SlimDreams

You look fantastic, and frankly, it's refreshing to see sleeved men show off their bodies and be proud of their new physique just like ladies like to do sometimes!
Great job, and congrats on your success!

I was sleeved on June 28th and I'm down a total of 35 lbs (pre-op diet included) ...
I was extremely fortune not to have any real issues except some insomnia in the last week. I got home on the 30th, didn't take any pain meds once home and transitioned from the Clear liquids to some soft items the 2nd week. I'll admit I'm trying to get used to some more substantial choices. I've still followed a Protein shake for Breakfast and lunch most days and dinner has included one scrambled egg and some cottage cheese. I do feel satisfied. I returned to work after one week (desk job) and it's been OK ... the clothes are fitting looser and that's a little bit exciting. I thought I'd be in a hurry to get back to solids, but been doing ok with a combination liquid/solid regime. The first week or so I couldn't believe the amount of mental hunger I was experiencing. I know I wasn't hungry, but will all the commercials and such, i was really craving some of my old comfort food. Those have definitely subsided and I'm thankful for that. It was a little tougher than I thought and you just have to push through ... the changes has been drastic, but they are far easier to incorporate now that I have a few weeks under my belt ...
I'm glad I finally did this and can't wait to see how I can take full advantage going forward!!

I'm a seasoned traveler that travels extensively for work & my brother works for the airlines;) Here are my suggestions should you be doing this "alone" contact the airlines notify them that you will need a shuttle and wheelchair. They airline will provide you with someone to help you to your destination, and have an airport shuttle meet you at your gate and take you were you need to go. Also, notify the gate when you arrive the flight attendants will board you first as well as any carry on you have, just be sure to let them know of any assistance you will need. That is what they are there for I hope this helps:)

I feel amazing!! Eating great, getting Fluid in, and loving life!! 5 weeks out, down 35 lbs. 203 to 168, size 20 to a 12/14, and XXL shirt to Lg!!!
How are you guys?? This is a pic of me today after tanning and one from two days ago at a store.

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Me today

I was just sleeved on Monday, also with no co-morbidities but at a high BMI (57) after a literal lifetime of dieting and exercise (first diet started at 6 mos old when my mother was ordered to stop breastfeeding as I was gaining too much weight; my first WWers meeting was when I was 5 years old). I'd just like to make two points:
1) "Society" is in love with hypocrisy: according to the "general view", we're all supposed to be thin. If we aren't naturally thin, and we diet and exercise, we're often made fun of at the checkout line of the grocery store for being fatties buying healthy food and at the gym for being fatties on treadmills, bikes, etc. When those same diets don't work long term, we're derided as failures. However, if we try to accept our weight and live as healthfully as possible, we're chastized for being fat, lazy slobs. Then, after years of this nonsensical Catch-22, some of us seek out a surgical intervention, and are rebuffed yet again for not having done Step 1 adequately, and accused of not having enough willpower. Call me crazy, but I think that "society" can shove it.
2) So who isn't subjected to the above scenario? People who are naturally thin (whether they eat healthfully or exercise or not) and people who maybe had a little weight to lose at one point, and were fortunate enough to have metabolisms that toed the party line and got them down to where they wanted to be with small diet changes and exercise. Once in awhile, you have the "unicorns" (as I call them) who do it all with diet and exercise and lose substantial amounts of weight (in my book, >40-50 lbs) and keep it off. You know what? Those people are literally less than 3-4% (depending on which research you're reading) of the number of people who lose weight. And they're generally only accepted by the former groups if they constantly proclaim how they're a changed person and finally saw the light, etc. etc. (i.e. divesting themselves of who they were before).
Thus, for whatever it's worth, after a lifetime of observation, I've arrived at the following conclusion: Do what YOU think is right for you, and to hell with everyone else's opinions, suggestions, comments, etc. no matter how well-intentioned (or not) they may be. Only you know what your journey has been, and only you can decide what your journey will be. Surgery has risks, possible complications, is kinda scary, and will be a lot of work, and that's just the first part. It all comes down to really weighing the pros and cons in your situation and making the decision that you feel is right.
Good luck and be well!

