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Hi folks, I'm 10 days away from having my bypass. I'm trying to get my head around what happens afterwards and the one big hole I have so far is activity/mobility in the first few weeks: How limited are you after you've been discharged? Can you bend? How much are you able to walk? When will I be able to ride a bicycle again? Any tips and experiences gratefully received! Love & peace, Jx

I was in Oz, for 14 years until I moved back to UK in November!

You're right Joann. It is your time and we'll all find our ways. Please don't think I'm prescriptive or evangelical - I'm working this stuff out as I go along just like the rest of us! Love & Peace, Jx

Hi BMC, I hear what you're saying about not talking to folks though, part of this for me is that this is the new normal and you don't spend your time talking and explaining about what's normal. I'm not avoiding talking to people about it - right now i'm just 'dieting' as far as anyone's concerned - but if they ask once I've had the operation I'm happy to talk about it (I say this now - who knows!). I'll talk about it as and when I want, and how I want - not making excuses to accomodate some damn fool's ignorance. So I won't make excuses and I certainly won't hide it. For me, I know we're all different, hiding it just plays right into the shame/embarrassment cycle that has made me so effing unhappy. I feel an amazing energy right now and I'm going to keep that. If people want to think I took the easy option or that I'm somehow weak or defective, let them. This is my reality and I'm not just taking control of my body I'm taking control of how I feel about it. You've got me ranting now. :-) But I have given this a lot of thought. I don't know how well I'll live up to my plan, but I'll keep trying and not judging. A lot of us have been hurt by people's attitudes and we know what it's like to turn that into something painful. My head, right now, is on the start of a big journey like my body is. Here endeth the sermon! Love & peace, Jx

That's great Dave, well done mate!

Hi BMC, I hear what you're saying about not talking to folks though, part of this for me is that this is the new normal and you don't spend your time talking and explaining about what's normal. I'm not avoiding talking to people about it - right now i'm just 'dieting' as far as anyone's concerned - but if they ask once I've had the operation I'm happy to talk about it (I say this now - who knows!). I'll talk about it as and when I want, and how I want - not making excuses to accomodate some damn fool's ignorance. So I won't make excuses and I certainly won't hide it. For me, I know we're all different, hiding it just plays right into the shame/embarrassment cycle that has made me so effing unhappy. I feel an amazing energy right now and I'm going to keep that. If people want to think I took the easy option or that I'm somehow weak or defective, let them. This is my reality and I'm not just taking control of my body I'm taking control of how I feel about it. You've got me ranting now. :-) But I have given this a lot of thought. I don't know how well I'll live up to my plan, but I'll keep trying and not judging. A lot of us have been hurt by people's attitudes and we know what it's like to turn that into something painful. My head, right now, is on the start of a big journey like my body is. Here endeth the sermon! Love & peace, Jx

Thank you for sharing this. I have ten days to go and nerves are kicking in. If there is an emotional tsunami ahead post-op it's good to know about it (I think I'll have a chat about this to my wife too!). I think back a few years to my wife giving birth after an emergency caesarean, she was overwhelmed by emotion and I'm not sure either of us expected that (we thought it would just be a nice warm glow). Of course with these things being done to your body it should be no surprise at all. Knowing that this could be ahead might not prevent it - but it may help others (I mean me!) cope by realising it's a normal part of the healing process.

Too funny... but kind of sad as well. I've just decided I really don't care what other people think. This has taken me a lot of thought and soul searching to get my head round, I'm fairly sure that whatever I say isn't going to make that much difference to anyone else's preset opinions. I reached a point where my weight peaked and the judgement of others, often implicit, was dragging me down. I'm not letting that happen with this - pride is the name of the game!

