Smanky

Thank you all! Day 3 has been a little better. Just a little headache that hasn’t even required Tylenol yet. I’m not starving, but definitely miss food and chewing! 😂 Can’t wait for the next phase!!!

I'm about a week into the pre-op diet, and it was ROUGH. But, it gets better. The headaches finally stopped, and today, I have barely thought about food. In fact, it's almost 4 pm right now, and I'm still sipping on lunch. A lunch, by the way, I forgot about eating. We even went to the grocery, and I was totally fine. The weird part was all the smells and food was actually calming. It gets better. Keep pushing through. YOU GOT THIS!!!

This comment has me reeling and questioning everything up to this point. I've always attracted both men and female attention. I was a very confident person. I never had a weight problem, I spent 8 years in the army and I exercised and ate pretty good. When my bestfriend of 15 years forced himself on me.... I lost myself, a few years later I was obese. I was relieved to become invisible. The attention that once gave me validation, was the source of my anxiety. I thought I'd worked though my issues and I had the sleeve surgery in 2018, lost 50 pounds, however after a miscarriage and poor eating habits quickly gained the all the weight back. I recently decided to go to Turkey to be re-sleeved. Not for attention but for my health. I'm set to be re-sleeved in 14 days and I'm trying to figure out how not to self sabotage my weight-loss. I wrote all this to say you're beautiful inside and out. You deserve to be healthy. Losing 125 pounds is AMAZING, don't allow depression and anxiety to rob you of the beautiful life you deserve.

You are going through withdrawals. Sugar addiction cold turkey is a miserable thing (emotional and physical) but it's mercifully short. You'll feel better in a week or so. Just keep repeating to yourself "this isn't forever". 10 days is nothing. Over in the blink of an eye.
The pre-op diet is the worst bit. It's legendary in its awfulness. No fun, but essential to shrink that liver so your surgery is as safe as it can be. Distract yourself however you can with games, walks with podcasts/audio books, cleaning, aspirational wishlisting from clothing sites you've always wanted to shop from, focusing on the goal. Grit your teeth and soldier on. I had my pre-surgery nerves kick in on week 2, which actually helped because I couldn't sit still.

My theatre youth definitely has helped me in life to mask my introverted social anxiety - not always successfully, but I've muddled by!
I've never been good at the whole flirting thing, and am that person who has no idea someone IS flirting 99% of the time. So if anyone has flirted with me now that I'm skinny, I haven't twigged. Mind you, the thin-aesthetic I've soundly embraced can best be described as "androgynous lesbian android", so I think that's successfully staying the hands and minds of straight men. Which I'm definitely more than ok with! (And also likely passed my sell by date. At the very least I need a good sniff first.)
To the OP: I definitely think you need to unpack this with a good therapist who can help get to the root of what's going on.

My theatre youth definitely has helped me in life to mask my introverted social anxiety - not always successfully, but I've muddled by!
I've never been good at the whole flirting thing, and am that person who has no idea someone IS flirting 99% of the time. So if anyone has flirted with me now that I'm skinny, I haven't twigged. Mind you, the thin-aesthetic I've soundly embraced can best be described as "androgynous lesbian android", so I think that's successfully staying the hands and minds of straight men. Which I'm definitely more than ok with! (And also likely passed my sell by date. At the very least I need a good sniff first.)
To the OP: I definitely think you need to unpack this with a good therapist who can help get to the root of what's going on.

My theatre youth definitely has helped me in life to mask my introverted social anxiety - not always successfully, but I've muddled by!
I've never been good at the whole flirting thing, and am that person who has no idea someone IS flirting 99% of the time. So if anyone has flirted with me now that I'm skinny, I haven't twigged. Mind you, the thin-aesthetic I've soundly embraced can best be described as "androgynous lesbian android", so I think that's successfully staying the hands and minds of straight men. Which I'm definitely more than ok with! (And also likely passed my sell by date. At the very least I need a good sniff first.)
To the OP: I definitely think you need to unpack this with a good therapist who can help get to the root of what's going on.