Search out the low BMIers we have here. A lot of folks self-pay for BMI as low as 35 - some even lower than that!
I was 45 day of surgery, so I was larger but heard many of the same things you are hearing. Is it possible you'll regret surgery? Sure. It's possible that could happen if your BMI was higher or lower, too. Most regrets don't stem from actual complications or problems - they stem from your mindset.
Have you tried to diet and failed? I'm not sure about you but I didn't go from skinny one night to being morbidly obese the next morning. I struggled with my weight for more than a decade before having surgery.
Dieting wasn't cutting it. If it worked for me, the first one I tried as a teen would have been the miracle cure and I'd still have a whole stomach. Even with a sleeve I've had to fight for most of my pounds to come off. It has not been easy.
People that shouldn't get a sleeve:
Are unwilling or unable to change disordered eating behaviors that have contributed to their obesity
Are expecting a fast, effortless trip from fat to goal in just a few months
Expect to see loss every single time on the scale
Plan to treat the sleeve like part two of a special diet
Aren't prepared for the real possibility (though remote) of complications or the accompanying pain and expense
Are not able to tolerate pain or discomfort for the brief healing period
Are not able to accept lifestyle changes as necessary for success
Are unwilling to follow doctor or surgeon's orders post op, or adhere to the special post op dietary guidelines
The sleeve will change your life. I would do mine again in a heartbeat. Had the opportunity and knowledge come to me at 41 or 40 or even in the high 30s BMI range I would have done it then, too. I regret that I waited until I was diabetic and had so much more weight to shed.
But that's just my experience. You'll need to think on this and if you're ready for the changes it entails. If you are prepared, this process is much easier.
~Cheri

You are so brave and so honest to share this..thank you

"Old Me: Self care is whatever feels good. New Me: Self care can never be self destruction." I really like this! Thank you for sharing this part of your journey.

It’s been 18 months since my surgery, and I am a work in progress. I recently posted about the decision to have the sleeve. See, “Down Over 140…The Decision: Fears and Tears” Now I want to write a bit about the emotional changes that I personally had to go through. Maybe some of this will ring true for you, too.
As I contemplated this entry, I struggled with what to tell you, a complete stranger, about my process. Finally, I decided to be honest, so that you could know in your heart that if it’s possible for me to change, it is also possible for you.
I still think about food all day, every day. I so wish I didn’t, but I have come to know that I am a food addict, and I have to treat it like an addiction.
I grew up the oldest of 6 in a poor family. When I was 12, my dad left and my childhood instantly ended. Alcoholism, mental illness, chaos. That was to become my family life. At 18, my stepdad committed suicide. When I was 20 I was raped. When I was 21, I joined the Army. When I was 22, my brother committed suicide. When I was 28, my two-month old baby girl died. I struggled with anxiety attacks. I developed a life-altering auto-immune disease.
There were good things, too. Love. My other beautiful daughter. My sister—who was my best friend, my soul mate, my rock--we went through everything together. Getting my college degree over a period of 20 years! Getting promoted. Writing. Photography. My home. Friends.
But always, there was food…my constant companion. It never failed to nicely anesthetize me.
One night, just before my surgery, I was watching a weight loss show where they were talking about how you MUST deal with the issues from your past if you are going to succeed. I don’t know why this struck such a chord this time, but I really began to think about the girl I used to be and all the fear I still carried inside me.
It hit me like a tidal wave! I cried for the girl whose childhood abruptly ended at the age of 12. I cried for all that had been done to me. I cried because I had been so powerless. But then I realized with real clarity that I am no longer that powerless child! I had succeeded at everything I had truly worked for! I had a great job, and would never be dependent on anyone financially again! I had even learned to be assertive.
That night, I spoke to that little girl inside me. I made a promise to her. I told her that she would never be a victim again. That she was no longer powerless. That I was going to take care of her forever.
But could I do it without food?

One of the best things I did for myself was to line up an appointment with a therapist for one month after my surgery. Although that person did not work out and I ultimately found a therapist who specializes in addiction, it was such a comfort to me to have a support system in place. I haven’t gone to her more than a few times, but she is an anchor for me, and I know she’s there.
As I said in my previous post, my beloved sister died in my arms on December 28th. I had postponed having my knee replaced to take care of her, and I foolishly thought I’d be doing well enough by the end of February to get through it ok. Well, I wasn’t. March was one of the bleakest months of my entire life between the physical pain, drugs, bad weather, isolation, and grief.
So how did I get through it? How else? I ate. Ice cream. candy. Cookies. Let me tell you right now, you can put down a lot of calories every day in 100-calorie increments. That is why you need to know beyond a doubt that what they say is true: They operate on your stomach, not your brain.
So I spent March crying and eating. And then one day, as I was sobbing to my husband about my out-of-control eating, I wailed, “The worst part is, I’m letting myself down!”
“I’m letting myself down.” I could not back away from this statement.
I called my therapist to discuss the grief/eating cycle. She let me off the hook, saying, “Sometimes you just have to be in survival mode.” I got off the phone and thought about that a lot and realized even though I had been given permission to eat badly, eating badly no longer felt like my authentic self. For the first time, I knew that I had truly changed.
The old me believed that self care meant whatever felt good. The new me knows that self care can never equate to self destruction. The next day, all the junk food left the house.
I’m still sad. But I am empowered. I am not a victim, even of myself.
If you've hung in there through this long post I hope you'll leave me feedback and share your own story. In posting this, I sort of feel like I'm running down the street naked!
Soon, I plan to post on some of the logistical things I've found to work for me since my surgery. More practical! Less emotional!!

