deletedsally

Oh DeeDee...I feel so sad that this has happened to you. I hope and pray that your leak will heal very quickly and that you can get on with building the positive future that you planned when you had this surgery. Even though this has been the hardest time of your life, I still believe that you can have a good outcome. Take care and keep us updated on your progress!

Of course we will support you!! Welcome aboard.

Thanks. Ordered and on the way!

WHooHooo! I'm so glad to hear that your surgery went well and that you are on the road to recovery and weight loss! I didn't have a lot of incisional or muscle pain, but I did have what felt like intense hunger pains for a while. I think that I may have been having some stomach spasms. For me, the feeling usually passed if I would eat something--even just a little yogurt or Soup would help. I'm almost at 8 weeks now, and occasionally when I'm going to bed I may still have a milder version of the feeling, but for the most part, I'm not feeling hungry at all. I would say the stomach discomfort gradually subsided over the first month. Congratulations!

Hahaha...Congratulations on the BIG achievement! I too was waiting for the day I crossed out of the morbidly obese zone. The day I reached that milestone, I sent out an crowing email to some close friends...stuff like that just makes you feel GOOD.

I am a foodie too, so I know how hard it is to make a decision that will permanently restrict your ability to eat. It's been almost 8 weeks since I had my surgery, and I can tell you that the 1st month after surgery was a challenge. Since then, this has been so easy. As far as cooking goes: Before my surgery, I had gotten so heavy that my feet hurt all the time, and I couldn't enjoy cooking anymore anyway. I'm feeling much better, and I'm actually taking the time to cook more for family. I'm enjoying smaller portions, and not feeling cheated at all. Would you send me the name of the cookbook you found?

I'm excited for you! This is definitely a life changing decision, and it sounds like you have be doing your research. It won't be long before you have your date!

YEEEHAAA! Sounds like your surgery went very well, and here you are on the bench. Congratulations!

14 pounds in 15 days? WOW! Posting that on this thread could trigger an uprising...

This is a quote from the Tom Venuto book that Swift mentioned: When a calorie deficit is first introduced, weight loss generally occurs rapidly, just as the numbers would dictate, but it never takes long before weight loss slows, and then eventually stops completely. Why does this happen? Why is it that you don?t lose 50 pounds in 25 weeks or 100 pounds in 50 weeks with a 1000-calorie deficit? The explanation is quite simple: Over thousands of years, humans have developed a weight-regulating mechanism that recognizes when there?s a food shortage and decreases energy expenditure to ?protect you.? This survival mechanism is known as the ?starvation response.? The Starvation Response You can survive for months without food. You?ve probably heard stories about people getting lost in the mountains or wilderness for months with no food at all (only water), or being confined in a prisoner of war camp for years with only tiny amounts of food. What makes surviving under these conditions possible is your body?s remarkable ability to slow down its rate of calorie burning. When your body senses calorie deprivation it says to itself, ?It looks like this is all the food we?re going to be getting for a while, so we?d better stop burning so many calories and start saving our energy. This way we?ll be able to survive longer on the little amount of food we have.? The starvation response developed largely from exposure to adverse environmental conditions like droughts, natural disasters and food shortages. Furthermore, there were no supermarkets ten thousand years ago - if people wanted to eat, they had to either grow their food or kill it. It?s likely that at times, ancient man didn?t know when the next meal was coming and may have only eaten once or twice a week. The starvation response evolved in humans to ensure the survival of the species. Your body can?t tell the difference between dieting and starvation This wonderful feature of human evolution is a blessing if you?re stranded out in the wilderness with no food. During periods of starvation, the body slowly begins to feed off itself, burning fat stores, muscle and even internal organs for energy. If you continued to burn calories at your normal rate, your limited reserves of stored energy would be exhausted quickly and you would die very soon after you food supply was cut off. The starvation response keeps you alive longer. Unfortunately, this same life-preserving mechanism can work against you when you?re trying to lose weight because your body can?t tell the difference between dieting and starvation! Severe calorie cutting always sends your body into ?starvation mode.? There?s nothing you can do to stop this from happening other than to avoid severe calorie shortages! Here's a second quote from the same book where he describes the solution: Here?s another common cause of fat loss plateaus: Your calories are too low and your body has gone into starvation mode. Once you go into starvation mode, no amount of increased training will help. The only way to get out of starvation mode is to eat more. If you know your caloric intake has been very low for a long time and you suspect the starvation response is the culprit, the best thing you can do is raise your calories. Keep your food quality ?clean? (don?t eat a lot of junk), just eat more of the same good foods. Depending on the degree to which you have slowed your metabolism, you might need a brief one to three day raise in calories before dropping back down (zig-zag method), or you might need to raise your calories for longer period. One proven way to give a sluggish metabolism a jolt is by using the ?Zig-Zag? or ?High - Low? method of dieting: that is, eat one to three days of higher calories and higher carbs followed by one to three days of lower calories and lower carbs. On the low calorie/low carb days, you lose body fat rapidly, but before your body can adapt, you raise the calories back up, which increases your metabolic rate and keeps you out of starvation mode.

