Thesaurophile

Holy **** once I went back to work life got busy. Anyway, I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess; over one week of pre-op diet, first week and second week post-op I lost 30 pounds. Which is amazing and I am still a little flabbergasted. Now, sadly, all that loss has caught up to me in the form of THE STALL. I've been between 235-236 for several days now (like maybe 5), but keeping patient. I did, after all, just lose 30 lbs in three weeks. I've been telling myself I might lose inches instead and reading the forums like crazy for morale, but every time I try on that stubborn pair of size 18 jeans they are still a little too tight. :[ HOWEVER: Work is taking us to Six Flags as a reward for being awesome last year, and I currently have nothing to wear to a theme park, so on my lunch break I dropped in to Lane Bryant to see what I could see in the clearance section. And lo, shining brilliantly on the rack, a pair of size 18 capri... jegging... things... hung in brightest red. And I did take them from the rack, and did carry them into the changing stall on the off chance they might fit. And there in the changing stall I discovered two things. One! My current work pants are a size 22 where I had unfortunately convinced myself they were a size twenty, which makes it retroactively depressing that they were pretty tight for a while. TWO! The capri-jegging-things FIT ME BEAUTIFULLY. aaand since I got them on the clearance rack and found $10 cash in my purse, only $10 came out of my checking account. Stall be damned, I won today :3

So I feel like I've been doing relatively well. My surgery was Tuesday June 18th, I got released late Wednesday, I haven't thrown anything up. I'm mostly able to walk around and I seem to be really dropping weight, whoo~ My stomach is SUPER rumbly, though. It's loud. And I can't sleep well, and I am always tired. I usually work ~fifty hours a week and I have no clue what to do with myself since I basically have to stay home and rest up; I'm actually tired of video games and TV but I don't really have the energy to do anything else, and generally everything I read about the first week sucking is extra true in a way that I had somehow told myself it wouldn't be. Optimist brain, 0; reality of major surgery, 1. :\ When did you guys start feeling like people again?

So this week has been pretty hard, but yesterday I realized some of my pain is already gone, and that's amazing! For a couple of months I had been getting bad, all-day-all-night pain in both hips/thighs, almost like a constant muscle soreness except minus the exercise that usually causes that sort of thing. When I was making my list of NSVs for the first time, I put that one up top. It was so bad some days I felt hobbled, and I'm 26. I didn't know what it was, but I wanted it gone. Yesterday I stood up to walk around and realized that I had just stood up with no. Pain. Not only that, but I had BEEN standing up with no pain all day, and my relatively pain-free state has thus far continued. HELL YES. As hard as this first week is, I have this little victory to hang on to. My other little victories/goals, scale and non-scale, in the rough order in which I hope to achieve them: Get below 250. I've been above 250 for a year. Start a series of every-morning pictures when I go back to work. Fit into my favorite pants again (the size 18s that had started to hurt when I wore them) Get below 230. I've been over 230 for a year and a half. Find an exercise I like! Get below 220. I've been over 220 for three years. Buy NEW favorite pants ;] Review my series of every-day pictures: six-month mark Have my ankles and knees not ache every 8 hour standing shift I do at work. Get below 210, which I haven't been under since I started college in 2005. Donate most of my too-big clothes. (keeping some for comparison!) Feel -- not even see, just feel! -- my hip bones again. I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE GUYS. Get below 200. I've been over 200 lbs since 17. Fit into a pair of size 14 pants. Get below 190. My lowest weight ever in my adult life was 187 at 16 years old, and I looked good. It's a shame I didn't know how good I looked, actually, but that's what you get when you're a slightly body-dysmorphic teenager. Sure, I was still pudgy, but I was awesome pudgy and I should have flaunted. CELEBRATE THAT ****. Get below 180 -- uncharted territory! GOAL: 175-170

From a 16-18 to a 2-4 is amazing! I agree, sounds like you're already at goal. 138 might sound bigger than you thought it was going to be, but if you feel good and you look good, I would leave the arbitrary number in the dust.

The only thing you can do for the gas is walk around. It sucks, I know! It hurts and makes it hard to breathe sometimes, but it will go away.

