JamieLogical

@ Glad to hear your visit went so well and you are feeling so positive about the whole thing. Only two weeks to go!

I was told no nuts for the first 3 months. They fell into the "crunchy" category and I was not allowed anything crunchy for 3 months. Since then I have eaten lots and lots and lots of peanuts. You need to be careful, because they are very high in calories. That's actually why I eat them. Since I reached my goal weight, I've struggled to not keep losing and nuts are a great way fro me to get extra calories in.

I assume you are talking about carbs. Certain carbs do go down SO easily and it is easy to go off track once you start with them, because "carbs breed carbs". Once you start having SOME carbs, you start craving MORE carbs, so it's a slippery slope. My best advice to you is to try to hit the reset button. Track your food for a few weeks. Try to keep your carns low. Try to maximize your protein. And hopefully you can kick the carb cravings again.

I went through the process of listing/selling my old house and buying a new house and moving from August through November. On top of that, my sister and her 4 kids had moved in with us in our old house in June and didn't move out until September (so they were living there the whole time we were showing and trying to sell our old house). It all turned my life completely upside down. But the beauty of it is, I came out the other side weighing the same as when I'd gone in. In the past, that amount of stress and being that far out of my routine for 5 months would have caused me to gain a good 50 pounds. But even though I wasn't exercising regularly and I wasn't as meticulous with my food, I didn't GAIN weight, which, for me, was a HUGE win. Sure I didn't lose weight either, but at least I didn't have a whole lot of ground to make up from backsliding. That is the beauty of the tool we've been given. It's still there, kind of doing it's thing, even when we can't use it to its fullest potential. But once we ARE able to get back on track, it so much easier!

No. I didn't even read your whole post, but I can say "no" with 100% confidence. It is not possible to drink too much or too fast. liquid passes straight through your sleeve in a matter of seconds. It will not "stretch" your sleeve or hurt you in any way. The only dangers from drinking are drinking WHILE eating or drinking immediately after eating. If you aren't feeling any restriction with liquids in the days immediately post-op, you should count your blessings! It just means you have less swelling than us unlucky ones who struggle to get our fluids in those first few days.

The first few weeks post op, I had that EVERY SINGLE TIME I took even the tiniest sip of water. A gurgling kind of thing in the back of my throat. Luckily it went away and 18 months psot-op, I get it very rarely.

@@SparkleTime I really like that graphic. It seems reasonable and doable. So many people on these forums seem to have CRAZY expectations of how quickly they will lose and are only in for disappointment. But that info seems pretty conservative and sets a realistic expectation.

You would think he's learn after 10+ years!

I was sleeved over 18 months ago. My husband didn't think I needed WLS. In fact, he shared with me that my decision to have WLS diminished his respect for me, because he had always thought of me as an incredibly strong person and he felt that having WLS was me "giving up". A lot of his perspective was my own fault. I had lost and regained many times since we were together. Every time I regained, I always had some excuse: an injury, an illness, recovering from surgery, etc. The problem is, I always milked those excuses for far longer than necessary and I took full advantage of them. Meanwhile, he bought into them. So where I *knew* that my regain was 99% to do with my own failures, he thought it was 99% legit. Also, I was a secret binge eater and I went out of my way to hide a lot of my eating from him. I would eat big fast food lunches, then bring the evidence back to work with me to throw in the trash. Or I would take trash straight out to the bin in the garage instead of putting it in the kitchen garbage where he might see it. So I did a really good job of tricking him into thinking I had a better handle on my eating and my weight than I really did. Which meant he didn't see how much I truly struggled with it, both mentally and physically. By the time I had my VSG, I knew myself well enough to know that it was the right decision. But it has taken me losing all my excess weight and maintaining it for 6+ months for my husband to catch on. We had a great talk at dinner on Saturday night. I had completed my 8 mile run for my half marathon training and was rewarding myself with a date night of dinner and a movie. While I was on the treadmill, doing my run, I had watched a couple more episodes of My 600 Pound Life. I was discussing the episodes with my husband and we got into the talk we always get into when discussing that show... how do people let it get that bad. We talked about how spouses and parents are "enablers" and how Dr. Nowzaradan always berates them for that, but in real life, what choice do they really have? It's easy to be on the outside looking in and say "well he should just stop buying sweets for her" or "well she should stop cooking him two dinners a night" or whatever. But when you are inside that reality, caring for someone you love and wanting to keep them happy, it's easy to see how they end up in those roles. My husband confessed that had I continued on that trajectory, he doesn't think he would have had the strength to try to intervene. Plus he might not have even realized how bad it had gotten until it was much too late. As it is, he says he looks at pictures of me now at my highest weight and he can't believe it. He doesn't ever remember seeing me that big. He sees those pictures and thinks "how did I ever let her get that big?" And since he never consciously registered how big I was and how much damage I was doing to my health, he can't truly say that he wouldn't have let it keep getting worse without realizing it. He then went on to say that he'd like to think *I* would never have let it get that out of control. And my response was, "I'd like to think I'd never let it get as far as it did, but I did!" I told him I probably would have made many more valiant attempts to lose weight. I probably would have gone through many more cycles of losing and regaining. But eventually the cycle was going to have to break in one direction or the other. Either I was going to lose the weight for good and keep it off or I was going to keep packing on the pounds and give up on losing. Without surgery, the latter was the FAR more likely scenario. Eventually I really would have had a chronic excuse, like a bad knee or back or hip and I would give up entirely. We came away from the dinner with me finally feeling like he understood why I'd had the surgery. Why it really was the best decision for our future. And even though it took him a while this time, once again he understands that I am always right.

