BigUtahMan

Do not pay out of pocket, insurance will never reimburse you unless you are approved BEFORE the procedure Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

How much you lose doesn't matter, if you have the mental strength to stay focused and stick to the plan is HUGE! You are going to lose all the weight you want and keep it off if you can stick with the plan. If you measure success by the speed of lose, its harder for me to stick to the plan because then I tell myself I can cheat and still lose. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Yes, I agree, you clearly worked hard. (Those results do not happen by mistake, and that is why I was inspired.) I Didn't mean to dimish your accomplishment on any level or minimize the huge effort you paid for them, and will even continue to pay. (Only have love and respect for you). But I am sure you recognize the fact, your results are far above average even for people who do everything right and work hard as well. Which again I only Celebrate your success with you. But for everyone else trying to figure out why they are not experiencing the same results as you at the same rate who also work hard, I was trying to connect a few dots. Probably could have/should have said it better. I had results like yours with my first procedure, I was banded almost 15 years ago. Got it reversed and then the weight came pouring back. Now I am at it again, but I simply not losing at the same rate I did before. (I didn't understand why my first time why people didn't have the same success I did, now 15 years later I have a better understanding. As I write this I see I am projecting my issues onto your post, which isn't fair to you, but hopefully you better understand. But again, consider me your fan, not a critique on your results. Thank you for your response and posting your results, I look forward to your continued progress.

I went up 3lbs my first week of challenge doing everything right. Usually it is water weight and at some point you body releases it. I try and remind myself long term success is not determined by the scale, but my actions. Stay strong and the scale will follow (eventually) Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Wow! Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Very inspirational! (You also look young which helps speed the weight loss for all of us trying to compare our results with yours.) But regardless of age,you Clearly are doing everything right! Keep it up, thank you for sharing. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Great explanation rickm Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

My self-proclaimed therapist response is, get new friends and your life will blossom again. No need to rush out and go looking, as "birds of a feather flock together". My advice is... have the confidence to know, your social life will return, but you have bigger fish to fry at the moment with your health and your overall emotional well-being. Sounds like you need more YOU time, more than bar time anyway. Especially with people who seem not to care about you, as they do their drinks anyway. I can appreciate you feeling isolated, but consider it a blessing and opportunity to work on yourself. Everyone enjoys being around a well adjusted dynamic adult, who knows them self and can feel confident in their own skin. Sounds like you are making changes like every butterfly does. So I wouldn't expect to make big changes by becoming healtheir and stronger, and still expect nothing else in your life to change as well. (Including "friends", nothing you stated would make a difference to a real friend who wanted you to be happy and healthy. I think you have drinking buddies, not friends.) Also I am an addict, whenever I take one addiction away, the addictive personality in me searches to place that addiciton elsewhere. so, I think it is very wise to stay clear of bars for the next couple years, so you don't have that issue on top of what you are dealing with today. There is a saying I learned from my first procedure, "as the weight comes off, the issues come out." No one who needs weight loss surgery is free from lot's of issues buried under their fat. Including myself. So just think about that as you continue the roller coaster you are on, as you are a strong person who wants to improve your life, thus you made the difficult decision to go down this path. So stay strong and stay the course, drink and walk, drink and walk, and write, write and write about your emotions and food. I hope this helps, forgive me if I am off base.

The Atkins diet is now usually referred to as the Keto diet or Ketogenic diet, which I also follow and enjoy. The premise is using your fat as primary source of energy rather than carbs. I think you should absolutely do it and see how your body adapts. As for me, I have lost all hunger pains and do not crave sugar or carbs like I use to even post opp eating my meal plan. I have lost about 10 pounds this month so far, (first 20 days) so I like that as well. The best thing about this diet, is I do believe it can be sustained as a sleever, as you are already 80% there as others have commented. My macros I try and hit are 30 grams net carbs, 75-100 grams Protein, and 100 + grams fat. (I try and stay between 1200-1500 calories per day.)

I had the same green light from my Doctor, and it worked out very well for me. I had to travel for a week and was very intimidated to attempt to have a liquid diet on the road with a busy schedule. Not that it is impossible, but taking clients out to dinner etc, wasn't practical either. I did make good food choices with lot's of Soups, protein bars, scrambled eggs, etc... I have not had much restriction from day one, so it is relatively easy for me to have normal foods. More important for me than what I CAN eat, is knowing and choosing the foods I should eat. That is where the battle is won and lost long term. Post op we are all excited to lose the weight and experience our new body. But if you fast forward 6 months, what changes? Fast forward again 2, 5, 10 years, what changes? I am still a food addict no matter how in the future I go, so I need to make good food choices right now and work with my surgery to re-learn how to eat appropriately. As far as a NUT, I think many are great, but I was not impressed with the one at my DR office. Any NUT who tells me to fill up on fake sugars and Jello, I think is off base. I personally don't believe overloading your system on fake sugars is wise, as it is usually just a matter of time before they go back to the real sugars, not to mention the toxins most of them cause in your body. (I do use stevia and Xylitol) Being a sugar addict, I know it works to lose weight in the short term, but likely not ideal to contribute to long-term success.) Currently, I am doing a keto diet which I like for a lot of reasons. My only advise is to keep up the great work in searching for answers, and continue to do more soul searching with your diet choices, as you get help from others including NUTs. Hope this helps.

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Not pathetic, awesome you love yourself enough to make it happen. Slow and steady wins the race, walking is great, walk all you can. But I wouldn't push to hard until a couple weeks out. Let you business day heal, but stay active to assist in the healing. Biggest risk factor after surgery is blood clots. Waking is the best preventive activity to counter that risk. So you are moving to circulate your blood, not to loose weight your first several weeks. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

290 02/17

That's great! Walk! Walk! Walk!

