gina8

Anyone had surgery with Dr Hausmann!! I am starting my journey on Sept 16th.. I meet with him for my first consult! My primary care is behind me 100% just wish insurance would be too! I am going to be a self pay at The Women Hospital! Just wondering any advice anyone could give on him! Bed side manor, result, etc. just some thoughts!! Today is my first day smoke free and I and hoping for the first of the year for my surgery just due to not having anymore sick leave at work!! Thanks for any thoughts!!

What ARE these people doing? Anti-histamines, because you have a full-on allergic reaction to a medicine? WTF?!! I'd be getting out of that hole as soon as possible.

Sulphur, Louisiana

Lafayette La.

From Baton Rouge, Louisiana but living in Lima, Peru South America

New Orleans!

Being able to change my Drivers Licenses weight without lying and the lady giving me that "Oh really NOW" look.....

Being able to change my Drivers Licenses weight without lying and the lady giving me that "Oh really NOW" look.....

I'm in the same boat!! Red Bull is my vice and can't seem to function without it! I am also stopping cold turkey on the cigs!! Today is my first day with both!! I hope I don't try and ripe someone's head off!!!! I know all of this is for our health!!! Good luck!!

Only one month from a year never thought I could lose as much weight as have in this amount of time was the best decision I ever made. This has been a hard year as far as personal life. The only thing that had been good is the weight loss. My sw. 451 cw 246 goal was 250 now I'm just going to loss as I don't look sick. I get to go back to Tijuana mx with a friend next month on my one year mark and I know dr ponce de leon will so a great job for him.

Wish me luck folks! I have to be at the hospital by noon and surgery starts at 2.
I cannot beleive it's finally here. I've made a kind of spiritual peace with all of it and I'm not nervous or scared anymore. I am looking forward to my new life and all that it will afford me.
Thank you for your inspiration, motivation and insight up until this point. The next time you hear from me, I'll be on the losers bench.
Much love
Alan

It was asked of me last weekend if I could clarify one thing about WLS, if I could make one notable point that has not been mentioned what it would be. So I thought, hmmmm….
We are constantly reminded that after WLS our stomachs have gone from being a sources of distress, these large cavernous things that CAUSED us to be overweight, FORCED us into eating poorly, etc. to valuable tools we use to lose weight. We have changed our stomachs to be sure. What, however did we change them to? VGS is generally a laparoscopic procedure that removed most of the body of the stomach. Starting generally below the pylorus, the suture/staple/cauterizing procedure extended along the length of the body of the stomach and removed the greater chamber, and may or may not have removed the fundus. So now what, what does that mean?
Now we have our tool. We eat less, we have to. The weight comes off. It may drop like a rock or progress slower. Different body types, health issues, meds, and still the foods we choose to consume will help determine this. So we have a tool for weight LOSS.
Then we maintain. Now we just eat less and it stays off, right? If you have been on the forum for even a little while you will see it is not always that easy. There are still many questions, lots of issues and answers still to be figured out, each in our own way and time. Many questions are about how to use the tool in maintenance.
BUT this post is not about maintenance; it is about the in-between, one of the less mentioned but in my opinion more profound things we do with this tool that affects our success. I define success not by an ideal size or shape but ability - ability to be a size that allows me to be active, and healthy, and off at least some medication, to name a few things. These are not the only goals I have, but they are the achievements I have that I now use to have a far superior lifestyle to the one I had before.
A big shift I have undergone is that I recognized that my tummy did something I did not expect. It provided a way to eat less and it has definite, defined physical ways it has assisted me, no doubt. Mentally it has assisted and even raised more questions! Beyond that, however, there is something more, and whether or not I embrace it I think is the true test of how successful this will be for me. I am talking about the “gap”. I have tried to find any reference to it in the articles and such that I spend a bit of time reading but so far I have not found that many.
The gap I refer to is that space that we never met successfully when we dieted. The ‘ –‘ in yo-yo. That point where the adulation of successful weight loss, and health and compliments began to lose momentum. It lagged with stress of home life, maybe. It was the burger and fries when, honestly, even if it had been a lackluster salad one could have ordered that instead, heck ordered TWO, whatever to be full – but did not. It is the sinking feeling one get when 50 lbs. of weight loss did not make the ailing marriage better, or the bills did not pay themselves. Maybe the issues that were under those layers were still there and still hurt. food was there, with food came feelings of comfort and simultaneous guilt, and a yo-yo began before the weight even crept back on.
Here is the “gap” the ‘ –‘ in yo-yo, and here is where our new friends, our new tummies, kick in. I think it is much underrated in the WLS journey. Our sleeves fill the “gap”. In between that space that we could not overcome, that ‘– ‘ in the yo-yo. We do not eat the burger and fries, we cannot overindulge by volume. We have a means to bridge that gap, if we want it. I think our longest terms of success can be affected by how we choose to take advantage of this bridge over the gap. Better habits, educating ourselves on food choices, understanding what got us here, learning to forgive and set vanity aside. Repairing the mental damage from being in the shells we were in, this is something our sleeves offer us that we did not have before. Much more important than just eating less and as vital as exercise - we have time. Time to recover before we even stumble, time to get equanimity from our minds and bodies at the same time we do not regress to bad habits and start that journey back up the scale.
We have time to make time – days and months and years to in turn create space to enjoy those days and months and years. If we did not gain a day from this, we gain quality. You know the sayings about rather have quality of years over a lot of years? We get an opportunity for both!!! From VGS and the bridge it gave over the “gap”.

I'm 3.5 years post op and still love this site. The site is like a therapist, moral coach, true peers, etc. you can get a lot from it. I suggest getting on her everyday.
If could share some knowledge it would be:
Don't stress... You will eat again, just not large quantity
Don't push your body too much, you will be going through a harsh surgery and it will take a little while to heal... And everyone heels differently
Focus on staying busy so you don't miss food too much
You have a window of 18 months that is prime losing weight time.. Take advantage of it
Put your fork down while you eat... It will make you eat slower

I just thought i'd post because I had a total NSV today, I went shopping and found a cute pair of jeans that only had a size 20 left. It was one of those "lets see how much further I have to go" type moments and I put them on and they buttoned and fit PERFECTLY. I was jumping for joy. it's amazing how far ive come in such a short time and I want to thank everyone on here for your inspiration and encouragement. this surgery was definitely a blessing in disguise. I attached a picture of me wearing a size 30 and a picture I took in those jeans in the dressing room today

I'm originally from Monroe! Thanks ya'll this is overwhelming but I'm determined it will not stop me!

I want to have a Spanx bonfire and burn every piece of Shapewear I own. Also it would be nice to sit indian style in a airplane seat. I've seen grown adult women do this and looked on in amazement. lol. Lastly, I'd like to particpate in a race and not have partipants and bystanders alike yell YOU GO GIRL as i pass by. Yes, America larger people run races.

Thanks.. I'll try doing that today!!

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

Surgery at 10:30 tomorrow morning! Praying for speedy recoveries to all the other 8/15'ers!