OzRoo

I'm not losing my hair, I'm man-scaping!

I lost al my hair by the time I turned 30. But I am a guy, so it doesn't matter. I'm going for the Jean Luc Picard look.

I didn't lose any. Or if I did, it was so little that I didn't notice it (I'm 19 months out, so it would have happened long before now)

Im one year out and my hair is thicker! Maybe from all the Protein and Vitamins? Ive been fortunate!

If it happens it usually hits around 10 to 12 weeks post op and will continue through the massive weight loss phase.
It might be a little soon to tell for some of you at this point. Also, you might be one of the lucky ones that does have any.
I will say that I lost nearly 2/3 of my hair from month 2 to month 13. I did not have bald spots but my hair was thin. While I was losing it, new hairs were popping up all over. I can honestly say that my hair is as thick if not thicker than it was before surgery. In fact my stylist swears it is significantly thicker. Also the texture changed and I went from some body in my hair to very curly hair. To the point where it is difficult to straighten it......

Today I finally get to go home!
My surgeon wants me back in a month for a new endoscopy so she can check that it's keeping open. So even if I get any problems, I have a safely net of an appointment to fix it already.
Now I'm well hydrated again, since I gained 1/2 lb since Thursday. But I'm sure the extra Water weight will be gone soon.
I was cleared to eat pureed food and in addition to that, to try solids as Snacks or meals. If tummy says yes, they can stay, otherwise see you in a months time for a new trial.
So happy to be able to drink fairly normally again! Cheers!!
Nilla

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Thank you!.....I have absolutely no regrets!!!.....and my advice is to do it! :-) Study your post-op eating plan and know it! Don't wait until after your surgery to try to figure it all all out.
Good luck to you!
Take Care,
Kathy

I hope everyone had a great New Year's eve celebration. Let's start 2017 off with a smile. Post a funny picture or humorous quote relating to weight loss and/or New Year's resolutions.

@@mrsNilla
So sorry to hear about your recovery challenges. I am happy that the problem has been found and is currently treated.
Wishing you great health and recovery. May the 2017 be kind to you, and may you have an uneventful recovery from now on!
All my best wishes to you xxx

Yep, first "nay" sayer has appeared ..... LOL

Quick update!
Who ever thought I would be happy to know I have a stricture?!? I had the endoscopy done a few hours ago and apparently one opening was so tight that the camera didn't even fit thru. So my surgeon inserted a balloon that she filled with saline to push the hole more open. The stretching causes some bleeding, so I got some meds for that.
I'm back in my room now, drinking milk. The feeling is so much different than before. Still taking small sips, but there is no pain or feeling that it gets stuck.
I still have an iv for hydration and I also got a Vitamin B drip, because I haven't been eating much lately and my labs show malnutrition.
But I feel so much better than before! Maybe my weight loss will start to pick up now that I can physically eat more..? One can always hope!
Nilla

Thanks for this. My surgery date was 3/31/16. So I'm a March sleeved as well. My SW:265 CW: 165.
So I'm down 100lbs and thrilled, but the past two months I've only lost 2lbs. I've been so worried that maybe I've hit maintenance. I've passed my surgeon's goal of 70% excess weight, but I really, really want to hit 100%.
I felt that complaining about it was ungrateful and my friends think I'm humble bragging. I'm sticking with the plan and trying to be patient.
I have a consultation for plastics in a few weeks and I wonder if maybe that would help.
Keep up the good work!
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All of your comments have been so helpful! Close friends who knew I had the surgery keep asking if I'm still losing weight and that makes me feel bad. And of course, I have this fear that I won't make it all the way and/or will put weight back on. It is so encouraging for me to read your stories, and know that this is normal for the sleeve. I will just keep on keeping on!
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This guy is:

