newat52

Ok, I'm going to the time out chair now.

About 9 inches.

Seela! The amazing myth buster! lol! You go girl!

I'm alive!!! Woot! Woot! I know it's hard to go against your surgeon and NUT recommendations but in all honesty, this is one that I think is just fine. ***Disclaimer*** I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.

I'm guessing you made it though the night? Your secret is safe with me!

Yay! Congrats! All your hard work has paid off! I'm so happy for you! Applause Applause Applause!

You look fantastic! Congrats to you. Life IS so much better now, isn't it? I'm almost there and I just can't get over how great it is! Keep up the great work!

Warped minds think alike and laugh alike! Life is good!

I got it. I chuckled when I read it.

I used a small pillow and all was fine for both of us. I do think I healed faster having my little one near. Good luck!

Dr. Nicholson is $12,200. Or that's how much it was in March.

I really wonder why your surgeon is so against it. Does he have medical fact that most other surgeons do not? There are lots of folks here that were offered straws in the hospital. I really am curious.

You need to keep positive. I stalled out about 6 months and have been hovering several months now. Only about 5 pounds lost since month 6. A lot of the women in our Facebook March sleevers have done the same. I am following my eating plan about 95% of the time. From what we have read, this is quite common. While I do get frustrated at the numbers, I have gone from a tight 12 to a very comfortable 10 and I'm starting to eye 8's. I hit the gym 3-4 times a week. 30 minutes in and out. I know we could be building muscle and that can even cause a slight gain. Don't compare yourself to others. It will only further your frustration. Our bodies need time to adjust. You have lost almost 60 pounds in 6 months. Your body probably needs time to catch up. Hang in there and follow your eating plan. You can not fail if you do that. It will happen. Just may not be as fast as we would like. Best wishes, you are not in this alone!

Have been using a straw since 4 weeks out. Perfectly ok with my surgeon and NUT. I get way more fluids and less gas and burping with than without. For sure follow your Dr.'s orders but you could ask him or her about it.

I got all my questions answered from Dr. Nicholson He answered every question at his seminar that was asked. There were probably 40 people there. He conducts them himself. I recall in his seminar, those questions did come up. He was straight forward in his answers. He said all surgeries have a risk of complication. That is true. He also gave the complication rate associated with this surgery. He also gave HIS complication stats. I also re- asked some of the same questions in my one on one consultation and he was very straight forward there too. Even gave me a couple of examples. When I had my surgery in March, the self pay price included everything and up to two nights in the hospital. I would seriously doubt that whatever surgeon would cover complications if it were not caused by the surgeon. Too much can happen that is not in the surgeon or medical staff's control especially on an obese person. I would recommend you ask those questions to whichever surgeon(s) you decide to have one on one consultation with directly. I want to have confidence in who was cutting out my perfectly functioning stomach, not nearly as concerned with who was talking to me on the phone. I thought I read somewhere that the insurance for covering complications is quite pricy for the surgeons and that they would be required to have it for all their patients therefore, raising the price of surgery a great deal. That is the reason that most surgeons do not offer it. I can't exactly recall where I saw that so it may be something to look into to see if that is fact or not. I know some people don't like the fact that Dr. Nicholson can do a lot of surgeries in one day. I believe the reason is that he operates one day a week at a certain hospital. I had my choice of hospitals to have the surgery done because I was self pay. Lots of his patients that are insurance pay are told where they had to have it by their insurance companies. The hospital I chose I was the only one that day. The nurse told that. I love that fact that he has thousands of surgeries under his belt and his complication rate is as minuscule as it is. Funny how one person's comfort is another person's fear. This is a very serious surgery and I took it very seriously as most people do. Researched it to death. It also weighed on me that my insurance company would not cover any complication as a result of this surgery. In the end, with my husband's support, I did it anyway. The risk was so low and the payoff was and is so great! Sometimes, we can over think and worry too much about what happens if…..I was guilty of it with the surgery (and other things in life). In the end, I did what was right for me. I knew that I was taking a much, much larger risk to not have this surgery than I was having it. Best of luck to you in your decision making. Whichever or whoever you use, it will be right for you.

Congrats! It is an amazing journey and victory! Keep up the great work!

Good luck and best wishes to all you December sleevers! Nice for you all to stick together. Us March sleevers have a private Facebook group and we have been all taking the journey together, the ups and downs. You will all love your sleeve and your life post sleeve!

We must have been typing at the same time. Great minds think alike!

You can't. He is not ready. As painful as it may be for you to watch, you can't make him change. You can't preach him into change. He is an adult and he is simply not ready. That said, you know that he is noticing what you are doing and how you are doing it. His passive aggressive comments and actions show you that. His weight and choices are on his mind as you can tell but he is not ready. Think back to your obese days. None of us made the decision to get healthy until we were ready. Some of us thought about it for a long time and the decision came slowly, some got ready via medical issues and scares but we became ready when we became ready and not before. Your brother knows what he is eating and what his physical shape is. He knows what WLS is. I'm sure he already feels bad about himself, what obese person doesn't. When people remind us of it even in the context of being concerned, it can send him into an unhealthy binge. We have all been there. Just be there for him and love him. Be a good example and only relate your experiences as they relate to you. Otherwise you will come across as judgmental and a reformed zealot. No one likes those. Think reformed smoker who preaches to everyone on the dangers of it. Really? Smoking is bad for you? I did NOT know that!…..said no smoker ever! You get my point….

