LindaD

The mirror - it lies. You are seeing a phantom image. Don't go by the mirror. Don't expect too much. Look for all the ways you life is better because of the loss. My surgery was just days before yours and I have SO many things that are better. THAT is what matters. F%#@ the mirror, ya know? It's not the boss of my feelings.

Oh, Samantha... that is so sad, almost tragic. :mad: I hope you two find your way back to each other. :wub:

Dropped a few more (was down, up, down) and hit a new mark - 210 this morning, 76 pounds gone! (most of it before surgery, but still a good amount since). I went in for my 2nd check up and we decided not to do another fill. So I'm at 2.4cc and will let it ride for now - I'm losing at a good rate and feeling good restriction. I can reevalute going forward and we'll change our minds on more fill if necessary. 10 more to go to get under 200 and 40 more to go for my goal.

I've had the GoWearFit for about a month. I like it - I like the tools and reports, I don't mind wearing it, all of that is fine. But I have concerns about its accuracy with regard to tracking my activity. For example, it will not give me "vigorous activity" for nothin... I do a brutal hour on the eliptical, pushing it at 15 crossramp and resistance of 8 or 10. The Precor machine at my gym estimates my calorie burn at 11 calories per minute (over 700 for the hour) and the GoWearFit does NOT ever show that as vigorous. It boggles my mind. I even changed my settings on the GWF tool so that any thing over 4.5 METS should be considered vigorous and it STILL doesn't consider my eliptical routine as vigorous. It does, however, log my teeth-brushing in the morning as vigorous. My teeth-brushing at night, BTW, is not vigourous. Last night, I did 1 hour and 15 minutes on the treadmill and it logged only 56 minutes of activity. When I do the weight machines, it barely registers as activity. And I do a pretty rigorous weight circuit - where I am working hard and sweating buckets. And when I upload my band, you'd think I was rocking in a hammock or something. LOL It acts like it wasn't hard work. So.... that's my complaint. I still appreciate it, and for me I just consider it "relative" and not accurate. I know much of my working out is very much vigorous and I don't know why the GWF doesn't read it as such, and that frustrates me. But at least it's under-estimating and not over-estimating so I figure in reality I'm burning MORE than it says. I still log my food on The Daily Plate and then once per day, I make one manual entry in the GWF food log bringing over my calories, fat, Protein, etc. The GWF database for food logging is lacking so I stick with one I like better.

I'm only about 3 months out but so far, I love it. I guess I'm still in the honeymoon phase, who knows. It gives me just the exact amount of "help" I need. I'm still working hard on my own, exercising nearly every day, yadda yadda. I only have 2.4cc's in my band and we're going to let it ride like that for now - I'm losing at a good rate and I feel like I have restriction, but I can still eat most things - just slower and less. I couldn't be happier. I hope when I hit the 4 year mark and beyond that I can continue sharing my success story, but I do realize that issues could come up with time. Right now, I've lost 70+ pounds. I'm sleeping better. I have tons more energy, my sex drive is back. Mentally I'm feeling better. I'm doing a lot better at work. It's just such a huge positive thing in my life. (And I realize all these results can be had with other forms of WLS, too.)

Mine was way easier than I expected too. I thought the healing phase would be harder. I thought the liquids/mushy food phase would be harder. I think the hardest part for me was the pre-surgical diet. Anyway, CONGRATS!!

You are very mature and well-spoken for your age. That had to be said. :lol I told my parents and my family that I was going to have it done, but then I didn't tell them when it was scheduled. I called them that evening and said "Guess what I had done today?" Everyone worries about the patient croaking on the table (though I had a c-section and don't remember a single person panicking over that... Hmmm...) Anyway, perhaps that's another way. Go through and do what you need to do, and then tell them as a fait acompli. The fear-of-death will be mostly past and it might be easier for them to accept.

I haven't lost any friends... my friends and family have all been very supportive. My husband was a little worried about the impact this would have on us - like, would we be tied to home eating scrambled eggs every day. Now at a few months post-op, he's ecstatic. It hasn't disrupted those parts of our life we enjoy, and it has enhanced some parts of our life which were a bit of a struggle. However, I KNOW that this has changed me. Some days, I feel like a different person, physically and mentally. I have to keep myself from talking about it too much. I worry that even when I keep myself from talking about it too much, I still may be talking about it too much. I have had friends before who suddenly found religion or true love or whatever and it can be quite tedious. This may be the same. I'm never jealous of someone who found God or true romantic love but I still don't want to hear about it every flippin' minute. So that might be how some people feel about us gastric surgery people. I guess it's a fine balance. We want people to share in our success, but we don't want to be too much "in their face" with it.

