Hollyhock

You are an inspiration. I'm post op sleeve 1 week. Thank you for posting this. Sometimes I feel alone on this journey because people are quick to criticize your decision. I often keep my success and pitfalls to a small circle of people. It's so true... it's like losing a best friend. Sometimes I feel moody because I can't eat what I use to. This is truly not easy, forums like these helps to cope with the drastic change and to see inspirations like you and find comfort in knowing that weight loss is a journey and success comes in many shapes. Thank you again for the inspiration. You look great. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

At least you have your surgery date I think I wouldn't be so anxious .. if I get approved cause that's my worry that I won't.
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I felt most frustrated in August. I had completed the entire program and was beginning to lose weight. I went for my scheduling appointment but was told, "We're sorry but our surgeon quit so you'll have to start over somewhere else." It took months to fill out all the releases and get my test results sent to the new program. But then I also needed to do the various assessments again. This time I sailed through. I brought a month's worth of food diaries and my DBT book and lunchbag as a show and tell, and was cleared for surgery by both the nutritionist and behavioral specialist at my first appointment and my surgery is scheduled for January 30. But now I'm worried that maybe I bamboozled everyone into thinking I'm ready when I'm not and I'll be the one in a million who doesn't lose weight with the surgery. The surgeon has recommended the sleeve because he says there is no reason to take additional risk when it looks like I won't need the extra help of dumping syndrome. I'm scared that maybe I've just pulled a great con job and really I'm no better off than I was a year ago. But that would mean I've conned an awful lot of people at both programs. I wish I had faith in myself to be able to do this!

The closer I'm getting the more excited I am, so just give it some time. I just have a sleep study left and that is scheduled for the 18th. Just try every day to research and start making better food choices-during the last couple months I've had ups and downs, but now I have a good meal plan and exercise routine so I hit my surgery weight and get in better shape for when I recover.
You got this!

This. I started looking into WLS probably this time last year but at the time had insurance that would not cover the procedure. I started a new job and was waiting on the new insurance to kick in, once that started I saw it was covered but still wanted to try something else. I did the medical weight loss and $2k+ later I had lost 20lbs and realized the liquid only diet was not sustainable and I was going broke, fast. Since then I've just been gyming and going back to some old eating habits. Now I'm wishing I had just done this a year ago! I have my first surgeon consultation and NUT appointment on the 12th as well. I'm very excited but wish I had gotten this done already.
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I barely started my journey and have only completed the first class at kaiser and scheduled the 12th of Jan for my surgery overview class.. I am getting a little discouraged and anxious at the same time and I can't lose any weight cause it could disqualify me for the surgery cause I don't have any other issues like high cholesterol ( but I just started a medication that raises my cholesterol) high blood pressure , diabetes ect .. but my family on both side have everything and a ton more .
So I'm sitting here spinning my wheels can't to anything ..
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I'm only two months out from surgery, but I have said it in my mind that carbs are the enemy, and I work very hard to avoid them. I am hoping that two years out I will still feel the same way. Maybe it's a kind of brainwashing to sit there and tell yourself that carbs are evil, but that's what I have to do.
I focus on my Protein intake.
Last night, I hit my local Korean market and bought a salmon head.
Don't gag, they are actually loaded with meat.
I steamed it with pink salt and some sliced fresh ginger, for about 20 minutes, and then had about 2 to 3 ounces of it, and let my daughter have the rest.
It is a cheap, easy, way to get lots of soft and easy Protein.< /p>

I am so thankful I joined up and read this post today. I am 4 years out this month and was wit30 lbs of goal when I started down the drink Water with meals, add back in carbs, hey they were good carbs! well at least at first....snack and graze all day, first healthy veggies ad nuts and then a here, a nibble there, not only did I not lose that 30 I gained 20 back. Thus I find myself today 50 lbs from goal.
I restarted this am, I can't tell you how many times I have restarted in last year or two but I am motivated, going to do everything in my power to ensure my success.
1) back to basics, no more drinking (even water) before and after I eat.
2) no more grazing period! planned 3 small meals and 3 small Snacks daily,
3) eat all my Protein first, then veggies, then complex carb, which I really should not reach since I should be full from Protein and veggie
4) 8 glasses of Water
5) track everything, every bite...
its challenging, grazing is a habit now but I am amazed to report that this 4 year old sleeve which has at times managed to consume a hamburger with bun, was stuffed after 3 ounces of chicken and a cup of salad. Our tool still works!

