CoffeeGrinDR

They weren't joking when they said this is 90% in our minds. I'm only 11 days out and I'm so impatient to have lost everything. Right away. Most of the vets would probably say "stalls happen" and to cycle your calories or the like.

I got really obsessed with daily weighing. I wanted to see the scale move...so I put it up on the shelf and decided to weigh only on Sundays. ANY GIVEN SUNDAY you can reach a new personal best

To live.

Hi, hang in there. I was sleeved on 1/16 and thought I was going to gnaw my arm off until a few days ago. Suddenly, at 8 days out I lost most of my appetite. Remember to keep hydrated, that should help.

The band was much more painful for me than the sleeve. I used liquid tylenol for two days after being released and was fine. It really isn't that bad. I was back at work 5 days after being on the operating table.

On the third day after surgery I traveled back from Mexico, walked through the entirety of a large airport, dealt with luggage, walked a long walk to my car, and then drove 30 minutes home. I was fine. I had my surgery on 1/16 and was out shopping and running errands on 1/20 (much to my surprise). On 1/21 I went back to work. Yes, you'll be very tired after exerting yourself but if you are NOT on pain meds (narcotics) you should be fine. My last pain med was given on 1/18 and then I had some liquid tylenol but that is it.

I want to do what will be most beneficial for my weight loss. To that end, does it make sense to weigh only once a week? I have been weighing daily (per doctor's instructions) and it is messing with my mind. I'm down 12 pounds since day of surgery but the scale hasn't moved in 2 days (I attribute this to only sleeping 4-6 hours a night). I thought I would pick Sunday morning as my weigh-in day to keep me focused and on track and be able to wake up Monday morning to a fresh week of possibility. Thoughts?

What Gman said. Remember: you don't control your breathing from your lungs, you control it from your diaphragm. Singing should come from deep in your belly. Losing weight gives more room for that. From personal experience I was singing and playing guitar just last night (exactly one week post-op). No worries.

This is NOT medical advice just personal experience: Chanca piedra (also sold as "stone breaker") can really help. You should be able to find it at any whole foods type store (or I order mine online). It is natural and has been used for a very long time (basically a digestive bitter).

Thank you for sharing. Yes, I can relate. Your words on filling the emptiness resonate so strongly with me. I understand what it means to grasp for control (of any sort) because of the trauma of childhood where you are trapped in an abusive environment. I also understand what it means to repeat those relationships as an adult. What I choose to take away from this is one of my own mantras: the choice to live. All these things you have faced, you could have stayed where you are. But you chose to keep going forward. I feel so impatient as well. It's as though I want to just fast forward past the day by day of this and be at my goal weight. That said I think there is some important internal healing to do that no one will ever see. I think this inner healing is what really gets us to our external goals (whatever "weight" that happens to be). Living belongs to us only one day at a time, you've chosen to live and you are amongst a community of people who are here fighting to live right along side you. I wanted to offer one of my favorite poems for you: You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

Good luck! My surgery is tomorrow as well.

I am three days away from leaving for surgery! Intake is January 15th with surgery happening on the 16th!! I'm excited, anxious, and a wee bit nervous. WOW. Can't believe the day is almost here. Hang in there, board buddies!

Just an update... SouthernSoul was spot on here. We ended up talking about EVERYTHING. I didn't get to see her before she left the country but we will when she gets back. She called me on Christmas to tell me she has feelings for me and that she totally supports my goals and plans for self-care. Turns out she loves me just as I am. This surgery has always been for me and me alone but it was an incredible experience to have prior to losing weight and means a lot.

Hey January Sleevers! When I wake up tomorrow the t-minus 10 day countdown begins. WOW! I thought it would never get it here and now...here we are. I started a liquid diet yesterday and besides being a bit grumpy I'm good. Any other January 16th Dr. Aceves folks out there??? Best wishes to all! -coffee

I agree. I can't do malabsorption - it nearly killed me due to loss of iron and severe anemia that required 4 hour IV iron infusions 1-2x a week for four months. To take iron intravenously wrecks you. I didn't want to EVER go through that again. Gastric sleeve is the only thing I would consider because problematic malabsorption doesn't really occur. My surgeon (who was supposedly running a center of excellence) told me the band worked because of restriction not malabsorption. Then the awesome surgeon I saw to get the jaws of life out of me said "of course it's malabsorption." So the science behind the band was switched up in the middle of pushing the product?? Yep. This time I have waited, read the medical journals. To me, gastric sleeve is the gold standard for sustained health. My mom had gastric bypass and I don't think her health is as robust as it used to be. Just my 2 cents.

ONE MONTH AWAY! (Also, happy birthday Jane Austen!) December 16th was supposed to be my date but I pushed it back to January (due to a xcountry move).

