vamping

Hi. I don't post here much but I too had adenomyosis and had a hysterectomy. I also had pcos, endometriosis, and fibroids. I would be happy to chat about my experience.

I am coming up on my one year surgiversary next month and have reached my weight goal. I still need more toning/muscles and am switching workout to resistance bands after witnessing a friends transformation in just two months of banding (thought he was taking steroids). Sooo Happy!!! My energy level is sky high! I am almost non-stop motion when I come home from work. I have changed my lifestyle now and pretty committed to low carbs, exercise, Water and moving! Now for the real test, can I keep it off for the next 2-3 years by following a good maintenance regime...My new puppy will help with that!

Hello everyone,
It's my first post, but I've been lurking around since before the surgery. I think now I'm ready to share my progress.

I had my sleeve on March 9, 2018. Highest weight 236. Surgery weight 229. I had surgery through Kaiser in LA by the greatest Dr. Um.

Everything went well. It took a couple solid weeks for my incisions to heal, but after that it was a piece of cake. Everything went down fine and no problems at all. Now I'm almost 7 months post-op, almost 65 pounds down. Current weight 167.5

I feel great, look great.. still want to lose about 15 pounds.

The dress on the photo is the same but was adjusted for fit new me.

As for skin.. ehh.. I wish it would look better, but not the deal breaker! The best decision of my life!!!

  

HW 237
SW 229
CW 216

Hello fellow sleevers. I have been on this site very little in the past couple of years but have logged in today to respond to a question. Since I'm here, I feel obligated to tell you all the things I've learned after 5 years.
1. The people that told me my approach to living life with the sleeve was all wrong and that I would fail, gain weight in a few years, stretch my sleeve, and regret my actions are mostly gone now. I have seen a couple of them around but the most are long gone. Do not pay much attention to the know-it-alls. They know no more than anyone else and are just as likely to fail.
2. Obviously you want to follow your Dr's instructions but don't get too hung up on strict rules and diets. If you make reasonable decisions and balance your good and bad food choices, your sleeve will do most of the work for you. I have eaten anything I wanted since day one. I try to pay attention to Protein etc., but I do not deny myself anything. You have the sleeve for a reason. Let it do it's job. Don't force it to hold more than it can and do not deny yourself the things that make you happy. Balance - just do it.
3. WLS is much more than losing weight. It is getting to the bottom of the issues that cause us to compensate with food in the first place. Pay more attention to your mental well being than the numbers on the scale. Your long term success depends on it.
4. Know that even after you reach your goal weight you will still be the same person with the same insecurities. Being thin changes nothing. If you did it for health reasons then hopefully those will no longer be an issue, but the person you are and how you feel inside doesn't change from losing weight. That has to change on the inside. No way around it.
5. Know that once you have made the necessary changes inside and out there will be some people that don't relate to you the same or just plain don't like you anymore. Also know that what they think is completely irrelevant . Physical and mental changes for the better intimidate those with small minds. Don't give them a second thought.
Thanks for reading.

Maybe because too many patients are keeping their WLS a secret and are telling people about "all the hard work and good dietary habits" that brought their weight down? If more people would be completely honest about how the surgery was the big game changer instead of talking about it "being only a tool" and it's "still incredibly hard work", the general population would be more informed.
Sometimes I think WLS is still be seen as this "dirty, little secret" that has to be hidden in the back of the closet.

I'll be 24 months out in August and some days it looks better than others. I can definitely tell a difference when looking what few progressive pictures I have.

hair stylist here!!! Dyeing ( correct spelling) lol ... wish you all could visit my salon & I would help you out with some practical solutions to the hair issues... I can’t do a great job unless I see you in person though ...but I bet everyone of you are BEAUTIFUL!!!! Hope you find your right shade of pretty!!!

Aaaaannnnndddd this is what’s wrong with this country. Instead of taking a good intentioned comment for the what it is, it is twisted into something offensive. All this person wants for you (a stranger) is to be well and you, in turn, rant about it. I’ve had Jewish (I’m not Jewish) prayers sent my way and guess what? I didn’t cry about it and run to social media, I said thank you! Again, I said thank you.

