snarkychef

Well, I hope it's going great for you. I'm just over a month out, and down just over 20lb, which considering I only have about 60 to lose, I'm pretty okay with. My stomach gives me trouble, but I was cleared to go back to Pilates after 12 days and my surgeon thinks I'm doing fantastic, so keep in touch, and lets see how things go.

It's not super active, because there aren't a lot of "loops" out there yet. My surgeon thinks that it will end up being the most used bariatric procedure over the next few years. DS true believers are almost religious. I'm just over a month out of surgery with 20 lb lost, but I only have about 65 total to lose, so I'm doing fine for the moment.

I can't speak to a DS related stall specifically, but I lost 50 lb on my own before having surgery. I'm not one to "diet", and psychologically I work better with a positive rather than a negative, so I treat my self to the fancy pilates classes I like, and make or buy myself my favorite healthy meals when I'm really struggling. You will have stalls. For me, my body would refuse to drop any weight for a month or more, and then, when it was ready, I'm drop 10 lbs. pretty quickly. Treat yourself with kindness, and your body will reward you.

This is going to seem like a silly question. I am exactly one week post surgery and down 11 lbs, 16 from when I came home from the hospital (man do they pump you full of fluids), and I was trying to get dressed today, and I thought...hmm, what am I going to do about pants. I was already at the bottom of my size range, and I've been running around pulling my pants up for about a month. I've been hesitating to buy pants because I though I'd just drop a size in March and get a couple pairs, but, realistically, I could go down two sizes by he end of March, cause I should already be one size down. I own my own business and feel like I have to dress nice and set a good example for my employees, but there's no way I can keep up with my changing pant size. It takes long enough to find a decent fitting pair of pants. I don't know how I'm going to have the time to try on all these pants.

Thanks, all. I think there is a decent consignment/resale shop near one of the restaurants. I'm just so used to buying things online, trying them on in my office and sending back what I don't like. It was easy because I knew my size in the brands I liked

I have Blue Cross, and I had a switch done with a BMI of 35.9. I'm very lucky in that my doctor is the head of the bariatric fellowship department at a big teaching hospital, and he basically set the Blue Cross standards. He even got any kind of pre-op dieting waived. You just have to meet with their dietician twice a month while going through all of you pre-op testing. I was turned down, but I actually went to the Blue Cross office and sat in the lobby until someone from appeals came down to see me and I asked her to schedule a peer to peer confernce with my doctor. It took me staging a sort of sit in, but they scheduled the call and I was approved the next day. Talk to your doctor about qualifying co-morbidities. If he can tell them why he thinks the switch is the best operation for you, you can likely get it approved at any BMI.

The thing I hate about the pre/post surgery diet is that it is not made up of real food at all. It's all chemically protein shakes with artificial sweeteners. Before my surgery I lost 60 lb on my own with really good eating, a raw vegetable juice smoothly for lunch, pretty much whatever I wanted for dinner, and a good amount of excercise, mostly pilates. I'm a week post op, and pretty miserable, not feeling at all well, and wondering what I did to myself.

Yeah, as of today, 1 week post op, I'm 16 lb lighter than the day I came home from the hospital. It's getting to the point that I'm kind of afraid of food, or liquid more specifically, since I don't eat any food. I'm sleeping in Depends, because they gas has now started taking the watery diareah out with it, and I can get to the bathroom when I'm awake, but two days ago, I had to wake up and change my pajamas and shower twice. I really only had 70 or so pounds to lose. I lost about 60 myself before surgery, and im kind of wondering what I did to myself.

I don't know of any Facebook groups, but I'll join if you shoot me a link. My surgery was last Thursday and yours was Friday, right?

Ugh...I posted a whole paragraph is SADI surgery, and then lost it when I went to get study links for you. And I have no idea why, but this forum won't let me post links from my IPad. Anyway, the single anastomosis DS is the more common operation everywhere in the world except the U.S. it has great clinical outcomes, and a better long term prognosis re: malnutrition and scar tissue formation complications. Best of luck for great success.

