vixsummer

I am! December 19!
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I'm a teacher, so that was my plan too - I'm still really nervous having to take the week before break off for the actual surgery, but oh well. I want the two weeks - it's not worth it for us to rush back and have complications, right??
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I'm a teacher, so that was my plan too - I'm still really nervous having to take the week before break off for the actual surgery, but oh well. I want the two weeks - it's not worth it for us to rush back and have complications, right??
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I am! December 19!
Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

All good ideas! Thanks guys! We started setting up our classrooms this week, and already the gossip is flying about different people. It's just the culture of my school, I guess. I'm very interested to see what it's like when I start visibly losing weight!
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All good ideas! Thanks guys! We started setting up our classrooms this week, and already the gossip is flying about different people. It's just the culture of my school, I guess. I'm very interested to see what it's like when I start visibly losing weight!
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My mother thinks I'm too young for such a permanent surgery, and I'm 32. [emoji13] we can't win, can we? Haha

I personally think it's hard to blame the psychiatric evaluations on instances where the wrong person gets WLS. Most programs only require candidates to meet with the evaluator for one session, and even though I believe MAJOR problems would probably be detected, and I don't doubt that the evaluators are mostly competent, I wonder if anyone can truly assess a person's mental health in an hour. If someone wants the surgery and doesn't understand their own mental instability or the fact that they are overall a bad candidate, they can answer however they please and be cleared by the therapist. I have suffered over the years with OCD, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, etc in varying degrees at different times. I am also educated, articulate, a business owner and a good conversationalist. There is no way the man who did my psych evaluation could truly understand the mental health risk I was taking by having the surgery. I was well aware that the health anxiety from this could spark some major panic, or that the hormone fluctuations afterwards could have me on more of an emotional roller coaster than others. Fortunately since I am aware of those things I made sure I had proper medication, a therapist and a supportive group of friends & family. However, if someone is doing WLS for the wrong reasons and just wants to be skinny or find a husband and isn't concerned with a lifestyle change, being healthy and doing it for themselves then I doubt that would be the type of person who would assemble the necessary support team. Then when the surgery is done and they are left without any emotional first aid kit, they end up like this woman with transfer addictions, no healthy coping skills and no personal responsibility for why those things are happening. And of course, they blame it on the surgery. Anyone of any age considering the surgery needs to take a look at their emotional and spiritual situation and be completely honest with themselves. No one knows us better than us, and if something doesn't feel right it usually isn't. Plus, if for some reason someone finds its not the right time and they could benefit from counseling then its just a temporary pause and they are doing themselves a great service. I think everyone of every age contemplating/getting WLS should have a regular or semi-regular therapist before and after. As I think a few others mentioned, sometimes people wont realize mental or emotional issues until after the surgery, and since its permanent those people only have two options: get help or fall apart. And if they already have that person in place they will be well equipped to tackle the problem and have a real chance at being a great success story.

My mother thinks I'm too young for such a permanent surgery, and I'm 32. [emoji13] we can't win, can we? Haha

I'm SO scared of losing my boobs, and my butt. I feel like those are the sexiest things about me - albeit, the butt could stand to be about 20" smaller, according to the measuring tape!
I was always the girl with the great rack, so I put a lot of "feeling attractive" into that. It makes me quite nervous, even though the rest of me will look way better.

My mother thinks I'm too young for such a permanent surgery, and I'm 32. [emoji13] we can't win, can we? Haha

