Globetrotter

Isn't seeing 100 lbs lost SUCH a rush!! So awesome!! As a 3 year veteran I would love to give you some hindsight advice, such as, keep those carbs downdowndown until you hit surgeon's goal, get a trainer and have them kick your a$$ with high interval training so as to train your metabolism so that you can keep losing after the honeymoon, keep an online food tracker (I'm sure you are doing this already), and get a therapist or support group that meets in person, not only online. Also vitamins and green superfoods!! Congratulations!!!!

Unjury chicken soup is a perennial favorite for the full liquids stage. also, beef consomme, low sodium tomato soup, V8, blendered leek & potato soup, and adding Unjury unflavored protein to any soup makes it legit for your protein count.

I'm completely wigging out, I just logged my calories for yesterday (I don't have access to a computer in the evenings so I log first thing every morning) and it turns out I ate over 1600 calories! I am doing 5:2 and it was a feed day but I am absolutely flipping out, that is so much!!!!!!!!!! Too much!!!!!!!!!! And I've been ill so no, I didn't exercise yesterday nor will I today. At least today is a fast day, but 1600 calories, I feel like a sloppy fast food gobbling PIG.

Woah Keys, long time no see!! So glad to hear from you, a fellow member of the 3 years crew! I remember how dedicated you were to your protein and exercise! If I recall you are also quite tall, at least to me (I'm 5'3"), so a size 8 means you are still pretty lean, good for you! I love that you are still big into the cycling, right on!

Boy do I understand stress eating! Also, grief eating, fear eating, anxiety eating, nervous eating ... I find that, when the urge comes over me, if I can get a really good strong hug from someone right away, the feeling passes. Or if I journal through it, the feeling will pass. If everything is just too overwhelming and I'm totally alone, then I hurriedly shove as much salad greens and raw veggies into my mouth as I can cram, those are still sticker foods for me, so if I'm packed to the gills with those, it's physically impossible to poison myself with something bad.

I too have pain issues with some wheys, and soy, basically anything with higher gluten content. Also, I have to stay away from the casein, as it gives me horrible cystic acne. Unjury and Syntrax have been the gentlest and most effective for me.

Cheri, I've heard that breast feeding burns crazy calories. Coops - alright girl, you are my sleeve sister but I'm about to rant at you! Stop saying you are medically obese!! I mean, unless there is a major difference between US and UK charts (I don't know perhaps there is, I'll check) you are NOT obese. I think you are 5'3"? 5'3" and 160 is overweight, according to the NIH website, NOT obese. Furthermore, repeating this toxic phrase to yourself is every bit as harmful as teenager girls pinching their teensy baby rolls and calling themselves So Fat. "Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words they cannot hurt me" is the biggest pile of effing hogwash ever foisted upon the human memory. Words matter!! Words cut! Words shape perception, trust me, in my line of work - I know. You work effing hard, you face your struggles and keep plowing ahead, we all love and respect the heck out of you, so, FEEL THE LOVE GOSH DARNIT!!!! <3 <3 PS - I am also 3 years out, am 50 pounds away from normal, and it makes me feel like a giant piece of poop when I hear VSGers who are from my time frame/numbers complain about how fat they still are, and they are like 30/40/50 lbs lighter than me v_v. rant over :wub:

Yeah that is so true, I'm at under 500 cals right now, end of the work day, I could make this a fast day by having a shake for dinner, or go to the dining hall and get real food ... Luckily I am so exhausted the idea of chewing seems like an effort, so it may end up being the shake :/

Yep, eat like it's my job during that time, and specifically my craving for meat is ridiculous, I attack a rare steak like a velociraptor! In the 2 days right before, red meat and chocolate and my boyfriend!

Why would the hormones make you accumulate belly fat? I thought that pudgy middles were something that everyone battles in middle age, fat or thin.

Exercise is crucial, I've seen incredible before and after pics of people who have nearly eliminated the batwings just with weight training, but I think most of us will require surgery to eliminate them. Either way, weight training is crucial.

Fiddleman stole the advice right out of my fingertips, lol! Go to The World According to Eggface, for her awesome zucchini pasta recipe. Also remember the old phrase, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should", at a few months out you may (or may not) be able to handle pasta, but that doesn't mean you should eat it. Even enriched fiber pasta has next to no benefits, is a filler without nutrition, and pure carbs that aren't even complex. There are other ways of getting the pasta fix, check out Eggface, she's Italian and has found many wonderful ways of replacing traditional empty calories with delicious alternatives

Yeah, my protein is definitely lower on fast days, probably around 50. On feeds it's more like 80.

I will have to have someone send me some

Coops, it might also be the result of withdrawing from sugar? I felt this way when I started ADR, that sugar withdrawal is no joke.

Gmanbat, it is okay that you posted here, I love to hear from the guys. However, it did slightly skew the thread, as the point of my original posting wasn't complaining that men are visual creatures, after your response it made it seem like that. My real point in the OP, which I guess I didn't clarify enough, was this paragraph: "So then I became not-obese, and then I got fit and almost trim (all the excess skin kept me from really looking buff) and suddenly I was visible. Men not only saw me, they pursued me, doggedly and I discoved that this kind of attention is just as saddening/depressing/disappointing as the invisibility was. Because of my armor of obesity, I never had to deal with men trying to get into my pants, and because I never had to deal, I never learned." I'm not saying men shouldn't judge with their eyes, after all, I do, it's just that I know they wouldn't be giving me all this full-court press if I didn't look this way. Perhaps it is sort of like ... I'm getting away with something? I'm passing for average?

Indigo, you got it, you really got it <3

... to be wasteful. I was never a member of the Clean Your Plate club, that was never enforced in my family growing up, though at the same time food was considered the only justifiable expense. But I was admonished/critisized/guilted for any act of wastefulness, to the point of being denied access to many things because it was deemed a wasteful expense (including being seen by a doctor but that's another can of worms). So, as part of my WLS journey, I am learning to give myself permission to be "wasteful". Spending 10 dollars on cheap cosmetics at Walgreen's, instead of a trip to Burger King - that's okay!! So I "wasted" my money and an antire can of Coke because all I wanted was that first frosty bubbly sip - so what, it's my money and a small sip is better than 8 oz! It's okay!! It's not as easy as it may seem, the indoctrination of youth is difficult to shake, last year I was unemployed for a few months and had to be on a budget and I found myself reverting to self-abusing habits: Not going out because that would mean a couple of dollars cover charge, but spending that same money on food - because it is justifiable. My enjoyment wasn't justifiable, isn't that just sad? I'm sad -and embarrassed- as I type this. A new lipgloss or bottle of nailpolish from Rite-Aid costs about the same as a fast food meal or drink at a bar, with much more positive results. I struggle to believe that my desires matter, that my having ANY desire for self-care or tenderness is NOT a sign of ego or a$$holery. It is time to wash myself clean of my parent's toxins.

When I was obese, I was ironically, invisible. Men looked right through me. And if there were men who may have still found me attractive, I still found fault with their attentions, reasoning that they must have a fat fetish which is every bit as objectifying as someone who only dates skinnies, and it is still someone being interested in a superficial aspect of you, not YOU. right? So then I became not-obese, and then I got fit and almost trim (all the excess skin kept me from really looking buff) and suddenly I was visible. Men not only saw me, they pursued me, doggedly and I discoved that this kind of attention is just as saddening/depressing/disappointing as the invisibility was. Because of my armor of obesity, I never had to deal with men trying to get into my pants, and because I never had to deal, I never learned. I know, even if they don't, their hypocrisy. I know they wouldn't be sniffing around so insistently if I were still obese. I want someone who would have wanted me when I was obese, but I didn't want myself when I was like that so, how can I ask that of someone else? It doesn't make sense, it's a psychological hang up I know, but it puts not only them but me in the position of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The family photographic black hole is noticeable, packets of pictures, in albums, scrapbooks, the old envelopes (remember how exciting it was to go pick up your photos before digital?!) and then ... nothing. It's like I was in a coma for 10 years. And although I've had a facebook account for about 6 years now, there are maybe 4 photos of me in my FB albums prior to 2 years ago, and I was hypervigilant about not being tagged and removing any photos of me that others put up. Sad. This thread is called little things you never would have done, and one of those things for me is wear high heels if I had to do anything other than sit. Before my obesity I lived in high heels, I'm only 5'3" and every shoe I had was a heel of some kind and I wore them all day and went up flights of stairs at a run. By my highest weight however, just getting out of bed made my feet swell up and they were so fat that squeezing them into any kind of shoe and then standing for more than 5 minutes meant agony, nevermind trying to wear heels. So, one of the sweetest little victories last year (when I was in a Stateside office) was getting all girlified for work and wearing pretty high heels, wearing dresses with hemlines around my kneecap, I even enjoyed wearing pantyhose because they were a snug second skin like they are supposed to be, not torturous sausage casings.