Wow--it's great that you were able to get an appointment with another cardiologist so quickly! Good for you! I hope your results are all clear. When I had to get a cardiac clearance, I kept reminding myself..."What problem could I have that wouldn't be helped by WLS anyway? It's not likely that they are going to tell me no."

We don't usually think about how important good sleep is to our ability to feel decent and function normally until something happens that deprives us of that sleep. About 1.5 years ago, I had a 3 month period where I would wake up having palpitations any time I tried to sleep. (No cardiac issues, and the cardiologist suspected that the palpitations were the result of too much synthroid or my oxygen level dropping due to sleep apnea). Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I've never been so anxious and miserable in my life. I tried every sleeping postion imaginable, including sitting in a chair. It was horrible! I'm sorry you are having this trouble. Hopefully, medication will help in the short-term and this phase in your recovery will pass quickly. Even though it doesn't help you feel better now, I think you can be confident that as you continue to lose weight, the sleep apnea and the reflux will both be less of a problem, and you will be sleeping much better! For now, just do your best to relax and take care of your sleeve!

I'm happy for you that you are planning on having surgery while you are still young! Before I got pregnant my highest weight had been 165, but most the time I stayed around 140 with careful diet and exercise. After my first daughter was born, my weight was 220. That was the beginning of a 30 year nightmare with my weight. I dieted and reached my goal weight multiple times, only to find that I was constantly hungry and began regaining weight quickly if I did not exercise an hour a day and continue to restrict calories. I kept thinking that I would "get it right" with the next carefully selected food and exercise plan. Unfortunately, I was never successful at maintaining weight lost through dieting--and neither are 95% of the other people who lose weight by dieting Until the medical profession comes up with reasonable and successful non-surgical treatments for obesity, my vote is for this surgery. You deserve to be healthy and to have the energy to enjoy your family!

Hope all went wonderfully with your surgery! We will be waiting to hear from you!

CalorieCycling.Net This link explains the basics of zig zagging your calories and has some other links at the bottom of the page. Body builders have been using this technique for years. It's based on some research that suggests that after 3 days of eating a very low calorie diet, your body will begin to attempt to prevent starvation by conserving energy/reducing metabolism. When you spike up your calories every couple days, you basically are tricking your body into so that it doesn't go into conservation mode in response to lowered caloric intake. I've done it on previous diet programs and it worked--but it's hard to make yourself take in those extra calories when it seems like you are already stuck on a lesser amount.

At 2-3 weeks after surgery, I was doing good to get in 400-500 calories a day. I'm averaging around 800 or less at 7.5 weeks. There's a great software program www.dietpower.com that you can download that is wonderful for tracking calories, carbs, protein, etc... Free trial download.

Congratulations on being able to move forward with your surgery! Great news that you don't have a blood clot. Hopefully, as you hop onto the loser's bench, whatever is causing the pain will resolve on its own!

Thanks for sending the link to the book. Lot of interesting info!

