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I'm just checking in with all my August 2023 fellow surgery patients! I hope everyone is doing well and has been genuinely happy at 19+ months PO! I finally conceded that I'm probably not going to get to my "goal" since I've been stuck here for months now. I also like to think that if I were to have skin removal on all the places I need it (stomach, arms legs and butt) it would take me to goal. This puts me at where I was weight wise most of my adult life before I started gaining weight ten years ago. So, I'm happy with the wls results physically health wise, lol just not looks wise. I knew what to expect...but its still difficult to actually seeing it. Plus all the new aches and pains from past stress on the body and shifting lose joints is .... Great 😉 Again, I hope everyone is doing well and has adjusted to their new healthy life!

Brachioplasty six weeks out now. Still putting silicon gel on incisions BUT started wearing these compression sleeves last week that really help sequester the pain especially in the daytime. The throbbing, burning and uncomfortableness are still there - but the compression helps numb the intensity. Many surgeons do not use them for this procedure since they can open up the sutures. I waited 4 ½ weeks for them to heal better before I sleeved. Keeping busy with light housework, cooking, holiday cards, planning for holidays and the 30th anniversary gala for Spring 2025! It will be fabulous, and really planning something special for hubby after his patience, loyal loving care in this 2019 - 2024 weight loss journey + saga now with the arms! Like SSS, by far the worst. I do not take any meds all day accept for Arnica, then a Tramadol at night to sleep. I definitely think I will be an 8 - 10 week heal time girl.

Thank you for the feedback. I had over a dozen instances of toilrts full of blood in the hospital starting about 36 hours post op and last 24 hours, but no more since coming home. I will just keep an eye on it and make sure to bring it up to my dr on 4/24 at my 10 day followup if still prevelant.

I have been getting tattooed since I was 18 (so for 10 years now!), and I consider myself to be decently covered, but I have only had 1 tattoo since having surgery and it was so much more painful! My prep pre-surgery for a tattoo would be coming into the session armed with sugary snacks, but of course I can't do that now. I have a whole chest piece booked in for April, and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for preparing for a tattoo in a bariatric friendly way?

Yeah I have to do a B12 injection every two months also, forgot about that as I have had to do that for more than 10 years now.

Okay, but I’m asking because if I don’t have to do a surgery I won’t. I’m thinking ten years from now. When I’m 56 will I be back here now. At 275 my weight loss on zepbound has slowed. That’s ~45 lbs drop. But I don’t want to go through surgery to only get to 250 because if I gain 20 lbs in 10 years I’ll be back here.

I have my date 10 March 2025.i have started my yr off with a major weight loss already I am down almost 60lbs already by eating a bariatric diet already

It is annoying. I can tell you that for 10+ years I worked out the same, ate the same and was always a fitness + health nut. But 5 years prior to WLS it literally all stopped working, I was doing NOTHING different, and nothing worked. I was always the one telling people off for not working hard enough, until I was stuck in the same vicious cycle that I learned to be empathetic and that obesity is a chronic disease. I am eating between 1700-2000 calories now and maintaining a 80+ pound weight loss, I ate strictly 1700 at my heaviest and worked out daily, and I was at a BMI of 33. it's mind boggling, but WLS does restart your metabolism.

I had a very similar experience about a week to 10 days post sleeve surgery! It was awful, never had anything like it previously in my life! I had some San Pellegrino laxative very effective, it took a few hours, but worked very well! Sweet relief!!

i had arm lift, breast lift and tummy tuck in Canada, and paid roughly 15K CAD for all three (back in 2019); that's about 11K in today's US dollars. Mind you, i did get the panniculectomy portion of the tummy tuck covered by provincial insurance which i believe saved me about 6K CAD.

Keep going! Maybe keep logging food and bring it down a little. And over the next 4 months you will have lost at least 10 more lbs! Hopefully more! As long as I am getting smaller I am ok with it going slow. The last 3 months I only lost 9 lbs. Lost lots getting ready for surgery and right after. But am upping my calorie expenditure now and hoping I will meet my goal of being 154 by my year appointment in December. Good luck!! As my quote says on my profile, the only way out is THROUGH!! Stay intent on what you want to accomplish. You will do fine!

