BlackBerryJuice

What happened to your ribs?

I agree. You'll probably start losing weight once you lay off the elliptical machine for a while and add some calories (fish oil, honey, juice, whatever).

I just picked boiled thigh meat (which is very soft) and then chewed every piece like 30 times so it turned into mush. I find that the difference between the full liquids and mushies is pretty blurred. Like, how come I can have yogurt on full liquids, but I can't have pureed vegetables that are the exact same consistency as the yogurt?

Ouch, it hurt just to read your post! I hope you heal quickly.

You look really happy in those vids!

I don't think you're stalling because you are eating high-fat items. Unless you are having 10 sticks of cheese a day, it shouldn't be a problem. Your body needs fat to function - I actually take fish oil on days that my fat intake through food falls under 15 grams. I'm at 2.5 weeks, but am slowly introducing "normal foods." Some things I eat other than the things you mentioned are non-fibery fruits like melon and watermelon; cottage cheese; various juices; yogurt and various milk products like kefir; soft sashimi (pretty much anything other than squid and octopus is soft); boiled chicken went down great today. I'm at 800-900 calories a day and have lots of energy - already started swimming and find myself having the urge to go for walks even if I already worked out earlier in the day. I know some other folks here eat like 500-600 calories, but this amount seems to work well for me, both in terms of weight lost and energy levels.

Ditto re: caffeine. And as far as sugar goes, I add honey or agave nectar to my yogurt for sweetness; and you can always use Splenda if you don't want the calories. Personally, I find that without honey and fish oil, it's hard for me to reach a decent amount of calories for the day.

I don't know much about John Goodman, other than having heard about his weightloss on the forum. Now, I don't doubt that it's entirely possible to lose 100+ lbs via diet and exercise - I know 2 people in real life who've done it, and one of them is over 60 (he did Optifast). However, neither of these people is SKINNY - they both could definitely lose another 30-50 lbs - AND they've lost it over a much longer period of time, more like a year. It's the 4 months and sample size thing that screams "BS!" to me.

I think I'm gonna write an angry e-mail to Allure to chastise them for feeding their readers BS. Lisalu, mind if I use that quote of yours? LOL.

I feel you, I went all out and took swimsuit pix. In a swimsuit that fit me well at about 30 lbs less than I was the day I took the pictures, so I'm totally busting out of it. I'll post them when I'm one month out and have some progress pictures to compare them to. The difference is already huge (pun intended).

Yeah, portions in the US are pretty outrageous. When I moved to Canada, I noticed 2 things: 1) way fewer extremely obese people - I don't think I've seen a 500-lb man on a scooter once here, whereas in the US it was a weekly occurence 2) smaller portions at restaurants. I firmly believe that the 2 are related. However, even so, portions in Canada are still too large. I'm still blown away at things like clam chowder in a BREAD BOWL. Where I'm from, it's common to have some bread with your Soup, but in my family it was a SLICE of bread less than 0.5" thick. Here, people eat the entire LOAF of bread with their soup! :s

Can you give us an example of what you are eating and how much?

Hm, this is a very interesting observation! I wouldn't touch the Jerusalem clinic with a 10-ft pole, so I'm pretty irked that my post is being used to advertise someone who I believe is a danger to gullible patients.:mad0:

This has nothing to do with WLS, but give me permission to vent here, as well. I've shed my share of toxic friends in the past. Just recently I stopped talking to a former friend of mine after noticing that pattern of always taking and never giving anything back and generally extremely immature behaviour. For example, she would always complain that I wouldn't come out to her town to see her, when I live 2 hours away and am very busy with school during the year, and she's a stay-at-home mom. Then the one time I was able to find some time to come visit her, she suddenly stopped returning my calls, and, later I realized, was actually screening my calls. I asked a mutual friend to call her and she picked up, but she didn't answer my call 5 minutes earlier. So naturally, I never went to see her. Then a week later she had our mutual friend (!) call me and give me some BS story about how she was busy. She couldn't even be bothered to call herself! I took an inventory of all things, such as the fact that it was ALWAYS me who had to take the time and gas money to come down and see her; it was ALWAYS me who offered to pay (and paid) for our meals out when I came out to visit, even though I'm a student living off of loans; the fact that, again, despite being a student, I spent a good $100 on gifts for her baby; and the fact that all she ever did was whine and act like a 12-year-old - and I stopped talking to her. Sometimes I felt bad, though, knowing she's stuck at home alone - she doesn't have anybody other than her boyfriend in that town. The other day, our mutual friend had a birthday, so I went to his Facebook to wish him a happy birthday. The posting right below mine was from my ex-friend saying something along the lines of "Happy birthday! So excited to see you this winter! It will be so nice to hang out without THAT BITCH!" Will be nice to see who pays for the outings now that "THAT BITCH" is out of the equation! Some people are genuinely immature, mean, and toxic.