I'm not even 3 months out, and I'm down nearly 75. Of course, most of that I dropped prior to surgery. If we're just talking post-surgery, I guess I'm down about 28 pounds since surgery. I have embraced working out. I started last October at 3 hours per week and now I am up to 7 hours per week - trying for an hour of activity per day (on average). I recently bought the GoWearFit armband and it helps me track my activity - I have a goal of 7500 steps per day, 1 hour of activity per day, 1500 calories intake per day, 2500 calories burned per day. These are all targets and I do average pretty close to my targets. I also log every bite I put into my mouth to make sure I'm keeping in check with regard to a calorie deficit significant enough for loss. I am still in the honeymoon period and I hope it never ends.

If you set unrealistic expectations, you will fail at meeting them. Research and set reasonable expectations. Expecting to have some change when you're only 2 weeks post-op, in my opinion, is unrealistic. Do some see a loss then? Yes, but MANY do not. Do the work, the tool will hopefully do its job helping, and you will see results. If you expect too much, you'll end up self-sabotaging and that is counter-productive.

I'm down 3.5 this week, and I dropped 3.5 last week. WOWOWOWOW. So I'm at 212.5, down over 70 pounds altogether. :sneaky: :thumbup: I knew this would be a good week - no business travel and I got to the gym 3 times for a total of 4 hours of working out pretty hard, not to mention just keeping more active during my regular day to day life. I am no longer a slug. :thumbup: 12.5 more pounds and I cross over to a place I haven't seen for almost 15 years...

Way before I went the surgery route, I was a believer in low-carb. And I dont' mean "eat a bunch of bacon and no fruit" LOL which is what many picture when you say that. When I'm doing low-carb, I usually stay about 100g per day or less. One woman laughed and said "THAT'S not low carb." Well, it's not Atkins-induction low carb, but it's about 1/3 of what the US guidelines recomment, so I would say a 66% reduction is low. I find that even now, post surgery, when I'm eating well, it comes to about 100g. I track my food on thedailyplate too. And while I started believing in low carb around '99, it was only last year that I read the Taubes book, but simply further convinced me that this is something to embrace. Keep in mind, what we call "low carb" today is probably pretty close to what a normal diet was for 99% of the duration of human kind. Also, Taubes does cover all the science behind why one does NOT need carbs for proper brain function. I know that even our most prominent experts aren't in agreement on a lot of this stuff. You can talk as if it's documented fact just because it's in a textbook, but I can go out and find another textbook that has documented fact that disputes your documented fact. It's just not as cut and dry as people like to make it out. We all have to choose our religion on this stuff, to some degree. I think that 80-100g of carbs per day is plenty for my brain. Then again, my brain did fine when I was on 20g a day during Atkins induction phases back when I did that for a few weeks as I kicked off the low-carb way of eating.

Last night, my husband and I went out. I dressed in a shortish dress with my hair french-braided and cute shoes and I felt so good about how I looked. But that's not the NSV... We were out sort of late. This morning, I heard the dogs and thought I'd let my husband sleep in so I quietly got up and grabbed my jeans and t-shirt off the chair and snuck into the bathroom to get dressed. When I put on the jeans and buttoned/zipped them, they were tight. I was all "WTF?" because my jeans have been pretty loose - I need to wear a belt with most of them. So I was surprised that the jeans were tight. I looked in the bathroom mirror and sort of turned a little and noticed that the back pocket had a faded square that was perfectly the shape of a wallet. I HAD PUT ON MY HUSBAND'S JEANS BY MISTAKE! And they fit! Oh, they were a little tight but I could wear them!! What an awesome feeling. I had a bit of a whoosh these past few days, so I'm down to 215.5.

5 pounds a week is awesome - I'd be a bit afraid to have it go any faster than that. Congrats on your loss!

Had a little whoosh and am at 216 now. :thumbup:

Thanks for talking me off the ledge. :lol I did get that whoosh this morning and have updated my ticker. I am now at 34.9 on BMI, which takes me out of the 'severely obese' category for the first time in nearly a decade. And I'm at 70 pounds gone. So today I am happy. And Chris, you are right - at the VERY least, I should avoid the scale for a few days after I return from a business trip. Because the reading I get is never right - it's not true weight gain. I suppose that I've gone without a scale all during the trip and I'm anxious to make sure I didn't screw up, so I climb on. But this is a case where it does cause me negative anxiety, so perhaps my rule should be that I get on the scale 2 days AFTER I get home.