I’m curious to know what surgery all of you had. I had a conversion from sleeve to Sadie. My doctor told me that with this surgery 80% of people keep 90% of their weight off past 10 years just wondering how that actually Fehrs in the real world

I feel totally lost too I didn’t really get much after care apart from a cpl sheets of paper with some basic advice on. I have my six week follow up on 10 march 2025.

I so hear you on this! I stalled around that exact same time...9-10 months post-op, and it made me question everything! I was doing all the same things too but the scale refused to move. Then out of nowhere I dropped nearly a pound one week and the scale slowly started cooperating again! The body, i learned, can be weirdly stubborn when it thinks it's protecting you. I recently read this article that really helped me understand what’s going on like why the plateau happens and how to work through it. Sharing just in case it helps you too https://slimvive.com/breaking-through-your-weight-loss-plateau/ Also I still carry most of my weight in my belly too!

Making the decision to improve your health and reclaim your life is huge so congratulations. And yes starting now can start to get you into the right frame of mind and help you start establishing better habits and new routines. You don’t have to jump in with everything. Small changes are often easier to adopt and adapt to. Here are some ideas you could start with. Just pick a couple which you think you could begin to introduce. Finding time to be more active when you work full time, for long hours and sit all day. But you can carve out short blocks of time throughout the day. The little bits of 5 mins here 10 there add up so don’t think you have to find a solid 30 - 60 mins a day to improve your health. Go for a walk at lunch time even 10 mins is better than nothing. If you take public transport get off at the stop before your office or home. Take stairs not the lift. Walk up escalators. Park further away from where you’re going. A lot of us start off with these small changes and then build and incorporate more activity as they go on. I still do short boosts of activity (stretches and bands) and incorporate these other behavioural changes in my usual chores I do day to day. May be start reducing or dropping those late night snacks. Up your fluid intake. Reduce portion sizes. Up your protein intake. Avoid following any fad or social media trending diet tips, diets or food fear mongering. They usually don’t work, are never sustainable & not based in any truth. Have you found a surgeon yet?

Ugh yep my stomach is always making really loud noises about 5-10 minutes after I eat. Usually when I am around people they will look at me and I have to warn them beforehand because it catches them off guard 😂

