Hammer_Down

I have quite a few piercings, and I had no idea I needed to take them out for EKG. I told the doctors I would need a few minutes and some pliers (I have a couple of captive beads and 1/2" metal flares in my ears.)
I got a wide eyed stare when I requested tools to open and remove 5 of my piercings. They decided it probably wasn't a big deal to just do the EKG with the piercings in after all (including both nipples).

Hello all!
None of you know who I am, but I know many of you from obsessively reading your posts, trials and success stories for the past several months. I'd like to thank everyone who puts themselves out there to the broader public to educate us about this procedure and many of the bumps in the road.
Like many of you, I have struggled with my weight for most of my life, starting in adolescence. Despite assurances from my friends and family that I looked fine, and that I wasn't really fat (just a little fat, I guess) I was never at a weight where I felt truly confident in my own skin. More importantly, I never truly felt that I was fulfilling my physical capabilities. I excelled at sports when I was younger, but I could recognize even then that my weight was holding me back from taking it to the next level.
Jump ahead 15 years (I am 32 now) and my "normal" fluctuations of weight went from about 20 lbs (I stayed between 185-205 for most of a decade) to more like 60lbs (getting as high as 250, doing Keto for 2 years and getting down to 150, only to gradually start gaining back to 250. I work as a long haul truck driver, and although I don't indulge myself at most truck stops, the sheer lack of physical activity is certainly part of my weight issue now.
After maintaining this new (disappointing) weight, I decided it was time to avail myself of every tool in the box. During a very drunken conversation with an old friend, she said that I she couldn't lose her excess 120lbs by her birthday, she was just "gonna get the gastric surgery". This sent me searching for more information, and one of the sites I found was this one.
Never one to say or do things I don't mean, I ended up researching the process with my mind set on making it happen. Unfortunately, in my part of Canada, the wait is very long (more than 5 years, start to finish) and at a BMI of 36, there was no hope I would be approved. I could never afford $20000USD+ to have it done south of the border, so I contacted A Lighter Me and got the ball rolling.
I just had my surgery last week, I am 6 days post-op and just got back home today. I feel prepared for some of the challenges coming my way, and hope that I can be of some help to someone else who is out there, reading this and trying to decide what to do.
Thanks for reading!

Your skin is an organ, and like every organ is requires certain nutrients to flourish and maintain health.
Dietary fat is an essential component to maintaining healthy skin. Saturated fats especially.
My mom has a cousin who has followed the low fat no saturated fat mantra for many years. My mom, a pharmacist, never bought into that craze and has always consumed red meats and real butter (she told us margarine has more chemicals than paint growing up).
They are almost the same age, and both quite slim in their 60s. The huge difference is that my mom has smooth skin, tans easily and almost no wrinkles. Her cousin is very pale and has tissue paper like skin, and is quite wrinkly. My mom looks 20 years younger.

Your body will proportion some of your body fat around to its liking as you lose weight. Hence, it's unusual to see someone with a very large face and neck but little abdominal fat. When women retain fat in their thighs and legs but not on their torso, it's actually a disease of fat distribution called lipedema, or possibly Cushing's syndrome.
Fat redistribution often happens during stalls on the scale. You may notice breasts, hips, abdominal fat deposits getting smaller as the fat is moved to other areas where it is needed.
None of this even touches the issue of white vs brown fat, surface fat deposits vs visceral fat deposits or the (mostly) myth of "spot training" areas with more fat than others.
Fat isn't static, and the fat inside each fat cell is constantly being circulated in and out.
The best advice is to be patient. Many of us spent years and years in an obese body, so giving our bodies some time to adjust to radical weight loss shouldn't be too much to ask.

Your skin is an organ, and like every organ is requires certain nutrients to flourish and maintain health.
Dietary fat is an essential component to maintaining healthy skin. Saturated fats especially.
My mom has a cousin who has followed the low fat no saturated fat mantra for many years. My mom, a pharmacist, never bought into that craze and has always consumed red meats and real butter (she told us margarine has more chemicals than paint growing up).
They are almost the same age, and both quite slim in their 60s. The huge difference is that my mom has smooth skin, tans easily and almost no wrinkles. Her cousin is very pale and has tissue paper like skin, and is quite wrinkly. My mom looks 20 years younger.

I also haven't had a c section, or any surgery, but my wife and I both had VSG. Recovery has been a breeze for us - no complications. The incisions healed up quickly and nicely, and we didn't take any pain medication after leaving the hospital.
I feel lucky not to have had any complication arise, but I don't think we're in the minority either.
I've had colds in the past where i felt worse than the VSG recovery.

Thanks for all the laughs here! I knew some people would get a bit rankled by the subject matter, and it did not disappoint.
There's a few small things mentioned that I disagree with (aside from the obvious "you should always be supportive because someday you'll want support" argument.)
Equating risk taking behaviour like drunk driving with addictive behaviour and stretching it further to equate a battered spouse fearing for their life to addictive eating is just a bad analogy, in my opinion.
Also, claiming that material that can trigger PTSD being labeled as such is another indicator of our desire to be coddled and validated at all times is a fundamental misunderstanding of PTSD.
Other than that, this thread has been very entertaining. A welcome break.