Have you looked up the salads at chilis, pF Chang, California pizza kitchen, macaroni grill etc? The salads all have 1200 calories or more. Almost nothing in those places is low enough for one person to eat for one meal. When I go out with friends who think "they'll just have a salad" I want to scream at them to look them up for calories, and order some nice salmon and broccoli already! So far I have (wo)manfully restrained myself. We truly live in an obesogenic environment in this country. So for me, I will bring up in casual conversation the great thing about scouting a restaurant's nutritunal value. I might say, wow! I thought whatever I thought was a good choice to only find out its not. That's as far as I go. Whenever I make plans to meet friends, I alway send the link of the website so folks can look. What they do with it is up to them.

Since I have kept my surgery to myself with the exception of my husband on one of our sons, I did not get that at Thanksgiving. I did prepare our traditional dinner for 10. I enjoyed every minute of it and put on my plate turkey and everything else. I enjoyed every bite I took but only ate till I felt happy. I admit I sipped a very good Pinot Noir with my meal. We had a most excellent meal with my most cherished loved ones gathered around our table. I found that my food was the least thing I focused on. Life is getting more and more like that these days. Who knew? It was so amazing that I could enjoy everything but scarfed nothing. I am really beginning to think a corner has been turned. Now if only I could master this just before bedtime head hunger….sigh….

I did not assume you were eating crap. I totally understand the food (and everything else) police. People just think they are the masters of everything. The sister that I talked about is the one who has smoked for over 40 years. She is so judgmental of food but will go ballistic if someone questioned her smoking. I just think we need to make sure our own houses are perfectly clean before we even venture into someone else's. I believe this in all parts of our lives. Not just food.

Nothing and I mean NOTHING annoys me more than the food police. The other day I literally said to someone "I've lost 70 pounds in 9 weeks eating what I like and without your advice, I don't need your input. Thanks' and shut them up real quick. I could not agree more! It not only annoys me but truly pisses me off. Honestly, does it help to "educate" people on their choices? No, it doesn't. People will make changes when and if they are ready. No amount of food bible preaching will change that. Sometimes, it can make things worse. You can't say something about what they are eating without effecting their emotions. You could be the trigger that makes them binge because you have just made them feel like shit. My brother had a lap band about 5 years ago. Every time our family gets together my sister and I are usually the planners. It's always at her house because I live out of state and we fight about this every time. She insists that no Desserts other than fruit be served. She insists that there can be no pizza or anything fried, nothing except healthy food because "she doesn't want to tempt him." I tell her every time that he will be responsible for his own choices and that he is well qualified to make them. We don't need to be his food police and in fact, he HATES it when she does that. He has told me a million times. He has told her a million times. it's the same for anything else, smoking, drinking, religion and lifestyle. Unless you live under a rock, most people have a good idea of the caloric and nutrition values. They have an idea of the hazards of smoking, they have an idea how they feel about Jesus….I think it is insulting to their intelligence to preach at them as if they don't know. For those of us who have been "reformed," we did it when we were good and ready and not a minute before. No amount of policing or preaching likely factored much into that decision. Don't become "that" reformed zealot person. It's never pretty.

Ha! Victory! I just changed my ticker to take back my inch. All the sudden I went from 27.98 BMI to 27.1 Yesireee! I will take that! I guess size DOES matter!

Ahhh….the million dollar question! That very question is smack dab on my mind! I have been out shopping for a few clothes and am finding myself pretty well planted in a medium top and comfortable 10 pant and have actually got an 8 zipped. Is that normal? Is that skinny? I sure as heck thought so as size 18 and couldn't understand when another woman would complain that her size 6 is tight. My original goal was a size 10 because that would be "normal" and an 8 would be beyond my wildest dreams. That would be skinny. Hmmm….Okay but now that is here I am still 23 pounds away from my goal. So what gives? My weight loss is slowing down to a trickle and I'm not that upset by it. I seem to hover up and down about 3 pounds for weeks then the scale finally gives it to me and I start the same hovering with another 3 pound cycle. In the 3 months that I had been stalled the not a pound was lost, that is when a butt load of inches fell off! (pun intended) So what gives? Perspective. Think that is the key. It's so damn hard though. I keep going back to what my original goal was. To lose the weight for good and be healthy and "normal." I thought for sure I knew what that meant at the beginning but that word is so blurry now. My brain is beginning to see the size I have become. I know this because I can't walk past a mirror without checking my self out and breaking into a smile and say wow! I am as small, if not smaller than my husband has ever seen me and my kids have never seen me this small. I get comments from people saying how small I am getting. It get it now. But is it normal? I want a "normal" BMI but I'm not yet so I keep going. But when I get to a "normal" BMI I will probably be a 4 or 6. That is tiny. I don't think that will look good on me. So what to do? Maybe I need to get rid of normal and try to wrap my mind around what works best for my body but that has never worked well for me. So what to do? I still don't know the answer but I have just decided to take my inch back! I have always been 5'3" at the surgeons office when they measured my height and said I was 5'2 and 3/4" wouldn't give me my 5'3". Of course now, it makes a difference so I am going to change my ticker and I will that much closer to "normal" and "skinny! Whatever the hell that is! I don't like thinking this much before my second cup of coffee!