VSGAnn2014

You know what the weird thing is now about VSG surgery? That at 13 months post-op I no longer think it's weird to have a smaller-than-normal stomach. Now, it just feels normal to me. Some people who have 100% of their stomachs also eat like we now eat. Some are diabetics who are managing their disease well. Some are hypoglycemic. Some are actresses and models, which is funny, but I'm not kidding . Some are long-time slim people I know and have known for years. Now I eat a normal amount of food / calories -- 1700/day. I never ate like this before, and it feels so great!

Great move, IMHO. This journey is about getting healthier. But it's also about some other things -- including not hiding any longer.

I had to do a full-day class -- nutrition, exercise, eating / drinking phases, etc. Is that what your boot camp will be like?

Well, there are many phases post-op: Clear liquids Protein drinks Purees Soft foods Real foods Early weight loss Later weight loss Maintenance And surgeons' eating programs for their patients vary more than you would believe. Some people are on liquids for a week, others are on liquids for four weeks. It's crrrrrazy! FYI, I averaged 800 calories (and at least 60 grams of protein) for months 1-4. After the first month I ate a lot of chicken, green, red and yellow veggies, skim milk, Greek yogurt and cheeses. I gradually added some non-starchy fruit (berries, oranges, mangoes) and the occasional low-cal, high-Fiber, high-protein piece of toast. In months 5-6 I bumped up to an average daily calorie count of 1,000 and 75-80 grams of protein. Ate more of the above-listed foods and started adding whole grains (brown rice, a little more bread, quinoa). In months 7-8 I raised my daily cals to 1,200 and protein grams to 100. I was able to eat more colored veggies and ate a little more whole grains. I started drinking 4 ounces of wine at night many nights. During all this time I avoided like hell the "slider foods" -- highly processed, high-carb foods that have little nutrition value and just make you crave more of them -- foods like chips, Cookies, crackers, ice cream, cake, etc. I also never drank juices or sweetened drinks of any kind. Now that I'm on maintenance, I average 1700 calories/day -- mostly quite nutritious food (see above). But on the weekends I eat some dark chocolate, low-calorie ice cream and extra wine. But not all at the same time and moderate amounts. That's how I am making maintenance work for me. Others have other plans that work for them. I've lost 95 pounds. I reached goal (150 pounds) 8.5 pounds post-op. I'm now 10 pounds below that and holding steady.

That'll vary considerably, depending on what phase of weight loss or maintenance someone is in. What phase are you interested in?

This is the first time in my life I've ever given away / donated / gifted my beautiful big-sized clothes. I always kept them around before, thinking I might need them again. I'm here to tell you that the therapeutic value of getting rid of those beautiful, expensive size 12s, 14s, 16s, 18s, and 20s was priceless. I felt like Alexander burning my ships after reaching the shores of Persia. Commitment!

I understand where the OP is coming from. But here's my take on it. My parents had seven children. We all had the same general childhood food options (my father's hunting and vegetable garden and my mother's cooking) and the same access to general child-rearing, medical and philosophical ideological applications. Yet we didn't turn out identically. One was a childhood diabetic. Four became heavy smokers. Two became alcoholics. Six didn't go to college, the seventh got a Ph.D. Two were blonde, one was a redhead, and four were brunettes. Two were tall, two were short, and the rest were of average height. One has a slight / petite build, and the other six are fairly muscular -- two were quite athletic. I was the only one who was overweight during childhood. By the fourth grade I weighed 100 pounds. I was the heaviest girl or boy that year in my class. In high school I weighed 165-170. In college I got up to 185. In my 20s and 30s I finally became "slim," but my weight fluctuated dramatically -- from 120 to 185. By my 40s my highest weight was 205. By my 50s my highest weight was 225. In my 60s my highest weight (just before WLS) was 235. During all those years I dieted "successfully," losing and gaining weight over and over again. And until my siblings hit their late 50s or early 60s I was still the only one of us with any kind of weight problem at all. I don't know all the medical / physiological / psychological reasons that combined to produce the obesity that my sibs didn't suffer from. But very clearly I had challenges they didn't have. I tried my hardest to overcome my overweight. But, in the OP's words, I "failed" to do so. For over 60 years, dramatic diets didn't work. Weight watchers didn't work. Exercise didn't work. Diet pills didn't work. Self-shaming didn't work. Trying harder and harder and over and over again didn't work. Honestly, the only thing, at age 68, that finally worked was becoming so unhealthy that I became more immobilized than I'd ever been. It was crystal clear to me that without some kind of dramatic intervention -- and doing something very different than I'd ever done before -- I would turn into an agoraphobic, chair-bound, miserable person and turn my husband into my caregiver. That was not a future I was willing to accept. That possible future was dire enough to motivate me to have WLS. Thus far, it has turned out to be exactly what I needed. It has been a wonderful success. My knee replacement surgery has been deemed no longer necessary. I can walk 3-4 miles without rest at 3+ miles an hour. I can stand for hours without sitting down. I am no longer agoraphobic. I am satisfied by how much I eat and physically nourished by it. And I am definitely not a failure. I just had not found "the right medicine" to treat and resolve my condition. That's how I'm looking at it -- at least for now.

Jeez! That's awful. Sorry that has happened.

@@rusty780 said: "We all need to stop - let's tie our self-esteem to our weight. Put all possibilities and moments of happiness on hold until we are thin enough to deserve it." That's not what I meant at all. But I hope you know that. I was talking about how our health declines and our opportunities in life decline as one's obesity increases. For instance, it's hard to enjoy life very well when you can walk no more than 100 feet at a time. Oh, and it's no big joy for our family and friends either when our own abilities become so limited.

