IcanMakeit

Thanks for giving me permission to order from the child's menu. I usually worry too much about what the server will think. But you're right. Why should it matter to them that I'm a senior rather than a junior? Oh, but I just remembered that the food on the kid's menu is mostly breaded and fried. I'll use this strategy next time if there are any edible offerings on the kid's menu.

I am in the same position. While I don't look so thin because of my loose skin, I've been advised to stabilize at my current weight. I want to do this carefully because for me, this is dangerous. If I get used to eating high calorie foods, I'm worried that I could just forget about my diet all together. I still enjoy eating tasty foods. The VSG didn't change my preferences, it just made me able to make better choices.

Maybe you should start by reconnecting with your doctor and nutritionist. They may be able to offer some solutions. Also, you don't mention whether or not you're still exercising. If not, it might help to move things in the right direction.

I had my one year post-surgical follow up appointment today. My surgeon was very pleased with my lab results and confirmed that I am now healthy. His only caution was that he wants my weight to stabilize, since I lost a few more pounds since my 9-month checkup. It would not be healthy to lose anymore. This is not news to me. I don't want to fade away -- I want to stay healthy and vital. But I am worried about adding calories to stop the weight loss. In the past, when I loosened the reins on my self control, I lost it and slipped back into my old eating patterns. Have I really learned anything this past year or am I still the same person? I will keep checking in here and updating my food/exercise log on MFP. These are new behaviors that I hope will reinforce my determination not to backslide.

I'm so sorry to hear about your husband's diagnosis. I can't imagine how hard it must be to face such a serious illness. I hope all the prayers and good wishes that I, and many others on this site are sending you lift you up at least a little bit and help you stay hopeful.

I experienced a lot of back pain after losing about 80 lbs. For me, the cause was the loss of my large abdomen, which used to support my heavy breasts somewhat. Without that "shelf," the weight of my breasts caused severe back pain. For me, the cure was breast reduction surgery. My back has been great since then.

I'm glad the cyst was benign. Although this is a very trying time, you have good reason to anticipate a positive outcome. I'll be thinking of you and your husband on Friday, @Canyonbaby. Good luck.

@@AvaFern, I think you are right to be hypervigilant. It is so easy to gain weight after reaching goal and so hard to lose the regained weight. Why walk that road if you don't have to? But in this case, I hope your panic is premature.

@@AvaFern, I'm glad you contacted your doctor as soon as you suspected something was wrong. And I agree that antibiotics are indeed a boon to humankind. But don't you think it's likely that the two parts of your post are related? The weight gain could be Fluid retention caused by the inflammation. If the weight gain persists for another week, then it will be time to react by cutting back on calories. Make sure you are drinking plenty of plain Water. Try not to panic. I know that's easy to say and hard to do, but it's counterproductive. Edited to add: If you are not currently tracking your food intake, you might want to start now. That information is very helpful for weight loss and for maintenance.

How much loose skin you'll have when you reach your goal can't be accurately predicted. If you're young, have good genes, and haven't been obese for too long, you are very unlikely to end up with a lot of loose skin after weight loss. If none of the above are true for you, you are likely to have excess skin after substantial weight loss. But there are two pieces of good news: 1. You can have plastic surgery to remove it. And 2. When you reach your goal weight, you look and feel so much better than when you were obese that the loose skin may not be too bothersome. You kind of get used to it because it doesn't really show much unless you're undressed.

I've been at 111.2 since the day after my last report. If I'm going to lose, it usually happens mid-week, not on Monday. My goal was to stabilize at 112, so I might need to increase my healthy calories if I lose any more.

We just got back last night from a four-day trip to Reno via the California Zephyr. The train ride was slow and expensive compared to driving, but very scenic. It was good to do it once, but I don't think we'll repeat the experience. For the whole four days, I snacked like crazy. I didn't eat anything particularly bad, but I just kept feeling hungry. I also finally got my first glass of wine. Thank goodness for my sleeve. Without it, I probably would have been eating a lot more at each sitting, making this a disastrous departure from my normal eating patterns. But instead, I weighed the same when I returned as I did the day I left. So I got away with it this time. I know I'll have to work on controlling the urge to snack while on vacation, though. I can't rely on the surgery to save me from bad habits.

Today is my one year surgiversary. I am so glad that I made the decision to save my own life by losing weight. At the beginning of the process, WLS was not part of my plan. (I had gone through the whole pre-op testing process five years before and then backed out of having the lap band.) I started dieting in Jan. 2014, lost weight steadily for a few months, and began to enjoy the improvements to my health and appearance. I decided that I didn't want this to be just another diet, where I lose weight only to find it again within a few weeks or months. I then talked to my PCP and he suggested that bariatric surgery might help me with maintenance. Within three months of that conversation with my PCP, I was sleeved. My family was amazed that I changed my mind about bariatric surgery and had it done so quickly, but they were all so supportive, it made me feel even more secure in my decision. Just like so many other people, the initial post-op period was unpleasant, but I was lucky that the worst of it passed within a couple of months. Then it was a pretty steady period of loss until I reached my surgeon's goal in December 2014. The goal he set for me, 135 lbs., put me near the top of the acceptable BMI level. At that weight, I looked so much better than before, but still looked a bit chubby. I had set my own goal at 125 lbs. because I remembered feeling pretty good and strong at that weight back in my college student/dance minor days. I didn't really advertise that goal. I had no confidence that I would reach it. But I must have gotten a second wind after my breast reduction at the beginning of December. Not only did I surpass my surgeon's goal, I surpassed my own secret goal. I have now lost 132 lbs. and look and feel like a new person. Changing my lifestyle has really been facilitated by my VSG. It has given me better control of my eating habits and the weight loss (and breast reduction) has made it possible for me to exercise without pain. I won't have my one year follow up visit with my bariatric surgeon until next week, but I'm expecting to hear good news, just as I did at my 9 month follow-up. Pretty much everything I was suffering from when I was overweight is either improved or resolved.

