Sajijoma

I've been there too and I'm working on my self sabotaging behavior. One thing I do notice is that if I get a lot of attention from people, it makes me very uncomfortable. If especially a male friend or family member or stranger even at this point, comments on how good I look, it scares me, and I do have to watch that I don't turn around and eat crap. It helps to not keep crap in your house so that you have time to talk yourself out of it if for no other reason than you don't want to get dressed and drive 2miles down the road just to ruin your progress. I feel like I use my weight as a form of protection. When I was heavier, people didn't compliment me on how good I looked. They stayed away and that felt "safe" but the more I lose the more "unsafe" I feel without that wall of protection. Probably because the last time I was thin was when I was also a helpless child who could do nothing to stop my abusers and as I got heavier and bigger eventually I had the power to stop them with my sheer girth. I do a lot of internal meditation to try to talk to my inner self and try to understand on a deeper level that I am safe now. I'm as safe as I ever could be and I don't need my fat suit anymore. I can protect myself without it. I can let it go. The other reason I have sabotaged myself in the past was because of money. I know it's stupid, but in the past when I lost weight and started buying new clothes, my husband would yell at me that we don't have the money for this(meaning me to lose weight and buy more clothes) and he'd yell and complain until I felt I had no choice but to stop losing weight because I didn't have the money for clothes. Better fat and covered than naked and skinny! So I'd get derailed that way or when I discovered how much excess skin I had and freaked out and quickly put all the weight back on to plump that skin back out. It's silly really, but I was prepared to live fat and miserable because of some loose skin! I'm not worried about that anymore. My skin is getting really loose and scary looking, but I'm prepared to cross that bridge when I get there which will be to get it removed. My NUT and I estimate it will take roughly 2 yrs to reach my goal weight from my starting point which gives me plenty of time to save and grow my money needed to cover the costs, so I don't need to live in fear of not having the money for skin removal or the fear of having to live like a deflated balloon, or the fear of not enough money for clothes. It's just all fears! Once we work through those fears and we give ourselves permission to just live and be happy, how great it is! ????

For me, before I had rny, my every thought was about food to some degree. What was I eating, was it a good thing to eat, what was I going to eat next, and what I was having for dinner. Then it was what I was having for snacks. It was a never ending cycle and my stomach ruled me. I was always hungry even after finishing a meal stuffed to my eyeballs. The surgery gave me freedom from that feeling. I'm a little over 3 months out now and I do feel hunger from time to time(not often but from time to time), but it's not that beast that it was. It's like "oh, I'm hungry. Maybe I should eat something" Not "I'M HUNGRY!!! FEED ME NOW OR DIE!!!!!" It's a very doable kind of feeling. I don't suffer at all like I did before trying to battle the hunger beast. My biggest thing though is reading labels. I am absolutely shocked by how much hidden sugar is in everything we eat. When you've got a 4-5g cap on sugar per meal, you learn to make better choices and that does require a lot of reading. You may still have head hunger(I've been dying for stuffed crust pizza) but it's not something I go and do because it's not in my plan. I make substitutes like using a low carb tortilla for a crust and going heavier on protein and veggies and lighter on cheese and sauce. It's just something you have to learn. But it is so much better and easier to handle after surgery. I've become a quick learner that that for every unhealthy food you like and crave, there is a healthier and possibly even more delicious alternative from pizza, to burgers, to "fried" chicken, to whatever you can think of. You don't have to feel like you are living a never ending diet post op.

I lost my butt too. I'm thinking down the road butt implants might be more a necessity than a luxury! ????

I took pj's, underwear, maxi pads because I heard that women often get their periods right after surgery(which I did need because I started spotting), deodorant, lip balm, listerine pocket pack breath strips, shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste, tooth brush, socks and slippers and my body pillow(that was the best thing I brought!!). I ended up wearing pj's home from the hospital because I knew I was going to go home and try to rest and it made no sense to dress in clothes then change again when I got home. I didn't even put shoes on, just socks and house slippers. My hospital provided lip balm, toothpaste, tooth brush, body wash, shampoo, and lotion, so in the end, I didn't even use the ones I brought with me. Trust me, you don't need or will want an extended list of junk to take to and from the hospital.

you will get there. It takes time. At 3 wks, I was tired all the time, constantly struggling with getting water and protein in, getting sick from my shakes and was just miserable, but I'm 3 months out now and my life is better than normal. My energy went through the roof, the sipping becomes easier and more routine, and eventually it just becomes so much easier and the weigh starts falling off and that makes it great too! I'm 60lbs down from surgery and over 100lbs down from my highest weight. You will get there. Your body just needs to heal right now. ????