Hope it all goes smoothly for you! Ask for that wonderful "relaxation" shot they give you up front -- best part of surgery! According to the revised BMI calculator (from Oxford) that would put you underweight. Maybe spot yourself 5 pounds? To each their own but the new charts recommend 123-166 for your height. http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi_calc.html Good luck!

Sheldon, not to throw a spanner into the works here but I'm curious about your goal weight (being 118). At 5'8" a lot of charts have a median healthy weight at 147 (with a range of 136-150).

I understand. I'm pre-op and feeling really emotional! I am not telling the object of my affection about surgery (i'm not really telling anyone except my mom and my therapist). I want to lose 100lbs before I start dating again.

I hear you! The vets can give you good advice about making clear decisions and why your hormones are going nuts (the release of estrogen from fat cells coupled with the loss of our usual coping mechanisms). They helped me. Here's where I landed on this decision: you don't need to wait to live but you do need to be true to yourself. My problem is that I put other people first. Always. And this surgery is a big step toward living my life for me. Getting involved in a relationship right now (pre-op soon to be op) is too much for me to manage on top of all of these other major life changes. Not to mention that I still need time to heal from my last breakup. I suppose if someone really cares about you they will honor and respect that. If you have strong feelings for this person (I have strong feelings about my person and was afraid of missing "the moment") then you have to trust that all in good time everything will work out. I used to think timing was everything. Now I think we make our moments in life. Good luck to you. ps. Isn't it nice to like and to be liked by someone?!!

True, I think Geneen Roth's work is good because it speaks to these issues but (forgive me, this is my humble opinion) she does a lot of pitying of the victim. And that just doesn't work for me. I want a structured recovery plan. She is mostly repetitive in her books and I appreciate it takes a lot for most of us to open up to soft parts of our insides that have led us to this point but where is the next step? I think that's why I find the forum here so helpful, these are people actively living the next step and living to tell about it from a place of strength. Much love to everyone in their journey.

Dang, what is your Iron level?? Ask for a full blood workup!

I'm a little bit late to this party but I can relate, so I will chime in. Relationships are complex, our feelings about ourselves are complex, open lines of communication and support should not be complex. I went through something interesting this past year with a breakup where I began to not trust my partner because while she was obviously attracted to me, when she got mad at me she made some comments that made it clear she was being judgmental about my weight. Some people can let that stuff go. I know me, I can't. It's all I thought about since she made those comments and I found it increasingly difficult to want to spend time with her or be intimate with her (even though she is a stone-cold fox). Long story short, we broke up (after a few years together) and I'm still working through my feelings about self worth. Weight and attachment are my achilles heel(s) in life. I often correlate the two whether they deserve to be or not. I had the band out when I was with her and the only thing she thought of the band was that it was "barbaric"...she also felt that any other WLS was a terrible idea. So I didn't entertain it. I got caught up in the cycle of living my life for someone else's approval. The breakup hurt immensely and kicked my confidence to the curb but in retrospect I realize I needed out. The comments about control are right, but my bigger worries would be about the communication and trust. Whatever decision you make do it for you and let it be one that brings joy into your world. Life is too short otherwise. Congrats on making choices to be healthier for you and your family. Having a partner you deserve (and holding healthy boundaries) is also self-care. These are the lessons I'm reminding myself of everyday. Lots of love and support.

You are rocking it! Thanks for sharing and inspiring us!

Steamy, it did. Psycho-social research tends to be much more difficult to draw clear correlations from due to the sensitive nature of things. What I found were some interesting (and at times confounding) outcomes. I'm happy to do another summary. Basically, overall quality of life for WLS patients goes WAY up but there DOES tend to be higher instances of depression amongst WLS patients than the control population... Here's where this gets "noisy" in statistical terms...we know that the reasons for our obesity/problems with weight are attributable to a confluence of factors, and none of them will be exactly the same for two people. The advice from what I've seen in the medical journals mirrors that of what many wise vets here say: the work is not just about the body, but the mind, and the heart. I often think there needs to be a lot more done in terms of social and mental (and perhaps spiritual if that's your cuppa) support for healing than anyone in Western/modern medicine would ever want to admit. Some psychologists are finally wading into this difficult area. I read a book by Sara Stein, MD, that discusses her own personal struggle with weight (as a psychologist) and it is reassuring. That book is called "Obese From The Heart" and it is helpful but it is a beginning to a much LONGER conversation. There are a few other books out there -- workbooks on emotional eating, self-soothing without food - but I haven't gotten into them yet. I believe in books that help you see into yourself but for some reason these sorts of works don't tend to resonate strongly with me (and yet I KNOW I am an emotional eater). My plan is to see my therapist weekly and journal my experience and keep talking to you all. The one structured thing I plan to do is to document how I am feeling - how i would have responded before - and what my NEW response is. Classic cognitive behavioural therapy work...make the implicit habits explicit until you change them I guess. I'll be back with a psych-lit summary later.