SouthernSleever

A couple things related to my weight gain - when I gained weight it was due to eating fast food/junk food during nursing school and then the pandemic (people sending goodies to hospitals) and the stress of the job. I also had two traumatizing relationships in that mix - what was 30lbs would have been 60lbs pre-wls When I was gaining weight, I wasn't stepping on the scale. So now, I do this often to keep me accountable. You are going to regain some, your stomach is tiny and then the swelling goes down and you can eat more (and you should)! I feel like wls is the only way I could have kept this off. The best thing is that the food noise is gone! I would redo the surgery once a year, every year, if I had to. That's how important is been to me.

Goodness I cannot believe that my 15 year surgery anniversary will be in October! A friend of mine is considering weight loss surgery so I went looking for this forum again and thought I would do a quick update! I had a VSG in Mexico (Mexicali) in October of 2010. I had zero complications and went from a surgery weight of 276 down to about 125ish. Size 24 to size 0. I had plastics in 2013ish (breast, arms, and tummy). I gained up to about 150/160 and stayed there for many years. Over the past 6 to 7 years I have gained weight thanks to nursing school and the pandemic ? but I'm happy with where I am! I am currently at 170 and in a size 8. (Lots of weight/skin in leg area). My surgery continues to be the best thing that I ever did for myself. The only drawback is that I have GERD, and cannot skip a day without Omeprazole. My labs are fantastic. I can eat pretty a normal size meal but still have some restriction if I go over that. I'll try to remember to come back incase anyone has questions but really I don't think about the surgery or food much anymore ?

I had a hernia fixed. Don't worry gal, you got this and you will LOVE your sleeve!

YOu need to make sure you don't have a blood clot. I doubt it would be existing for that long but I had very sharp pains in my heart/lungs when I had a clot in my legs that released and went to my lungs. I almost died from it. This was not related to VSG but to an ankle fracture in 03 and a stupid surgeon. GO GET CHECKED!

I took some tums when I needed them. Also don't drink/eat right before you lay down, that helps a lot.

What do you do after goal? Well here's a list Live life Try on cute clothes all.the.time. Look at yourself in the mirror a lot (with disbelief) Cut up your lane bryant credit card and tell them to F* themselves and their over priced clothes Miss lane bryant's bras and panties, send apology and ask them to make smaller sizes. Try out your new body. It's amazing what it can do. I have tried rowing, hooping, dance, hiking, and big music festivals. Keep weighing yourself but use that extra daydreaming about being thin space to daydream about lotteries or promotions etc

This has been my favorite thing about my VSG that I don't care what I eat next. I used to daydream of what I would eat later in the day or the next day. I would even look forward to the next meal while I was still eating. I'm almost 2 yrs out and I still don't care for food, I just use it for energy and occasionally something looks tasty but not often.

Knox area here but HI Nashville! I'm there at least once a month because i have friends in the area. I love LOVE nashville!

Tons of loose skin here. Had vsg when I was 31 and had been obese since maybe 10 years old. I look 80 naked but 20 in clothes so I don't mind

It is OKAY to be scared, I was. I had a 2 year old at the time and bought all the supplements, had my mom help out all this stuff. You know what? When I got home I was absolutely fine to take care of myself and my kids and I still have a pantry full of shakes/supplements. This is the easiest surgery I've had out of 2 ankle surgeries, a c-section, and lots of oral surgeries. You will be fine. Breathe, YOU WILL BE FINE!! BTW I had no problem taking care of my 2 year old, including picking him up if he got a booboo.

Alice, I never did protein shakes but I did strain a lot of soups and drink the broth. You can get veggie soup and take out the big chunks of veggies and eat the soup portion. Black bean soup and chew really well. BOTH of my kids have whey allergies so listen to me when I say GOAT'S MILK is your best friend. It is amazing and when you get further out they have cheese as well. Taste almost exactly like cow's milk but very easy to digest and is very close to human milk in make up. Our walmart carries it in a purple/white container with the refrigerated milk. Don't get low fat, go full fat. With that you can mix in bananas and a scoop of cocoa powder and if you have a health food store get goat's yogurt too. Try to up your fats, limit your sweets since your capacity is so low and just go at the pace that is comfortable to you. Good luck lady and congrats on your weightloss!

I would have said that people didn't treat me badly as an obese person. In fact, if you read my post from the begining of my vsg journey I probably said that very thing. The truth is when I hit about size 8/10 I really started being treated as royalty in the being small kingdom. That's when my friends dropped off and I started being treated so much better by pretty much all of society.

Don't just take out lactose but also watch whey products. Lots of green veggies and yogurt and if you need to get a probiotic.

Keep on swimming keep on swimming. Persist like the above poster said, you will eventually wear them down.

MISS DIVA! I've missed you! Look at you, you look amazing! I also go out of my way to speak to obese people and include them. It's very easy to feel so fat that you want to be a wallflower for fear everyone will judge you.

HUGE difference by everyone including family, friends, waitstaff, men, women everyone! The only people who haven't changed are my kids and husband. My husband actually says, "It kinda makes me feel bad about myself when people constantly ask "How did you land her?" It hasn't been all good either, my friends no longer hang out with me but I find it very easy, now as a thinner person, to make new ones. I never open doors by myself, people GIVE me free stuff often at say AT&T and food places, men offer to carry my things. I'm never expected to be a work horse like I was before (Oh she's big she can lift this heavy thing). It's amazing the difference. It's sad too. It just reaffirms my want to NEVER be fat again.

Let me add, start saving money now to ROCK your new body, it's so amazing to wear all the cute clothes!

Cut all sweet drinks out of her diet. ALL, including milk, juice, Gatorade! If she spends 2 hours watching tv/computer she must spend 2 hours outside to earn that time. Cut everything out of your house with high fructose corn syrup. I've done these things with my kids after watching a very informative lecture by a Mayo clinic's Dr on childhood obesity. Try not to eat out much either, you can only control what you bring into the house and NEVER reward with food.

Alice it took me longer to move past stage one as well and even when I did it wasn't comfortable. My friend who had the DS had a stricture and she was unable to keep down even Water so hopefully that's not it. I will say that eating post op was never comfortable until I was 6 months out or more. Drinking/eating very very slow and over chewing helped.

I know this is the man room and you are asking for manual laborers but I thought I'd give my 2 cents. I work as a housekeeper, usually about 6 hours with no breaks of lifting, turning, reaching, scrubbing. I went back to work 3 weeks out and got very dizzy where I had to sit down and call in help. Now this is in an airconditioned house and not a lot of heavy lifting so I imagine your job would be much worse. I took two more weeks off and even though I had bouts of dizziness here and there I was able to continue. I would think the heat and the lifting combined with your inability to get in much food wouldn't bode well for you till maybe 2 months out. Good luck!

Go GO! Do it now! I wish I had done it at 20 and trust me, the excess skin is not a big deal and the sooner you have ti done the better your skin will bounce back. OH how I wish I were in my early 20s when I found out about the sleeve.

Had both of these things happen to me but ONLY when i overate or didn't chew well. Haven't had it happen in over a year and even before then it was maybe once a month. Usually when I was very hungry and ate fast. Lesson learned! I compare it to having gas, it's really not that awful or big of a deal.

sex.

you can look at my siggy for how much i lost and i just reached goal at 18 months out!

Had my first consult since I posted last and also reached GOAL! WEWT! Looks like to get everything done would be 30k, <choke>! I'm going ahead with a LBL (lower body lift) in hopefully late June or early July. Then seeing where we are financially for the rest. I'll keep you guys updated with lots of gross pics