Running around after munchkins sounds like some pretty purposeful movement to me!!

Three Years Later - What I've Learned
Here's my experiences from the sleeve process years ago. I wish I had this information before getting the sleeve, so I wanted to share it with all of you:
GAINING WEIGHT
Gaining weight is easy: you simply eat when you're emotional, lonely, or not hungry. Even though my stomach would barely fit a slice of pizza, I could still suck down an entire large meat Lover's Supreme by eating a single slice, waiting until my stomach could fit some more and then eating another. Until the pizza was all gone. You can also do this with ice cream, burgers, fries, and all the other miscellaneous crap food widely available via drive thrus.
This is why you're required to see a counselor and nutritionist - to handle your eating issues. If these aren't handled, then DON'T BOTHER WITH THE SURGERY. You will simply get fat again by eating smaller portions more frequently. If however you only eat when you're hungry - and stick to good foods then you're golden. Now OBVIOUSLY if you did that in the first place you wouldn't be fat. So surgery is a booster shot to your weight loss, and new way of life.
Think of it as waging a war, and surgery is a tank. Now a tank is a formidable weapon. Can run over enemies, shoot some big artillery but eventually if all you have is that one tank, you'll probably lose a prolonged battle. So you gather some strategy and military air support (diet changes), some recruits and soldiers (lifestyle changes) and NOW you have a master battle plan for your war. And ultimately a better thought out path to success.
You invested a lot of money and pain into this - don't screw it up.
FIRST FEW MONTHS
The first six months your weight will drop amazingly fast, because you're out of surgery and can only eat Soup broth for a week. And then slowly mushy foods come in, followed by a few solids. You don't really need a blender, there are ample canned goods you can eat. Baby food, blending a steak and other shocking posts you read about aren't required: just shop for other things that qualify. Going out with friends during this period is depressing, since your diet is so restrictive, you're staring blankly at the menu for a long time and finally decide on Water.< /p>
Get everything you need together before coming home. You'll be on some pretty loopy meds when arriving home, and won't be in any shape to hit the local Walmart. Nor will your family want to bother with it - so plan ahead.
FOOD AND STRETCHING
You can only eat maybe a half cup of food during the first couple months. Then a cup after about five months, then two cups after longer. You can hurry this process along by stuffing your face until your stomach hurts so bad you need to go lay down, or vomit. But if your eating problem is that severe then see my multi-faceted approach to surgery from above.
Each person is obviously different, but stretching your stomach (to me at least) seems difficult and a venture of pain and suffering. I can feel my stomach naturally taking in more food over time, however I've cycled that back down by going a few days drinking only delicious fruit smoothies. This makes my tummy literally shrink back to where it was after surgery, or pretty close, dependent upon how many days I go. You can also accomplish this via more extreme methods like water or veggie juice fasting, however banana/stawberry/pineapple with some coconut water and ice in the blender tastes much better in my humble opinion.
If you do continue to gorge like a tick on bad foods, then yes your stomach will stretch. I've met a few people who's stomach has returned to normal size. Again - everybody is different, I'm just telling you MY story.
How much food you can eat varies by food type:
RICE - I can eat maybe five spoonfuls of this before I feel sick. Stuffing in another three before my body registers that I'm full and it's a vomit party. You need to eat slowly - there's a point in which eating more means bending over the toilet. And once you've experienced that joy, you quickly learn where the limit resides. Rice expands so you gotta be careful. An average meal of fried rice and an egg roll is a full day's worth of food, that requires splitting up.
SODAS - Equivalent to drinking battery acid. I've met some people who've acclimated back to it, but why bother?
MEAT - Steak is bad, try like five or six bites before calling it quits. chicken is similar. Fish goes down a little easier, and you can eat more, maybe because it's flaky.
SALADS and FRUIT - I can eat one banana. Two is painful. Ditto with grapes, strawberries, etc. These foods process through your stomach quicker, so you can eat a little more often compared to stuffing down a sirlion.
PIZZA - Takes me about 12 hours to suck down a large thin crust. Regular or deep crust, I end up tossing half of it into the trash.
Desserts - They hurt. Bad. And then make me sleepy, ticked off and depressed. I mostly stick with natural sugars now like fruits and veggies.
RESTAURANT EATING
Eating out with friends has a lot of rules tagging along. You must wait 30 minutes after drinking water before eating (which works out great, since that's how long food takes to arrive). I order an appetizer or split a full meal with a friend, so this is not a big deal. I see and hear lots of drama about this mingling around, but it's not THAT bad, and you can easily make it look perfectly normal without telling people you had surgery. You don't need a little happy note from your doctor saying you had surgery, just get a doggie bag or go halfsies with a buddy.
CONCLUSION
These are just my two cents, and I hope they help someone.
I lost about 100lbs, then gained back 50.
I'm in the process of losing again thanks to a diet change (I went 100% raw food) and exercise.

