Lisalu

Jillian, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. It sounds very frustrating and discouraging. I have a bunch of questions. Did they measure your stomach after surgery (once the swelling went down)? I guess they would need to do this with an xray and some contrast medium like barium. If they didn't, I'm not sure how they could know your stomach stretched as opposed to having a too large sleeve. Also do they know why your stomach stretched? I think it could be because you have a super-elastic stomach, but it also might be because you don't have the same full sensors that others have. I'm NOT blaming you for your predicament, but I am curious about the origin of your problem. It might make a difference in how it can be treated. Please keep us posted.

I am 3 months out. I can eat everything. I do avoid chicken breast because it fills me up sooo fast that I feel full after 3 bites. I prefer, eggs, cheese, tofu, salad and fruit these days. My sweet tooth has returned but so far I've been able to talk myself out of sweets. I've been craving carbs and fats lately and have been indulging these cravings very carefully. Occaisonally I'll have diet soda but not often. Hardest rule for me is not drinking and eating at the same time.

You look as cute as a button in that recent photograph! I don't see crazy just happy and slender.

I use DaVinci's chai syrup or Oregon Chai's sugar free chai (both available from netrition.com). I like the Davinci's better. I use skim milk, soy milk or silken tofu and water for the milky part. I always add a scoop of protein powder. It's very yummy.

5'2" top weight: 210 at surgery 185 I'm about 150 lbs now. Surgery and recovery were pretty easy.

Coops, yes I was sleeved 4 days before you; that almost qualifies us as sleeve sisters. I'm doing great other than the bit of boredom I mentioned in an earlier post. It feel healthy and it's pretty awesome no longer being fat. Sometimes I see my reflection in a window and don't recognize myself. I never thought I'd see that day come. Rememer the fable of the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race.

Congratulations. You'll be the incredible shrinking diva soon. You might look out of place in Tristan und Isolde, but I never liked Wagner anyway. Perhaps if I drive up to Phoenix and go to the opera, I will see you. I will look for the skinny opera singer. Best of luck on this journey. AZ summers are much nicer with the sleeve.

Here's a link to wikipedia. It answers your question (assuming of course that this wikipedia entry is well researched). It is a starting point at least. Anyone know where I can get this done in the US and an approximate cost?

That is a really cool test. I want to get one, though I might freak out at the results too. It seems sooo unfair to only need 900 calories a day. How tall are you? If you increase your muscle your metabolism will rise. Lifting weights would help.

Here I am, the one that put out the challenge to you all to only weigh once a month and I'm having trouble sticking to that rule myself. It's been 2 weeks since my last weigh in and I'm really tempted to get on that scale. (Luckily, I don't own one so it means going over to a friend's house.) I think it's because I'm bored and maybe a little down. Now that I don't have food to focus on, I'm looking for something else to give me a temporary boost. Obsessing about my weight loss would certainly do that, but it's not good for me. I'm 12 weeks out and things have really gotten back to normal. That means that everything is about the same as it was 6 months ago except that: 1. I'm thinner 2. I can't (I choose not to) act out with food anymore I have not found the holy grail. The partner of my dreams hasn't suddenly appeared. I don't have a perfect body. I'm just the same old me but thinner. Rationally, I knew that losing weight wouldn't solve all my problems but part of me must have believed the fairy tale that if I lost weight, I'd never be sad, lonely tired, angry, bored or depressed again. Here I am with goal in sight and a certain dis-ease or ennui has set it. Nothing too serious, but I need to fill it with something besides food or weight obsession. Maybe it's time to get a new hobby.

Coops, I don't consider you a very slow loser. It's been 12 weeks since surgery and you are down 30 lbs. I know we have some super speedy losers on this board, but more than 2lbs a week seems like a respectable weight loss. Just my $.02.

Post-op sex? Yes, please. Where can I find some? --disgruntledly single

I told few people before the surgery. I didn't need people's judgements. Now 12 weeks post-op, I tell people pretty freely. I see myself as a champion of a one person WLS education plan. This is a personal/political choice with me. Plenty of others have chosen to keep this matter private which I respect. No "right" answers here. You'll figure out what is right for you.

Oh Jolanda, do tell. Rabbit? Veal? Sea Turtle? Whale? What could it possibly be?