The gas pain( not in the belly but in the chest) was awful! I went in to my initial consult thinking I was going to do a switch, but since I don't have a ton of weight to lose, I liked the idea of a more moderate operation, with less complications and the long term benefits of the DS like very low incidence of weight regain. If it weren't available, I would have done the traditional operation. I read the studies from France and Spain, and Australia, where the single anastomosis operation has been the more common for several years, and I was comfortable with the outcomes. I also kind of like it that if I do end up with some kind of severe malnutrition, the modification operation is quick and easy. I wouldn't judge anybody else's choice. I just gave mine. Since our surgey dates are virtually the same, let's keep in touch and see if we can be helpful to each other. Almost everybody around here is doing a sleeve, so it's a really different animal.

I just had my surgery last Thursday, and Sunday morning I had my first BM, but it was terrible, smelly, watery, diareah all day long. I never had issues with my fluids, no nausea, no vomiting, and have been able to get about 50 oz of clear fluids a day down and 50 grams of protein. My surgeon said that I have had an "amazing" recovery. Today, I made myself some mashed potatoes, figuring that they would absorb some of the liquid in my system, and I managed to eat about 4 oz over about 45 minutes with no trouble. I'm really having a lot of stomach grumbling and gas, but hopefully that will calm down as my system adjusts.

I use Celebrate vitamins, but also am taking Wellesse liquid vitamins and calcium, since I'm less than a week post op. They taste like an Orange Julius.

I am a professional chef with two restaurants, so I understand exactly where you are coming from. I only really need to lose 60-ish pounds to be at my ideal weight, having lost 50 lbs on my own before getting my surgery. My primary goal was to resolve blood sugar issues, which were actually getting worse with my weight loss. I chose to have a duodenal switch with a single anastomosis because of the larger stomach, which allows you to eat much more normally than other procedures. It also has the advantage of almost immediately resolving blood sugar and cholesterol issues. Since I was never "super obese", I liked the fact that the single anastomosis operation leaves a longer common channel, reducing long term malnutrition issues. Good luck with whatever you choose.

I just got out of the hospital from my operation yesterday. My doctor is participating in a study comparing traditional DS surgery with the single anastomosis loop DS. I am really in pretty good shape and on the day of my surgery my BMI was only 35.8, so I was most interested in not gaining weight back and minimizing long term complications. I opted for a single anastomosis DS with a 250 cm common channel. I was in terrible pain from the gas right after surgery, but left the hospital about 30 hours after surgery. The surgeon said my numbers were amazing. I've been able to consume about 6 oz of liquid at a time, and my digestive system is behaving mostly normally. I just wanted to put it out there. The reason that surgeons are talking about the new operation is that it is a much simpler surgery with fewer complications and, at least in my experience, I will have about a week of downtime, as opposed to three weeks that is common with DS surgery. I know everyone is anxious to lose wait as fast as possible, but this is a lifetime that we're talking about, and I feel like I made the better choice for my long term choice.

They actually wanted to do it this week, but I have the single busiest day of my work year this weekend. I'm a pastry chef, swim working a hard sprint from now 'til Valentine's Day, so I am going in on the 19th. Glad to hear you're doing so well. The operation is done for diabetes not even co morbid with obesity in Europe with good results, so in theory, it should be great. But, the closer it gets, the more nervous I'm getting.

I'm curious as to how y'all are doing. I am actually participating in the study at Duke. Luckily, I read French and Spanish, and read the outcomes of the previous studies. It was also the feature presentation at the Gastro-intetinal Surgeons annual conference last summer, so it's definitely "news". I actually asked for the switch, because even though I've lost 50 lb on my own in the last year, my blood sugar has destabilized, and I'm now prediabetic. I wasn't at my highest weight, and I my appendix burst in October, and the discovered that I have fatty liver disease. I didn't think about it before, but I'm starting to get a little anxious, so I'd love to know how you you're progressing.