Sheribear68

It looks amazing. Honestly I have no idea what the “rules” are for sugar consumption. All of us are walking the same path, but we all took different roads to get here, so what I say is literally just for myself because even though I’ve been living in it for 50 years, I’m truly starting to understand my body in a way I never took the time to previously. For me, I know I absolutely need to avoid as much sugar and artificial sweeteners as I can. That means honey is out, chocolate chips are out and anything that resembles a refined carb is out. That’s because the minute I get exposed to sugars (even in tiny amounts) it sets off a cascade of the hungries and bad choices that I can not control. Carbs are like crack to me and I just cannot go down that road at this point. Maybe not ever at any point— I just don’t know. Right now at 6.5 weeks post, I’m eating primarily protein only, and my only “cheats” are salads. God I miss salad! If I could have my old stomach back for 10 minutes, I would totally demolish a wedge salad with gobs of bacon and bleu cheese. For over 6 weeks, I’ve cut so much sugar from my life that plain fairlife milk tastes almost like melted ice cream. It’s weird. The other day I actually had to re-check the label on the bottle because I was CONVINCED I had inadvertently bought a flavored one. It tasted that sweet to me.

I’ve lost close to 30 so far and people are starting to notice because I’m losing it all in my face/waist/torso. Sigh, I’ve always had a pear figure and my thunder thighs are still there. I’ve dropped over 2 sizes now in tops, but only 1 pant size. Maybe the next 30 pounds will help my hips,butt,and thighs shrink

Another thing that really helps with nausea is to drink drink drink. I know it’s not what you really want to do, but proper hydration will make you feel a million times better

So at the tender young age of 30, you’ve probably not had to deal with many of the very unpleasant, inconvenient and downright awful side effects from prolonged obesity. I first became obese when I was 28. By the time I was 40, I was diagnosed with TNBC (triple negative breast cancer). By the time I was almost 50, I was pre-diabetic, was getting high cholesterol, and had had 2 more cancer scares. My GERD was becoming more uncontrollable. Working a 12 hour shift was becoming so painful that I was taking massive doses of NSAIDS and resting in bed whenever I could get a chance because my whole body hurt. Oh yeah, did I mention the thousands of dollars spent on the 2 cancer scares? 2018 was the year I decided enough was enough and I started the process. Took me from June 2018 through Feb 6, 2019 to get my surgery, but even though I’m only 6 weeks post, I’d still do it all over again—- even the 2 hell weeks immediately post-op when you’re desperately trying to figure out how your new digestive system wants to work. Even at just 30 pounds lighter, I feel like a brand new woman. Yeah, there are moments where I’d love to have my old stomach back for just 5 minutes, but then I think of how great it feels and how much better it will feel when the next 70 pounds come off that the food just simply isn’t that important anymore. I’m convinced that someday I’ll be able to order off of a restaurant menu, but in the meantime I’m going to enjoy every step of this process and know that I’m giving myself the best chance ever of thriving in my 50’s that I couldn’t do in my 30’s or 40’s. I

It gets better in about 3-4 more days. I was sleeved 2/6 and I cannot believe it has now been over 6 weeks. The time has flown by

Yeah the first few days really stink. In fact, don’t sweat it if you can ingest enough liquids to get your protein goals met. Worry first about water and nutrition will sort itself out later. The best thing you can do is walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk. Sleeping more than 3-4 hours at a time didn’t happen for me til somewhere around day 7. I’m a side-sleeper, but trying to roll side to side was impossible for the first couple weeks, and I would have to get up to pee 3-4 times during the night anyway. It was okay though because at least I didn’t have to worry about having to go in for work

Smart to tell you to aim for over 80 ounces water. Since surgery, I’ve been battling orthostatic hypotension, but my blood pressure in general is just fine. I have noticed this week that it hasn’t been as bad as weeks past, but I’ve also been retaining fluid in my ankles and feet, which is weird bc I’ve probably had over 96 ounces today.

I joined up at a Pilates studio and I’m loving it! Fortunately their class schedule is super flexible because some weeks I work early and some weeks I work late. I’ve let my instructors know my core is weak from surgery and they’re good about keeping that in mind. Just today I was finally able to do planks on the box and my instructor cheered me on! Love how relaxed and confident I feel after a class now

So this Pilates studio I go to is right next door to a very popular breakfast place. In fact, this place is known to have an hour or more wait on any day of the week and I always have to hunt for a parking place if I’m having a morning class. Also, this week is spring break which is making it even busier than usual. Anyway, this morning just as I was opening the door to leave class, I almost walked smack into my bariatric surgeon and his family as I’m heading to my car. He apparently has the week off because he always does his surgeries on Wednesdays and was taking the fam out to breakfast. It was funny to see the look on his face when I announced that was my 3rd Pilates class of the week and to tell him to “enjoy breakfast, I’ll see you in May for my 3 month follow-up”. 🤣🤣🤣