I'm glad I found this thread. My foamies just began last week. It definitely seems to come from eating too much/too fast. I am 3 months out, and eating too much affects me more now than at 8 weeks. I have to be really careful and slow with solid Protein. Yesterday I ate too much twice! I was so annoyed with myself. TMI WARNING: I had to make myself throw up to get rid of some pressure. It was not pleasant. I hope I learn soon.

WTF? Someone must have been having a really bad day. I tell, I tell, I tell. If people have a bad reaction, that's OK by me. Maybe I'll educate a few people along the way.

I wasn't being critical. Reindeer meat sounds good to me. I'd much rather eat an animal that had a good life prior to being slaughtered than one that was in a feed lot. How we raise animals here in the U.S. is inhumane. I said what I did about my son because for American kids reindeer = Santa's team. He'd be traumatized because he'd think he was eating Rudolph. Here in the Southwest, you can get ostrich, goat, stingray and maybe even javelina (peccary) if you have the right connections. I'm an adventurous eater but we don't have a lot of reindeer in the desert. I noticed it because it seemed so Swedish.

OK, why I am the first to mention the cold smoked reindeer meat? You can't really get that here in Arizona, but it does sound kind of good. I will NOT mention it to my 7 year old, though. I'm sure he's be traumatized. Congratulations, Jolanda.

I giggled when I read the post about your panic attacks. Wow, that sounded bad. I was NOT laughing at you; I was laughing because I recognized the symptoms. About 2 weeks after my surgery, I ended up in urgent care due to leg pains. I was sure it was deep vein thrombosis and was waiting for it to progress to pulmonary embolism. Luckily I had a really great doctor in urgent care who talked me down. You regrets and panic seem very normal. I think you will start feeling better soon. I am 12 weeks out and I feel great. Hang in there, chica.

Geez, Tiffykins, I thought I was a foodie. You put me to shame. :-)

Just another vote: C-section hands down.

Autumn, I do not have lupus but my ex did. Tough disease. Please let me know (pm?) if you get some good info about lupus and VSG. My ex wanted bariatric surgery and I'd like to be able to give her some more info. What's the problem with bypass and lupus? Many people with lupus already have to do B12 shots because of the lupus attacking the intrinsic factor in their gut, so it seems that bypass wouldn't make it any worse. But then again, I don't hsve lupus and don't know the full scale of all the problems it can cause.

Well, some of my tastes changed shortly after surgery and then they stayed stable for a couple months. Now they keep on changing and I'm finding it frustrating. I think I like something, make it and then I can't eat/drink it. For the past 6 weeks or so I have been making Protein smoothies with silken tofu, fruit or chai extract (DaVinci's), soy milk, whey protein and a liitle psyllium. I loved them. This morning I made one with fresh mango. It tasted like play-doh and I had to dump it. Next I tried soymilk, chocolate Protein powder and psyllium--inedible. Somehow I could taste the unflavored psyllium powder. Finally, I just grabbed an Atkin's RTD shake, mocha flavor. I really liked them after surgery but now it was just tolerable. For the past 5 days food is really hard on my stomach. I threw up after lunch on Tuesday. This is a first for me. I think I ate too much. I haven't thrown up since but food sits really heavy. I thought, OK, "I'll just go with more Protein shakes for a while," but those taste terrible now. Last night at a party I ate the topping from a piece of pizza. It tasted good going down but didn't settle well. (Ok, maybe that was because of the 1/2 beer I had before it.) It's just new to me to have to be so careful with my food choices. Before someone reminds me that I got this sleeve in order to be free of my food addiction, let me say that I know that. Also, that in the grand scheme of things, I'd much rather have these current food problems than be obese. It is, however, disorienting and hard to find a way to get my nutrients in when my tastes keep changing.

I looked at this article. It seems the increase in mortality was very small--it hardly reached statistical significance.

I'm only 10 weeks out but no regrets. I think you CAN try everything at Xmas dinner, just put tiny portions on your plate. I sometimes eat with a cocktail fork. This means my bites are tiny--about the size of a raisin. If I do this and chew every bite about 25 times, then I eat about at the same pace as others and don't finish 20 minutes before everyone else. Today I didn't do that. I was eating lunch while on the computer (I know, shame on me), and so my bites were too big and I didn't chew enough. My food was dense Protein and now I'm full way too soon. I'm a slow learner though, I've done this twice this week.