Mattymatt

You've maintained your weight loss for quite sometime! That's something to celebrate!

Good on you for taking a positive action!

One way to go about it is to look at the major, respected hospital systems in your area and compare programs - attend an information session. This is what I did. I am in the Greater Philadelphia Area and the two most respected systems are Christiana Care and Penn Medicine. Of the two, I ended up going with Christiana Care because they had more rigorous work-up requirements. I needed 3 life skills classes, a psychological eval, an Upper GI and Abdominal study, a lung function test, and a cardiac stress test. I felt that I was in safer hands. The staff at Christiana Care have also been a pleasure to deal with. I also looked at after care, knowing this would be important as well.

Since this is a life altering experience, you should have no doubts as to the competence of the surgeon whom you will be working with. If you have even an inkling of doubt, it's time to look elsewhere.

Wine is rather caloric. I am glad you found one potential cause but there could be more. Can you go to see a dietitian that specializes in post-op, bariatric surgery patients? Maybe they can help you get to the bottom of this.

2 hours ago, Copper5 said:

Hello

im a nurse of 41 yrs and have been approved for gastric bypass for many reasons including metabolic syndrome, failed diets, painful osteoarthritis gastric ulcers from those meds, hypercholesteremia etc etc

ive been scheduled for my insurance approved procedure now twice first time I discussed with husband he threatened divorce and was going to start to pack his bags , I gave it a 6 month effort of strong exercise regime along with my nursing schedule have had to drop my arthritis meds due to non healing ulcers after 3 EGD's finally healed and rescheduled and although I've been exercising the very best I could have I've GAINED 4-5 pounds and my bones and body is in extreme pain...again he stated he's going to divorce me if I have the surgery

he's 14 yrs younger exercises regularly but can't and won't understand a postmenopausal series of events leading me to my present health crisis..I don't over eat in fact I eat very healthy but liver enzymes cholesteroland glucose keep going up..( both my sisters are obese have headaches and high cholesterol..)I can't get him to attend doctors meetings or classes he just gets garbled info from his work customers of their troubles having surgery and I on the other hand have waited and watched at least seven other nurses in my own hospital department have my doctor perform their surgery w/o complications and great results

i want a better quality of life of life and hopefully extend my life but I also love and want my husband to stay with me

i know if issues don't resolve we'll get divorced or I'll get heavy and have heart problems develope or develop more ulcers which could end cancerous( aunt died of gastric cancer she also was a stressed out nurse died at age 60) I'm presently turning 64

i don't know what to do I feel ugly look ugly in pain have no love life at present because of the way I feel and he keeps telling me to get off my fat @ss and just exercise more... Please someone help if you've had this occur what did you do ?

my surgery reschedule is May8th

thank you for listening

As the millennial saying goes, you only live once. I think you need to tell your husband to get bent and go ahead with improving your life. I cannot countenance being with someone whom will be so unsupportive. It's time for you to live life for you.

1 hour ago, korii said:

I had my surgery January 9th and i am having a difficult time.i am randomly nauseous, I haven’t reached my Fluid requirements, I can only mussel through 2 Protein Shakes,my Vitamins make me cry 10 mins after I take them I feel like vomiting, I can’t even walk around Walmart without getting tired .is this normal? What do I do?

Please call your surgeon. This is something important that should not wait.

1 minute ago, jenn1 said:

Don't lose slow to make negative people feel comfortable. They can get bent..This is your health and your life. Get the most you can out of your surgery.

Love this. They sure can get bent!

17 minutes ago, Bobbie61 said:

Recently at the gym I spoke with a person that had gastric sleeve surgery about 3 yrs prior. She lost a tremendous amount of weight - 275 lbs. and over time gained back 200 lbs. My question is, how does that happen if your stomach only holds 1/2 c of food. I had the roux en y procedure and if I eat one tsp more than I should then I am miserable.

The pouch stretches. It sounds like the person you spoke to was non-compliant with the program. I am personally concerned that this could happen to me because I've been successful with traditional weight loss programs in the past only to veer off course and gain back the weight. In some ways this is my hail mary pass ... I have to be successful at this or I will die early or painfully.

@JohnnyCakes Keto is just another fad diet. There are so many fad diets and all have one common denominator: they all fail long term. I am determined to do one thing and that is track what I am eating for the rest of my life, like taking the Vitamins. Hell, I even made index cards to remind me to eat slow, chew 20x, liquids 30 minutes after eating, etc.