Firstly...I'm nearly four years post banded. Just a couple of weeks till my anniversary. I've been at goal for around three years give or take so I absolutely consider myself a vet though not necessarily one of long term duration.
So...this week has been both a bit of a challenge and also a great joy. The joy part is that I'm with my friends, family, and loved ones and I'm doing a spectacular stay-cation home in NYC. A little background is that my boyfriend owns a food tour company and is obviously very knowledgeable about food and is a huge foodie as part of his job and interests. And that is often the challenge...especially this week.
We decided to do a global food tour and in tandem, head out of Manhattan to explore the outer boroughs and eat foods from different ethnicities. So we went to Greenpoint Brooklyn which has a large Polish population and ate Polish food. We went to Staten Island and had Spanish food, we went to Arthur Avenue in The Bronx which is a well known Italian enclave. We've done Brazilian, Malaysian, Jewish delicatessen (along with movies on Christmas Day), and we're still heading to Astoria Queens for Greek food.
I got on the scale this morning and am exactly the same weight I was a week ago when we started this foray.
And what does this tell us? For me, it tells me that as long as I watch my volume, and make good choices, I can eat anything and live the life I want even when my interests still gravitate towards food. The difference now is that I don't need or want to eat to excess. A little bit goes a long way. Last night was my biggest challenge. My danger food is Pasta. I ordered the house special...Nona's meatballs and spaghetti. Suffice to say the spaghetti was perfectly al dente. Chewy deliciousness. I had about three or four small forkfuls, and let the remaining three dinner companions go to town on the rest of it. This worked so well as I got in my chance to enjoy this food and still not give in to it.
I know everyone has to approach living post WLS the best way they know how. For me, this works. My fervent hope is that I'm posting the same when I'm ten years post banded. Today I think I can make it.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all my friends on BP.

9 months post op, and I have been the same weight for the past 2 months.
Today I finally lost 2.2 Ib (1 kg) ..... I am so close to goal ..... and it is so, so very slow for me now.
I am eating still same size portions, 1/2 cup, but I really concentrate on Proteins and more Water. I even eat very little fruit, especially rock melon that I love.
I thought this happened to me because I was lower BMI to start with ......
However, my March buddies also noticed that the weight loss has really slowed down, for most of us.
At least, I lost the 2.2 Ib, took me 2 months ... but it is still happening at a snail's pace.
I have better NSVs, so I am still shrinking, even though the scales are not budging much .....
Good luck with those last few pounds!
You have done so well! Congratulations!
Great topic, thank you @@JupiterinVirgo

Absolutely. My surgeon is pretty liberal with her diet progression compared to many I've seen here as well. But each surgeon has developed their protocol based on their training and experience. After surgery when you're experiencing cravings and head hunger is not the time to compare my plan with yours and decide your surgeon is being too conservative because you're wanting to move more quickly. Follow your doctor's instructions. Period.
sent from mobile device

Over the last few weeks, I've seen a number of posts about "cheating" on the diet plan in the days and weeks immediately following surgery, and I am very concerned about this trend.

I am not a doctor, I do not play one on TV, and I am not dispensing medical advice.

However.

I am a registered nurse, and what I'm about to say is an informed and educated opinion.

Surgeons tend to give VERY detailed instructions about what to eat after a stomach surgery, and for VERY good reason.

Even when the surgery is arthroscopic and looks to be a very tiny surgery on the outside, it's a VERY BIG surgery on the inside. The VSG surgery leaves a staple/suture line the entire length of the stomach. That incision has to heal, and if you could see it, it would look like raw beef. If the incision were on the outside, we would be very careful with it, keeping it clean and bandaged while it healed. Of course, it's on the inside, so we can't do that. But we need to keep in mind that it needs to heal in the same way.

We have to eat, and that food will be against that raw incision. At the same time that we have to protect the healing stomach, we also have to get in plenty of fluids and nutrients, specifically Protein, in order to support healing. Protein is the primary building block for tissue, so it's critical to healing. Carbs are mainly just energy sources, so they're not as important, especially given that people having bariatric surgery have plenty of energy in their fat stores. This is why protein is stressed so heavily over carbs in the diets.

Additionally, the stomach is now in a new shape, and it basically has to learn how to function as a slender tube instead of a big bag. There's a learning curve. Kinda like a newborn baby's stomach. We don't dump steak and salad into a newborn's stomach for good reason - it doesn't know how to deal with it. Similarly, we don't want to do that to our new sleeve. We start off with stuff that's easy on the suture line and easy to digest, and as the suture line heals and the sleeve learns its job, start working our way up to "real" food.

So over the years, doctors have learned what foods are best for a healing stomach, and that translates into the post-op diet progression instructions.

Typically, that looks like this: Clear liquids, then full liquids, then pureed foods, then soft foods, then slowly move into a "full" diet beginning with high moisture content foods first. When moving from one stage to the next, it's typically advised to add just one food at a time, in small amounts, and see how it's tolerated. A food that's not tolerated well can be tried later on as well. If an entire stage is not being tolerated, back up to the previous stage for a while, and then try again more slowly.

Surgeons tend to specify how long to stay in each of these stages, what types of food make up each stage, and how to transition to the next stage. Every surgeon's instructions are a little different, and it's based on their experience and sometimes changes based on the patient's specific medical case.