It's really hard to properly design a workout program remotely since a lot of the things I would normally recommend would require some instruction. I also have no idea what sort of equipment you have available. That said, I'll try my best. Workout Splits: You really need to hit all the major muscle groups at least twice a week and preferably three times. Currently you're not doing this since you're doing an upper/lower split and training twice a week. That means most of your muscles are only getting hit once a week which is not sufficient for growth. If you can only lift twice a week, each of those days needs to be a full body routine. If you want to continue doing upper/lower splits, you'd need to lift 4 days a week (2 upper & 2 lower). There are other ways to break up workouts such as a Full/Upper/Lower, but those are really considered to be more advanced techniques so not really needed at this point. Out of all the possible options, I'd probably suggest Full Body on Mon/Wed/Fri as the most sensible. You'll get the best hypertrophy from that as a newer lifter. Exercise Selection & Programming: I'm going to base my suggestions off the premise that you'll be doing a full body workout as suggested. I also mostly picked from the exercises you were already doing because there's nothing wrong with those exercises and I assume you already know how to do them. Day 1: Lat Pulldown -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Leg Press -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Chest Press -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Hip Thrust -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Bicep Curls -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Calf Raises -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Tricep Pulldowns -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Day 2: Upright Row (Cable or machine) -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Hack Squat (or Leg Press if not available) - 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Incline Chest Press (flat is also fine if this is not an option. I mostly picked this because it will hit the upper pecs a bit more, as well as pull in the shoulders) -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Smith Machine Elevated Reverse Lunge (if needed, Hip Thrusts will be fine as well but single leg work is great for a lot of reasons) -- 3 x 8-10 @ 70-75% of 1RM with 1-2 RIR Machine or Cable Fly -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Pallof Press (Cable or Bands) -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Kickbacks (Machine or Cable) -- 3 x 12-15 @ 65-70% of 1RM with 2 RIR Notes: Make sure you introduce this workout plan SLOWLY. For the first two weeks, only do exercises 1-4 on each day. It's also fine to do a bit lighter weight than what I listed for those first 2 weeks. Make sure you're warming up properly. One of the biggest mistakes newer lifters make is not understanding how to warm up for lifting. Do some light cardio for 5-10 minutes, then do some dynamic stretching. Also, before starting your work sets, do one set at ~20% of 1RM, one set at about 40%-50%, and then maybe another at about 55-60%. This means you'll end up doing five to six sets total for each exercise. I'd probably suggest 20-40-60% for the first 4 exercise, and 20-50% for the last 3 exercises. The numbers like 75% of 1RM mean to do the exercise at that percentage of your 1 rep maximum. In other words, you need to determine what the maximum amount you can lift is and then do the math to determine how much weight you should be lifting for that exercise. RIR means Reps In Reserve. If it says 1-2 RIR, the idea is you need to be going until you think you can only do 1 or 2 more without failing. This is important because we don't want to go all the way to failure most of the time. Doing so creates a lot of load on our central nervous system and makes recovery more challenging. You'll notice that I changed the # of reps, % of 1RM and RIR for the last few exercises. This is because these are what we call "accessory exercises" and are somewhat less important. I want you to focus on the first 4 exercises the most. I didn't prescribe rest intervals on purpose. Between sets, just take a few minutes to let your body recover. If you find you can't get through the next set, try resting longer next time. Because there are day 1 and day 2 exercises, but 3 days a week you'll be lifting, you need to simply alternate. This means week 1, you'd do Day 1 on Monday, Day 2 on Wednesday and Day 1 again on Friday. The next week, you'd do Day 2 on Monday & Friday and Day 1 on Wednesday. it's important that you continue to push yourself in terms of the weight you are doing. We call this progressive overload. If the exercises start to feel easier, you need to increase the weight. If you don't, you'll stop growing. Rest is CRITICAL, so I'd suggest skipping the Les Mills classes. I just don't think you can properly do the above exercises at the weight you should be doing them at, and then turn around and participate in a class like that. I'd expect you to be worn out after the above sessions, and if you're not, then you're not lifting heavy enough. Don't do this for more than ~3 months. At that point, you need to change things up again. No lifting program is perfect and all of them will have some areas that could be done better. Further, some people respond better to certain exercises and not others. This is why having a trainer is honestly the best way since they can judge how well you are responding to certain things . We change things every now and again to even out imbalances, as well as make sure you are not stagnating. If you just don't like any of the exercise selections, there are always alternatives because regardless of what social media may have led you to believe, there's no such thing as "the best" exercise for any specific body part. This means if you find that one of these just isn't working, or you just can't stand doing it, we can change it. If you do stop the Les Mills classes, you may need to up the cardio work. I'd ideally like to see a minimum of 3 hours a week (3 one hour sessions), though don't try to jump to that amount right away. It would also be good to mix up the type of cardio you're doing, While uphill walking on a treadmill is good for you, it's pretty one dimensional. I'm obviously a big fan of running, but if that's not something you want to do, maybe biking or the elliptical would be good choices? Rucking would also be something for you to look into as there are lots of benefits to getting outside the gym for at least some of your exercise hours. As you can see, I could probably go on for a lot longer here, but this is enough for now. Best of luck and let me know if you have questions.

Finally hit over protein for first time in 5 weeks. I’ve not lost any weight in over 10 days. I’m eating around 500/600 calories a day in total since 27th January . I’ve lost around 10kgs since surgery should I be worried x

My whole life I used to think that. Through my adulthood (age 19-29) I was in great shape, worked out regularly, ate well and maintained a great physique. I always had the propensity to gain weight if I wasn't careful with how I ate and my activity level. I lost over 45 lbs and kept them off through staying active and eating well and my belief was, if I could maintain being in shape doing that, anyone can. It worked for me through 2 pregnancies and a whole decade. Fast forward when my hormones got out of control, I gained 10 kilos in 1.5 months, my weight kept going up, had a bad sports injury and in 5 years I was 30 kilos overweight. I still ate well and worked out 5 times a week but NOTHING WORKED and by nothing, I mean NOTHING not even injectables, not one pound lost, NADA, Zilch. I counted calories, walked 10k steps ...etc. the whole shebang. I was sad, depressed, so uncomfortable and I finally got how sometimes, you try your hardest but it just doesn't happen for you. It was so ironic because I was seen as the health guru who lectured people on how they should work harder and not create excuses (hard pill to swallow, I admit). I finally decided to give in the fact that my weight isn't going to budge dieting and working out like it did in the past. I bit the bullet and got the surgery. I lost a lot of weight fast, but went back to working out regularly and staying consistent and disciplined, I wouldn't have been this successful (not with just the weight lost, but my actual physique, being lean and fit and all) had I just gotten the surgery and depended on it to achieve what I had in mind, I had (and continue) to put in the work, choose to prioritize eating well, etc. Yes the surgery is a tool to HELP you lose weight and BUILD good habits. It doesn't do the work for you in the long run ,that is on you and how you utilize this tool that will determine your success. I would however (very general advise), suggest that before resorting to surgery, that one does try to see how far they can get naturally, and if they can't maintain/fall off the wagon/don't get to their goal weight or physique that they do utilize WLS, but it has to come with a mindset shift. I had that mindset, I just needed the kickstart. Evaluate where your body and MIND is because that is as important.

