VanessaKaye

My advice to you is be a pain in the butt because this is your health, and sadly, you must be your own strong advocate. Also, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Keep after them!

bread - by all that is holy the smell of baking bread freaks me out now. I miss sourdough bread so much

Ever since I decided to have WLS I've been trying to answer this question. Because I knew that until I identified the issue I wouldn't be able to fix it. I have a lot of things I feel like I'm addicted to but I kept coming back to sweets. I have observed in my house that when we have sweets around, they call to me but no one else. My kids will have a brownie when I make them and then totally forget about them. However, I'll sneak a bite while I'm doing the dishes, or come down after they're asleep to eat one, or have one for Breakfast before they come down the stairs. So clearly I have a problem.
But it didn't really click until I was watching an episode of My 600lb Life the other night. In the episode this woman was showing all the places in her bedroom where she hid candy and chocolate. And all of a sudden this memory came flooding back to me...
I was in Jr High, so probably 12 at the time. With any money I had from chores I would go to the store on my way home from school and buy kool-aid packets. When my parents weren't home and my brother wasn't around, I would mix one kool-aid packet with a cup of sugar in a ziploc baggie and hide it in my room, on a shelf behind my dolls. I would cut one of the corners off the baggie and just eat the flavored sugar. Like a pixie stick but in a major quantity. I can now remember that at one point I had four flavors in my room...that's four cups of sugar I was eating probably over the course of one week. I don't think my parents ever knew. I didn't see it as anything other than a fun secret because I was super skinny as a kid. It didn't matter what I ate, I never gained weight. But now I can see this is where my problems started, even if it took another 10 years for the weight to start pilling on.
I don't even know yet what to do with this realization but confessing this is definitely a start. So, what have you all been truly addicted to?

I was so stunned...I had my surgery on january 31st 2018, and for the first time went shopping for some clothes to help me get by (considering its only almost 3 months, but my "old" clothes are litterly falling off me) i could not believe it i fit in an Xl-1X!!! Before surgery i was a size 26-28 or 3x i almost cried my mom was there with me and i told her i never thought i would fit in them...
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I have popcorn on occasion, no issues with it. I have Act II 94% fat free, 15 calories per cup, popped. It's no no guilt way to satisfy that salty crunchy, snacky craving.

This*

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Your surgeon is not your counselor, neither is the surgeon's staff, and the extra paperwork you are repeatedly asking them to do is out of line. Yes -they do get paid to guide you through this process, but the process for them is your surgery and recovery. Not your mental or emotional struggles. For every patient that cancels over and over and would like a therapy session at each visit, there are 100 more patients who will not require this extra hassle.

It is NOT their job to stabilize your mental health enough to follow through with your commitments.
That is YOUR job.
You need to actively seek help and take care of these issues. What you are doing with surgery dates is not acceptable and soon your doctor will send you a letter saying you are no longer welcome as a patient.
Mark my words on this. Actions have consequences.
If you call the office tomorrow and explain you really need to seek some therapy first, and that your therapist will be in the loop when you're ready....they might continue to work with you.
But at this point...you are going to burn your bridges.

When you change your mind about major surgery at the last minute:
1. You are depriving other people of that surgery spot
2. You are creating endless paperwork for both your surgeon's office and your insurance.
3. You are behaving in the most self absorbed way imaginable and inconveniencing others.
4. None of your excuses for not following through hold Water. You don't seem to care about how this effects anyone but you.
Your behavior is unacceptable.
I don't blame your surgeon at all for giving you a final warning.

If you can stomach them, I like pickles because they are zero calorie and fill me up if I get hungry.

If you can stomach them, I like pickles because they are zero calorie and fill me up if I get hungry.

I'm going to guess it's the time travel. Temporal flux is hard on the body.

I've already posted in the before and after thread. I thought I do a separate thread. Today is my first surgiversary! I've been in a 3 month stall. With RNY, I accomplished my loss without any strenuous exercise (due to a heart condition). I'm 25lbs away from goal weight and I feel great!
HW: 334
SW: 319
CW: 205
GW: 180

I'm the same way! I wish I had an answer for us.

I had to do three months before surgery. My regular dr put me on chantex that worked for me and I'm going on 2 years smoke free

I was sleeved 3/12. And dropped 23lbs fast then have stalled now for about 10 days. I feel your pain

Hello everyone, just checking in. So, tomorrow I will be 1 month post op and down about 30lbs from my surgery weight.
Here is what I have noticed:
1. Its hard to not eat and drink when you have had tha t habit for all of your life.
2.Its bittersweet when you realize you can no longer can down the foods that you used to eat into your bottomless pit. Literally after 2-3 bites you are full.
3. I am not motivated to exercise and am in search of some fun ways to get real exercise in. When I don't get on my treadmill I powerwalk through whatever store I want to visit that day with my son in his stroller or cart. Takes 45-1hr. Stopping and going. It is better than nothing.
4. I crave coffee and spicy foods, don' care for sweets too much now....and I used to have a horrible sweet tooth. Feels weird and I don't really care for coffee either. But I put salsa on almost everything.
5. sleeping on my stomach is not an issue,it was uncomforable at first but pillows helped and then I got comfy on my own.
6. I do have some pains sometimes that feels like something is pulling so,I am going to tell my Dr at my appt on Thursday.
7. Every time a commercial comes on or that I am interrupted I take a sip of Water and that is my secret to getting my fluids.
8. Pintreset is a great tool for healthy recipes and meal hacks
That is all for now! It' been an interesting journey so far and I keep telling my that "if nothing changes, then nothing changes" meaning if you do nothing you get nothing in return. I got this surgery to save my life and I want to take full advantage of it. 😉