This is an interesting topic. I said to my wife that I was happy if she told anyone, and that for a couple of her friends I would be glad if she did as it would smooth out some awkwardness. Clearly the choice is highly personal and what's right for you is right. That said for me it's sad that having been obese we can potentially exchange one stigma for another. I don't want to live my life being ashamed or embarrassed, and those things only come from me. I've spent too long with the emotional weight of weight that now I'm determined to throw that off, and for me that means being open and not giving and 'eff' what anyone else thinks about my choices. From a bigger picture point of view this surgery appears to be so life changing that people need to know about it and feel it's a normal choice. I think that if I'm being open and it makes someone else feel that way then I'll have a added a little to my karma!

According to the nutritional/RDA panel the Flintstone vitamins are pretty good, one tablet gives you your recommended daily allowance of most essential vitamins (I'm assuming that the US RDA/NRV is comparable to the European Union recommendations). In respect of calcium supplementation multivitamins tend to carry low amounts, however if you have a dairy component in your diet that will be well covered. My nutritionist pointed out that Vitamin D deficiency, which will affect your ability to process calcium, is a problem for some bariatric patients. However the reason isn't necessarily nutritional, rather that obese people quite often have a a tendency to cover up and avoid the sun (which is your best source for the generation of Vitamin D).

Hey geets, You'd be daft if you weren't nervous, it's the big unknown ahead of us. I've been doing the Pre-op for a week and, whilst I'm not on liquids this might be easier, I'm using it as a kind of food mindfulness training. I think that, knowing surgery is coming up, I'm more focussed on it... and otherwise I'm just trying to keep myself busy. Let us know how you're going. Best, Jx

Hi Dave, I hope all's well with you. By the looks of it we have a lot in common, similar age, height and starting weight - and we're both in the UK. I'm having a bypass (that's the plans anyway) on 12th July. I think, whatever way I look at it, it's bloody daunting and the closer it gets the less able you are to kid yourself about the implications. I have no more experience than being exactly where I'm at. I don't know if sharing my experience will help you, but I'm on a constant journey of working out how I feel so I'll share/ I've always been 'a bit overweight', you would have called me 'chubby' for most of my life, but have always been pretty active and relatively fit. That started to change about five and a half years ago when my son was born. Sleep went out of the window (we ended up in a residential sleep school, when he was one, for a week). To cope I ate an awful lot of carbs and would have a drink to help me relax. So gained about 5 stone (60 pounds) in a couple of years. I did a 12 week diet at one point and got 25kg off (I was living in Australia and thinking in kilos) but it came back with a vengeance. Around two to three years ago I started to have string of symptoms that were related to weight - I was glucose intolerant and heading for diabetes, sciatica, skin breakouts, never could shake colds and infection and of course just feeling tired and awful. In the last twelve months I've had a big change as we moved back to the UK. I've put on more weight. More importantly my back's always bad and my ankled always hurt and I can't run to play with my son and I sweat constantly. The weight just doesn't come off. I feel like I'm swimming against a current. I've started to worry about how much of my son's life I'll get to share with him. My confidence has been shattered as my self image has taken a dive. Going down the path of surgery is something I never expected to do. It's scary as hell as, being overweight, we're always told we're high risk for surgery anyway. I've spent a long time getting my head round it though and now I feel massively positive. Firstly I'm looking at it as a circuit breaker not a cure. I feel I need to break a cycle and the way the surgery works makes me think it can help. If I do the right things it is a tool I can use to limit my eating. I'm hoping the extreme weight loss at the start will allow me to get back up and active quickly and I can get into a virtuous cycle. Secondly I know a lot of this is in the head but it's still behaviour that needs to change. I know a lot about food and nutrition but that's never helped me too much. I need something that's more direct than education. The appetite supressing nature of the surgery will help, so will the enforced abstinence. Those will help - but I need to maintain that shift for it to be a lifelong change. Thirdly I'm not thinking about this as something 'I'm having done' or that is being done to me. It's just a part of something I'm doing. That might sound a bit abstract but for me it means I'm not thinking about 'things i'll miss' or what the limits are or whether I can eat XYZ again. Rather I'm thinking that this is now how it is - I am what I do. I don't even know if I'm expressing it properly here, but it's been a massive mindset change for me (and not one I was aiming for - it's come about recently thanks to considering a lot of stuff I see on here and because of following my pre-op eating plan rigorously). It's bene really liberating and it makes me feel optimistic about my chances of long term success. Dave, I don't know if any of that helps mate. I reckon I now know it's the right thing for me because I feel like I'm doing it for the right reasons and because I've made some kind of link between it and the future. I'm sure you'll get your head round it somehow - either way. In the meantime good luck and all the best. Cheers, John

