MacMadame

That was Wildflower. I've done one since then but it was a little one. Wildflower is my accomplishment for the year (so far). Heh, when I did my first 5K, I got beaten by a mom pushing a stroller. And a dog! Congrats! Are you overtraining? It's important to have rest days because that's when you actually get your fitness gains. If you don't let your muscles repair themselves, they don't get stronger.

My surgeon told me to have my colonoscopy before surgery as it would be easier to drink the horrible tasting drink stuff pre-op. When I get my follow-up, I'm going to make them let me do something else. There are other ways to clean your colon besides drinking a gallon of greasy liquid.

It's called telogen effluvium and it's caused by: -sudden shocks to the system (i.e., surgery, general anesthesia) -rapid weight loss -hormones -nutritional deficiencies With WLS, we have the first three no matter what. Nutritional deficiencies can be a factor, if you aren't getting in your Protein or taking your Vitamins. But, if you are, taking a bunch of supplements and eating more protein won't help. Here's an article about it: Telogen effluvium (hair shedding). DermNet NZ

WTF? I missed this... why does Ebony think you have an eating disorder? More labor to make them. I'm surprised Animal Control hasn't been brought in. I was bitten by a dog like that once. AC was called and the people got out of it but then a month later he bit one of their kids and AC made them put him down. He only bit 7 people before something happened, not 20! Yes, I got my pants back. I had a bunch of bags on the bench in the changing room and the Talbot's bag fell under the bench. When I was consolidating all my bags, I forgot about it under there so I walked out without it. I only figured it out when I was showing Mini-Mac my purchases and it wasn't there! I just kept calling the store until someone found it. I knew it was in there somewhere. :eek: It's because they rock and are open. With coasters, you are strapped in. I'm always convinced they are going to rock too far and tip me out. I had the same experience when I made some protein bars. I used PB2 and they were still 100 calories per ball -- a ball the size of a walnut! Can you imagine if I'd used real peanut butter like the recipe called for? OMG! Do you realize how much ALCOHOL is in a martini?! Apparently not... Okay, a cosmo has 4 parts of vodka and 2 parts triple sec or Cointreau. A chocolate martini is 6 parts vodka and 1 part chocolate liqueur. Since 1.5 oz. of hard liquor is equal to 1 5 oz. glass of wine, each one was probably equal to 2-3 glasses of wine.

Luck! :smile2: That's terrific. I hope you win! Something to keep in mind.... The first 10 min. or so of exercise, your body's oxygen needs to up immediately, but you aren't burning ATP fuel yet. That doesn't happen until about 10 min. out. So the first 10 min. often feel like you are going to die. Then it gets better.

I have a weak full signal too. A couple of things have helped me: -time! :smile0: When the swelling goes down, the amount you eyeball will be more appropriate -weighing and measuring instead of eyeballing. I measured it out and, when I couldn't eat it all, I measured what was left so I knew about how much I could eat and measured less the last time -eating really, really slowly. Like eat a bite, wait a minute. -stopping at any sign, no matter how small. If I even got a niggle of a feeling that I was full, I stopped. If my chest felt tight, I stopped. Then I'd wait a bit and see if I had more room. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't My full signal seems stronger now. It's still weak, but at least it's *there*. In the early days, it wasn't even always there.

The mini-bypass is not one of the surgeries that the ASMBS has put their stamp of approval on. It's dangerous, for one thing. Sometimes insurance will pay for a DS and the surgeon goes in and can't actually completely it due to scar tissue or something. So they just do the sleeve stomach part and you get no malabsorption.

For me, I can wait it out sometimes. Other times, I have to burp up the foam because it makes everything worse. But sometimes it's painful enough that I have to vomit up some food. The hard part is just upchucking enough to get rid of the pain and not losing everything. But mostly it doesn't happen. You figure out your full signal after a couple of incidents and then it might happen only if you are eating without minding. I think this is different from a band but I'm only going by what I've read. It seems like with a band sometimes a food goes down and sometimes it doesn't. With my sleeve, it's never about the food. It's always about eating too much.

The ASMBS says in this paper somewhere: http://www.asmbs.org/Newsite07/resources/bgs_final.pdf "A clear liquid diet is often used as the first step in postoperative nutrition, despite some evidence that it might not be warranted [172]." I haven't looked into it past that.

I don't believe in the liquid diet so I can't really answer your questions. But a lot of docs put their patients on things like Medifast. That's really easy because you just add Water to their packets and you've got the exact right mix of nutrients. OTOH, any weight loss will shrink your liver. Low carb does it better but weight loss does it too.

Only if you have certain jobs that put you in the "Designated Reporter" category. These would be things like social worker, teacher, medical professional. It also depends on what state you live in. Different states have different job lists and not every state has designated reporter laws. As for PG, maybe she should have reported him at the time, but I don't think the police are going to be much interested in a report of something that happened 6 years ago where no one was hurt. We make our decisions based on what we know at the time and then deal with it the best we can. It's always difficult when it's family too. There are conflicting interests.

