BlackBerryJuice

Congrats! 86 lbs, wow! How much of it post-op?

Good work! I can't imagine being at 22.9...

That's strange that you are pale, dizzy and clammy yet your pulse is low - usually your pulse gets really high in that situation. Normally I'd think of low blood pressure or low blood sugar, but they generally come with a fast heart rate. I don't have any advice other than to give your Dr. a call. Do you know what your pulse is normally? 45 may be normal for you (I get as low as 33 sometimes), in which case the 80 would actually be faster than it should be.

I'm with juliarh on that one. I had cravings but when I was finally able to have the food in question, it wasn't all that exciting. Not to say it tasted badly or anything, but no more food-gasms for me (and that's a good thing).

Get a ziplock baggie, hide it underneath the table, and scoop things in there when she looks away....lol.

I believe my doc clears you at 3 months. I started at about 1.5 months and weighted crunches at 2 - but don't tell anybody!

Pretty sure the only thing he forgot to pick up was Type 2 diabetes...

Have any of you noticed changes in your breast tissue after the surgery (other than loss of size, obviously)? My breasts became super-nodular, almost like a bag of grain or something. I went to get this lump checked out today and the doc actually decided to order an ultrasound, and she also said she felt that my breasts were very nodular. I was thinking maybe it's something to do with hormonal changes due to rapid fat loss, since fat makes a form of estrogen?

Just tried to upload them again and it worked. Thanks!

Could be, maybe you don't have the best thermoregulation or something? I'd suggest just wearing warmer clothes to bed and drinking most of your fluids hot. It gets pretty cold where I live and this time of year, I drink almost exclusively tea and hot water. You could also have an underactive thyroid, weight gain and being cold are 2 common symptoms. You can Google the others if you are concerned about that.

Where in Canada are you? Maybe I can help you locate someone.

Aug. 9th, 45 lbs down.

So I recently got dibs on a couple of free Velashape treatments with the help of a friend. She's really into cosmetic surgery and related stuff and she suggested it to me, so I figured, why not try it if it's free and FDA-approved. It's currently approved for "circumferential reduction of the thighs," which is exactly the area I need most help in. Their site says 85% of people had a reduction of half an inch or more (not much, but better than zero, right?). I looked it up on some medical databases and the average reduction in circumference was around 6-7% after 1 session. My thighs are 25", so it'd mean losing about 1.5", which would basically equal to losing a clothing size. The real question is - has anyone here tried it? The studies I read mentioned redness and temporary bruising and there was mentioning of "adjusting energy level to a level tolerable to the patient," which suggests this could be rather uncomfortable or painful. If no one here has had it, I guess I'll be the VST guinea pig for it...lol.

Hey, thanks! I have 5 scars. One of them is inside my bellybutton so it's not visible. Another one (in the epigastric area) is very small, the other 3 are slightly bigger. I've attached a crop of my stomach area with the scars, you can see all 4. Sorry the pic is small, I had the original resized, so this was the biggest I could get with the crop. Click on the thumbnail to make it bigger.

Ouch! I don't think ultrasound can rule out ALL gallbladder stones, by the way. I think you need to a) get endoscopy get your pancreatic lipase levels. Pancreatitis can result from stones (like Oregondaisy alluded to above) and pancreatitis will also present with pain in the upper abdominal region.

330 calories a day....pretty sure a newborn requires more than that! At first, I ate about 600-800. After about a month, once the swelling subsided and my stomach increased in size a bit, I started eating more. These days, I'm usually at about 1100-1200, with the range being between 1000 and 1400. I work out pretty hard about 5 times a week. It's worked well for me so far, but if you are entirely sedentary, 1400 might be getting a little too high. These extreme starvation diets just make you lose muscle mass, there's SO MUCH research on it out there, I don't understand why ANY health practitioner would recommend that someone eat that little! Less muscle mass equals slower metabolism (i.e. less weight loss later on) and looking like a melted snowman after you've lost weight, because most of that weight was muscle - which is what makes you look firm and shapely.

I don't count carbs. I eat fruit daily - today I've already had a banana and I'm sure I'll dip into this basket of grapes I got for a snack later in the day. I'll have a small pita with baba ghanoush before my workout this evening. I also let myself have sweets several times a week - like 2 squares of dark chocolate, or a scoop of gelato. I see lots of people really obsessing over carbs but losing at the same rate as me, so I just don't see a reason to torture myself when I can have the same results by eating a varied diet. And the concept of avoiding fruit and vegetables and counting carbs in pills is just beyond me. People are always like, "You can't have carrots! They are so high in sugar!" Well, show me someone who got fat by eating too many carrots and then I'll go low-carb...lol.

Also, while I was careful for the first 1.5-2 months or so not to try any of my old "trigger foods" (chocolate, ice cream, cookies - any sweets, really), I can now keep these things in the house and not think of them constantly. Right now I've got a box of truffles, box of butter cookies, and a few pieces of chocolate in the house and I don't have any desire to eat them. The truffles and the cookies have been here unopened for a week. Some days I'll want some chocolate and then just have 2 pieces, like a normal person, and then STOP. It's practically effortless. I've always envied those people who could just keep sweets in the house and not devour them instantly, and now I'm one of them! I actually just bought this chocolate cookbook and my boyfriend and I will make a chocolate flourless cake this weekend - I finally feel like I can make these treats and safely keep them in the house.

This is a very interesting subject for me, as I was a huge emotional eater pre-surgery and now I don't have that problem at all. I haven't noticed any substitute addictions, either. In fact, I actually went to see an obesity expert about possibly doing a research project about VSG as a tx for emotional eating in obese people, and he liked the idea, but said I'd have to do a master's to pull this off, which I don't want to do and don't need for my career. So it's a very real beneficial side effect. I've had maybe ONE episode of having a really stressful day and wanting to go buy a bag of chocolate and binge on it, but it was really more of an ingrained behaviour than truly wanting to do that. I was able to step back, look at that urge, and just say "I don't need it or want it and it won't taste or feel good, either." That's it! I started counselling right after my surgery, and the original topic was emotional eating, but now we don't even talk about it anymore - it just doesn't happen.

Yikes! I made a similar mistake, but with quantity rather than a certain food the other day. We went out with my boyfriend's friends who don't know about my VSG, and I always get self-conscious in those situations and often end up overeating - whether consciously or subconsciously. I had 4 BBQ wings and quite a bit of mixed greens - normally, I would've just stopped here. But then for whatever reason I decided to order dessert so that these people wouldn't think I was anorexic. Normally, my boyfriend and I would split one, but he ordered his own and was so stuffed he couldn't even finish that one. I don't even know why, but I proceeded to eat my entire dessert. I felt more or less ok until we got up to leave and then I barely made it home! I was actually worried I'd vomit on the sidewalk. I also had to go to the washroom and drop a big one (lol), but even after that I still felt terrible! I had to lie down and every time I moved for the next hour, I'd feel this ache in my stomach. I didn't feel like getting up or even reading a magazine until an hour had passed! It was brutal. It was the first time it's happened in a long time, I'd say at least a month and a half, so I was pretty mad at myself for overeating so blatantly when I've been so good with portions for such a long time!

My boyfriend never said flat out that he was worried I'd leave him or something, but I sensed that it's a concern. The amount of flowers I've been receiving since the surgery has been increasing in proportion to the amount of weight I lose, lol. The concern he DID voice was that I'd "become vain." I think I'm already kind of vain, though.