I'm not giving contrary medical advice or telling the poster to ignore the advice of their surgeon, just pointing out that there's not universal consensus on this topic, so eating a couple of chicken nuggets during pre-op is not worth ginning yourself up into a tizzy. Be 100% honest with your surgeon at all times, but don't freak out about cheating just because some people on these boards have gotten dire warnings from their surgeons that if they break the pre-op diet they'll go into surgery and come back out with a couple of holes in them and no procedure done. The poster's initial concern was the level of strict adherence they saw advocated on this board - I saw the same thing pre-op and it's why I quizzed my doc about the lack of pre-op diet and the size of my liver.
From what I've heard (and the heavy implication from my doc), the liver thing is mostly a scare tactic. It also makes no logical sense - there are plenty of ways to gauge liver size without booking an operating room and team and putting someone under anesthetic and cutting into them, all enormous risks compared to an ultrasound. My doc said he'd never closed a patient due to liver size after thousands of procedures, and seemed to think the entire question was a bit ridiculous. Clearly from what I read on this site, for most people who heard it the scare tactic was effective.
Moral of the story being: don't freak yourself out because of what people on the internet say about their experience. Talk to your surgeon, be 100% honest and get the facts.

I'm sorry, I agree with @aNYCdb that this sounds like a scare tactic. First, many surgeons have successful outcomes with little to no preop diet, including my surgeon (and my surgery was at a COE). Second, of all the stories on here, have we ever had a surgeon sewed me back up story? Third, if a surgeon was that concerned about the size of the liver, then why would they wait until they have gotten in there. They would rely on blood test or ultrasound. Getting someone into the OR, opening them up and not doing surgery would cost the surgeon money.

Hi there @erika702,
I just wanted to check in with you in hopes that you stopped reading many of the replies to this post. This thread went off the rails rather quickly. The internet is a great place to go for recipes and opinions about clothes, music and other things that won't have a significant issue on your health and well-being. It is not the place to go for life-changing advice simply because those giving the advice only know their own experience and quite often they simply assume that the problems they had are the same ones you're experiencing. All they know about you is the few words you typed on a screen and nothing else. Then they assume that worked for them should work for you.
Perhaps you got lucky and something someone said struck a chord with you and you found their advice enlightening, but that's rarely going to be the case. Please, just look inside yourself and for each of the fears and doubts you've had, ask yourself what the real issues behind them are. Like why didn't you stick to the pre-op diet as well as you could have? Was it because it was too difficult, you didn't like it, you found it too hard to give up the food you like, or perhaps something else completely. Then talk to your doctor and perhaps consider professional counseling. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone needs help sometimes and better you should get it from someone educated and trained to help you instead of a group of complete strangers who, while trying to be helpful, may be doing more harm than good.
Do all that for yourself and if it turns out that surgery isn't the right thing for you then at least you'll know why and you won't have to carry that baggage with you. Good luck however things turn out. Please feel free to PM me if you need someone to listen to you instead of telling you what you should and shouldn't do, other than my suggestion to get real help, that is...
-elf

ABSOLUTELY! Let them know you suffer from motion sickness and they will premedicate you to make sure you don’t get sick! Patients that wake up vomiting are a huge aspiration risk and they don’t want that.

Thus rant has made my day and made me feel better. Thank you.

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NY ---a problem Alex and company haven't fixed, if you access BP from a phone, even a smartphone, instead of by computer/tablet there is no function on the options to update phone-wise, that is why many spell it out on their postings. Hw300 sw280 1st GW 200. 2ndGW 165 etc. I'm sorry but that's the way the old mop flops.[emoji38]
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Ok this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but people here sometimes get frustrated and/or elated based on fictional movements of the scale (which is why you shouldn't weigh yourself daily). As a general rule a pound is going to equal about 3500 calories burned (give or take depending on a number of factors). So when you are operating at a caloric deficit you are going to be losing pounds, even if the scale says you aren't losing weight (I know that this sentence doesn't make sense).

There are a number of reasons for this including (but not limited to);
* "Water Weight" - and I don't mean just retaining Water, but more specifically depending on the time of day your weight may fluctuate more than 4 pounds based on what you've had to drink and when you have urinated (64oz of water has no calories, but still weighs 4 pounds)
* food in the digestive system - This is why everybody complains that when they go from liquid diet to puree/solid they seem to hit a "stall." That stall in many cases is complete B.S., you are just building back up the 4 pounds of food that is normally in the digestive pipeline (on that same note unfortunately it also means that most likely 4 of the pounds you lost on the pre-op liquid diet weren't real losses).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all get frustrated at times with our weight loss, but that when we are doing the right things there is absolutely no need to get ourselves down because the scale doesn't show us losing every single day.
Rant over.

I took naps every day for my 3 week post op time off. That doesn’t seem unusual to me. But I was doing laps around the main level of my house every hour the first week and then the second week I was outside walking as far as I could. It wasn’t pretty. But I didn’t do hardly anything besides get my fluids and Protein in the first few weeks and do my laps. And id fall asleep in the recliner during the day. Naps aren’t the devil. I was just as tired as you described. But as long as I was walking and moving every hour and getting my fluids I was fine