Thank heavens for threads like this one. I'm right on board. Bloody carbs! The invention of the Devil. They are so easy to eat and to be honest I find them very yummy!!! However, my new wardrobe and accompanying new found confidence are worth more than a a dollop of those horrors. I am 15 months out from my sleeve surgery and for the first time I've been complacent and a couple of lbs have crept on. Back to basics for me so no more dipping into the Christmas chocolates that are there for guests. I now have a mountain of oranges and clementines to satisfy my sweet tooth. I'm also upping my Water intake which had slipped a bit.
Reading these posts has given me the required kick up my arse that I needed. Thank you guys x
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Okay so my first year was phenomenal! I did so good! And this past year? Well... not so much. My loss slowed around the end of last year and continued to be slow/creeping for the first couple of months. Chalk it up to holidays, the stress after a move, poor planning, it wasn't a great time. And I should have followed that up with renewed vigor, but instead I re-introduced two things into my life that has made this year, frankly?, a complete waste!
1. Carbs! I started re-introducing them back in February. Just a little at first. But what was an occasional thing turned into an every day thing, turned into an (almost) every meal thing, turned into an (almost) every meal/every snack thing. It's a slippery slope. And the worst part about this is that I don't even enjoy them that much! They're just convenient and EVERYWHERE.
2. Snacking. Before I was mostly doing the strict 5-6 meals/snacks per day. It would occasionally deviate, but for the most part, that was my mainstay. After introducing carbs, the desire to snack became so much stronger. The more carbs I ate, the more I snacked, the more I snacked, the more I ate carbs. It was just a gross gigantic avalanche of snacking/carbing.
3. Facebook! Can I blame the fact that I re-introduced Facebook on this? I recently read (a real article, though I can't remember the name of the publication at the moment! I THINK it was NYT.) that surveys suggest that Facebook takes up more of our time than exercising, reading, and socializing per day COMBINED. COMBINED. That's... INSANE. To know that I've wasted good quality exercising (and reading!) time on Facebook (which I don't even really LIKE, which is why I avoided it for SO LONG.) is mind boggling to me. I haven't deleted the app from my phone yet, but I'm doing it tonight! I'll keep messenger because for some reason people prefer that to texting these days. STILL. This is unacceptable in my world view. How did I allow this to happen?
I have not technically gained weight this year because I looked back and I'm around the same I was this time last year. So that's... something? But with gains and losses, I did gain back about 25 lbs. You could say ALMOST 30, but the only reason I ever dipped that low was because I had mycoplasma pneumonia (the one with gastrointestinal symptoms) for 2 weeks in the middle of the year. Apart from that one week period where I had lost weight because of Illness, I'd been hovering at about 255 for a pretty long time this year. Then, when I stepped on the scale one week ago I was shocked to discover that I was weighing in at 278.5. 23 and half pounds higher than my (non-pnuemonia-induced) lowest weight!
The little progress that I did make this year, just kept being erased by my poor choices! I hadn't stepped on a scale since I'd been sick. I was in deep denial!
I immediately joined a dietbet (which I'm going to lose because I'm losing too quickly!) and started eating right again. No carbs, veggies, Protein (at least 70/day), getting in my fluids, only eating 5/6 times/day. I began losing weight so rapidly that I couldn't believe it. Still can't. That was Dec 1st. When I weighed myself this morning. I'd already lost 12 lbs! This is TWO YEARS out from surgery. I haven't had ANY TIME this week to exercise (though I do babysit after work so I usually get all my steps in.) This tool still works! It still does EXACTLY what it's designed to do! And the REALLY remarkable part of this? Half way into this week, my dentist had to prescribe me an antibiotic AND a steroid. A steroid! Yet I still managed to lose 12 lbs. I feel like I JUST had surgery. These are astonishing numbers even if it's mostly Water weight. Even if I'd just lost 6/5 lbs this week I would have been astounded. 12 is beyond anything I ever expected.
Some things I've noticed this week:
1. I still don't miss carbs (much!)
It's hard to step away. But honestly? I just feel so dissatisfied with what I'm eating when I'm eating carbs. I've always been more of a meat and veggie girl. Carbs are just so abundant, so easily accessible and convenient, and so weirdly addictive even if you don't really love them, that it's just a habit I fall into that is almost exclusively environmental. I just need to REMEMBER that I control my own "food environment" if I make the time to plan!
2. I have to remember to take my Vitamins.
I still have them, I just have lapsed in taking them. Now that I really need them again, it's more important to remember!
3. I am going to the bathroom very infrequently, much like I did the first year post-surgery.
4. My capacity really is not as high as I feared.
When you nibble, stretch out your meals into long social affairs, snack frequently, eat slider foods, it can really be a bit of a mind trick. You start to believe that you can still eat like you used to. But you can't, you're just adapting what you CAN do, to what you WANT to do. If you want to eat more, you'll make it happen. You have to MAKE YOURSELF use your tool the way it was intended.
If I eat good quality veggies and protein, eat from start to finish (no stopping to chat OR BROWSE FACEBOOK for ten minutes in between bites!), I can still only eat ABOUT a solid cup of food before I'm comfortably full. Might take a few extra bites to make me UNCOMFORTABLY full depending on what the food is. I made a double-batch of Skinnytaste's Stuffed Pepper Soup (without rice) last week. Which is not very brothy and more like a stew. Yesterday I had a cup of that for lunch. (my ladle measures exactly one cup). By the time I finished the cup, I was UNCOMFORTABLY full. I actually should have stopped a few bites before I finished. Because it was stew-like, it was way more dense. For dinner today I had about 2 ounces of roasted chicken breast (which doesn't equal a half cup if you cut it up in chunks), about a half a cup of sauteed brussels sprouts, and a little less than a tablespoon full of homemade pimento cheese melted over the top. I was perfectly full by the time I was done. Not too full. Not still hungry. Just right.
5. I'm worried this will not last. I don't mean I'm worried I will fail again. I'm sure I will and I have a plan for that. (Get back on that horse, not 10 months later, but two minutes later!, etc.) I'm worried that I'll somehow do the same thing I did this week and for some reason I won't lose. I think I told myself for a long time this year that it wasn't ME and MY CHOICES that were causing me not to lose. It was something else. So I just have to remember that I am in control and I think these worries will go away. I'm really excited to get back to the gym too. Babysteps!
I'm so thrilled at this NEW START. I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat I am, or is in the same boat I was a week ago? Has anyone had long-term success with a re-start? After a period of not losing or a period of slight re-gain? What are you doing? What's working? What's not? How did you "re-boot?" Did you do the pouch test? What warnings do you have? Etc?
I feel like a newbie. It feels kind of good!