I have a love/hate relationship with mine. I really do sleep better and I've noticed that my breathing during the day has also improved. I used to get burning in my lungs from exercising too hard. That seemed to go away. Now I just breath hard from being out of shape.

Vitamins for the rest of your life is a lot better than diabetes for the rest of your life. I'm diabetic and it sucks. I mean it sucks! To me there is no trade off.

Keep up the forward progress!

On 1/23/2018 at 9:45 PM, sunshinetinks said:

I saw this on another support group and thought it was pretty awesome, especially when that darn scale doesn't move.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using BariatricPal mobile app

For the win!

6 hours ago, BigViffer said:

RNY never stops working, same with the sleeve. People just stop following plan. Write all the article you want, but they will all boil down to that.

Yep! This is pretty much dead on. The purpose of RNY is so that you never go back to your old ways of living. I never want to live to eat again. The misery of diabetes cannot be over-emphasized! I needed to experience this first hand to get my ass in gear.

1 minute ago, firefighter3158 said:

Thank you so much!! I’m 42.

Thanks for answering my question. Now I feel as if I've some hope for developing a positive body image post-surgery.

I have read stories that really run the gamut when it comes to weight loss over a 3-6 month period and I know it largely depends on metabolism and genetics but what would be considered a reasonable expectation? I don't want to go in to this expecting a 90 pound weight loss in 90 days (it's happened to some people) and end up significantly short of that.

On 1/12/2018 at 9:54 AM, Tmusselman said:

I can't get my old username to work so I had to create a new account but I used to post on here a lot. A little background on me. I had the gastric sleeve in July 2014. I never felt I had the restriction I was supposed to from this surgery. When everyone else was posting they couldn't eat a whole egg or yogurt, I was thinking are they nuts. I could eat that and not feel any fullness at all. My starting weight was 290 and through tracking and monitoring everything I ate, my lowest I got down to was 210 and it took over a year to get there. And then I stopped and got stuck there for months and months. Nothing worked, decreasing calories, increasing calories, changing exercise, nothing. Every time I visited my doctor's office I mentioned my lack of restriction and their advise was "just keep eating your Protein and tracking your food". Honestly, I felt like I was doing a weight watchers program again because the lack of restriction I had.

Fast forward to now and I have regained 40 of the pounds I lost. For the most part, I'm still watching what I eat, but when you have the ability to consume almost a full entree when you go out to eat, it makes it hard to stay on the program. In the fall of 2016, I finally got my surgeon to check the size of my pouch and he stated it's enlarged and I now have a hernia too. After going through everything in 2016 for a revision, i found out my insurance had a one bariatric surgery per lifetime benefit and would't budge on approving it. At this point it was too late for me to switch to my husbands insurance for 2017. I now have finally switched to his insurance and hoping the revision can finally happen.

My surgeon is stating he can either do a resleeve or switch me to a gastric bypass. I choose the sleeve because I didn't like the idea of all the Vitamins that are required with the bypass surgery and some of the negative long-term effects I heard about. I'm now considering the bypass because I don't want to get resleeved and be back in the same situation a couple years from now.

Has anyone had the sleeve to bypass revision for weight loss? I realize weight loss will be slower with a revision. Can you advise what kind of success you had after the revision or any issues you are having afterward?

Thanks for all that reply.

On another note, I'm not looking for "this is just a tool and just because you can eat a full entree doesn't mean you should" replies. If I had a sleeve that worked like it was supposed to, I probably wouldn't be posting this.

Don't rule out gastric bypass as it is still considered the gold standard for weight loss surgery. You know that you could do the gastric bypass and only take one Vitamin 4x per day. The Vitamin is called optisource and it comes in an orange flavor that's pretty good. If you're going to undergo surgery again, this might be the best route for you. There aren't really any negative long term effects. The stories you read about need to be taken with a grain of sand. Less than 1% of people that undergo gastric bypass have long term problems. You read about those more than the successes so you don't get an adequate perspective. I am going the gastric bypass route because it is the *gold* standard and I am willing to make the changes necessary so that I am never obese again.

You look great! May I ask about your age? I am 40 and hoping to look as young as you.

