FluffyChix

^^^^This is a really great post. The only thing I would add, is that I may not be able to eat 3 pizzas at 1 time? But if I really want to binge, I can eat AROUND my tool. And I bet I could eat 3 pizzas in 1 day with concentrated focus. I could eat 2 pieces now as a fully mature pouch. All it would take me is to wait 30minutes to an hour and I would be good to go on another 2 slices-ad infinitum. And god forbid, if I added wine or booze into that mix? I would lower my inhibitions to the point where I could actually mainline pizza and booze together and create quite a problem. Food for many of us is out of our pouch very quickly per Dr. Weiner. He says it's as little as 10 minutes with an RNY and even faster with VSG. So it's very easy to comfort yourself back to MO.

Thanks so much for this! I'm gonna see if I can find a school here! I'd know about Tai Chi, but thought Qigong was the same thing! Glad you're balance and pain is better!!!

Ha on falling in yoga! We were doing balance exercises in support group at the last meeting and I kept falling out/over! LOL. Forget about closing my eyes! No so ha on the hiking on the trail and falling! ((hugs)) Hope your vertigo corrects itself. Do you do the exercises for it? So weird about the backpack balancing you! But cool you figured that out.

Yep. This is it exactly hon! Your body will catch up but doing balance exercises will help. Tai Chi is supposed to be amazing for us as is yoga!! My balance was whacked from chemo, but it's much worse now that I'm 131.

^^^^^This is truly profound. It IS a multi-factoral disease recognized by the AMA and ASMBS (sp? chemo brain catching me) and insurance board. Most bariatricians and bariatric surgeons readily admit (when asked) that this is a disease (obesity) and once MO and some say overweight not even obese, you will battle it for your entire life or suffer regain. So it's a case for us of being in a state of NED (like with my Stage 3C BC). I can never say I was cured. This surgery does not offer a cure. It offers a brief 3-5 year window to reset your body's metabolic thermostat to defend a lower set point. But the body is smart and wants to get back to the state it knows. Some studies show that the microvilli increase post RNY and DS to ease the malabsorption and take in more nutrients. All studies show as we heal, we are able to eat more and more and more volume to the point of 5 years out most of us will be eating at our pre-surgery volumes (or just about). That's why Dr. Weiner says that we should never buy into the myth of restriction and malabsorption. It's why we MUST learn new skills and behaviors with food and use the time to develop new food preferences and new gut biomes that crave more good foods than bad. So at best we are in Remission or NED (no evidence of disease). And the longer we can trick our body into staying in that state, the more chance we have of long term success. It's like pulling weeds. Pulling a couple of weeds each week? Meh. Totes doable. Weeding a 1 acre garden? Total bull crap! LOL. It will take huge effort!

I've seen it many times! It has to do with how quickly we're losing weight! Just look at some of the vets photos. Do they look haggard? Nope. Once you get to the bottom of your window and maintenance and are taking in plenty of fluids and your normal maintenance nutrition, your "look" does change. (I am still haggard however cuz you know...I'm old. :D)

Also, people get used to the obese image of you. They often as much dysmorphia about you as we have about ourselves. Also quick weight loss can often make us look haggard in the face for a while till we kinda re-apportion. So she may be talking about that. But, it is A-OK, to maintain and appoint boundaries! Things that are off limits. You just need to lovingly work with her to understand those new boundaries. Hang in there. The phase will pass but yeah, it is frustrating!!!

Honestly? Embrace boring. Embrace eating simply and very small. Encourage food apathy where you just barely eat to fill the small real estate you have. Get busy learning new things! Pick a hobby. Add a creative activity. This is the time when it's SUPPOSED to be boring and routine and easy. You want to ideally kinda break up with your fixation for food and for truly slap-your-mama appealing cuisine. I quit the Food Netwook, Food Channel, commercials, cooking mags, cook books, etc until I was well into my routine and new life. I went from full liquids to mushies (fork tender and chew to puree) skipping puree state but I ate: yogurt cottage cheese canned chicken and chicken gravy (low cal, low carb, low fat) roasted smashed cauli with chicken gravy (low cal, low carb, low fat) turkey lunch meat (Hillshire Farms) tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad whizzed until chopped very fine and very wet with Greek yogurt and Dijon mustard sf jello sf popsicles pumpkin puree "refried" in a tiny bit of ghee for flavor protein pudding protein drinks homemade bone broth defatted cream soups with protein added to it green smoothies made with high protein milk, protein powder, frozen spinach, frozen blueberries, greek yogurt mocha and peppermint frappacinos made with protein powder, decaff coffee, ice, sf torani peppermint and chocolate syrups And the time passed so quickly...

Wow! So I hear ya. And understand! I don't want to sound as if I'm dismissing your ultimate goal. Cuz I understand having a driving focus. But as the others have said, "Wow and congrats!!!!" 174lbs in a year is PHENOMENAL!!!!!!!!!! Please take some time to embrace your accomplishment!!!!! At 384lbs down to 210lbs, the reality is you probably have quite a good amount of excess skin left? Also you don't mention if you are female or male? What height? Have you had a DXA scan to see how much fat to lean body mass you have? I can also assure you that your surgeon is gonna be super happy with your progress!!!! And just because you are 12months, doesn't mean the party is over! I'm 21 months almost 22 months out and I can still lose. I'm at 131.2lbs this morning down from 287lbs recent high weight. The last 20lbs are the HARDEST to get off. I had to totally bear down, do IF, eat ridiculously lean and clean and not party in order to do it and it still took as long as it took to lose the first part! Continue to work your plan. Take the stress off yourself. You body has its own timeline. It won't be rushed. But you do your part every day with building new relationships with food, eating right, getting your fluids, your vits, and exercising and you will get there!!!