If you are burning that much through exercise 4x a week, then 1000 calories isn't enough, nor is 65 grams of protein. You need to increase both your protein and your calories.

Why would anyone NOT weigh naked? Assuming you are weighing in your own home, of course. I weigh myself every morning after I pee, right before I hop in the shower. Already naked for the shower anyway!

There's a reason why we aren't supposed to drink our calories or eat a lot of soups and mushies past the post-op food stages. Sleeves offer no restriction for such things. The only reason SOME people feel restriction with those things in the very beginning is the swelling.

I wasn't cleared until 30 days post-op, bu I literally counted down the days. Rejoice in getting to have it so soon! Just make sure you go easy on it and dilute it with a lot of cream in the beginning to make sure your tummy can handle it okay.

@@1Cor2:9 Sorry I misinterpreted your post.

Welcome! All of the emotions you expressed in your original post are completely normal. Though they are definitely the kind of thing that only other WLS patients can understand. It sounds to me like you have made a great decision for yourself and you have the right attitude to be successful long-term. Like you, I was a pro at losing weight. I used to joke that if weight loss was an Olympic sport, I'd have multiple gold medals. Maintenance was a whole other story. I think my main problem was that weight loss was always a "diet". I always thought of it as something temporary and that I would eventually be "done". So as soon as I was "done", I went right back to my old lifestyle and regained all the weight. The great thing about WLS, is it's not a temporary phase. It will never be "done". Your sleeve or pouch is forever! Once you make that switch in mentality, maintenance becomes much less of an issue. I had sleeve, not bypass, but I reached my goal weight just before my one year mark and I have been maintaining for the past 6 months. Through that six months I have experienced many of the types of life stresses that would have thrown me off track in the past. Yet I have managed to get through them and not regain the weight. It's been amazing!

My water nausea is temperature related too. I have to drink ICE COLD water... with ice literally floating in it. Or hot beverages. Anything room temp or even just refrigerated sits in my stomach like lead. I'm 18 months post-op.

You aren't eating anything close to enough calories for your level of activity. If you had a 22,000 calorie DEFICIT last week, that means you have a 3142.857 calorie deficit per day. That is WAY WAY WAY too high. Your body is definitely going to go into starvation mode running that kind of deficit and you are going to completely trash your metabolism. You should be trying to run about 1000 calorie a day deficit to keep your metabolism in tact.

So happy for you! I wish you continued success.

Exercising probably isn't going to help with loose skin. At best you might build some muscle to "fill in" the empty skin a bit. I am not sure when I first started noticing loose skin, but I definitely had plenty of it by the time I'd lost 90 pounds. Everyone is different though.

I vaguely remember some diet in middle school where I had to eat grape fruit, and pitas filled with tuna salad.... I have done Atkins before... really not much different than post-sleeve except I'm not quite as strict on the carbs now. I also did 5:2, which was actually really great. I would definitely recommend it for people trying to lose weight without WLS. Edit: Thought of a couple more: Did Slim Fast for a while in my early 20's. And did Nutrisystem for about 2 months at one point.

According to the Mayo Clinic, that's not true: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/caffeinated-drinks/faq-20057965 I would, however, be concerned about the effects of caffeine on your healing stomach. Most caffeinated beverages are also high in acid.

@@con con Feel free to PM me if you have questions/concerns about going outside the US for surgery. I've gone to Mexico twice for surgery (once for plastics, and once for VSG) and plan to be going again in late August/early September. I'd be happy to share my personal experiences with you.

I really really hate the idea that WLS is someone admiring defeat or failure. I don't know why society projects that mentality. With ANY other medical condition for which there is a surgical solution, you don't see that. If you have to get a knee replacement for a bad knee, no one is yelling at you that you should just suck it up and walk it off and power through the pain. If you have an appendicitis, so one is telling you it's mind over matter and you should just tough it out. I don't get why WLS is any different. You have a serious disease, for which there is a surgical remedy. Why is it "cheating" or "quitting" to take advantage of that tool?

The question is, how is one possibly supposed to eat a HALF CUP of edamame AND something else post-sleeve? My protein goal is 100 grams a day. I eat 5-6 times a day. I am 18 months post-op. This means I need ~20 grams of protein for each meal/snack. If I eat a half cup of edamame for 12 grams of protein, where is the other 8 grams coming from? How am I going to have room for it? And remember, the OP's fiance was just sleeved last week. He is a loooooooong way from being able to eat 1/2 cup of food in a sitting. That's not to say edamame isn't a great choice. If you insist on having "sides" with meals still, it's an excellent option since it has its own protein. Definitely better than just some lettuce in a salad or something.

Only 10 grams of protein for 190 calories doesn't seem like much of a protein bargain. You can get 20+ grams of protein for that number of calories from Quest Bars or Combat Crunch.