1- Sounds like you are a direct beneficiary and victim of your own success! Congrats from making you life rotate around food, to not having emotional dependence on it 24/7! What a huge psychological transformation! You have identified the problem, another plus. Now you are looking for lasting solutions. Yes, Ideally better not to have the episode, but sounds like it was a great teaching moment. It is very tricky to turn off our eat all the time dialogue, without turning off the other feedback loops. Yes I agree with everyone else, keep trying new fluid choices until you get one that works, make your vitamin regimen a routine instead of a choice. Excited for you that you have made such great progress in such a short time!

Sure, Reader's digest version. - One of the side effects of the band is that it can affect the esophagus. Mind did after several years which means my esophagus muscles wouldn't function correctly and would not loosen. Thus blocking some of my food from reaching the stomach and staying in the esophagus. Then when I slept at night, this food and drink would then enter my lungs. Eventually, this caused me to have walking pneumonia. Not knowing I had this condition it went unnoticed, and my chest cavity began to fill up with the disease. Eventually the disease grew to the point it collapsed my lung when i was on a business trip. (Still not knowing I had an issue, because it presented itself as all back pain. So I ignorantly assumed I pinched a nerve or slipped a disc in my back. (I flew home, then flew to NYC, both flights could have killed me in that condition.) While in NYC I went to the emergency room as it was difficult to breath, where I had a resting heart rate of 233! Worse, the disease is now RAGING in my body and my whole body is septic. (They said had I not gone to the hospital when I did, I would have died a few hours later. I spent the next two weeks in ICU. A couple months later I removed the band and my esophagus returned to normal! Yay! But then I started to gain a lot of weight, as I did not have insurance and I went through BK because of it. Fast forward 5 years later and I just got sleeved. I wish I didn't have the attributes that make me addicted to food, but I do. So I am grateful for both surgeries. But I wouldn't fear the sleeve. Hope this helps- B

I was banded in 2004, removed in 2012 from complications that nearly killed me. Gained all the weight back. Sleeved in November, the easiest surgery I have done. Love it!

My weight today is 296!

You can have Soups, and if you mix food with Water, you can create soups in your mouth. And if you bypass the effects of the surgery, what's the point? You will likely be much happier staying to plan and avoiding all the foods you just can't have. I was sleeved 3 days before thanksgiving, it sucked but boosted my self confidence to stay the course Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Thank you for putting this together, you ROCK! Current 298 Goal weight - 275 Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I am 2 months out, I can "eat" anything. But with some foods there is nearly immediate restriction, with others almost nothing. So I need to stay disciplined and stay on the program. I am very grateful I can have 4-8 oz of Water without issue. But that luxury brings the risk of able to eat poor choices as well. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I fear eating all day with meals and Snacks, as I am more likely to evolve that into having 7, 400 calories meals. (Instead of just a couple healthy snacks.) I find it easy to have several hundred calories by just breathing if I am not careful, 7 meals = 7 times a day to make a poor decision. My advice is: you need to be aware of your own self-make-up, and how you really tick inside, to make sure whatever method you choose it is a lasting one. There is a general sense of security I get knowing I can eat throughout the day. But when I dug deep, I discovered that was my food addiction talking, not my new healthy self. Frankly, I am ok with starving my food addictions. (A lot of people have success with intermittent fasting as well.) Either strategy can either work for you or against you depending on who you are, how much you can eat and drink at one sitting, etc... Just be self-aware and honest with yourself, so you don't lose your mojo. I was banded before the sleeve, and never really changed my eating habits or my relationship with food. My goal with this procedure is to really begin to change how I eat and not just temporarily change what I eat.

11/25 SW 355, currently 300. Haven't lost in 3 weeks, but I have off plan. Making corrections, and will see it drop again.

The best surgery to solve our weight would be "brain surgery " but that is not possible, so they operate on the next best thing which is our stomach. To be successful with any stomach surgery, you must work on your brain at the Ame time. I love what the surgery has done for me, but it is the brain that determines success and failure. While that battle is easier with surgery, Its a battle that will be with me the rest of my life! Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I have gen through two surgeries, both I feel have been successful. (The first surgery, lapband was removed after causing other medical issues, 7 years later. But lost and kept off 120 -140 lbs) Once it came out I gained almost all my weight back. I am a food addict and binge eater, so my capacity to hurt myself through eating after a month of great choices is always there. Loose a couple pounds only to gain 10 over a weekend of binge eating. My second surgery was the sleeve, and it is great! I've lost 55 pounds in 2 months. My appetite is no longer the major driver, but I gave 47 years of a food relationship that I need to continue to change. The smaller stomach gives me a wall I run into whenever I want to binge. But it also only works if I am following the program the other 97% of the time. I do not drink soda, I follow the plan, but I still have emotional triggers that she need to keep in check. If you break all the rules, your mind will find ways to override the surgery. ( that is why success rates are not 100% and this forum is used by all of us still in the fight. To be successful - have a good dr - commit to yourself, you will follow the plan - stay committed long term. Surgery has little to do with the last two bullets, but surgery assists you to accomplish them. In many ways I failed my first surgery, because I didn't make enough changes to function without it. It was very humbling to realize that. But at the end of the day, I rather struggle to gain control of my eating at 225 instead of 375. I did not want to become diabetic, heart disease and all the other issues I faced being so heavy. Surgery gives you a lot of momentum to make good choices, then it's up to ourselves to take advantage of that momentum or ignore it and return to our unhealthy relationship with food. Hope this helps- best of luck Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App