The other night I was chatting with some VST folks when I got a call that my 4 yr. old grandson was being taken to the ER. I take care of him several days a week, so I am very attached, and I immediately headed down to the ER. As I was leaving, I grabbed a box of Nutrigrain bars in case we were there for a while and anyone got hungry. As we waited, and waited...my mind kept drifting to those NG bars because I just wanted to eat something even though I knew I wasn't hungry. But here's the good part: Everytime I thought about eating, I automatically thought of YOU and the urge to eat would pass. Since that night I've really been giving this some thought. More than before, I'm coming to realize that this surgery is such a life altering experience...I can't imagine how isolated and afraid I might have felt going through all these changes by myself. I'm grateful to each one of you for taking the time to post your experiences (good and bad), to respond to questions (that you've probably responded to a lot of other times), to offer suggestions, and to be a source of encouragement and inspiration! This has been an unexpected gift that caught me by surprise!

It's unfortunate that people who are supposed to be in the healing profession can do so much harm. It sounds as though this MD was completely unprofessional and disrespectful--both to you and to your PCP. I had a doctor who made a snap diagnosis of COPD when I was having some breathing difficulties. It had not been a chronic problem, I didn't have any history of smoking, and to be honest, the diagnosis made no sense. I got a second opinion, and it turned out that I was having problems with reflux and that was allowing small food particles into my lungs. When that was treated, the alleged "COPD" magically disappeared. Wrong diagnosis. I also had a brief problem with palpitations that I eventually discovered were caused by too much synthroid. I was looking for a new PCP at the time and on my very first visit to this "doctor" he announced that I had an anxiety disorder, and he promptly wrote out a prescription and told me to "trust him". Good thing I didn't. Wrong diagnosis. I could give a lot more examples, just from personal experience--but I'll spare you. The bottom line is that I have very little respect for doctors who hurl their uninformed guesses at unsuspecting patients. I would talk with your PCP about what happened and ask for another referral. This doctor sounds like a loose canon and he isn't someone I would want playing on my team!

Before I had this surgery, I kept doing research on ghrelin to see if I could find some way to lose weight that wouldn't increase ghrelin production because I always got hungrier and hungrier any time I lost weight. Even weight loss achieved through exercise alone (no calorie reduction) resulted in marked increases ghrelin production. This is where I'm hoping that the sleeve will kick in to make it different this time.

Just another thing to consider...it seems a lot of Protein shakes are chocolate, and this can really make problems with reflux worse. I pasted a clip from one research study: "The researchers found that chocolate significantly increased the number of reflux events and the acid exposure time in the esophagus for the seven patients. "We found that the chocolate causes a large amount of serotonin to be released from the cells in the intestines," says Wei Ming Sun, Ph.D., research scientist, U-M Department of Internal Medicine. "The serotonin causes the lower esophageal sphincter to relax. The relaxation means the 'door' between the esophagus and stomach is opened and acid is allowed to flow back up to the esophagus." I had a lot of digestive distress (cramping, intermittent diarrhea) when I was on my preop diet and using various protein supplements that contained whey protein concentrate. When I switched to the

I lost 10 pounds in the 2 weeks prior to surgery. I had surgery on a Tuesday, and by Friday of that week I was down another 10 pounds. Then the scale didn't budge for almost 10 days. I figured that there was no way that I had lost 20 pounds of fat in less than 3 weeks, and that even though I was probably still burning fat during the "stall", my body was reclaiming some weight in water at the same time. That was what I told myself--but who knows...and any rational explanation you come up with doesn't counteract the frustration of not being able to see a loss when you are working hard for it! Try to keep shaking things up by eating "high" calorie intake about every 4th day and then dropping back down. What's your sodium intake? You might try making sure to eat low sodium for a day or two and see if that makes a difference. It seems like forever when you are in the middle of it, but pretty soon you are going to see a loss.

I haven't had a DVT or problems with arthritis, but I have had unexplained pain in my knees and legs that made it difficult to walk for short periods of time. I hope this is something that passes quickly and that you are still able to have your surgery! Let us know what happens.

Yaaay on the good report! It is definitely interesting to live with a new way of eating. I knew how to make healthy food choices before the surgery--unfortunately, I just didn't do it most of the time. Thankfully, the sleeve is helping me because I'm just not as hungry, but I still have those psychological cravings too. I've been to some really nice restaurants in my time, and had some really good food...but the two foods I seem to miss are Hardee's Sausage Biscuits and Pizza Hut Super Supreme Pizza with a Pan Crust. Go figure. What do you suppose the hidden addiction is in our fast food loves? Too bad we can't figure out how to add it to broiled fish!