Thanks for all the laughs here! I knew some people would get a bit rankled by the subject matter, and it did not disappoint.
There's a few small things mentioned that I disagree with (aside from the obvious "you should always be supportive because someday you'll want support" argument.)
Equating risk taking behaviour like drunk driving with addictive behaviour and stretching it further to equate a battered spouse fearing for their life to addictive eating is just a bad analogy, in my opinion.
Also, claiming that material that can trigger PTSD being labeled as such is another indicator of our desire to be coddled and validated at all times is a fundamental misunderstanding of PTSD.
Other than that, this thread has been very entertaining. A welcome break.

This is the rants & raves section where people come to, ya know, rant & rave,
Aw heck, let me try to phrase this in language this forum's users might better understand:
"You should try to be more understanding because someday you might be pissed off abs need somewhere to let off steam."
If you can't stand the heat - stay outta the kitchen.

Thanks for all the laughs here! I knew some people would get a bit rankled by the subject matter, and it did not disappoint.
There's a few small things mentioned that I disagree with (aside from the obvious "you should always be supportive because someday you'll want support" argument.)
Equating risk taking behaviour like drunk driving with addictive behaviour and stretching it further to equate a battered spouse fearing for their life to addictive eating is just a bad analogy, in my opinion.
Also, claiming that material that can trigger PTSD being labeled as such is another indicator of our desire to be coddled and validated at all times is a fundamental misunderstanding of PTSD.
Other than that, this thread has been very entertaining. A welcome break.

Just my own observations, drawn from my own experiences: if you are eating pancakes and Cookies and SUPER high carb starches and sweets this early out, you are clearly battling carbohydrate addiction. Fructose, half of a sugar molecule, crosses the blood brain barrier and stimulates the brain in a way similar to opiates. This creates a very strong dopamine reward and extremely intense cravings.
Think about it: you literally risked your life for pancakes. If that's not addictive behaviour, I don't know what is.
So what my point? All this sugar free crap (popsicles, puddings, Jello, sweetened Protein powder, Protein drinks with acesulfame-potassium. Sucralose, saccharin, maltitol, xylitol, erithritol, maltodextrin, aspartame and stevia are sweeteners that WILL stoke your addiction to carbs.
Before you start using sweetened foods, you are going to need to break your addiction and cravings for sweets. Reintroducing them will be slow, and if you find yourself dreaming about pancakes again you know you need to just stop with the sweet stuff.

Taking a PPI has been shown clinically to create dependence on PPI drugs to control acid, instead of allowing your stomach to adjust to the new size and adjust acid levels. When people with no GERD symptoms were given a PPI for just a few weeks, fully half of them developed GERD when they stopped taking the PPI.
If you miss taking it, that's most likely responsible for a sudden flare up. When you stop taking it in a few months, you can expect more of the same.

I know this may not be what you want to hear, but we are a community of weight loss surgery patients - not doctors.
It sounds like you really need a second opinion from a doctor and not a bunch of opinions from lay people on the internet.
I sincerely hope you're able to get some resolution and come back to let others know what the cause/cure was.
Good luck.

I bought a scale just before leaving home for surgery. I confess that I have yet to use it, almost 6 weeks post op.
The caveat is that I have to portion my food for a week at a time because I am not home for 7 days, home for 36-48 hours then gone again for 7 days with my work schedule. So each meal is ladled into a small tupperware container, 1 cup at a time.
Often it takes me several hours to get the whole cup of chill or Soup down. I also cooked and froze some meatballs that I can zap in the microwave, and they're easy enough to Portion Control.

Back atcha'!

My surgeon is funny too. You could say he is a real "cutup".

@@AvaFern
Your diet wouldn't work for me, because at my age, my emphasis is more on health and nutrition. I would feel like sh*t if I ate like that. And I'm so over feeling like sh*t all the time.
But you do you.

Okay, but be gentle.

The old joke goes... What is the difference between a surgeon and God? God doesn't think he's a surgeon.
sent from mobile device

Let's have sex.

If you have your food portioned out, you are not grazing. Especially when you are fresh from surgery. Grazing is just mindlessly eating non stop. It might take some people 30 minutes to eat 2 ounces when they are on soft foods. People need their nutrition, as long as they are eating their proper allotted portion there is nothing wrong with it taking longer.
I never really ate slowly. I hate cold food, so I never really slowed down. I eat my allotted portion and that is it. I did make sure to chew thoroughly.
The most important thing is to always weigh/measure your food and do not over eat.

First of all, understand that the gain has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you're eating this early out. Your body is in starvation mode and storing glycogen, hence the gain. So stop sabotaging yourself!
Second, this isn't a "diet" right now. It's not Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. It's a PRESCRIPTION diet for surgery while you heal, so start treating it as such. Find a Protein you can drink, and make sure you're getting all your other fluids in, too, so you don't end up back in the hospital for dehydration. That's the most common reason for readmission.
Keep working at following your prescription diet so you can heal up and get back to the business of losing weight and becoming healthy.

I have eaten less than 20 grams of carbs per day since March, and even once I get to my goal, I will probably always have to keep them low. I am a carb addict. I may not be able to completely eradicate them from my life like an alcoholic does booze, but I will likely always have to keep them low. Maybe not below 20 low, but probably below 50 or 60 low when maintenance comes around.

Once your body recovers you might notice an increase in bleeding the first 2 days but a decrease in the amount of days you have your period. I used to have very bad cramping, it got a lot better after I gave birth so I can't judge regarding the effects of the operation on it. Glad it's helping you so far though :-)
Sent from my SM-G900FD using the BariatricPal App

I'm a week late myself...have never missed a period before (except when I was pregnant, of course)