Good Evening everyone!!!! Today is Saturday December 14, 2024. I had the Gastric bypass surgery on 10/9/18. I started at 510, pre op weight was 420lbs, and my lowest weight was 261 lbs in october of 2020. I relocated to Upstate NY in August of 2019, to meet the love of my life and we've been together solidly for 5 years. When 2020 hit, of course we all went down. My epilepsy took over along with my depression issues, so I gave up. I have a eating disorder and did not accept it until after surgery. I fell back into my eating disorder, along with drinking alcohol. Fast forward to 2024, February hits and I decided to get back on the journey. I started at 486 lbs and now am down to 344 lbs. I want to continue, until i hit my lowest weight again, of 261 lbs. What I am looking for is an accountability partner. I am wanting someone to talk with daily, someone who will take advice and will give advice also, someone who will accept hard love and encouragement, also provide it. Its just me and my woman, she has her own health matters and is not on the same journey as i am. So, i am alone with this. I dont have friends locally. And ive tried groups on facebook, no success. So, if anyone is interested, let me know please! it will be a judgement free zone and I do understand that everyones journey is different and we all have different goals. 4

Surgery is in 4 1/2 days (10/01) and the nerves are real! I know logically that I have done everything they have asked of me, but I still keep thinking I've screwed up. Starting Weight- 350 Current Weight- 325 Still a few days remaining to see what what I can lose on 5 shakes a day for the next 4 days.

My lap band removal was terrible. I lost a lot of weight in the beginning and ended up gaining all my weight back and then some after a couple years of having the band. I kept it about 10 years. I had my band out last January and ended up having bypass last October. The band removal was very uncomfortable, i had a drain and I just felt overall terrible compared to bypass which was an easy surgery for me….that band was the Bain of my existence personally….bypass a lot lot lot better so far for me. Good luck and get that miserable thing out.

Stumbled across this community while doing some late-night research, and thought I'd say hi. I'm a 41-year-old union electrician and I've been dealing with Type 2 diabetes for about 12 years now, diagnosed when I was 29. Took me a few years to really get serious about it, and my A1C even crept up to over 10% at one point. Now I'm managing it with Metformin and daily Lantus shots, and my A1C is usually around 7.3%. My job keeps me pretty active, but managing blood sugar with a demanding work schedule and irregular meal times is still my biggest challenge. I don't know much about bariatric surgery, but I'm looking to learn more and see if it's something that could help me with my diabetes management. Glad to be here and looking forward to connecting with you all.

No I haven’t once I was discharged form hospital I was given 4 sheets of dos and don’ts and dieticians no but I can’t seem to get through. I had my bypass no on nhs in uk. have a 6 week appointment on 10 th march so I will speak to them then x thank you for taking time and advice x

Congrats on your success thus far!!! My stats are in my signature, but I had WLS in December 2019, which seems like a lifetime ago, although it's only been 5 years! I maintained at 112-118 for the first 4 years, and then last year I regained about 20lbs. I decided to try Mounjaro and quickly lost the 20lbs, and am back to maintaining, and this morning weighed in at 116 (daily weighing is a must for me! LOL!). I didn't really have an hurdles or obstacles, and I confess that I sometimes feel a little guilty that's in been so easy! I'm turned 50 this year, but I feel better than I felt when I was 30 (and look way better too! LOL!!) I also have had a few plastic surgeries along the way, which I also highly recommend if you can afford it. I'm a brand new me!! 🙂 Best of luck to you in your journey to a new YOU!!!