Feeling comfortable with your surgeon is extremely important and cannot be emphasized enough. I ended up changing surgeons when I was pretty far along in the process because his staff was obnoxious and I felt that he talked at me, rather than to and with me. The second surgeon is wonderful and her staff are fantastic. The program at Christiana Care in Delaware is comprehensive and fantastic. They do a really thorough and complete workup .... they want you to have the safest and best chances for success.

47 minutes ago, AGreenEyedWolf said:

...to share a before and after photo.

I still have 10-20 pounds to lose to get to my goal weight - but at 1 year post-op from my VSG it seemed like time to be brave and share it with everyone... so here is pre-surgery vs. now.

Despite needing to lose another 10 to 20 I am still pretty proud of my results so far!

You should be very proud of your results. You look fantastic and I am sure that you probably feel even better!

On 1/24/2018 at 11:02 AM, Batcap said:

I'm now 15 days away from my bypass surgery, 15 days! About 8 months of work and now the time is just flying by, I know that everyone says not to "Last Supper" but it's getting hard not to. I'm not scared or worried about post op eating changes I just know that it's going to be a while before I can have certain foods so I'm rationalizing it to myself that way. I'm not going crazy and haven't put on any of the weight I've already lost it's just hard to walk away from Tommy's double chili cheeseburger without a proper goodbye, after all it helped make me the man I am today! It's great to hear from all you post ops out there, it's really helped me feel even more confident than I did before. Here's to the next 15 days!

I understand it's hard but you can do it! 2 weeks will absolutely fly by, and before you know it, you'll be there.

Doctors can be such jack asses. Sorry you had to hear that. I have my medical clearance appointment on the 29th and I am hoping they don't pull some crap like that on me.

1 minute ago, kakatlady612 said:

Jingles 0231 YOU are not too old! I am older than you (72) weigh a skoosh less (325 down from 355) and I'm having a RnY in early-mid March in Columbus(where Mount Carmel my hospital is located). My doctor is Marcus Miller MD, the Director of Bariatrics there. It's a Center of Excellence which is what you want. I don't have CHF but I do have GERD, sleep apnea and have had 2 knee replacements. Shoot I've had arthritis since I was 25 but I've kept going with life, had 3 children (2 still living) but kept gaining and not losing weight. I've tried fad and structuralized diets and just couldn't keep a substantial loss. So I am facing surgery in about 6 weeks, worried? Heck no, I'm more concerned about more of my body breaking down until I die. So darlin' you have a friend and surgery buddy in Ohio if You want Me. Let's face the future together and show theses youngsters how it's done. There is an over50 thread on Bariatric Pal, although we are a smaller group,there is still quite a few of us and we would be happy for you to join us on this journey.

Sent from my VS880PP using BariatricPal mobile app

Speaking of fad diets ... everyone wants me to try the Keto diet. Fad diets don't work - they come and go. The real success is actually with people that have used surgery as a tool. The keto diet ain't real good for you either - it's terribly high in fat. The studies point to about a 65% success rate. That's a little bit more than 1/2 people keeping weight off long term. I am done with the fad and the yo-yo.

41 minutes ago, Fluffie2006 said:

Lost story short, My mom is not being supportive of me having surgery. Honestly, it kind of sucks. My husband, sister, sister in law, brother in law, and best friend all are. I've only told them... but my mother is telling me I can lose the weight on my own. She knows how much I suffered with my weight all of my life... But she doesn't understand that PCOS, Endometriosis, Hypothyroid and Hypertension all cause Water weight/weight gain (idk if she just doesn't believe it?)... Do/Did you have a family member or friend who wasn't supportive?

In my experience, you aren't going to win over the naysayers and they have no bearing on your decision. You're doing this for you. The naysayers may come around when they see how healthy you've become or they may get jealous of your success. My father isn't supportive and I really don't give a damn one way or another. It's your health, your life, and your matter - no one else's. You are doing this for your quality of life.

1 minute ago, Sosewsue61 said:

With addictions, it is never the substance that is the issue, it's just the vehicle to numbing whatever you aren't facing. I can't speak to what that particular set of issues are, as it is as varied as we are - but often we feel like we are never good enough, or always waiting for that future perfection when everything will finally be okay to live the way we want to or be accepted for our true selves. It is a deep painful issue rooted in childhood oftentimes.

The substance is at least partly the issue because the substance is doing something to alter your brain's chemistry. Sugar is shown to be almost as addictive as heroin. There is a reason that heroin is sometimes cut down with table sugar.