Well, at least today my number was back where my ticker says it is. So that's something. I still don't understand how a person can have a calorie deficit of more than 1000 calories per day and not lose. And I'm not under-estimating my food - if anything, I'm over-estimating because I want to be sure that I'm counting properly. I'm also not over-estimating my activity - I bought this GoWear Fit armband and it keeps track of all of that - activity, vigorous activity, how many steps I take per day, etc. From that, it estimates a number of calories burned that is said to be something like within 8% accuracy. The band is doing what it's meant to do - it's keeping me eating a very small amount of calories per day - less than Jenny Craig would have me on. I am doing what I'm supposed to do - I'm tracking every bite, I'm exercising almost every single day. My body isn't cooperating. It will happen, though. I know the things I am doing are right and good so I'll keep doing them. I just wish the results weren't so slow.

My mantra is "this is a marathon, not a sprint. this is a marathon, not a sprint." I tell myself all the time. I've posted it here even. Mostly, I'm willing to be patient. I really am. And when I screw up - make poor choices on food, skip my exercise - I'm willing to take my lumps. But when I eat well and get my exercise in - when I'm operating at greater than a 1,000 calorie per day deficit - then I don't like to take my lumps at all. I DON'T LIKE THESE LUMPS!!! I was out of town this week again. I had my GoWearFit on, I exercised, I logged every friggin' bite of food. I should have lost. But the scale read up 1.5 pounds today. And I'm pissed about it. So I keep reminding myself "this is a marathon, not a sprint. this is a marathon, not a sprint. It should make sense. A 3,500 calorie deficit should be a pound of loss, not a 1.5 pound gain. Blah.

I updated my ticker this morning - I broke into the two-teens!! I'm at 219.5 so that's 66.5 pounds lost. :thumbdown: :scared2:

Even without surgery, our bodies often stop and take a rest after dropping a chunk of weight. You've lost 34 pounds? That's great!! Let your body adjust and heal, and soon the scale will start creeping down again as long as you are doing well on your eating and exercise. Good luck!

Walk, walk, walk. It will help, I'm pretty sure. I had the chest pains when breathing for about the first month, but it did lessen in intensity over time. Those pains finally went away, of course. Hang in there!

Stop worrying about the weight loss just yet - you are two days post-op! Right now, focus on healing and setting the stage for future weight loss. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You're only two days post-surgery! (I gained a bit post-surgery too. I was soooo hungry after about 4 days, my doc said I could have oyster crackers and for a week and a half I ate a lot of oyster crackers. LOL And yes, I gained a couple pounds... but once I was healed and eating better, they came back off and I've continued to lose.) Good luck!

I think it just can really upset the equilibrium of the relationship, especially if the other person is insecure and feels that once your options open up (and I'd imagine that they often do when weight loss occurs), then why would you stay? It's sad, but I don't think one person can fix insecurity in another. And enabling a jealous/controlling partner doesn't get you anywhere, either. It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm sorry for anyone who is dealing with this.

I chose to be very open about it, but I certainly understand that some would not want to share what is considered private medical decisions with everyone. I sort of feel like it gives me an opportunity to dispel myths, to create understanding. For people who do choose to keep it private, if they lose a lot of weight quickly, I think people may speculate about it anyway, probably behind their backs. And I suppose that's OK too - if the objective is not to have to talk about it, even in this situation, the objective is still met, right? For me, even though I understand the desire for privacy, it just feels dishonest to act as if I was suddenly able to conquer this demon without some help. I worry that other fat people might think "Gosh, if she can do it, then why can't I???" and it could make them feel worse. Good luck with whatever you decide. It's not an easy one, I'm sure.

Have you started exercise - walking on the treadmill? I have heard many say it helps relieve some of the gas pressure that is causing pain. I'm guessing the fact that I walked on my treadmill from day one - including my day of surgery - is what helped make my pain and healing process easier. Taking the band out won't help with this. You'd likely prolong it by having another surgery where more gas is pumped in, etc. You had surgery. You have to expect some of this - it will pass! Chin up and muscle through it. I don't mean to sound cold or uncaring, nor to minimize your pain and misery, but you had this surgery to change your LIFE - it's not a little thing, it's a big thing. These few days or even weeks of pain are just the first part of a long marathon and pretty soon they will be a distant memory. For such a big important life decision, it seems you're willing to throw in the towel way too fast and way too easily. Put your game face on - this is a marathon and you're only at the starting line. Don't focus just on the start of the journey - keep in mind the big picture.