I can tell you what my experience has been on the fronts you're concerned about.
FYI, I'm 20 months post-op, have lost 100 pounds, am maintaining at 135 pounds and currently averaging 1,800 calories/day and around 90-100 grams of Protein. I try to eat at least 5 healthy veggies / fruits a day. I prefer whole grains to processed ones. I drink a glass of wine OR scotch most days. In other words, if someone else were watching my daily menus I bet they would think I "eat normally" and probably "eat healthy."
Uh -- that's not how I eat 20 months post-op. Yes, I spent the first 6-8-10 months being very disciplined about what I ate, when I ate, how I ate. And in doing so I built some new habits. And, badda boom! Now they're habits. I don't count bites or chews or anything like that now.
By working hard to build those new habits, I learned how to eat much more slowly, how to chew my food much better, how to recognize what satiety feels like, how to know when I'm approaching "too full" and to stop before I get there. Trust me, I had some awful bad habits pre-op. I bet you do, too. We can't change those bad habits without some serious attention to our behavior.
It's not persuasive to say to you, "Trust me, I don't have an eating disorder." But I don't have an eating disorder. What I have is a new lifestyle. I feel very relaxed in this new lifestyle. There's no anxiety about eating. There's no fear, anger, or other upsetting emotions about food. Isn't that what you want?
Y'know -- on the front end it does sound *extreme* to remove 85% of your stomach. But on the back end where I am now, it just all feels normal. I just spent a week hanging with some good friends of mine -- all normal-sized and athletic people my own age. We were both eating at home and eating out, too. Some serious partying occurred, as well. What I notice in those settings is that, nearly two years post-op, I am now living the same kind of eating / exercise life they've been living for a long time. They watch what they eat. Read that again: They watch what they eat. Their watching is not obsessive, but it's attentive. I think there's a range of behaviors between obsessive and attentive, and it's intellectually lazy to equate the two end poles of that range. So don't do that.
Actually, the barrier to my maintaining past weight losses wasn't the planning -- it was that my plans were so often blown out of the Water because I'd never built any new eating habits beyond the "diet to lose weight" phase.
After you lose all your excess weight, after a year or so you can eat so much more than you could right after surgery. The first week after surgery I averaged probably 500 calories/day, all of it liquid. But over the last 20 months I have gone carefully from phase to phase to phase. I didn't go from Dieting one day to Struggling Not to Gain Weight the next day. (How I did all that is a big subject, and one I won't go into here, but it wouldn't surprise you how I did it.)
Yesterday, I ate 3 meals and 2 Snacks -- all real food. I do record most days my menus on My Fitness Pal (it takes me all of 5 minutes -- I'm a data hound). Yesterday I ate 1,805 calories, 103 grams of protein, 189 grams of carbs, 67 grams of fat, 23 grams of insoluble Fiber. Girl, that's how a real person who's eating healthy and maintaining her weight eats!
Oh, and yesterday morning I went for a hike up a small mountain with my sister and late yesterday afternoon I spread 20 bags of mulch in some flower beds. And I went shopping. I wasn't wearing my pedometer all the time, so don't know how many steps I got, but it was at least 10,000 I'm sure.
Am I obsessive? Or am I attentive? You decide. You can also read this post to your therapist and see what she thinks.
Last thought: You should not do this surgery unless and until you are really comfortable that it's the right choice for you. Don't let anyone here talk you into it, including me.

Reading this reminded me of some of the concerns I have had about the surgery. Mines is scheduled for May 3rd and in preparing for my two week liquid diet, I began thinking about all the foods I was giving up. I also thought about how these foods put me in the situation I am now to have the surgery. For 32 years I ate what I wanted with no regard and now I'm paying the cost because I'm uncomfortable in my skin and I have little kids I want to see grow up. pizza and burgers are not more important than a healthy future or my kids. My 33rd birthday is this Friday and it will be my last being the big guy and I'm proud of that.
The surgery isn't for everyone and if traditional methods worked for me, I wouldn't do this, but to me the pros outweigh the cons. I'm ready for the next phase of my life.
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Ask her to tell you everything she knows about bariatric surgery. Guaranteed it won't be much.
Give her your surgeon's phone number and tell her to call him and tell him that she disagrees with his diagnosis.
Tell her that some people do look like basset hounds when they reach goal....but that is what skin removal surgery is for. Then go buy a pair of skinny jeans in your goal size, to give yourself some incentive.
Geeze Louiz. Why can't people just be happy for us? Bariatric surgery has a way of exposing the raw dynamics of our relationships. Through this process you will have to seriously re-evaluate who is in your corner and who needs to keep their distance.
Don't give away your power. This is your journey.