BlackBerryJuice

26 now, got sleeved at 25. It was nice to celebrate my birthday being at my thinnest since about 2001 or so! I was fortunate to have access to a lot of credit and be in a field where I know I'll have the $ to pay it off; I know this is not an option for most 20-somethings, and most of us probably don't yet have the comorbidities, so qualifying for insurance can be tough.

The only way I'd be motivated to do it is if I combined it with some other leisure activity (e.g. reading a book or watching TV) or if I signed up for something competitive. One of my friends is trying to lose weight now and since her mother died of cancer last year, she decided to sign up for Ride For the Cure. It's about 6 months away, and since it's impossible to bike outside, she's been training indoors with a stationary bike.

Bfast: Protein bar Lunch: risotto salad with salmon Snack: same thing Dinner: *sticks out pinky* coffee with Godiva white chocolate and banana liquer, croustilles au fromage (deep-fried crepes with cheese), slice of French bread, and 4 escargot in mushroom caps

I like to snack on Asian pears, bananas, baby carrots, or cucumbers. I have salads, too, they actually don't take up that much room! I just make sure to add a Protein in there. My favorite chicken salad is a rip-off from a restaurant (will post recipe in the recipe thread when I have time), but it's more time-consuming. A simple one I like consists of: raw spinach cooked and peeled shrimp avocado cucumbers lemon juice and salt

Well, I've crossed the overweight/normal weight barrier, so there have been quite a few NSVs lately. 1) Can fully cross my legs without getting uncomfortable at all. 2) Was in a clinical skills session where the doctor was using me to show the sternoclavicular joints and everybody in my group said, "WOW, you have such big clavicles, I can see everything!" 3) Running at 6.0 mph is too slow now - I used to struggle with 6.5 mph, but now it's my cruisin' speed! Haven't run any 5Ks or 10Ks since the surgery, but I suspect my time will improve quite a bit. I also walk way faster! 4) Went to an adult ballet class and was the fittest person there (not the skinniest, but definitely the strongest). The teacher said "You clearly have had some ballet training, so you should check out a higher level class." For someone who's always been fat and clumsy, that was huge! To top it all off, I placed in 4th level ballet even though I had only had the equivalent of 1 level of training. Now that the weight isn't getting in the way, my natural strength and flexibility are finally visible! 5) I don't even think about walking a couple of flights of stairs, I don't get out of breath at all. 6) My "skinny clothes" of yore are all at Goodwill or sold on Ebay now, because they were all way too big! 7) I can wear regular boots instead of special-ordering wide-calf ones and paying 3x the price.

Wow! 20 --> 5 is crazy! Good for you!

I don't feel that my sleeve has stretched very much in the last few months. There was quite a big difference between the first month and say, 3rd, when the swelling had gone down. But if my sleeve has stretched since the 3rd month, it hasn't been to an extent that's easily noticeable. Around month #1, I could have 1 egg for breakfast; now I can have 2. I've seen some people mention that their sleeve appears to be tighter in the morning, and that generally seems to be the case to me, as well. I never have a problem eating an entire Protein bar for my afternoon snack, but this morning, I couldn't finish my Breakfast bar. My stomach capacity generally seems to vary from one day to another. Some days it feels like I'm back to first month post-op, and other days, I can almost eat a normal serving of food. Same thing with hunger - some days I could eat every 2 hours, other days, I barely want to touch food. I hate hamburgers, but on one occasion about 2 months ago I had a grilled chicken sandwich. I took the top bun off and could only finish half of the sandwich in one sitting. I doubt I'll be able to have an entire chicken sandwich, with the bun and all, anytime soon.

I don't count carbs at all, just try to eat enough protein.

You didn't fix yourself, a surgeon fixed you. If not for surgery, you would've remained one of those big people who disgust you. I don't know if you are snotty, but definitely a hypocrite.

Your metabolism will eventually adjust to fewer calories, so you don't waste away. I remember watching a documentary about Japanese Buddhist monks - they only ate about 1000-1200 calories a day at the monastery, and did physical labor for most of the days, as the monastery tends to be almost entirely self-sufficient. None of them were fat, but none were emaciated, either - their BMRs just dropped to sustain them on that amount of food. My greatgreatgrandfather spent 10 years in a hard labor camp doing construction and other tough jobs for 12-14 hours a day in freezing weather, and their meals consisted of one loaf of bread and a bowl of soup a day; some days he'd be able to do extra chores for a 2nd loaf, but that's it. The human body adjusts amazingly.

For those of you who've had rings resized, how much was it? And did they give you the excess metal back?

Oatmeal with milk is great - some protein and lots of slow carbs to give you energy throughout your workout.

I agree with you, the first few months out, you can eat so little, there's no way you could get enough nutrients from 3 meals a day and no snacks/protein shakes between meals. Gotta make sure you get the protein in so you don't lose too much muscle mass! And I think it's fine to snack on low-calorie, healthy items like vegetables or fruit. No one ever got fat from eating cucumbers!

RNY is a scary surgery, the long-term consequences are very unpredictable. One of my friends is a resident doctor and she had to take care of a woman who had the RNY and, 20 years after her surgery, ended up a complete wreck with major electrolyte abnormalities that made it almost impossible for her to function outside the hospital. Every time they'd discharge her, she'd be back within days! To top it all off, you can't even say "well, at least she wasn't obese for 20 years so she didn't die of a heart attack a decade ago," because she was still obese! Granted, my friend didn't know how big she was before (maybe she was 500 lbs before her surgery), but talk about a crappy deal.