Checked out Dr. Pompa's website...she's pretty hot! Hehe. After looking at her qualifications, I'd have no qualms about using her as my surgeon, although I'm a happy Dr. Aceves patient myself.

I think you should limit the number of people who you tell about the surgery if you are concerned about the "I told you so's." I wasn't going to tell my parents until after, but then I felt like a bad daughter for keeping secrets from them and told them the day before I headed to Mexicali...the end result was that they drove me to tears, made me incredibly stressed, and prevented me from getting sleep the night before I flew out (my mother actually called me at 2:30 am to say I'd get stomach cancer!), which made for a miserable first day in Mexicali. I absolutely regret telling my parents about it, so I say, don't tell too many people before you go. Tell 2 or 3 people in case something happens, so that people can fly out to be with you, take care of your affairs while you are in the hospital, etc, but that's it. Regarding doing it all on your own....I lost 50 lbs last year the old-fashioned way (i.e. hungry, stressed out, and exhausted all the time and sacrificing time with friends for the stupid gym). Mind you, I was still a good 20-30 lbs overweight after losing all that weight, but maintaining it required me to starve and exercise like a maniac. Then I learned more about obesity in medical school and started fearing for my ability to keep the weight off. The physician who lectured us is a local obesity expert (non-surgeon) who's a huge advocate for the obese and a big supporter of the surgical approach to weightloss. He flat out told us "If any of you have lost a significant amount of weight recently and manage to keep it off for the next 5 years, please e-mail me, as you are one of a kind and I would love to meet you in my office." After the stats he gave us (only 2% of obese people who try to lose weight the old-fashioned way succeed over the course of 5 years) and the information about the physiology of obesity (e.g. significantly higher ghrelin production, leptin mobilization, etc), the whole obesity surgery thing started to make sense for me and I felt like I could comfortably suggest it to my future patients who struggle with obesity. Of course, 6 months later I had put almost all of those 50 lbs back on, just as the doctor predicted, and if I hadn't had the surgery, I'm sure I would've gained an extra 10. So armed with a decade and a half of experience battling my weight, I had no qualms about exploring surgical options to deal with my problems. Of course, I am seeing a counselor to prevent emotional eating, as well, but I really feel like dealing with the physiological issues behind my eating first was the right step to take.

I'm 2 weeks out and while I'm still careful and definitely don't take any huge gulps, I'm finally at a point where I no longer have to worry about dehydration from not drinking enough. I can probably finish a glass of water in an hour.

I can't stand Lean Cuisine. I mistakenly bought 3 last year and threw out the first one I tried after one bite. I then attempted to feed them to my boyfriend, who'll eat anything, and he said "I can't believe the crap you women will eat to try to lose weight" and refused to eat it, lol. So the other 2 went in the garbage, as well. If you have a Safeway in your area, one thing I enjoy there is their frozen vegetable lasagna. It's pretty low in calories and has lots of veggies in it (i.e., fiber). I think one tray would feed a sleever for a week, lol.

The Unjury unflavored one is fine. Seems to have a slight sweetness to it, though.

Best wishes from Alberta!

So as I'm struggling to get enough protein on the clear liquids phase, I remembered an old article in a bodybuilding magazine that mentioned that one can use pasteurized egg whites as a source of protein to mix with other drinks. I just tried 1/4 cup of them with 1/2 cup juice and I can't tell the difference in taste or texture, but I'm getting 7 g of protein with my drink! You should be able to buy a carton at any major grocery store (just confirm they are pasteurized, so you can have them straight out of the carton).

Literally strips. You put them on your tongue and they dissolve within a minute. The taste's not bad.

Consider eggs and egg whites as a protein source. They go down pretty easy.

I couldn't walk more than 3-4 blocks without getting exhausted and light-headed until like 10 days out. I'm finally at a point where I run most of my errands on foot, but so far I'm still driving to the university. Normally I'd walk - it's about 3 miles - but I'm still not sure I can handle it at 2 weeks post-op.

Well, that's a relief - the way you were describing it, it sounded like a staph infection, but I didn't want to post that and freak you out before you saw the doc. At least it's simply uncomfortable rather than dangerous.