MisforMimi

This pic isn't even my highest/heaviest, so hard to find a full body shot. Highest recorded 320, Starting 275, Surgery 256, Current 165. Gastric bypass 1/15/15. Best decision ever!

@@AngelaE !!! Girl, you look amazing! Get it! :-)

Another thing I was thinking and would add to this that I noticed the last time I was thinner and a naturally thin person pointed out to me that many ex-fat folks still hold their bodies in space like a fat person. For instance, many us still hunch forward when we walk if we had large bellies or move our legs funny if we previously had large thighs. I was told to visualize a string coming from the top of my head to the sky to get the proper alignment. Also, we tend to lumber and galumph around not being aware that our gait can change to a more relaxed look since we are not hauling around so much weight. Sometimes, I do little spot checks to make sure I am standing tall and walking like a normal person.

I would put in a plug for a company called Luvo. They are not low carb but they are healthy real food that is pronouncable. I can eat around the carbs if I choose now. The food tastes like it was made in someone's kitchen not a factory. The problem with some brands mentioned is that they contain MSG, modified food starch or some derivative. It makes me feel weird and zippy and high for some reason. The chicken and chili is bariatric friendly and a couple of other non-Pasta flavors. http://luvoinc.com/

Love love love this. New beginnings are great, but I can't move forward truly unless I embrace that wonderful "me" that got me here! Truly a transformation. Congratulations!

@@onthefencejenny, Looks like you are not on the fence anymore! Great job! :-)

Super cute!

Love the black calla liLlies..

@@*Lexie* That sounds like some awesome investment in patients' success. Never heard of that level of preparation.

I'll be subscribing to this thread. Thank you for bringing this up. I am pre surgery but I have an interesting prospective. I have been feeling a bit like an imposter my entire process for getting qualified for surgery. This, WLS, is supposed to be the like the last house on the block. We were supposed to have tried and failed miserably at the weight loss thing and never had any long term success at losing weight, but this has not been my exact story. In 2005, I lost 140# without surgery. I discovered that I have a sensitivity to gluten and sugar and I stopped eating junk food. I didn't exercise but the weight literally fell off my body. I was lighter than I had been my entire adult life. I went from 320# to180# in about 8 months probably averaging about the same clip as a bypass patient I'm imagining. I had some feelings of euphoria, but mostly I felt like a live electrical wire. My comfy fat, my safe place to hide from the world was suddenly gone and I felt as if I was practically electrocuted if I would even brush by furniture too hard. I had trouble sleeping with the new sensations of my knees, ankles and toes rubbing together aching for their familiar cushion and I felt horribly uncomfortable if anything including clothes touched my newly discovered clavicles. I cried at random and inconvenient intervals. I stayed at this low weight for a VERY short time and hovered comfortably at 200 for many many years. I was never prepared for and have never heard ppl taking about how to just be and reside in a body, newly formed and considerably smaller. How do we really listen and hear and feel in a body with new sensations and dimensions? How do we become like the normies I call them, those people who never ever gain weight while we constantly were ballooning up and dieting down the scale? What were/are we to do with our one life outside of food? I know I have the tendency to want the newer, sexier, more interesting route to any destination, like success with even WLS can't just be about plain old (following the prescribed) diet and exercise, can it? I'm still wondering if the surgery is just the newest thing for me. I switched my surgical consideration from sleeve to bypass for this very reason. Because if I'm going to do it, I need to go old school. With me it had to be vegan, raw, paleo and Crossfit. Zero to sixty. Never just walking, always training for the half. What happens when the proverbial dust settles and it's not about the food anymore and the weight is lost? When the life I thought weight loss or this surgery would fix is still going forward unchanged? Sitting in this empty space with myself without support and resources or a clue is what made maintenance so elusive and probably so for most people who've lost massive amounts of weight with or without surgery and gained it back. Will having had a glimpse of being thin for a while make me a better bariatric patient, more compliant? Perhaps, or maybe not but at this stage in the game I can't take anything for granted but these are the questions that are clearer in hindsight and that I need to formulate a plan for now on this side of surgery.