Every time I see a post like this -- "Even if I don't have WLS and never lost weight, I'm a happy, healthy person" -- I think this: Fat people always get even fatter, grow older, develop more and more comorbidities, become less mobile, find fewer opportunities of all kinds in their lives and, as a result, become less and less happy. To all those fat, happy people out there who think their life will always be that way, know this: in two years, five years, ten years, the quality of your life will be lower than it is now.

Boy, those are two very different kinds of surgeries, with very different lifelong self-care requirements -- but both require significant lifestyle changes and discipline on your part. The surgery will not "fix" you by itself. You have to do quite a bit to make the surgery "work" for you. Like @@Djmohr said, you should research very carefully what those differences are and what your best options are -- based on how much you weigh pre-op, your co-morbidities, any eating disorders you may have and your plans for overcoming those post-op (neither surgery will fix eating disorders long-term), and your past, demonstrated compliance taking daily Rx meds and nutritional supplements, etc. And then there's exercise and your activity level -- ramping all that up will make a big difference in your ability to maintain your weight loss long-term. Good luck to you!

Just sharing my own experience here ... I had my gallbladder out 4 weeks after VSG surgery -- and no one ever told me to eat low-fat. (Maybe ignorance was bliss?) I've had zero problems (that I know of) as a result of my gallbladder surgery -- no diarrhea, no dumping, nothing like that. I do keep my fats low and seldom exceed 60 grams of fat in a day. That's mostly because I would rather use my daily maintenance cals to enjoy some whole grain carbs and the occasional carby treat. I do eat full-fat cheeses every day, occasionally beef and bacon, but balance all that with skim milk and a lot of chicken and salmon. FYI, I'm now 13 months post-VSG surgery. Good luck with your gallbladder surgery recovery. Mine was really quite easy -- was fully recovered about a week post-op.

Fuckin' A.

@@CowgirlJane ... you are such a source of inspiration and good counsel. Truly. Thank you for all your posts.

"Clinically proved to improve body composition" Truly laughing out loud. What in the world does that actually mean?

44C to 34D

These posts are so frustrating for me to read. I have no idea how or where the unreal expectations I see online are established! Want to know what real post-WLS surgery looks like? Pre-op I lost 11 pounds on my own diet (during 2 months) and 8 pounds on my surgeon's 2-week pre-op diet. Month 1 post-op I lost 10.4 pounds. Month 2 I lost 11.8 pounds. Month 3 I lost 9.2 pounds. Month 4 I lost 10.4 pounds. Month 5 I lost 6.8 pounds. Month 6 I lost 5.0 pounds. Month 7 I lost 6.2 pounds. Month 8 I lost 6.2 pounds. Month 9 I lost 4.4 pounds (and reached my goal of 150 pounds). Month 10 I lost 3.8 pounds. Month 11 I lost 1.8 pounds. Month 12 I lost 2.6 pounds. Month 13 I lost 0.6 pounds. That's what normal WLS post-op weight loss looks like.

www.pinterest.com

Speaking solely for myself, my healthy weight will be where I can eat as much as I want of healthy food AND I can feel great about how I look. Oddly, I'm still losing weight very slowly, even though I'm averaging close to 1700 calories a day. So it looks like my maintenance diet may be more like 1800 calories a day instead of 1700. FYI, this morning I weighed 139.8 pounds. I'm 5'5" and 69 years old. I have ZERO interest in being so skinny that my maintenance diet will be too low to tolerate. So far, I feel like one of the lucky ones whose metabolism is higher than expected post-op. This is a weird thing to be going through -- needing to eat more than I think I should to stop losing weight. But, as we all know, everything about WLS is a series of phases. I can't assume this is the way things will always be. #reallife

@ ... not to drag this out forever, but you're very newly sleeved (just last month, if I read your profile correctly). And what you're experiencing when you feel like you "... can already tolerate things I couldn't tolerate even earlier this month" isn't the sleeve stretching -- it's the sleeve healing as the swelling goes down after the trauma of being mangled during surgery. I think that the restriction you will feel by month six post-op is not very different from the restriction you will feel by month twelve. I'm only 13 months post-op, so I can't speak from personal experience about the restriction beyond that, but perhaps others here can.

Jeez -- two two-liter bottles of soda. That's nearly 1700 calories! Wowzah!

Ruh roh! I'm working up a head of steam again about message board amateurs who start threads and then whine about what others post in response.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Read the study reported at this site http://www.nursingtimes.net/effects-of-bedrest-3-musculoskeletal-and-immune-systems-skin-and-self-perception/5003298.article , including this little tidbit: "Disuse of the muscles leads to atrophy and a loss of muscle strength at a rate of around 12% a week (Jiricka, 2008). After 3–5 weeks of bedrest, almost half the normal strength of a muscle is lost."

A different perspective here ... Some people (it's suggested in some threads that the majority of people) have very easy recoveries post-op. I certainly did. Check out this recent thread for a different perspective from those who didn't have many issues post-op: http://www.bariatricpal.com/topic/351493-my-doctor-faked-my-surgery/ Either way -- whether you suffer post-op or have an easy ride -- you can take this to the bank: A few months down the road you will look back on the first few weeks post-op as no big deal because you'll be doing so well. Good luck to you all. P.S. Oh, and @@Radar ... my surgeon cleared me for coffee on Day 10 post-op. But I don't drink as much coffee as I used to and don't miss the second, third and fourth cups at all.

If you've been suffering from an allergy, you're probably on lots of antihistamines -- maybe several of them. Those will knock you on your butt. We really become unfit and less healthy simply by being bedridden. It's time to get up and get moving.