I think I have a little more sympathy for the posters who seem to be asking for validation for their bad choices. They know they've screwed up, but they need to feel like they are not the only ones in the world who ever blew it. They aren't really looking for permission, they just want to connect with fellow travelers. This doesn't mean that they don't need to hear the truth, it just means that we should just share our truth without sharing our impatience.

I know you might not be comforted by this right now, but let me pipe in with my $0.02. Your body is different from everyone else's, but only up to a point. If you follow your doctor's post-op diet, you will lose weight. Maybe not at the rate you would like, but you will lose. This is when you have to take yourself in hand and breathe through the frustration. Time will pass whether you stress out or not. But it will pass more pleasantly if you try to relax. Don't get me wrong, I felt the same way you do at the beginning of my post-op period. Someone on this board gave me the same advice I'm passing on to you. Good luck. I look forward to reading about your progress.

I'm back to 112 this morning. And that's after a Mother's Day/birthday dinner at a really good steakhouse. I think I am slowly learning how to maintain, but this weekly weigh-in is definitely a part of my thought process when I decide what to put in my mouth. I am very glad that I am participating.

Wonderful. I hope you're feeling great about your accomplishment.

Thanks for all of the thoughtful responses. My iPad ate my original response this morning, but now I'm glad to have AvaFern's perspective as well. From what you all have said, I see that I'll just have to give myself a chance to succeed. If I stay in diet mode forever, I won't be learning to live life like a thin person. I'll just be on another diet, and sooner or later, I'll get diet fatigue and give up dieting. I intend to keep the promise that I made to myself, to never go back to morbid obesity. Since dieting was not a winning strategy in the past, I need to get beyond diet mode and step up to eating like a responsible adult. And whether I can emulate Queen of Crop or must remain like proudgrammy, will only be discovered if I give myself a chance.

The support group might be very helpful, but you won't know if you don't go. Try it. The other participants aren't going to bite you. (Even though some of them might be hangry.)

This is my first post in the Veterans' Forum. My surgiversary isn't until next week, but I have something on my mind and would like feedback. I have been below goal since December. It's time to learn how to do maintenance and "moderation." I have to admit that I am afraid that if I change my habits even a little, that I will spiral out of control and end up morbidly obese again a year from now. I know that this "all or nothing" mentality is part of the reason my weight got so out of control. I would use my failure to resist treats as an excuse to forget about my diet, and just keep on eating whatever I wanted. Now that I am thin enough to be healthy, I don't want to live like a monk. I want to enjoy occasional pleasures, including party food and wine. Tonight I found myself feeling deprived because other people were enjoying wine with their dinner. So far, I have been too conservative to enjoy both wine and fattening foods on the same occasion. Since surgery, I have indulged in only one small glass of champagne on New Year's Day. I have so far opted for birthday cake (or whatever the normally forbidden dessert is) rather than wine on special occasions, since I shouldn't have both. But does it need to be like this forever? We're celebrating my husband's 65th birthday as well as Mother's Day tomorrow. I think my plan to forego the champagne so that I can have a small piece of birthday cake might be more of my all or nothing attitude. Before I lost weight, I had planned to allow myself to Celebrate special occasions with my family with good food and wine in small amounts. That still seems like a good goal. But my abstemious practices during weight loss served me so well that I'm afraid to let myself have a glass of wine and treat food on the same day,. How do others navigate celebrations in maintenance?

@@Rev Del, I don't know hope it works on a phone, but on the iPad, you click on your screen name and then click on my tickers. Then click create new ticker.

@@Rev Del, When I was at the soft foods stage, I made sure to avoid carbs as much as possible. I lived on protein shakes, SF Greek yogurt, soft scrambled eggs, SF protein pudding (this stuff tastes like %#<>% but it really packs the protein), and puréed meats and veggies. Thankfully, I only had to do soft foods for a week. My plan kept me on full liquids for the first five weeks, purées for a week, soft foods for a week and then normal foods as tolerated. I'm no nutritionist, but I believe that a protein forward diet really helps with weight loss.

@for_me. I can really relate to your feelings of frustration and disappointment in your rate of weight loss. I posted a very similar post a month or two after my surgery. I got the same responses that you are getting and at first did not feel comforted. Then I looked around at other people's posts and found that my experience was pretty darn normal. Now, almost exactly one year from my surgery, I am below goal and healthier than I was when I was 20 years younger. Please try to take this one day at a time and a year from now, if you stay on plan, you will be able to look back at your old frustration and chuckle.

So when you hear people say WLS saved their life, you really understand. How fortunate that you listened to your doctor and went through the pretesting. Edited to answer the question. I had WLS because I was living a miserably unhealthy life and I believed that without it, I was heading for an early death. I chose the VSG because I have several family members who had gastric bypass with varying levels of success. I thought that I could do just as well with a less drastic surgery. So far, I was correct.

@@MistyAnnMoon829, Ooh! Cute. I'll bet you look great in it.