Have you talked to your doctor or RD? Maybe it's time for a tune-up and check-up? Believe me, they want to know these things are happening to you while you are still at 20lbs regain rather than 120lbs. Are you weighing and measuring and logging your food? Why do you think you are regaining and didn't make it to the BMI you wanted? Do you have any underlying medical conditions that were unresolved by the surgery? Are you on any meds? What is your age, activity level, etc. So many questions! We want to help. Start by filling out your profile and giving us a couple samples of your daily food intake...

Dang! #drool

You should join us over on the Doing The Headwork thread in the main lobby! Start on Page 1! I do a combination of things depending on the situation. 1. Deep breathing (4 square breathing - google it). 2. Relaxation Meditation (5-10 minutes worth) 3. Self talk with dialogues that discuss hunger and how hunger cues to eat pass after 10-20 minutes and get quieter and quieter and pass easier the more times you do not respond to the message to eat. 4. Walk or run. 5. Process the thought, and the feeling/emotion that it elicits. 6. Eat anyway (cuz you know, we're all human and sometimes you fall down. But, you get back up and try something different next time to change the tapes.)

Here's my chart of B12 (I cut back on the dosage a bit cuz I forget to take 'em and rolled it into my B-Complex vitamin.) Here's my Folate Chart Here's my B6 Chart Here's my B1 Chart As @catwoman7 mentioned, it is not unusual for bariatric patients to have skewed vitamin levels - especially of the B vitamins. My doc has never mentioned anything to me about my B12 or Folate levels being dangerous. When I was low on B1 and B6 and Potassium, we supplemented until the levels came back to norm. But I did it under doc's care.

Well, crap! Bar raised. Challenge accepted. bahahahahaaha! (I've already lost cuz you are smokin hot + have buns o' steel!)

As an RNY I'm supposed to take 500mg of B12 daily. But if you take it even the day before, most of us will have high levels circulating in our blood. And bari surgeons aren't super concerned. Mine is always high and I stop my vits 3 days before testing. The RD said, they see that in the majority of patients and generally isn't anything to worry about.

When did you take your B12 prior to your bloodwork?

That looks so great. So moist!

You should check out a group I'm in on Facebook called Resetters with Dr. Mindy Pelz. She talks about progesterone loading the week before your period in order to help balance your hormones. You won't want to do the IF portion of it right now. Only work on getting WHAT you eat and when you eat settled. Right now your tool needs to do the heavy lifting. And, it's not a personality defect. It's being a woman. And have WLS on top of it all! You're releasing fat at a very fast pace. That fat contains wicked bad estrogens that cause your hormones and insulin to whack out. You bloat. You crave. You get cranky. You binge. You set up a repeating cycle. Break it. Weight loss will NEVER EVER be as easy as it is right now in this instant. It's like your one golden shot at WLS virginity. You can do this!!

Nah. It seems reasonable to me. That tells me they are gonna have you on some kind of liquid plan afterwards for about 3 weeks. And until you start progressing in the stages, you might not need the nutritionist yet?

I'm sorry you are struggling with this. I think it's fairly common? And I'm gonna (of course) take the other angle on this one. You had this surgery to give you an opportunity to REFRAME how you deal with food and to learn new behaviors and relationships with food. Right? You didn't get this surgery just so you could take yet, ANOTHER scenic route, meandering towards weight loss. Did you? Cuz I know I didn't. When you feed a craving you do a couple things...the biggest one is you behaviorally hard wire that action into your brain through repetition. That makes it even harder to break. And then actually using the substance like sugar makes it even worse. But also, using sugar free stuff STILL lights up your pleasure center and activates insulin (fat storing hormone). So.... My advice would be to break up with it. Get an action plan together. You are in WLM (weight loss mode right now). You need to be lean, mean, and green! Don't cheat. Eat meat! Right? So when you're hungry behaviorally, do something else. Get busy. Make sure you aren't thirsty. Deep breathe. Do relaxation practices. Change things up. Do a puzzle. Color. Do something that engages you creatively rather than passively. Exercise. Take a walk. Drink water!!! Pound the water down til you can't take another sip. Brush your teeth. Or drink black decaff coffee or decaff black tea unsweetened. NO sweets. Avoid sweets!!! Avoid sweet water, sweet vitamins, fruit, ANYTHING sweet for now. If you are wanting to eat at night, then consider adding a small mini meal. Make it only protein and a tiny bit of healthy fat. Or do a protein drink (yes, sigh, they're sweet. that's a b***h.) Eat a hard boiled egg. My rule during WLM was if I wanted to eat I got to eat a hard boiled egg, or a tuna pouch in water, or an ounce of turkey lunch meat rolled up, or a light string cheese. And if I didn't want any of those, then it was head hunger, not real hunger. And my rule was: I don't feed head hunger, that's what got me to the Obesity Ball. Hope this helps. Nip it in the bud. Once you hit maintenance you can set up a whole new set of rules to work with your pouch!

Have fun with family girlie! We're here when you need us or want to play!!! Glad you're holding steady!

I approve all 3 of your messages! Yummeh!!! Now I want pan seared ahi! And salad. And artichokes!

I totally get it. I just want to tell you in a non-pervy way that I want to be you when I grow up. What an incredible transformation, lady! Major proppahs!