I was going to type "I woke up this morning thinking..." But, no. I woke up this morning to a giant thunderstorm after two hours of sleep, angry at the world. I drove an hour to work in the driving rain and had to stop and scramble for doctor-approved protein shakes at the grocery store so I could eat ("eat") at work. When I got to work fifty loud teenagers were babbling in the breakfast hall, three people needed transportation, and so on. So it was only after I finally got to run back, sit in my office and turn on some ridiculous cheesy "meditation" piano music that I cleared my head and I thought: Today is the last day I have my whole, I-got-born-with-it stomach. And that's cool by me. Goodbye, 75% of my stomach. We've had some okay times, particularly downing way more alcohol than we ever should have in the 18-21 years and getting stuffed full of all kinds of delicious things that were probably mostly butter and sugar painted to look like something edible. I'd say it's been a good run, but actually, now wearing clothes bums me out and my leg joints hurt a lot. So I think it's time we part ways. Goodbye, regular stomach; I'm trading you in for a bionic model. Helloooo, staple line~

Congrats! The month is going to FLY by. :]

I'm gonna admit right now that the first two days of my preop liquid diet were AWFUL. I cheated (hummus) and nearly yelled at my boyfriend for cooking his dinner in front of me. I resented the metallic ketone taste in the back of my throat. Finally on the morning of the third day I told myself to suck it up, resigned myself to just enjoying the SMELL of regular food, and plodded through another five protein shakes spaced three hours apart. Then that evening I bought a scale, since my surgery is on Tuesday and I figured I'd want one and not really want to go GET one afterwards. And I stepped on it. And I have somehow lost EIGHT POUNDS since Dr. Kim's office last weighed me. Day four of liquid diet, these goddamn shakes almost taste GOOD.

You look awesome!

Oh nooo! It will get easier, I promise! Especially if you can eat some real foods, not just liquids. I went vegetarian for two years; I started because I wanted to impress a boyfriend (lolol) and so it was initially really hard to start and ignore all the delicious foods I was used to eating. Eventually as I got rid of all the stuff I couldn't eat in my house and only bought the right foods/frequented the right restaurants, it got so easy I never had to think about it. Even smelling meat didn't make me want it, and I bet it gets like that with non-doctor-diet foods for you. It's gonna be okay!

Whoo! Yeah, the start of the preop diet has been rough for me, but the forums are making it better. Two weeks is gonna go by in no time :]

Hi! Getting sleeved on June 18th with Dr. Kim in the Dallas area. It's really reassuring to know there are so many other people going through this right now! I started my liquid BariEssentials preop diet Tuesday and I didn't think it would be this hard D: and I have three weeks of liquids post-surgery, although at least I can choose a brand and get some different flavors then. Worth it, though!

My boyfriend was initially resistant because he didn't know my history of trying and failing in various forms. We had basically the same heated argument it sounds like you guys had cue crying and "I don't want to talk to you right now"s and all that good stuff. I was finally able to just sit down with him and explain my previous struggles and tell him that although I appreciated where his concern was coming from, it wasn't necessary and right now I just needed his support. Once he realized the decision hadn't just come out of nowhere he's been SUPER supportive, and even went to my pre-op classes with me so he knows as much as I do about what's gonna happen in the upcoming months!

It was a couple things for me; realizing my BMI was too high to qualify for being an egg donor, even though I'm a perfect fit everywhere else. Realizing that my last pair of "comfy" jeans -- the pair that used to fall off my admittedly nonexistent butt! -- were now so tight they hurt when I sat down. Realizing it hurts my hips to try to cross my legs. :[ Ready for a change~

Hii. I guess this is where we make introductions! I'm Emily. I'm 26, 5'10", 266 lbs, goal weight of ~170 and am six (!!!) days out from my surgery on the 18th. I've been reading the forums for a while, they're actually part of what helped me decide to do this, but I started my liquid protein-shake pre-op diet yesterday and it's driving me crazy, haha, so I finally signed up. It's awesome that this forum exists. I don't know anybody in my day-to-day life that has had this surgery, so being able to read such a big variety of experiences is really helping! Outside of Surgery Life I'm a sales coordinator at a great hotel. I got 90% of a degree in studio art (I'm a painter!) before getting tired of being in college for seven years. I have a metric ton of hobbies; I bind books, write, play video games, and pretend I can play the guitar and ukulele. I have a lovely, super-supportive family and a boyfriend who had to be converted to supportive, but is now great. We live with our two big dogs in Texas, which is the best state.