I think that's completely untrue. The conventional wisdom is that, if you are a sweet eater, you should get bypass because you'll have dumping to keep you in line. I think that's dumb. :tongue_smilie: The thing is, only about half the people who get bypass dump. For some, the threat of dumping is enough and it keeps them in line. But not everyone is the same. For some people, they count on dumping and when it doesn't happen, they start cheating like crazy. Some people don't do well with negative reinforcement either. Also, as your question points out, what does it even mean to be a "sweet eater"? Most people either prefer crunchy/salty foods or sweet foods. Just because you prefer sweets to, say, chips, doesn't mean you will fail with every surgery except bypass. After all, fruits and vegetables are sweet! Many people report after WLS of any type that they have lost a lot of their tastes for sweet things anyway. For many, that's enough for sweets not to be a big problem for them. I think that bypass is something to be considered if you are the kind of person who binges on sweet junk food and you think that having the threat of dumping will keep you in line. Otherwise.... I have always been a big sweet eater and that was not me at all. Even pre-op, I could do things like have one piece of chocolate and be done. One piece didn't make me binge on sweets. I also don't do well with threats for motivation. I would definitely be the kind of person who would constantly flirt with disaster trying to eat something that was on the borderline of making me dump. So I found bypass to be completely unappealing and I have done quite well with my sleeve. I hardly eat sweets at all, but I can if I want to and that's important to me.

I like Steve's new sig line about not having surgery wars at home!

I think greek yogurt tastes a bit like sour cream. So I always put in some sweetener.

Well I didn't go to Mexico and my insurance didn't pay so I'm going to assume, if they had paid, I wouldn't have gone to Mexico either. :tongue_smilie:

A stoma is an artificial opening. RnYers have it between their pouch and their intestines. Bandsters have it when the band cinches their stomach. Foaming is when you fill up your pouch too much or too fast and lots of saliva gets made but there is no place for it to go so you start spitting up foam. Sliming is another name for it. It's a slimy foam.

It's been true for me. I am more sensitive to "artificial" flavors in things and I find a lot of stuff I used to like is now too sweet for me.

We're not malabsorbing so we shouldn't have extra "stuff" coming out. Mine are about the same except they tend towards a green color more easily.

As long as the fundus is fully dissected, the ghrelin making part of the stomach is gone. I do think that some DS patients with their larger sleeves don't end up with the fundus fully dissected. But I also think that may be because of technique in some cases. I don't think the surgeons realized how important that was until recently.

Many surgeons don't even require a patient with a BMI of 39 to do the liver shrinking diet. In fact, if your surgeon can't get around your liver at your lower weight, I'd fire him. (But I'm sure he can.) As for why some have you do a liquid diet, it's because they think it's easier for you to do it that way. There aren't choices where you could eat something you think is low carb or low calorie, but it isn't. I don't agree, but that's the rationale behind it...

I haven't watched tv in months! Right now I'm only getting 6 hours of sleep a night though. This is not good. Something has to give and I think it will be the internet.

Yes. With the sleeve, the first thing is trying to convince themselves that they need the biggest sleeve their surgeon is willing to give them. But it takes other forms too and you see it with all the different surgery types. But you aren't an early post-op with a very swollen tummy that can only hold so much. It's a completely different situation. OTOH, maybe if you ate more Protein, you could have run on 1000 calories a day. :wink0:

This comes up a lot. So I saved one my posts about it. (Yes, I'm lazy.) Here it is: I honestly don't care what I end up weighing. I care about how I look, what size I wear, and what percentage my body fat is. My first goal was just to get to a normal BMI and then worked on my body fat until it got on the low side of normal. Now I just want to look "cut" and/or "buff." At one of my support group meetings, the topic was "Goal" and we talked about setting a goal and also about maintenance. For setting a goal, I thought we were given some really helpful guidelines. Using BMI: A healthy BMI is considered to be anything between 18.5 and 24.9. However, that's a big range and where you should fall in it will depend on a lot of factors. Met Life says the "optimal" BMI is 21.4. That's optimal in terms of insurance -- longevity vs. healthiness and other factors. If you just take longevity into account, 22-24 is the range with the best longevity. Using Body Fat %: Acceptable range for women is 17-34% But the lower 20s are the healthiest. Other considerations: What can you maintain? It's better to have a higher goal and maintain it than to be bouncing all over the place, starving yourself one week and bingeing the next because you can't maintain your goal. Then again, don't sell yourself short ... WLS is different from dieting and people often get much lower than they ever thought they could. Is there a size you used to be that you would like to be again? A weight you remember feeling great at? How much work are you willing to do long-term? How often do you want to eat treats, how much do you want to exercise? It may be less in the long-run than during the weight loss phase and you may find that you'd rather be a bit heavier and not have to work so hard. Or you may turn into an athlete and be able to get down much lower than you ever dreamed of. And everything in between. Bounce Back: A lot of people end up 10 lb. over their lowest weight. So maybe you want to adjust your goal downward to account for that. Plastic Surgery: PS say that they usually end up removing 10-30 lb. of excess skin and fat cells when they do PS on WLS patients. So you may want to make your goal higher so you aren't beating yourself up trying to get down to a weight that you can't get to because you've got 10 lb. of excess skin hanging off you. When you take all these things into consideration, it should give you a ball park figure that seems good to you that you can set as a goal. Oh and here are some calculators that might help you: Calculator Body Mass Index Happy Weight Calculator: Calculators: Self.com They all use different formulas, some more scientific than others.

Eh, my cholesterol was 195 when I decided to get surgery and it's 131 now. I find my cholesterol goes down when my calorie consumption goes down. It doesn't seem to matter what the calories are made up of.

My surgeon also suggests people use protein shakes so that they can be freer to try other things -- like veggies -- at meals. I have one pretty much every day for breakfast and he thinks that's great.