IncredibleShrinkingMe

Anyone else in Blighty?

Has anyone here taken Chinese herbal cures after surgery? A Chinese medicine practitioner I met has suggested an herbal compound that might help with brain fog and building vitality. I'd be grateful to hear your experiences.

Left a bad taste in mine, too. Sometimes I think people want to be right or seem clever more tnan they actually want to learn or be helpful. I hope these folks were just having a bad night and things are better elsewhere on the forum!

My doc says that 1 oz of Water maximum in a meal is OK. That's about a shot glass, so the advice earlier was pretty spot on. If I drink too soon, I get sick, and if I drink more than the odd sip of water, I get sick as well. I'm eating a lot of softer food, though, so I don't need as much water to moisten my food. Not sure if this helps anyone, but a positive hat has come out of the restriction on water: I am a night eater, and I'm still struggling with the desire to eat at night. Using the restrictions about fluids to keep myself on plan. Feel like snacking? Have some mint or fruit tea and think about it. Oh, look, bed time soon and I have half an hr to wait... so far, it's working.

Wow, really. Is this petty nonsense the standard of this forum? Thanks for asking the question about volume, @gustavo. A lot of nutritional advice can be a bit confusing or counter-intuitive. I'm still trying to get over the fact I can be so full on 3 spoonfuls of Beans, but can eat more tuna. Weird, eh? I think it's a pretty normal human desire to make sure things are on track, particularly early on. Yes, we each have a plan to follow, but I think we learn by comparing advice and asking questions. Her question was about volume, not is it was OK to eat what she ate. Not sure why everyone was obsessed with the correctness of the Evil Fruit Which Will Remain Unnamed. Maybe when we are worried about the state of our own diets and progress, we want to validate our own opinions and knowledge just that bit more? We worked so hard for this change, and we all want to be correct in our respective plans. Maybe we need to learn some humility and empathy as well?

Just booked my flights and hotel for the Czech Republic. Can't believe this is finally happening

The pre-surgical psych eval was explained to me as being more about your expectations, how you cope with stress and change. Many people overeat to self-medicate other problems in their lives. For example, if you have been sexually abused or attacked, you might overeat to make yourself invisible by making yourself less attractive or to feel larger and more secure. Someone like this might find that losing weight will remove the fat but not the underlying anxiety. As they lose weight and start getting more attention, possibly aggressive/unwelcome attention, how will they cope? The fear is that you may sabotage your weight loss or possibly take on other self-destructive, punishing or self-erasing behaviours to cope. This is where further therapy might put you in a healthier place before surgery.

Hi Rosie So glad it's going well. I am getting sleeved in July in the Czech Republic... going though New Leaf. I'm nervous and excited all at once. How are you finding aftercare on the NHS? I'm wondering how it might work for me once I'm back from self-funded surgery overseas and all that.

Another one with a Garmin Vivosmart HR. I swapped over from the fitbit and have never looked back. Totally waterproof and it adjusts your totals to keep you challenged. If you are consistently smashing 10K steps, it will adjust your targets upwards. If you do less than 10K, it will meet you where you are. Absolutely love it

SMART Recovery doesn't make too much of a fuss about WLS. And as for OA - if you are abstinent and working a program, I'm not sure how WLS is supposed to be against OA principles. You're still using OA or SMART to address compulsions and triggers.

My surgery is on 17 July. Live in the UK but am going to the Czech Republic for my surgery. Should be back home on the 25th. Excited doesn't even begin to cover how I feel!

In the country I live in now, if you call emergency services for help, if you have a special medical or safety concern, a message flashes up on the screen. The message alerts the call handler and dispatch that the person at this address may have a special concern that may mean other agencies need to be involved in the call or be notified. I took a call one day to find the man at the address was flagged up as weighing 23 stone or more. (322 lbs) Anyone with that weight might need additional crew to attend the scene to help carry them, and may need larger or reinforced equipment to get them to hospital in an emergency. This might cause a delay, which is why emergency services are warned in advance. At the time, I weighed 22 stone. I was 14 lbs away from possibly facing a life-threatening delay if something ever happened to me. That realisation scared the hell out of me. The final, final straw though is the realisation that I was avoiding meeting people I had not seen in a long time (or to meet them face to face after making friends online) because I was self-conscious about my size. I am normally a confident person, but realising that I was shutting myself away from the world because of a sense of shame about who I am... Booked a surgery for mid-July. Absolutely over the moon!