I have Aetna, but they only approve for one day, one overnight stay, so when I was still in the hospital because of anesthesia and pain meds causing oxygen issues, the hospital requested an extra day and it was easily approved.

It sounds to me like this is his way of manipulating the situation. It sounds as if he's saying if you can't be fat and miserable, then it's not worth it to him so choose to be fat and miserable or he's leaving. My advice, as hard as it sounds is to just let him go. You need to have supportive people around you, especially in those first days and weeks, and it certainly sounds like this guy isn't it! I'm reminded of an episode from my 600lbs life when Zalynn was on there and her husband wanted her to be big. He loved big women. He was with her because she was big and that was it. He didn't care she was suffering and in pain. He didn't care her life was being cut short. He was only there to feed his sexual fetish. When she went for wls, he tried to sabotage her, he was cruel to her, mocking her, ridiculing her, and even trying to force her to eat fries and fast food crap in the car on the way home from the hospital knowing damn well she couldn't. He was absolutely just cruel and in the end, she finally gave up and realized he didn't love her and let him go. It's hard, and I am so sorry you are going through this, but if you have to choose between your health or him, you should choose your health and wellbeing every time! Hang in there sweetie! Sometimes when we lose weight, we lose a couple hundred from our life we weren't counting on, but you'll be better off in the end.

I did the 90 day plan as well because of my BMI and because I went through a center of excellence. My 90 days started the day I saw the NUT for our first visit/consult and then I had 2 more visits that were exactly 45 days apart. After that, it depends on the speed of the office and ability of them to get everything together and files with aetna. My office took about 2wks because the psych held my eval ransom because he "forgot" to send me a bill to pay and demanded it be paid before he released it(he's just that nice a guy!) then my surgeon was out of town the next week so he couldn't write the letter of recommendation for surgery, but after they got all that together and it got submitted, it went in on Monday, I called Tues and there was no update. I called again We'd and they told me still no update and later that afternoon, the coordinator at my surgeon's office called with the official approval. From there it was a matter of picking my day, another visit with the surgeon for directions on what to do and blood tests needed and then over to the hospital for a blood draw and some questions and a brief EKG and that was the end of it! ????

Drink water and lots of it when you feel hungry. A full belly can't be stuffed with food. Also, make yourself NOT go to Taco Bell or if you absolutely have to snack, get something good for you like carrots or a protein bar and not junk. It gets easy for awhile post op to not cheat, but there comes a time when when you get to where the cravings pop up and you have to deal with the root cause of them whether it's poor diet, mistaken thirst, emotional eating, whatever the the causes, they do pop back up. I'm 3 months out and spent a week struggling with my desire to eat pizza and want chocolate. I didn't cave into those desire, because you have to stay committed. It's hard, but you can do it. Distract yourself. Go for a walk, so whatever it takes because it's too big a thing to leave behind for a Taco Bell burrito.

I haven't had this problem exactly. It took about 9 days after surgery to be able to go poop and it was the most painful Boulder I ever pushed out. Since then, I got back on my probiotics and I really don't have hard stools. It's pretty predictable too. Not every day regular, but close at this point. I read somewhere that using stool softeners and laxatives can over time teach your intestines to not work properly. They basically get lazy and you can become dependent on them to get the business done. I've tried my best to avoid that end and I really do believe the probiotics are what helped prevent my need for those. I take a double dose daily.

You look great! Such an inspiration to those of us who have a long way to go! ❤️

My butt is significantly smaller. The biggest change I notice is when I'm sitting down for anything over 20 mins it just hurts to sit. It's all boney! I had to buy more throw pillows to make a substitute butt! ????

I went in thinking I wanted the sleeve because the idea of rerouting the pipes really worried me. I went to the seminar session and after listening to what my surgeon had to say and to what other people had to say, I chose bypass because of these reasons: the success rate, the solid 25yr+ research and history supporting the RNY's success. The fact that I wasn't going to lose 85% of my stomach which may come in handy later in life if I should develop esophageal cancer or severe erosion from GERD. The "spare" stomach left behind from the making of the pouch can be used to rebuild the esophagus. With the the sleeve, you are just SOL. The fact that GERD does often get worse with sleeve and the "cure" is to convert to bypass. Then there's the fact that I am a sugar addict and that the sleeve is only really effective at quantity eating control. My problem was multi leveled. I needed to find a way to control my sugar addiction(dumping is a good and scary deterrent to eating too much sugar), and it's a good deterrent against my other love of greasy food too. The whole thing just motivated me to go for RNY. I knew I didn't want to have another surgery down the road if the sleeve didn't work out. I don't regret my choice and honestly my rerouted pipes are much nicer than my non rerouted pipes. Really it was a lot more worry than I should have had.

