensible way of eating, the "healthy" BMI range WILL look healthy on most people, especially given some time for remaining fat to redistribute and for skin to tighten a bit. Just because you can't picture it now doesn't make it true. I also think the last 15-20 pounds tend to be "invisible". It is around our middle and we tend to hide our middle by wearing clothes that compress it (jeans) or hide it (untucked shirts). Also nobody looks very closely at someone else's stomach because it is rude. People keep telling me they don't know where I will lose more weight but I know it is between my bra strap and my hip bones. I have at least 20 pounds to lose from there if not 30.

I have my personal number which puts me at a BMI of 22. My surgeon's goal for me is a BMI of 27 but I'm only 1.5 BMI points away from that and I certainly don't feel done. I'm in size 12 at 4'11" and while that is heaps better than size 22, it's still pretty large for my height. If I get to a point where I am having to work especially hard to lose more, I hope I will have the self-awareness to realize it and be happy with whatever weight that is.

I just wanted to point out that this is the January 2014 Sleevers support thread. The bandsters are welcome of course but it made me wonder if this thread belongs somewhere else like the lounge? What so you guys think?

It will sure hurt your weight loss if you get pregnant this early out. Lots of women get really fertile really quickly after surgery. Edit: posted that before I saw the reply from Jerzy. Wow. I hope your surgeon and other doctors are guiding you through it. That would be so stressful! I was not trying to make light of your situation.

Lol thanks I appreciated your opinion!

Thanks Butterthebean for getting this moved back to the right place.

Food and tablets don't get absorbed in your stomach even before surgery. They get absorbed in your small intestine, which is the same as it always was. You can take any medications you had before, as long as your surgeon gives the OK.

I can and have had it. I can eat half of a small deli sandwich (like a ham and cheese on rye -- not a thick one). It fills me up and I can't get as much protein so I treat it like a treat. I usually get salads instead and ask for extra meat. I have found that I can tolerate the hard thin breadsticks and there is a brand that is only 5 carbs for 3. So I have them as a snack with some cheese and sriracha sauce. But on,y a couple times a week.

It's very regional. Assamese and Bengali people eat beef. Probably other regions too. Also lots of more secular people from all over eat it. A few years ago you almost never saw pork on the menu, but it is now easy to find as well.

You actually can change the columns. It is in the website under Settings I think. Then you have it restart the app to see the change. On the phone it only shoes you calories though because of limited real estate. I have mine set to Calories, Protein, Carbs. For the others I chose None.

Um why is this in vets? I am not even a vet yet. I posted this in the General Sleeve forum.

Holy moley! I think your plan seems harder than tracking!

As an aside, what firm protein do you eat for breakfast? Eggs? I struggle with breakfast and often just have a shake.

I was just playing with MND today. I had bought it for my iPad and forgot (probably years ago) so I reinstalled it and played with it. It is a lot different from MFP and i didn't find it as quick to enter things but maybe I just haven't got the knack yet. I did like that you can hide calories (though you still have to have a calorie target). Sometimes I like the social aspect of mfp but again sometimes it is a distraction too. I think I have OCD and everything is a potential OCD monster.

What are you using to track, if I may ask? I have a friend who had surgery a couple weeks before me and just tracks protein in her head. I envy her. She is already at goal, had a little less to lose than me. I will be interested to see how she maintains. She didn't want a heavyweight approach. She also doesn't use web forums either. She is focused on living her life with all the benefits of being smaller. I feel like a huge amount of my brain is taken up with tracking and reading these forums. I have to say this is not the "after" that I envisioned. I thought I would spend more time outdoors and active, and spending more energy on my professional life. Instead I feel so distracted by all of this that I feel like I am missing out. It's hard to explain.