Okay so I’m a full 6 weeks out now and have been on “regular” food for a week. In the morning my sleeve is so tight that I just can’t even think food. I drink 20-32 ounces of water and then a half cup of milk to take vitamins with so my tummy isn’t upset by them. Sometime between 10am-11:30am, I’m taking in my first actual food of the day. Sleeve is a lot looser from the liquids and I can eat anywhere from 1/2-3/4 cup of food. Sometimes I feel slightly “hungry” after this, and if I wasn’t being mindful I might graze, but instead I set my timer for 30 minutes and then start drinking water like I’m getting paid by the ounce. Usually it’s another 20-30 ounces. Then I’ll have a small “ snack” mid afternoon and then dinner by 6-8pm. My stomach pretty much growls from the moment I wake til after I’ve gone to sleep, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. I think in the past I would associate that with hunger, but now that the hunger is gone, it’s just noise. How do I know when I’m full? I’ll start to get a pain in my solar plexus area also and it reminds me do the horrible pain I had for the first 2 weeks after surgery. It will come on suddenly: one bite doesn’t hurt and the next one does. If I try to eat beyond a couple bites of the pain starting, then a slight bit of nausea kicks in and I’ve even put down the fork mid-way to my mouth because I know that’s the signal for “DONE”. Tonight that happened to me: I made ground beef taco salad (mine sadly without lettuce) and I was sooooooo happy because it was soooooo yummy. Then after what seemed like such a small amount, the pain started and I got sad. Lol, then I remembered that this is exactly what I intentionally signed up for. 🤣🤣🤣

This plus infinity. Reminds me of a convo I’d overheard back in my college days between 2 frat boys. They were being disgusting talking about women that had been to a party recently and one of them was giving the other one a hard time about being with the “fat” chick. He literally said “ she was so fat that she probably weighed over 125 pounds”. Now at this time I was 20 years old, 5’7”, and was rocking a size 6 and carrying 135 pounds and hearing this made me want to hide before they realized I was sitting on a bench on the other side of the hedge. I was 135 pounds and felt “shamed” because of this convo between 2 pea-brained, immature idiots. It’s soooooo wrong of me, but I really hope those guys are severely obese and bald and have ED.

Slow and steady might not be as “fun” as fast and dramatic, but I’m going to look at this as a a chance to truly start a new lifestyle for forever. One thing the bariatric psychiatrist was adamant about reinforcing over and over is that the good habits MUST develop during this honeymoon phase because no matter what we eat, we will lose. The problem with that is that it will eventually catch up. He told us in support group that the “slower” losers actually had a better long term success rate because even in the honeymoon phase, they had to watch everything that went in. Those that are going to eat fast food or follow a non-keto diet, or who eat refined sugars are in for trouble when this phase wears off. So it sucks to only be losing 0.2 pounds daily average for now, but I refuse to give up. Eventually this body that loves to betray me will get whipped into shape. Just since last week, the scale finally started moving a smidge faster. I lost 3 pounds in 8 days and I can tell a radical difference in a pair of work pants from last week to this. Progress. Not as rapid as I’d like it, but I’ll take the progress

Well I’m relieved to hear that there’s no leak. Air bubbles are extremely painful, but I’ve learned that if you know the reason behind the pain isn’t something serious, it makes the pain easier to bear. It’s the not knowing why that’s the worst part

This is a great outlook to have. Today I stopped into a new consignment store that is about to open and I basically just walked in and announced that I’d had bariatric surgery last month and joked that I’ll be doing a lot of trade/buy/resale with them. These 2 girls combined probably weigh what I do currently, but I didn’t feel any shame in telling them that I’ve got a lot of size 20/22 clothes that fall off of me and my current size 18’s aren’t going to get me through April. They were super excited to hear that I’ll be dropping off my old clothes because they said their biggest complaint is they don’t have enough plus-size clothing to resale because people never bring that stuff in. Then we talked for a moment about how hard it is to have any kind of fun looking for clothes as a plus size and how exciting it will be to move down the sizes until I find my goal weight. During the convo I wasn’t at all self-conscious talking to two skinny young girls about negative body image and how difficult it is as a plus size to shop. I can’t wait until they get enough inventory to open up and start getting some affordable things that will fit my ever-shrinking body

I put the miralax in plain water and can’t taste it. The only thing I notice is maybe the water tastes like smart water.... a little alkaline and mineral-y tasting. IMO, not at all unpleasant. It can also be put in any kind of juice, but for some reason it doesn’t dissolve very well in milk.