Hi everyone! I remember looking all throughout these threads prior to my surgery. I kept searching and searching the threads trying to convince myself I was doing the right thing. I read all the wonderful success stories and the horror stories, in the hopes that I would be able to gear myself up for what was to come. I was sleeved on 9/13/16. Now I want to share my three month update and experience with you. First, here are my stats:
Starting Weight: 296
Day of surgery Weight: 280
CW:215
This has been the best decision I have ever made for myself! I have tons of energy, and am truly enjoying this new lifestyle change that I have embraced. I will say that after surgery your body completely changes. For example, 7 years ago I was 200 lbs and a size 14. The minute I hit 210 I became a size 16. Now, after surgery, I am 215 and wear a size 14 again. It's crazy. My husband swears I am thinner than I ever have been since he's known me, even though the scale doesn't match his assertion. Maybe it's the muscle I've built and the excess skin that has added to the scale( yes, I have excess skin). I don't know. But I do know that I feel fabulous. Prior to surgery, I took a "worst case scenario" approach regarding what to expect after surgery. Luckily, I wound up with the best case scenario! I haven't lost any hair, I never regretted my surgery and I only suffered from bad cravings for the first two weeks. I credit a lot of this to my nutritionist from Dr. Tom Umbach's office in LV. She has an unconventional approach. I was allowed to eat after two weeks. I was instructed to count carbs and Protein, not calories. She also insisted that I don't bother measuring my food. This advice was life saving for me, as I experienced physical hunger after two weeks and I could eat more than most of the posters on here (about 1/2 cup). I was afraid that something was wrong with my sleeve, but my nutritionist assured me not to worry. I kept doing what she advised and the weight keeps falling off. I also noticed that, for some reason, as the months went by, I developed more restriction that what I originally had after surgery. Some days I have more restriction, some days less. Although I eat less food, I actually eat more times in the day than I ever have before (about 6 times). The difference is that eat much healthier foods. I actually crave them. Every now and then I get a naughty craving. I'm a CA girl and I love Mexican food. I don't always deny myself the craving. Sometimes I indulge and get 1 rico taco and take off the extra corn tortilla. I have gotten cravings for Chinese, but considering that is all carbs and sugar I usually have a pickle to curb those cravings. I've found sour foods do the trick when it comes to craving starch. Don't get me wrong, there have been a time or two that I've had a few spoonfuls of rice or noodles from Panda Express, but they're never as good as I imagine and I don't want to risk temptation with going to better Chinese restaurants to try theirs.
Bottom line, this surgery worked for me because I eventually came to accept that some foods (starchy carbs) are not every day foods. And other carbs, while good and sometimes necessary, should be limited and always accompanied by protein. Every day I am faced with the choice of eating foods to promote health or foods to promote obesity. I understand that these are choices I must make make everyday, at every meal for the rest of my life in order to prevent the weight returning. This surgery allowed me to come to a place where I actually am capable of making the right choices and am confident that I can continue to do so. I must remember that even though I couldn't have done this without the surgery, the surgery will do no good if I don't continue to keep my head in line with healthy eating habits.
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Lol -love that idea. Thanks. It would be 265 lost then. Lol Sent from my SM-S902L using the BariatricPal App