How light? If it's beige, then there's something wrong with your gallbladder (most likely stone somewhere).

I never stuck to these recommendations and am doing just fine. On the contrary, if I don't sip something with my meals, I'm much more likely to experience the "stuck" sensation and the discomfort that goes with it, so I always have at least a few sips of liquid with my meals, unless it's something like an apple that's high enough in moisture on its own.I was in a rush to eat before class yesterday and didn't have time to get something to drink, and for the first 30 minutes after eating some beef curry (not that dry of a food, either!), I felt that I was either going to throw up or my eyeballs were gonna fall out of my skull. Thanks, but no thanks!

One of the reasons we have to go heavy on protein is because your body essentially starts to resorb your own muscle mass for protein if you consistently lack protein in diet. Whenever people lose weight (especially if it's done without resistance exercise), they lose some muscle mass, but they lose less muscle if they eat a high-protein diet. When you are low on protein, you start burning your own muscle, so even though you lose scale weight like crazy, you are killing your metabolism and making yourself weaker in the long term. This is why you screw up your body so much when you go on fad diets, like the cabbage soup diet - you lose a ton of weight in a short amount of time, but then your metabolism slows down. Therefore, it's important to keep eating lots of protein, otherwise, you might lose more weight, but hinder your goals in the long-term.

I have yet to get around to it, this semester I'm taking 4 (maybe 5) dance classes, so I think this will have to wait til the summer....except for I still have a 1-month bootcamp pass that I was planning to use in the summer, so maybe not even then!

Great, I'm paranoid about this. I don't have reflux very often, maybe a few days a month (I pop a Nexium and I'm good in half an hour), but before the surgery, I almost never had it.

I'm also an atheist. Best movie ever - "The Invention of Lying."

I discovered Joy Nash's vids a few years ago and a recent post reminded me of them. If you haven't come across them, enjoy! I think a lot of us will be able to relate to what she's talking about.

SN............Starting Wt........Current.......Goal.........Lbs to Goal Avilda..............275.................187..............177..............10 BlackBerryJuice 208.............153..............145..............8 Brendasgonnalose..335.....236.............225...............16 Cwalker..........250.................180..............170..............10 Drysdale .........202.................186..............174...............12 Ibejjo...............249..................249............229................20 Juliarh.............230..................230..............215...........15 Kimmes............239..................222..............200............22 Kgremmy.........225.................210..............199..............11 LeslieH...........212..................212.............199..............13 LilMissDiva.......235..................235.............220..............15 MINI-Me...........203..................125.8...........125.............0.8 & holding Mommy2Girls....275.................240..............228..............12 Moni luv..........190.................190..............178..............12 MRSKOUBIK....317..................283.............267..............16 PamelaAM . . . .250. . . . . . . . 200. . . . . . .190. . . . . . . .10 pattimomof3nj..203.4..............167.1..........155...............12.1 Sailorgirl...........240.................220..............200..............20 Sleeve 4 me...166..................166.............156................10 Yolanda240.....236.................203..............170..............33 I hope to hit goal by then (145). 8 lbs in 1.5 months should be attainable.

I'm interested, but it'd depend on the time/place. Unfortunately, flying from Canada is expensive, so the prices would also play a role. I also vote for the summer (June/July) - I will have some free time during those 2 months, but I won't know when exactly until later in the spring.

Ha, my mother asked me the exact same question my first day in town (she hadn't seen me since the surgery). NO WAY! I got to 165 on my own last year (I am now 153) and it was a BATTLE. I found it basically impossible to get to my goal weight because your weightloss slows down so much when you get close, and you are SO hungry and stressed out all the time, you just can't power through a plateau anymore. Now if I plateau, it doesn't bother me, because I'm not torturing myself. I eat what I want when I want it, so I don't feel like I'm killing myself for nothing if I don't lose fast enough or whatever. I have so much more free time now that I don't need to exercise like 10 hrs a week to maintain my weight like I had to last year! Oh and did I mention when I got to 165, I also got back up to 208 in under 6 months? While no one is safe from the threat of regaining some weight years after this surgery, I can tell you right now that you won't be packing on 10 lbs a month after this, you'd have to get a feeding tube with frappucinos in it to make it happen.

I eat more than most people on here. It's not really a skin issue for me (I agree with everyone who said it'll tighten up either way in the end), I just didn't want to lose muscle mass and become malnourished. I also didn't want to slow my metabolism so much that I'd experience the same struggles I had pre-surgery, where I'd pack on 5 lbs each time I ate a candybar. I seem to have avoided all these pitfalls. It's hard to assess the speed of my weightloss at this point, as I'm almost at goal and once people get close, they lose a lot slower, anyway. But when I look at the overall loss or the loss I had in the first 3 months, I've lost weight at the same rate as the average person on here around my starting BMI. As I'm getting closer, my weightloss has slowed down to about 1 lbs a week. But considering how close I am to goal and the fact that I haven't been able to work out at all for 2 weeks (out of the country), I was quite pleased getting on the scale this morning and realizing I lost 2 lbs during these 2 weeks of drinking champagne and eating pate. Food here is also quite different, I'm drinking 6% milk instead of the 1% I drink at home, and EVERY meal involves copious amounts of bread and baked goods, so I was surprised to see any weightloss at all. My family and friends have already all told me not to lose any more weight, and I'm pretty content with how I look now, even though losing a few more pounds off of my thighs in particular would look better, so I don't really have any pressure to lose lots more weight coming from any direction. It's more the vain desire to be able to wear booty shorts one day just to say I did and wanting to jump higher during my ballet class, haha.