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like that Robert! I worry about the anaesthetic, about coming out fro it. It's the thing that is nagging in the back of my mind and, even though I know it's irrational. But that's the problem with irrational thoughts! I'm just focussing on every other part, where my head's much better. See you when we come round!

Good luck Shellshook!

Thank you for sharing Mona, so much of that sounds familiar.

Thanks James, thoughtful advice as ever.

I've noticed that no other members of the animal kingdom read or write either. From your logic I assume you will be refraining from these activities too.

I'm consigning them to history. My Dad was a baker so this is a challenge but I know bread is a very particular weakness of mine, I mean when I've travelled round the world I have asked to go into the back of bakeries! Adios doughboy!

Hi, I'm just cooking and freezing purees right now. My nutritionist basically said if you can puree it it's fine. I'm trying to make things as nutrient rich as possible - using organic beef, fish and chicken (plus homemade broth of each) and cooking with lots of vegetables. So far I'm using (and apologies, I'm in the UK and I know we call vegetables different things): Onions Peppers/Capsicum Garlic Courgette/Zucchini Tomatoes (sieved) Mushrooms Fennel Carrots Squash Butter beans Green beans The purees I'm making are very fine textured and while I cook with a wide variety of herbs and spices I'm careful not to use anything that has hard seeds (so no fennel or caraway seeds and sieving the tomatoes) as I imagine that could be an irritant at the healing stage. My philosophy on all of this is that, if I'm eating very small amounts of things they should be bloody tasty and good for me!

Hi Laura, I'm not on a liquid diet an day Op is on 12th July. The diet I am on is quite precise and very low fat and low carb - I'm eating a lot of fish, chicken and fresh vegetables. It;s making me more mindful of what I eat and I'm sure that will come in handy. There seems to be a massive variation in Pre-Op diets. I can see why the liquid diet is used, I guess it's pretty black or white whether you follow it or not and that's probably helpful for people who, like all of us, have had issues with what we put in our bodies. I'm in the UK and from what I see it's less prevalent here, I would think that from any nutritional or physiological point of view that, if you were consuming the same calories and very little sugar or fat, there would be no difference in the effect on your liver.

The day before me Geets, good luck. I'm finding the diet is fine, it makes you quite mindful about what you eat and I think that's a skill that will come in handy.

From the discussions I had with my nutritionist you just need some decent, run of the mill A to Z chewable one a day vitamins (which I'll take two a day). I would be very sceptical about some of these 'bariatric' products. There's nothing special about them, from looking at ingredients they are often everyday items rebadged. They charge more because they know we're worried and need reassurance... so they can get away with it. I got a great deal on Centrum on Amazon here (in the U.K.) but my nutritionist also recommended some supermarket own label.

I'm due in in 12th July and started my pre-op diet a few days early. I think I'm comparatively lucky as it's all real food, albeit very low in carbs, calories and fat. I'm finding motivation comes easily. Knowing that the pre-op diet reduces chances of complications focussed the mind for me.

There appears to be enormous variation in pre-op diets and regimes. I read about people's liquid diets and then look at my program, which is all real food (albeit very low calorie/ low carb/ sugar/ fat). Clearly there is an end point, which is to reduce the fat layer encasing your liver to enable access to your stomach for surgery, but many different paths. I think you have to trust your medical practitioners. Their experience is far greater than any individual here.