You are going through withdrawals. Sugar addiction cold turkey is a miserable thing (emotional and physical) but it's mercifully short. You'll feel better in a week or so. Just keep repeating to yourself "this isn't forever". 10 days is nothing. Over in the blink of an eye.
The pre-op diet is the worst bit. It's legendary in its awfulness. No fun, but essential to shrink that liver so your surgery is as safe as it can be. Distract yourself however you can with games, walks with podcasts/audio books, cleaning, aspirational wishlisting from clothing sites you've always wanted to shop from, focusing on the goal. Grit your teeth and soldier on. I had my pre-surgery nerves kick in on week 2, which actually helped because I couldn't sit still.

I lost at a rate of about 1kg per week, which is what I used to lose doing a "normal" diet before surgery. Compared to many others, I was a slow loser. You're doing absolutely fine. I've never heard of this 50% by 3 months either, and honestly I think a lot of folks go into WLS with unrealistic expectations of how fast they'll lose (either via misinformation online or by TV shows like My 600lb Life).
So relax. Everything is normal. Stay off the scale and distract yourself with other things. Weighing yourself so frequently isn't helpful and when stalls hit (and they will), it's even less helpful.

You're losing much faster than I did (I averaged about 2 pounds/1kg per week), and I wasn't a revision patient. Just be patient and kind to yourself and stick to your plan and you'll get where you want to be.

You are going through withdrawals. Sugar addiction cold turkey is a miserable thing (emotional and physical) but it's mercifully short. You'll feel better in a week or so. Just keep repeating to yourself "this isn't forever". 10 days is nothing. Over in the blink of an eye.
The pre-op diet is the worst bit. It's legendary in its awfulness. No fun, but essential to shrink that liver so your surgery is as safe as it can be. Distract yourself however you can with games, walks with podcasts/audio books, cleaning, aspirational wishlisting from clothing sites you've always wanted to shop from, focusing on the goal. Grit your teeth and soldier on. I had my pre-surgery nerves kick in on week 2, which actually helped because I couldn't sit still.

My theatre youth definitely has helped me in life to mask my introverted social anxiety - not always successfully, but I've muddled by!
I've never been good at the whole flirting thing, and am that person who has no idea someone IS flirting 99% of the time. So if anyone has flirted with me now that I'm skinny, I haven't twigged. Mind you, the thin-aesthetic I've soundly embraced can best be described as "androgynous lesbian android", so I think that's successfully staying the hands and minds of straight men. Which I'm definitely more than ok with! (And also likely passed my sell by date. At the very least I need a good sniff first.)
To the OP: I definitely think you need to unpack this with a good therapist who can help get to the root of what's going on.

You are going through withdrawals. Sugar addiction cold turkey is a miserable thing (emotional and physical) but it's mercifully short. You'll feel better in a week or so. Just keep repeating to yourself "this isn't forever". 10 days is nothing. Over in the blink of an eye.
The pre-op diet is the worst bit. It's legendary in its awfulness. No fun, but essential to shrink that liver so your surgery is as safe as it can be. Distract yourself however you can with games, walks with podcasts/audio books, cleaning, aspirational wishlisting from clothing sites you've always wanted to shop from, focusing on the goal. Grit your teeth and soldier on. I had my pre-surgery nerves kick in on week 2, which actually helped because I couldn't sit still.

You are going through withdrawals. Sugar addiction cold turkey is a miserable thing (emotional and physical) but it's mercifully short. You'll feel better in a week or so. Just keep repeating to yourself "this isn't forever". 10 days is nothing. Over in the blink of an eye.
The pre-op diet is the worst bit. It's legendary in its awfulness. No fun, but essential to shrink that liver so your surgery is as safe as it can be. Distract yourself however you can with games, walks with podcasts/audio books, cleaning, aspirational wishlisting from clothing sites you've always wanted to shop from, focusing on the goal. Grit your teeth and soldier on. I had my pre-surgery nerves kick in on week 2, which actually helped because I couldn't sit still.

LOL - me too!

