MacMadame

And slipping into your fat-brain was because you were unfilled. Don't beat yourself up for needing a band.... we all need WLS or we wouldn't be here!

Some people just withdraw. I think that can be okay, if they do it in a way that works for the other partner. But if they do it like an ex-boyfriend of mine -- why you are talking to me when I want to be quiet? You're insensitive! -- then it's not okay. It's not okay to blame the other person for not being a slave to your moods.

You have to go to my profile. Look up MacMadame on there and in my profile will have some blog posts. I have saved all the links to all these posts because otherwise you can never find them. The search over there SUCKS! (I don't have time to get a direct link right now because I'm at work and they get mad if they catch me on here during work hours.) You can send PMs to people by clicking on their name in a post. A drop-down menu comes up and one of the choices is "Send a private message to <their name>"

You need to talk to your doctor... intense, unexplained pain can be so many things. But, if it makes you feel better, your heart is actually more on the left side of your body. Also, it's normal to lose anywhere from .5 to 2 lb. a DAY when you are on liquids.

No one ever hits on me, fat or thin. :sneaky2:

Weird. I do heat it for 3 minutes, but 1.5 should probably be fine.

If you don't get a lot of responses here, I have a post on my ObesityHelp.com profile that has links to people's "surgiversary" reports that are at least 1 year out. There are plenty of 2 year reports you can look through. If they don't talk about hunger directly, then maybe you can PM the person and just ask....

Wow, it never ends for you, doesn't it? Hang in there!

My advice is to get as close as you can to that BMI one way or another... Make sure your height gets measured as short as possible and your weight as high as possible. A little slouching when they measure the height and heavy clothes, drink lots of Water, eat before your appoinment, etc. and you could get up there. The closer you are, the better off you will be, if you have to appeal.

What temp was the water? I get mine pretty hot and it always dissolves pretty well.

I don't like coffee but some of my friends that do make "protein coffee" for breakfast in the morning. They add cold water to a protein powder and add that sludge into their coffee instead of creamer. It's supposed to be pretty good. I've done it for Hot Chocolate and it works, but I like my ready-made protein hot chocolate better.

I wear short sleeve even though I have a lot of wrinkled skin in that area. But I have too much loose skin to wear sleeveless. I get this lip of skin that hangs over the shirt. It's disconcerting because it's not something you normally see. Wrinkled arms, I've seen before on really old people. I don't like having the arms of a 70 year old (even if it's a very buff 70 year old), but I can live with that. These weird flappy things? Not so much.

coffee can be hard on the tummy early out. Caffeine can be a diuretic. It can also be an appetite stimulant. In my program they say to wait on caffeinated drinks until you have already consumed 64 oz. of non-caffeinated fluids that day.

Time. We lose fast and the skin needs time to catch up. My weight isn't changing on the scale much any more but every day I'm smaller due to shrinking of my skin.

Here are two booklets that are online from other centers. They may be helpful: http://www.hopkinsbayview.org/bariatrics/docs/nutrition_sleeve.pdf http://www.cornellweightlosssurgery.org/pdf/dietary_guidelines_sleeve_gastrectomy.pdf

UHC used to cover the sleeve but now they don't. Morons.

Check out my profile on OH for some links about the sleeve including some 5 year results. That can help with the "unproven" angle. I'm "MacMadame" on there too.

I started waking up at night pre-op. I blamed it on Mr. Mac's snoring but then he got a CPAP machine and stopped snoring and I still was waking up. I found it gradually got better but going to bed and getting up at a set time helps too.

I workout 5-6 days a week with a total of 8-10 workouts. It works out to about 10-15 hours a week. I swim, bike and run, 2 - 3 x a week, and do strength training 1 day a week. I started back to the gym at 2 weeks, but held off on anything that worked my abdominal muscles much until I felt comfortable doing that.

Hey, I'm aiming for 115 g a day! :biggrin: I think of my protein goal as a floor. I want to get in *at least* that much. So, if I get to my floor by 4pm, I still have protein after that, just not as much as in the first part of the day. I think of my carb goal as a ceiling I want to stay under though. Same with calories.

I never had a band. Stories like yours scared me off it. For me, I never felt full before surgery no matter how much I ate. And now I do. If I eat too much, I do get a horrible pressure in my chest, but mostly that doesn't happen. It only happens if I deliberately push it or I am not paying attention. Nothing is ever truly "stuck" though. If I wait long enough, the pressure goes away. I haven't thrown up in months either. (I'm 10 months out.)

Most people love their WLS in the first year... that's true for all the surgeries including the sleeve. To get a more full picture, you need to hunt around for people who have had the surgery longer. You can find lots of unhappy people if you go to more established websites with revision sections, too. You also need to lurk on the boards for a while to get a true picture. I spent several months on LapBandTalk and during that time I slowly found people who were raving about their bands when I first got there having problems. It was scary, quite frankly. But in terms of statistics, there are a number of studies coming out about how the long-term complication rate of the band and they are not pretty. They show anywhere from a 25 to a 40% re-surgery rate for people with bands by the 10 year mark. These studies are a large part of why I don't have a band. Between that and the people who did everything right but still couldn't get restriction, I realized that the lap band is the least effective of the surgeries and had a unacceptable (to me) complication rate.

I eat fried chicken sometimes. I take the skin off because I've never liked it, but the fact that it was fried to begin with means the chicken is moister and goes down better. I don't think having WLS means you can ever eat certain foods ever again. It's all about moderation and making informed choices and that means sometimes you choose to eat something high in calories, knowing it means you can't eat something else later or you have to work out more the next day.

I would have taken a full two weeks off too, but I'm not sure I would have done much more than that. It can be convenient to wait until you are off liquids though.

Okay, I was going to try to catch up, but it's just impossible. Had a great trip to Tahoe. Triathlon was just so-so but ended well with a great run. Hate my job.