Well crap! Sorry to hear this and please keep us posted. I’ll be thinking about you tonite gabybab

Okay so it’s time for my Monday progress report! Week 5 going into week 6 and I’ve finally got a decent loss. Went from 220 down to 217. First time I’ve lost more than a single pound in a week since week 2. Let’s hope this is the start of a good losing trend.  Total loss since surgery day on 2/6  is now 27 pounds. 

Omg. That’s so much worse than my nephews wedding weekend and there were parts of those 2 days where I thought I was gonna slap the next person who offered me food or an adult beverage. I know how extremely difficult it was to navigate two days.... you have my utmost respect for doing it an entire week! Oh and I’m willing to bet that the food you had didn’t hurt you too much. For some reason the losses absolutely suck on weeks 3 and 4 so please don’t mentally beat yourself up for anything

This is going to sound weird maybe, but I think I’ve noticed, but can’t be sure that it’s food related. Before surgery I always could tell when I needed to eat because I would get shaky and irritable and I could recognize those signs of low blood sugar, but now I think the hunger feels different and it’s somewhat difficult to recognize true hunger. lol, I just realized I typed a whole paragraph that is a no -answer answer. 🤷‍♀️

Okay so whatever you guys do, DO NOT drink mag citrate liquid. It could cause a lot of pain and suffering. I do a scoop of Miralax every other day in my water and things don’t get too bad. I’ve had severe constipation a few times, but if I do the miralax every day it’s too much. The thought of using a stimulant laxative is just flat-out scary to me. Still trying to find that balance.

I’m in both camps and it will be situational. First, I kinda had to tell my coworkers because of so many reasons, most center around the fact that we work in such a fast-paced closed environment that it would flat out be impossible to explain change in eating and drinking habits. Also, I knew I would need their support and help for the self-care I would need moving forward. Im a chain-retail pharmacist and we typically work 10-14 hour shifts with zero breaks for either food or bathroom and are going 100mph the whole time we are there. They needed to know that for at least a few months I was gonna need to tone that back a bit. To have something like WLS and not tell them would be unfathomable because now I actually HAVE to try to eat and drink with some kind of regularity. In the past, we would all purposely dehydrate ourselves so we could get through a whole day without having to go to the bathroom. That had to change. Second, as a health care professional, it’s going to be difficult to flat out lie to my patients once they start asking questions. I mean, don’t I owe it to people to try to get on the path to better health by explaining the pros and cons of WLS? Now that’s not to say that every jerk that comes through deserves to know: only those who could benefit from the knowledge or who I’ve built a relationship with throughout the years. Besides, you never know when someone I’m helping could be either contemplating WLS or maybe just had WLS and if there is ANY chance I can help them with anything, it’s my professional duty to help. I’m also a cancer survivor and I make sure that every patient I come across that has been newly diagnosed knows I’ve “been there, done that” and that I’m available to answer any questions or concerns that they have. Surely I will need to carry that over to WLS and counsel people if I get the chance. Now I do have many casual friends that have zero business knowing my business and if any of those people start to say something to me, I’m gonna tell them that I’m doing IF. LOL, technically that’s what WLS surgery naturally does to you anyway so it’s not technically a lie.

Yes! I can relate to the stomach gurgling with what I think are hunger pains. It’s so weird feeling maybe-but-not-for-sure hunger, but my first meal of the day starts it going. Today at work all day I was looking forward to corn beef and cabbage when I got home and it reminded me just how much we as a society tie up holidays and food and celebrations and good feelings all into one package. Well I did get my corned beef (2 ounces measured) with some spicy mustard on the side and about 3-4 bites worth of cabbage and I made sure to pace myself and not eat quickly. I have to admit that it only took about 10-12 minutes to eat it so I made myself put my plate in the dishwasher to avoid getting seconds. I can relate to the whole going out and ordering dinner and making it an event. What is helping me push through those feelings of “missing out” is I’m calculating what we would’ve spent in all that eating out and saving the money towards new clothes and for a vacation. In addition to expensive eating habits, me and hubs loooooved our wine and spirits. It was nothing for us to spend $100/week at the liquor store alone and now we aren’t. So far I’ve got $300 in an account to buy some clothes with and we’ve saved $250 toward a vacation at the end of the year. Thinking about how much fun it will be to save that money truly does take the sting out of feeling deprived.

Please keep us posted on how you’re doing

And THANK YOU for being brave enough to start this thread in the first place. It’s been wonderful to vent and lend support and know that others are going through the exact same thing. I started keeping a personal journal a few days after surgery because I don’t want to forget what every step of this process feels like

Lol, I’m only 5 weeks out so my loss isn’t particularly noticeable but I’ve been warned that many of my relationships will change. Wow, is your post not a absolutely proof positive of that. Any advice on what to say to people as they notice the weight loss as it is in progress? I work with the public and have many regular customers and I swear some of them are already noticing something is “different” even though I’ve only lost 27 pounds so far. I’m trying to figure out how to respond when that day will inevitably happen