I am maybe a little more confident than you. I have learned over the years to act confident. My jobs needed a confident person, so like an actress I took over that role.
The attention I get now amuses me as I am soon to be 64 and married 47 years. Only this week, I was stood waiting for a bus, totally wrapped up in my winter coat, leggings and boots. A 30ish cyclist went passed me and he almost fell off , craning his neck to look me up and down. He needed to put glasses on. I am way passed my sell by date

I lost at a rate of about 1kg per week, which is what I used to lose doing a "normal" diet before surgery. Compared to many others, I was a slow loser. You're doing absolutely fine. I've never heard of this 50% by 3 months either, and honestly I think a lot of folks go into WLS with unrealistic expectations of how fast they'll lose (either via misinformation online or by TV shows like My 600lb Life).
So relax. Everything is normal. Stay off the scale and distract yourself with other things. Weighing yourself so frequently isn't helpful and when stalls hit (and they will), it's even less helpful.

Whether or not you get loose skin and how much is such a crap shoot. I started with a low BMI and lost about 80 lbs... a relatively small amount for WLS patients... but I ended up with so much loose skin. I'm at my Ideal Body Weight with 18.2% body fat, and I still look like I have a tummy because it's all loose skin. Even after losing all the weight, I'm still not comfortable going without a shirt. I look terrific in clothes, but naked... oh my.
I might get surgery. I don't know. It's expensive, painful, and carries risk. And for me, the only reason would be cosmetic. The loose skin doesn't affect me in any other way.
Still... I will take loose skin over being fat all day every day!

I know, it's a wild mystery, isn't it? And these are all excellent questions. Leave a bowl of milk outside your bedroom door each night as pixie payment. But beware if you forget! They'll prank you in the night by removing fat but stuffing it back into weird places so you wake up with super-fat ears you cannot hide under any hat. Noooooo! The naysayers were right, I should never have done thiiiiiiiis!

Re: losing teeth and TikTok. It's TikTok. Who's saying this? First hand post WLS patients with first-hand knowledge, or the Body Positivity/Fat Liberation/HAES crowd who have a vested interest in putting others off weightloss? I've never heard of the teeth thing. It sounds very much like scare-mongering BS to me, and that it's coming from TikTok raises one mighty red flag. You'll likely have some temporary Hair loss, but losing teeth? Never heard of such a thing in terms of a WLS side effect.
Re: the easy way out. People again often have an ulterior motive, or are projecting their own issues when they double down on the whole "easy way out" myth. I have never dieted harder and changed my lifestyle more diligently than I have after WLS. WE do the hard work counting calories and watching macros and exercising. The surgery simply makes it next to impossible to fall off the wagon. Do people who insist it's the easy way imagine it's ... what? Like the tooth fairy? Fat is taken away by the blessed pixies every night as we still eat whatever we like? It's ignorance, or in the case of people who want to argue and not accept the truth: willful stupidity. And they're not people worth having around.
Some people also just project their own insecurities and that will manifest as a nasty little emotion called envy. You'll find these people in both the above camps.

I think it is because we eat so little after RNY, and our body requires a certain calorie level. As you said, 4 bites, full. How many calories are you consuming a day?

I still eat every 2 to 3 hrs when awake but it didn't hamper my weightloss at all; and in maintenance, if I don't eat every few hours, I would never get to my maintenance calorie level.

Just came back from my surgeon follow up. He said it’s just muscles. I need to build up more . Again thank you all for the responses

In my case, a lot of the foods I occasionally miss are ones that give me nearly instant, really unpleasant issues (sugar, alcohol, bread, Pasta, potatoes are mostly the ones I can't tolerate STILL, even at 19 months out!)...so in a way a lot of that resolved itself because it's like aversion therapy. Every time I start sizing up a cookie, I remember fainting the last time I ate one and that definitely keeps me away LOL.

It's no different. I will, however, always dispute the well-worn myth that it's hard to get your Protein in. I've never had an issue. Once you know what foods are your higher protein options (and there are many), it's no more difficult than lacto-ovo diets. There's so much available these days!

It took me months to be able to eat "normally". Combo of zero appetite, my paranoia of hurting my stomach and new intestine join, and strong restriction. Everyone's post-op experience is subtly different, and some cases, wildly different dependent on the type of surgery, your body, your pain tolerance and heal rate etc etc. There's no "right way", other than sticking to the plan your team gives you. Beyond that you just have to do your best.
So don't worry, don't beat yourself up. I've always had sips of Water with meals and don't care. Nothing's broken and I'm doing fine. Things will get easier and you'll settle into the new routine in time.