The general idea in the very early weeks is to eat foods that will not stress the healing suture line, and do not have particles that are known to cut into the raw tissue or get embedded into the suture line. If a cut or embedded food particle gets infected, it can become an abscess and develop into a leak. A leak can be life threatening, and at the very least cause the patient to have to be hospitalized and possibly have more surgery to correct it. Foods that are particularly known to cause issues are those that swell up like rice, have seeds like strawberries, or have rough hard edges or hard to digest fibers like wheat crackers or raw vegetables.

There are people who eat all sorts of things against their doctor's orders and have suffered no ill effects, but this should not be used as an argument that the doctor's orders are not important. Similarly, you will find some people who smoke a pack of cigarettes every day and drink a pint of whiskey every day but live to 100. They are not representative of most people, and should not be used as the example other people follow.

The reality is that some people will develop abscesses and leaks because they ate things before they were cleared to by their doctors, and there is no way to predict who will have the complications and who will not. And the consequences can be as severe as death. It's not common, but that's how bad it can get. That's why the doctors give the instructions they do. They're not just testing you or trying to make your life hard. They are giving you the best information they have to keep you safe.

Violating these orders is not "cheating" on a diet. It's risking your life. I am not being overly dramatic with this statement, it is a fact that it has happened. You are risking your safety and your health if you violate these orders. It's not about "being human", it's not about "food addiction". It's about your safety and your health. It's hard to be on liquids only for 2 weeks (or more). Some people have huge cravings, or "head hunger" as we tend to call it here. Or just want desperately to chew something. No one is saying it's easy. But it's necessary. Distract yourself. Eat/drink anything that's allowed on your plan - freeze it, heat it up, try something that's opposite of what you've been having to shake it up. Walk around the house or the block. Suck on an ice cube. Count to ten or a hundred. Post about how hard it is, and ask people to help you get through it. But muscle through. It's nothing less than your health and safety.

As for why one surgeon will have his patients on Clear Liquids for 2 weeks while another only does 2 days? Or why one will skip a phase entirely? Each surgeon has different experiences that inform his practices. One is not right and the other wrong. They are each operating out of what they were taught and what they have seen in their own patient groups. They may have even modified the plan because of a specific health concern in your specific case. As a patient, you need to fully understand what your surgeon expects, and if you have a problem with the protocols get it straight with your surgeon and team BEFORE you go under the knife.

If you don't trust your surgeon and his protocols, find another surgeon. I personally would question a surgeon who doesn't allow any Protein drinks including the clear ones for 2 full weeks post op (saw that in one patient's instructions on this site) and likely wouldn't work with that surgeon, given what I know about the needs of protein for healing. But after surgery is not the time to be questioning the surgeon's protocols. Get those questions asked and answered to your satisfaction well before the surgery date.

If you are having surgery, and you have not been given your post-op instructions, at the very least for the first 2 weeks post-op, do not proceed with the surgery until you have that information. We have people posting here stating that they were sent home without clear instructions as to what they were supposed to eat or drink, just a vague statement about "full liquids". That is not sufficient information, and instructions should be given WELL BEFORE the surgery, not after. You should fully understand what will be expected in the weeks after the surgery before consenting to the surgery, or your team is not doing their job.

(This ends my sorta rant about post-op diets and "cheating")

Good luck to everyone!

Different time changes for few of us, hence we can't all know about "the latest post, etc"
As I mentioned earlier, I was puzzled about bugles, not sure if we have it here in Australia.
At first I thought: "bagels", this reminded me of beagles that I adore, as well as pugs.
I am sorry if a certain poster or two feel offended, this was NOT Personal !!!
So, for goodness sake, have a bugle, bagel, beagle, whatever
and listen to the Buggles:
And to all the hangry people, put a smile on your dial, not everything is about you.
As for being called a "BULLY", I choose not to be offended.
Feel free to read all of my 1,000 plus posts and find one that I was "bullying" someone, especially a newbie ...
This anger defies logic. This is why most of the great people here are leaving or left already.
BP will be run by Newbies full of non-experience and lousy advice.
Merry Christmas to you all.

I had no idea what bugle was, apart from the obvious.
Learnt that these were chips; well, learn something new every day
Now I have to check the junk food aisle in my supermarket here .....
Warning: Satanic Entity who dares to have a sense of humour, in Rants and Raves of All places!
No name calling (except for myself ), no links to a thread, .......
SMH
But: