gmanbat

There it is! Anger is a good motivator for some people. Works for me. I would walk and work out alone until you are in top shape, invite yourself in to the group, blow their doors off. Revenge by success.

Big yes from me, Alex! I like how you are presenting this!

Awesome, everyone! Nearly 3 years out here and still very glad I took the plunge. Being a child of the 60's, I laid on the morphine pump as much as possible... Half out, my wife asked me how I felt. "Miserable but happy!" i said. My family will not let me forget that.

I did the sleeve, my wife did the bypass. We both got to goal and have done well.

Prayers for you!

You got this, Bob. Pulling for you, man.

Good work!!!!!! For maintenance I would suggest keeping up an exercise routine the rest of your life and never thinking that you have arrived and going back to old ways. Diligence is the price of freedom. The weight can creep back up but not if you keep up your guard. I enjoyed the last 25. It was like chasing the enemy out of my country. I had him on the run and got a kick out of seeing his sorry butt in retreat!

Here are before and after pics of me and Deb. She had RNY surgery in Nov. of 2011. I was sleeved Jan. 2012. We have both passed our goal weights. Before: After:

Movement becomes a profound experience when the weight begins to come off. I remember after losing some weight and attempting to run the first time. I took off slow after warming up and expected the heavy breathing to commense. It didn't come....and didn't come...and ....wait a minute....where's the wall? My body was announcing its change. The tears came to my eyes,......freedom!!

Update: We are still at goal and enjoying not being obese. At 3 years for Deb and almost the same for me it seems like obesity was a long bad dream. Yet we know it was not our imagination and the fact is that it can again become our reality. We will not return to those chains. Exercise and eating right is a small price to pay for freedom. To those that are new to this I give you this advice: never give up, believe in yourself, ask for help from God and smart people and don't listen to those who want to destroy your dreams. No one deserves obesity, kill it!

A dear lady in our support group requested the participants to give her some comebacks for folks who, when hearing of her sleeving, say,"Oh, you took the easy way out!" My comeback is to quickly lift up my shirt and display my beautiful scars and say, "Does this look easy to you, genius?" Anyone have some comebacks that work for you?

I was morbidly obese as well. Almost 3 tears out now, still below goal weight, and can report absolutely no negative feelings whatsoever about my body image. I feel like I have returned to the real me after a long separation. If you have always been obese, get ready to discover a new you...a freed one. New abilities and options are coming your way. The annoying inconveniences of clothing restrictions and social adjustments drop off. I suggest developing your interests and hobbies, you will have time and energy to peruse them. Obesity has no positives. Living life is much easier without it.

Same here, Ipad, Safari.

Gliders do some serious bonding to folks who have patience with them. They basically adopt you as a glider into their colony. A lot of ladies carry them around in their bras all day since they are nocturnal and sleep all day. They wake up occasionally and poke their heads out for a drink or snack. Makes for a lot of chest staring at work.... Their size masks the fact that they are very intelligent and emotional. I put them on a level with elephants. They are more like little people. To me it is like discovering a communication channel to the animal world. They are eccentric, unpredictable, get bored, extremely sensitive, and project what I interpret as love. They have a highly developed sense of smell, I theorize that they read the chemical changes that occur in us when our emotion changes. They are used with epilepsy sufferers to predict seizures and the pheromones they release actually alleviate the seizure. They have a calming affect on nearly everyone. Their care takes a great deal of preparation and research. They are much more labor intensive than the monsters that peddle them at mall kiosks and flea markets lead you to believe. They suffer a lot because their cuteness causes impulse buying. A check on Craig's list reveals the aftermath of mill breeder sales: a lot of people trying to dump them and get some of their money back. Bonding takes time and patience, they are very tuned in to emotions, and they don't readily take to stupid people. They bite. If anyone is thinking about getting sugar gliders please stay away from youtube phony vets, pocket pets, flea market salesmen, ... Go to Facebook, look up Sugar Gliders or Sugar Glider Fanatics... Real glider lovers with real knowledge and experience.

LL, thanks! I wouldn't be surprised if I already know her, though. I am involved with some pretty big groups there. Gliders are quite an addiction...could be the calming pheromones they emit, the dog like bonding they hit you with, their challenging intelligence or just general cuteness. Sorry, original poster. Catching up with old friends got me carried away.

I have missed you folks, too. I have been sentenced to hard labor by my own blind compulsion to compensate for poor retirement planning. I am in better shape that I have ever been, rippling shoulder muscles, hard abs under the protective layer of loose skin, tired beyond any former definition of the word. I have also acquired a strange new passion. I have inherited the care of a pair of sugar gliders from my granddaughter who could no longer care for them. They are marsupials from Australia, cuter than a box of kittens, emotional, intelligent, and require the attention of a 2 year old child. Subsequently, I have spent many hours on Facebook pages doing extensive research on their proper care. My wife and I have designated a large room in our house to be their room and they are let out if their cage at least an hour a night to run, glide, and generally be gliders. It is a labor of love. I hope to show up more in the future.

At times in this life we are thrust into the inescapable presence of unpleasant people: the rude clerk at the DMV, the soap-allergic olfactory offender in the grocery line, the sulphuric mother of the sweet woman you are hopelessly in love with. Everything here is behind glass, it cannot hurt you without your permission, you can defeat any attack by the simple tap of a finger or voice command and go on unscathed with your life. Other than regular rules moderating by hosts and admins lecturing folks on being nice is an exercise in wheel spinning. The bad people are bad so they won't listen, the good people don't need to hear it. In my life the offensive people that I have the freedom to escape are normally dealt with by employing my best defensive tactic.... not being there. When I see their name, when I hear their voice, I occupy other space and experience other environs. My life is fraught with trouble enough without subjecting myself to self-torture. Forums like this remind me of a guy working quality inspection on a conveyer belt of peanuts. You occasionally see a bad nut, don't eat it, put it aside, move on.

130 pounds, kept off for 2 years now. Protein first, much exercise. Cancer survivor.

When I went into this I made up my mind to become a life long athlete. That was in January of 2012 . I have kept that commitment. Exercise was just a means, not an end. I visualized the finished product... In the best health and shape possible...and structured my life to make it happen. When I first started I could barely climb stairs. I used a steep hill by my house as my gym. I walked up and down the hill, going longer each time. Then I added weights, more time. Then I started running, then more weights. At the end of a year I was running full speed up and down the hill 12 times with ankle weights and 20 pound dumbells. This on top of push ups, knee bends, and kettle bell routines. I follow simple protein first guide lines. Now I don't work out at all. Why? I work at a job where I shovel dirt and run a wheelbarrow, carry heavy boards, and lift heavy poles all day in the Florida heat. I work with men nearly one third my age, (I am 65), who can barely keep up with me. Other than fighting cramps and joint pain my health is good. Oh, yes, forgot to mention, I had prostate cancer treatment in 2009 which caused my cascading weight gain. I was supposed to be dead in 2012. I am not dead. Make your mind up, invest your heart, your body will follow.

Always the hard headed one, alcohol does not affect me easily. It is quite a waste of time now, I am not fond of the taste and the amount needed to cause me too feel it is far beyond my capacity and not worth the belly burn. I am intoxicated my not being fat anymore.

My prayers are with you, too.

...OK...that moment passed...time to go work in the garden.