No full body shots! I can show you in my face, which really changed. The body shots will be 50 pounds from now when I hit onederland ~

Love that I am able to live life and do things I've always dreamed of but held myself back because I didn't feel good enough (too fat/big, etc).

Here's my starting weight and pic from Saturday after wrapping half trail marathon, one year and 11 days from my heaviest. Last pic is feeling good about how far I've come.

  

VSG 10/11/17
HW = 360
SW = 292
GW = 220 3/7/18
CW = 218 (6'5") [emoji256]

Sleeved 10/6/14
HW 334 CW 198 GW 175
This was about a year ago. I just had a baby 2 weeks ago so I haven't been back in cute clothes yet.

Sleeved 12/20/16

93lbs gone forever!!!
Highest weight: 280lbs
Current weight: 187lbs

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I don't know if anyone said this, I didn't read all of the replies but on top of what poster allwet said, also get rid of that cheat day. Immediately! I haven't had my surgery yet so you can take my opinion as a grain of salt, but I am the QUEEN of weight loss losing as much as 100 pounds in 10 months before and I can tell your from experience cheat day is only once you have reached your goal weight and is in maintenance mode. Until then say good by to cheat day, gorging on anything you want day. All you are doing is flushing all the good you did all week long down the drain. I have tested this over and over during the past 20 years and have spreadsheets dating back to the 90s to prove. usually the weeks I had spikes during dieting was when I did cheat day especially while in plateau mode. Find none food ways to treat yourself... food should never be a treat anyway, that is how I got to be over 300 pounds using food to Celebrate, treat, stop crying, etc. etc. etc. As i wait for my surgery I'm looking for new ways to handle these emotions including something other than treat day. Work those foods into your plan in small portions through out the week, key being small portions... But you're going to HAVE to calorie / carb count for that to work. If you refuse to calorie / carb count, leave those "cheat" food alone... period until you reach goal. Good luck!

So I'm going to just address the naked king in his new clothes standing in the middle of the room.
IMHO, you are both maintaining. You are NOT stalled for 4 months. You are eating the amount of calories along with your surgery that allows you to maintain. But beware. You are both approaching the end of the honeymoon period within the next year or 14 months ish. Then those same calories you're taking in right now, will quite likely cause you to start creeping up on the scale.
It's impossible to help you. You're not giving us enough information. I could come to you and ask the same question. But because I track every bite of food, good and bad, I can present samples of my day, I can present an excel spreadsheet showing the relationship of macros in a month to average weight loss. I have a LOT of data to look at and tweak. You don't have any of that, even a food log.
How can you possibly know what it takes to lose weight? You've no earthly idea. This is not magic bean surgery. It's WL surgery. It's SCIENCE!!!!! You HAVE to count sh*t. The End. And any RD who says you don't has a butt-load of peeps keeping her in job security who never forking make goal!!!!
I read yesterday that this surgery is 40% surgery and 60% you. I don't know if that's the exact ratio, but the reality is, weekly cheat days are just that...weekly events that derail your progress. They can do nothing but create a GHDWL situation (Ground Hog Day Weight Loss=where you gain and lose the same 2lbs over and over and over again until you want to chew your own leg off to see a drop on the scale).
Go back to basics. For me, and from a lot of vets, the ideal losing phase is a caloric intake average of about 600-900 cals per day. Maintenance is personal--anywhere from 1000+ depending on so many variables.
Go back to no eating or drinking 30-30 Water >64oz per day Vitamins every damn day Exercise (walk) every damn day--don't go cray with working out right now Weigh and measure everything (60-80g Protein for the day; <30g of carbs daily; around 30g fat for the day; <10g naturally occurring sugars for the day) Log EVERY bite that goes down your piehole If you're drinking alcohol--stop that sh*t right now!!!! Eat 3 meals a day + 1 snack (no grazing, no crap foods, no slider foods) Eat your meals in a window of 15-30 minutes Protein (dense) first 3oz per meal Veggies next Healthy Fats next If any room leftover then low glycemic fruit/berries (but if you have more room, fill up on fibrous veggies) Accept that you are gonna feel like jack sh*t for about 2 weeks. You're eating carby crap and sugar. What do you really expect. Sadly it WILL be fuc*ing hard! You don't have the excitement of the looming surgery, you've got diet boredom, you've lost faith in your tool, and you're being self-indulgent and going back to bad habits. It's gonna hurt and you WILL have to force yourself to get over that hump. Get mad! Do it! Suffer. And do it. In 4 days it will get easier and each day after.
If you do those things, I can ALMOST guarantee you will both start losing again. And remember, you can NEVER out-exercise a bad diet.
Oh and get your butts to the counselor (someone who specializes in bariatrics).
P.S. And I "get" that you want to have a normal relationship with food. I "get" that you want to eat intuitively like all the other skinny girls in the world. But what you don't realize is that many (maybe most) of those skinny girls are secretely limiting calories, fats, sugars, foods or worse, purging, or anna stuff to "effortlessly" look like they are naturally skinny girls.
If we were capable of having normal relationships with food, we would have never made it to the obesity ball in the first place. If we didn't have seriously, and I mean SERIOUSLY broken metabolisms, we would never have become MO.
Once you are MO, the "normal" rules of skinnydom no longer apply. You can not take the set of rules for naturally skinny people and apply them to the subset of MO and formerly MO people. You just can't. It's like trying to feed a lion a peanut, or trying to feed an elephant a dead gazelle. It's apples and oranges. DUE to our disease, we will ALWAYS have to be more vigilant, try harder, do more, and live differently if we EVER want to maintain our weight loss.)