Amazing attitude !!
When someone asks you how much dead weight you have lost, add his weight and feel proud
Hugs
Kate

Thank you both. Yep - I truly feel God has amazing things planned for me. I know now that you are right my life will be better without him & already feels like it is.
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Hi, wanted to Thank all those back after I had my sleeve surgery on 09/19/16 & 09/23/16 my husband left me. The we'll wishes really got me through some had times cause would read them when I needed a boost. I originally thought he left due to a drug issue. I thought we would work out if he got help but didn't work out that way. I found out by doing some investing that over our last 3 1/2 years of part-time nursing school -he cheated on me while in class at night after working full time, & on clinical weekends with multiple women. I really struggled after finding this out for awhile with getting Vitamins every day, enough Water, but did Protein Drinks for Breakfast & still do for Protein amount. I got through things & doing so much better. I found out Friday also that I will be graduating nursing school. I work with claims dept for the hospital I had surgery at now. I hoping that after I pass my state exam I when take in few months I can get,a job on the baratric floor for surgery patients. I would love that even more then anything. I am writing this update so if anybody else loses their spouse after surgery -keep chin up because it will get better. Sleeve surgery on 09/19 was one of the best decision of my life. I filed for divorce & he signed papers last week, graduating nursing school from long part-time road, & am down around 50 pounds since surgery. I feel better then I have in such a long time -it is amazing how surgery can change your life for the better. I enjoy exercising, walking dogs & energy level is so much higher now. Plus hearing how well you look from others is huge boost to everyone. I hope nobody ever has to go through what I went through, but if anything hard happens in your life post surgery hang in there. Hang in there, keep chin up because trust me your life & overall health will get better & what a blessing in the changes. I do feel very, very blessed in my life again.
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Same with me. I'm scheduled for 2/7 and it's been an emotional rollercoaster. And I'm single so that is making me anxious too. I a few have friends around to help me. But wish I was closer to family that I could depend on. The pre op diet for me is all liquid for 2 weeks. I don't know how I'm going to manage with that. All overwhelming. Good to hear from others feeling the same.

I'm exactly like you! My sleeve is january 12! 35 and never had any surgeries, have all the same fears!! Let's be sleeve buddies. We can calm each other!
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Thanks everyone!
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I don't have much else to add to the other's great comments, except that I'm an RN so I've seen the "behind the curtain" of surgery and recovery. That can either give you a lot of confidence in healthcare or scare the pants off of you. My experience is that it gives me a lot of confidence. Even though I've run across a few (very few, thank goodness) complete idiots in my career, healthcare has a lot of checks and balances so the rare idiot doesn't get a chance to cause a real problem for a patient. And surgery has more checks and balances and better-trained and more experienced personnel than most other areas of healthcare. You really can rest assured that you will be monitored continuously during surgery and recovery and they are prepared to handle anything that comes up.

I booked my surgery two weeks ago and like you, have mixed feelings. Right now I'm mostly depressed that I "let" myself get into the situation where surgery seems to be my only option.
Other times I'm excited to be the activity partner my family deserves.
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im going through it now Trill! there is nothing i can say to get make things better. just take it one day at a time. im sitting in hospital now and my stomach is turning-im very anxious.
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????
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I think we have all felt all the feelings and thoughts you have pre-surgery. Very normal. Maybe look at this as a process, journey whatever resinates with you. Do your checklist again
- why Im having surgery
- surgeon credentials
- well informed of risks
- after care
- support
- possitive gains
Then go for it! Your still going to probably be nervous on the day - but thats good. Others arent - we are all different and so is the journey. As for pain - everyone is different again. Thats what meds are for! Just remember it all goes. Have faith in your surgical team, they have done this before. All the very best mate. Heres to a new you!
PS- just follow your pre op diet. Its important. Its also disgusting hahaha but everyone is different! Hahaha! Its all for the greater!
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Thanks for replying. I trust my surgeon, she has a good reputation not only for her skill but also for her after care. I'm just nervous about the pain, the struggles I'm going to face. However I have to believe it will all be worth it in the end and I need to just stay strong!
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One of the things that made me relaxed was knowing that I had a room full of highly trained people who just wanted me to be safe taking care of me. That's their job and they're only there for you during that time.
I was worried about not waking up, but now that I've gone through surgery, I'm no longer concerned about anesthesia.