BlackBerryJuice

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...

"I was thinking of you, so I grabbed those:" 1) bag of Twizzlers 2) dark chocolate bar 3) Pretzel M'n'M's 4) Shortbread Cookies With friends like these, who needs enemies?

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.

OK, so you are losing a pound a day....how's that a bad thing? Would you EVER have lost that much on your own? And how long did it take you to pack on these 15 lbs? I venture to say a lot longer than 2 weeks. As far as comparing yourself to other people - someone who's 300-400 lbs will lose more pounds than you on average, but they also have lots more to lose. So I would step back, look at it rationally, and realize that you are losing VERY fast and there's nothing wrong.

I think you have to keep in mind that WLS patients are generally pretty high risk. All of them are obese, many severely so, and most will have comorbidities like diabetes, heart disease, etc. So I think your average WLS pt would skew the statistics of ANY surgery because of all these issues.

Thanks, guys. While I'm not at my goal weight yet, even if I didn't lose another pound, I'd still be content with the results of my surgery. I was actually able to get to this same weight last winter by exercising 2-3 hours a day and always being hungry, but the difference now is that maintaining this weight doesn't take over my life. I don't really have to deny myself that much. Some urges are still there due to ingrained bad habits, but 90% of the time I'm able to step back and say "You don't really want it or need it." The 10% of the time that I succumb to temptation (like last night - had 2/3 of a 3.5-oz Cadbury dark chocolate bar) I put things into perspective, realize this is WAY less than what I'd eat in that situation before, and that in the grand scheme of things, it won't make me put on weight - even with that chocolate, I had under 1300-1400 calories yesterday, for sure.

I think you addressed a lot of your own concerns by saying that you haven't followed the post-op diet perfectly and that you only recently began exercising. Both of those could be to blame for not reaching your goal weight. Also, I think it's important to consider whether your goal is realistic. E.g. if you are 6' tall, 150 lbs might actually be excessively thin. Also, what kind of exercise are you doing and what exactly and how much are you eating? I'd keep a food log for a few days and then use that for damage control. I don't know what kind of exercising you're doing, but if it's something like walking, maybe you need to step it up. Basically, bottom line is that it's hard to give much advice without knowing any details.

This is what I get while adding a pic to my album: An Error Occurred Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information. [#107148] The image upload failed, please contact a system administrator

I'm the exact opposite, I sometimes have to remind myself NOT to eat, especially if I'm home or somewhere else where food is quickly available. I definitely get hungry after not eating for 3-4 hours, although the hunger is not as intense as it was before the surgery.

1) Drove home from the airport - so day 4 2) Was able to sleep on my stomach around day 5 (with pain pill before bed); quit the pain pills after day 5 3) Started swimming about 2 weeks out - my surgeon said it was safe once the scabs fell off 4) I would say also around 2 weeks. Until then, I found that I'd get tired really fast and didn't really experiment with walking far from home for fear of having issues getting back 5) Hard to say, as it's not something that's usually part of my day

Today's pictures.