Watched and I also play as often as I can. Burns up a ton of calories and is so much fun.

Hey everyone i’m super excited to share that today I stepped on the scale this morning and the number I saw surprised me! I finally hit a normal BMI. And I’m super close to my goal weight (I even surpassed my doctors goal weight which was 72 kg)
I know BMI is just a number but It‘s been over 25 since i was maybe 14 years old. it’s amazing and I’m super happy.
I’m 6 months post op gastric by-pass surgery. My highest and starting weight was 120 kg, my surgery weight was 110 kg, and as of today I’m 71,6 kg.

Here are some photos of my journey:
This is me at my highest weight


This is the day i left the hospital after surgery

During the process
  
And one of my latest pics

Love of my life (dont tell my husband or kids, LOL)

This is our Goldendoodle we brought home around Christmas. Our boys are totally in love with her.

Love pet people.
I have a blonde shih tsu and a black shih tsu pomeranian.
My little 5 pound shih tsu pom will go on short jogging routes with me. She's not much for protection..lol

Thank you Outsidematchinginside. You are always a good source of information. I'll check around to see if I can have my metabolism tested.

Just wanted to share my most recent before/current
HW was 301lbs in July 2016, though it could have been a little more since I didn't weigh regularly.
SW: 271 (12/30/16)
CW: 185
GW: 175, then reassess.
The left picture was October 2016 at about 275 lbs while working my pre-op diet. The right was Monday at 185 lbs.

Here is a before and a current. I'm still early on in my journey, and would like to lose another 40 lbs or so until I hit my "goal weight." My highest was February 2017 at over 327 lbs, and the bottom pictures are of this morning at 226.2 lbs.

Had my sleeve 2 years ago, got reflux so had it converted to bypass last summer. Highest weight was 267, stayed pretty steady at 143-147 for the past year, I'm 5ft 8. Gone from size 2XL to Small, and my feet went from size 11 to 9!

I started running, which has been a huge help with maintenance. I love Spartan style races, they are so much fun!

Edited pictures because I'm still in the closet and paranoid!! I haven't posted pictures here before, fingers crossed nobody I know sees them! 

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Almost 9 months from surgery. I've lost 125lbs so far. Last time I met the nutritionist she said my goal should be around 170 so I only have 15lbs until I hit that. I plan to reassess how I feel at that weight and if I'm happy at 170 or if I want to lose more. I've taken up sewing over the last few months and customizing my clothes for my changing body is a huge help since I'm losing more in different places and don't always fit well into ready to wear clothes. I made myself the first form fitting dress ever and hopefully find somewhere to wear it soon!