Interestingly, everyone has focused on the relationship aspect of the OP. I would like to turn our attention to the other significant point of the post, that you feel the need to be constantly doing something. Sure, this is likely the result of making up for lost time, all those years when we sat around doing nothing and as you say, literally wasting our lives. But I do think there is something else at work here; you see, we used to fill that "boredom" or antsiness or whatever you want to call it, with food. Which of course reaches back into the "whys" of our overeating in the first place. What were we avoiding by stuffing our faces? What aren't we facing by being constantly active? What would happen if we were alone with our thoughts? I don't know if I'm making any sense or if it's just hogwash, but this occurred to me too, just like it did for the OP and a few others who said they have felt this way. When I was in the States a typical day for me was as follows: 5am wake up, 6am-2pm work, 3pm pilates, 4pm yoga, 5:30pm crossfit or tango, 7-8pm do laundry/pack lunch/set out clothes for following day/pay bills/journal/shower. 8-9pm watch a movie or show, sleep. and I did a version of this 6 days a week, I only slept in on Sundays, and even then it meant getting up at 8 instead of 5. and guess what? I really mean this when I say, that I still felt like I wasn't doing anything. I'm serious guys, I still felt "lazy". No doubt that is from over a decade of social abuse, being told overtly and subconciously that I was lazy or worthless etc etc etc. so anyway, I love being active, I love dancing and physical movement and being social, but I have also concentrated on being okay with just being me, and not having to prove my worth every second of every day. Hope my ramble made sense.

Georgia! I'm all choked up now! Thank you!! <3 The last 13 months have been absolutely brutal to me, unceasingly brutal, and I'm not making anything better or easier by packing on pounds and becoming unfit.

I look down the list of responses here and it's old home week, CLK, M2G, Sweetums, Oregon Daisy,FeedYourEye, Swizzly, we have all been here going through the business together and if I'm not mistaken, share roughly the same time frame. I was sleeved July 2010 and share the 3rd surgiversary with Coops. Coops, everything you said was so right on and to put your awesome accomplishments in perspective, to help you see just how great they are - The lowest I ever got was 164, and I've gained back up to I don't even know what because I'm genuinely frightened to get on the scale. It is crushing. I know a lot of it is my and my choices and what has happened in my life over the last 12 months, but I'm also battling against the Mirena, which I really do feel has helped pack it on. You think you are still overweight, do you know how much I would love to be "overweight" like you? I recently received a pretty devastating diagnosis that has left me reeling and one of the treatments for it is a type of steroid, and we know what those do ... But I apologise, I don't want to hijack this thread or steal your totally well deserved thunder. Coops, you just never give up and I admire the hell out of that, you keep moving forward and have such an awesome attitude, congratulations my sleeve sister! <3

green superfood powder, made with coconut water. Fiddleman has described it on VST, you can do a word search, I don't know how to describe it other than it is the stuff that juicers swear by for detoxifying and ultimate nutrition. I just made mine and took a sip and yeaach! like alfalfa dust in my throat, or sawdust!

About to have my green superfood drink, finished my shake a few minutes ago, does anyone know the hows of superfood drinking?