Be asked to dance, and confidently say yes

Be asked to dance, and confidently say yes

Lately I've seen a TON of posts about lucky sleevers that drop 100 pounds in six months.
Congrats to them and to their loss. And I would never, ever begrudge anyone the right to crow about a fantastic success. It's part of why we're all here, to share the ups and downs of this surgery!
But frequently, these posts are followed by folks that feel frustrated because they aren't losing at the same pace. All too often, we forget that everyone loses at a different pace. It's easy to lose sight of the real goal (long term maintenance) in the face of the scale goals we set for ourselves. And it's also easy to forget that this isn't a race and that there's no special prize waiting at the end for reaching goal more quickly.
I would like to contribute my loss pattern so that people can see that there is more than one way to achieve a goal. Being successful is about reaching your personal goals, overcoming your personal food demons and maintaining your weight loss for life. It's not about hitting goal in nine months.
I encourage everyone else with a slow loss story to contribute their successes here as well. It's hard to research this surgery and find only the stories about extremes - people completely thrilled with surgery or people that regret every minute of life post op. The same goes for loss. When people search out stories on this, it's too easy to only find rapid loss or stall posts but nothing showing the more realistic and moderate journey many of us take. The sleeve is a permanent tool that does not have a special window of easy weight loss. There is no reason to feel discouraged when you haven't reached goal at one year out, or even two. There is nothing preventing you (short of your own body's natural stopping point) from achieving or re-achieving goal at any point post op.
I lost 60 pounds in the first five months after my surgery.
And I slowly lost 32 pounds over the next seven months.
It took me another five months to shed the final 15 pounds to my goal.
I lost 107 pounds over the course of 17 months. I stalled twice for nine weeks each time. I had months where I only lost one pound. I regularly experienced a gain of three pounds around my cycle, and often only lost weight in the last week to ten days of the month, after sitting at the same weight for nearly three weeks.
I am a success, and at 2.5 years out (and currently pregnant) I still have good, healthy eating habits and maintained my weight loss quite easily. Even 30 weeks pregnant, I am still wearing a size 6/small (in maternity clothes, of course) regardless of how I feel about my expanding body!
I learned what was important on this journey and am in better health today (not just physically, but mentally and emotionally), than I have ever experienced as an adult.
Good luck to those currently on their journey, and I encourage everyone to share their stories here so that newly sleeved folks can see that slow vs. fast loss doesn't really matter in the end.
~Cheri

Hi all wanted to check in, I was sleeved yesterday--surgery went well and Dr. Lee my PA said I have beautiful anatomy, I bet he says that to all his sleeve patients!! Lol
Anyway my reaction to the anesthesia was tough!! I was very out of it in the recovery room shaky lots of aches and pains...some dry heaving, yucky spittle and a low grade headache, also nausea that lasted into this morning.. basically just laid here in and out of a light sleep...the nausea subsided once they took me off of the injectable pain meds and the anti nausea medication did help, so it came in waves instead of being constant...
Overall I'm doing well....I can say that now bc they gave me some lortab orally, which I'm told is liquid vicadin about 10 mins ago..and right now nothing really hurts except where the drain is...also they took out the catheter and I've been able to tinkle on my own, and have some ice chips and propel
Catering has been by twice, so my broth and Jello which I haven't touched yet is starting to pile up (that never would have happened before!!)...I'm not hungry at all...
I'm so happy there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, I know there's a long road to go, but I'm still happy with my decision and just wanted to thank all of you for your support up to this point... reading everyone's preop and post op experiences had really prepared me for my own...
THANK YOU!!

Omg!!! Stupid phone!! And stupid me for not rereading my post!!!
Thank you for being able to translate that lol...yes comes with a lid for travel!!

Hi. Imitrex is also available sub q injectables and in generic. It's like an epi pen.

Well I don't know how opposed I would be to butt sniffing...guess it just depends on the cuteness of the butt in question... lmao

Do you ever look at what another person is eating and think, wow that is A LOT of food? My husband ordered the waldorf salad at marie callendars and it looked like enough food for 10 people. I used to eat that and the cornbread too. I'm noticing how supersized our world is. No wonder people get fatter here.