It is TOTALLY worth it! When I was in my 20's I looked into gastric bypass and got scared because of the whole rerouting of pipes and the things I was going to have to give up. I didn't have any real support and I knew it would be hard and I bailed. Fast forward to my 30's and my weight became crippling. My knees are shot, my back was in constant pain, I could no longer walk across the house without being winded, and at night I was suffocating from the extra weight. I would literally wake up gasping for air and a severe headache from the extra weight crushing me. I was dying! If I hadn't done it, I would be dead in the next few years. I'm 3 months post op, now and I've already lost 60lbs since surgery and over 100lbs since I started this journey on my supervised weightloss. My knees will still need repairing and I may have a back surgery in my future from carrying around over 400lbs on my frame for so long, but I can do so much more! I walk daily and exercise and can go places I couldn't for years because of my weight. I'm actually enjoying life for the first time in about 10yrs. I wish I had done this years ago when I first had the chance. I look at all these years I wasted getting no where and just making my kids and my husband and myself just miserable and I really wish to God I could go back in time and smack myself around and get the life I deserved earlier.

Hi tamika! I had to wait 90 days per my insurance plan from the initial consult to being submitted for approval. I had 3 NIT visits and a psych eval and that was it really. No sleep study, no X-rays...nothing. Originally, I didn't want to go that fast and had made up my mind that 6 months would be great, but in the end, 90 days felt like forever and I worked my butt off to lose weight pre op so that I would have a better outcome than at my starting weight of 429lbs. I was 386lbs on surgery day. The only requirement I had in regards to weight was not to have a net gain over the course of the 90 day program which of course I didn't.

It probably is too late to help you, but Incase anyone else is looking, there isn't a way to check online for approval. I tried. What you have to do is call them and ask and have it checked. If you have an advocate(some employers provide this liaison to help expedite the process for their employees) then they can get things going faster.

I didn't want naysayers about my wls so I told very few people. I told everyone I was having a hernia repaired...well, don't you know I had crazy people telling me their horror stories about their hernia repairs and how they knew people who died?!? People really are nuts and always seem to want to doom and gloom anything. I was so grateful I was "only" getting a gastric bypass and not having an actual hernia repair by the time they finished with me! ???? be strong! I'm glad I went through it!

I had my husband hold my phone, purse, and hospital bag til I got to my room and then from then on I kept them with me and updates people, took pics, and Facebook updates. There's no reason not to keep your phone with you. There's always a risk It could be stolen, but there's also a risk your shoes or underpants will be too...is it likely? Not really.

I was on full liquids from the day I went home to day 9. At day 9 I got puréed. At 1 month I got soft stage and 2wks later full solids.

I had kidney stones prior to my surgery and as long as you are healed up and your kidneys aren't damaged enough to need time to recover, it shouldn't have any impact on your having surgery. Water is your best friend though and wls in general does increase your chances for more kidney stones so water, water, water, even before surgery and after surgery sip sip sip your water and if your urine starts to get too dark, sip some more.

@@SHOTzY good luck to you as well!

Good luck with your surgery! I pray that it all turns out absolutely perfect! Life is so much better on this side!

With love, you can't really control when or if you fall in love. I had relationships where I wanted so badly to be "in love" with the guy, but it just didn't happen and then like with my husband, I fell in love with him at first sight and I'm sure he did as well, because we got engaged on our second official date. We had written emails and talked on the phone for about 2 months, but our 2nd date we were engaged and he was shelling out big cash for the ring. lOL we got married a month later and have been together for over 17yrs and counting and with 7 kids to our credit. It's funny because even though I loved him and knew I never wanted to be without him, it wasn't until he got sick with the flu about 3wks after we were married that I truly knew just how much I loved him. ???? when you know, you just know.

No dumping here either. I've never heard that eggs can cause dumping. When I had eggs for the first time, I made them with a runny yolk and mashed them with a fork. It went down easy and didn't sit hard at all. Scrambled egg and boiled weren't til later on and still kinda sit heavy.

It really is going to depend on your personal experience and tolerance. Pain wise, I could have returned to my "job" of homeschooling within a few days of surgery, but I was very tired in those first few days/weeks and the time off to rest really was invaluable to me and my overall recovery.