Search the Community

I had lap band 21 years ago. Through the years I lost 120 lbs. 60 of those the last three years after I retired from teaching. My band has slipped and food is sitting in my esophagus. So it has stretched out, and my reflux is bad and I have to have the band removed. I am freaking out that I will gain the weight back. It has been part of me for so long that I feel funny having it removed. But I also don't want to have esophagus problems and can't keep getting up in the middle of the night with terrible reflux. Has anyone gone through this? Did you gain your weight back? Any hints and suggestions? Thanks. Deanna

Hey everyone! I had my surgery on the 9th! Everything went really well, I’m still a little sore, but it gets easier every day. The biggest challenge has been the protein shakes, while they were good at first, I have begun to have a dislike for them. Tomorrow is mashed potatoes, soups, and creamy peanut butter! Looking forward to that immensely. So far I haven’t experienced any nausea or vomiting. I already feel a change in my weight I’ve lost 25 lbs between my preop and post op diet. Once I start working out the weight should fall off. Thanks to everyone who greeted me and sent their well wishes!

I feel you on the going backwards thing, honestly, I'm at a point where I'm like, I should just start selling feet pics haha, kidding I will work on rewriting my budget and not buy as many protein drinks, the money for the drinks will be used for more solid pick, my friend has a Costco membership, and said she'd take me, I can buy some frozen foods in bulk to keep frozen for easy meals, I will see what recipes I can do and hopefully after a few weeks, I will be in a much better spot, thanks for the food ideas

Thanks for the information. I'm a Gym Rat, but my surgeon told me I had to wait 6 weeks before I go back to swimming and cycling, and I have a personal trainer working with me on strength training so I lift weights well. I'm getting in over 80 grams of protein with my protein water and doing a lot of walking and only 3 days post op now. It has been a wild ride so far, and the surgeon called me last night to see how I was doing and checking my glucose numbers and pain...that was a shocker, who does that? My surgeon does!! He is a people person, that's way cool! Anyway, thanks again for your support, and everyone's support. I'm starting my new life happy.

My 5 penny worth of advice for what its worth - Your stall will eventually break and untill you get used to them they are scary. Do your best to eat as well as you can afford. I dont know if the news is fake or not but I beleive eggs are expensive in the US but a few boiled eggs are always handy in the fridge, eat them like apples or squash them in mayo with tiny melba toast. As @Arabesque said pre cooked chicken is super easy to grab with a small salad. Salmon and tuna is good too. I love a chunk of cheese with a sliced apple and a few grapes with cream cheese is a delicious dippy snack

Unfortunately so many are struggling financially these days all over the world. Cost of living is skyrocketing everywhere & we have to do what we can to survive. I swear I go backwards every week. I am with @SpartanMaker in regards to meal prepping ahead. I love my freezer & my microwave. My freezer is filled with food I have cooked and frozen in single serve portions. I did this from early out from surgery. At most all I have to do is reheat the meal and zap some vegetables or make a quick salad. I can have a nutritiously cooked meal in 5 minutes or so. Easy peasy. As most workplaces have a microwave, grab a meal from the freezer & reheat it at work for lunch. For example pre cook some chicken tenders and freeze, then in the morning grab the chicken tender and pop it in a container with a few cherry tomatoes, some lettuce leaves, a few slices of cucumber, … done. I loved mince dishes because you can add lots of vegetables: meat balls, savoury mince, taco filling, etc. so you can eat as a complete meal or add to a taco shell or wrap if you want/can. And soup is great too for the same reason (protein & vegetables in one). And yes home cooked foods are often less expensive. For example I made pea & ham soup last weekend. I made around 18 portions (I wasn’t interning to make that much but 🤷🏻‍♀️) and it cost me $18.80 Aust (split peas, frozen peas, pearl barley, an onion and a ham hock) so about a $1 a serve.

I mainly rely on shakes because it's much easier, I work 2 jobs and I'm up and out by 6:40am, getting home by 10:30pm/11pm, its just easier to grab a shake while I'm driving to my jobs, I do have a more stable meals during the weekends and if I can, meal prep so I can have some food for my lunch break, I know that I need to eat more but some night I get home so exhausted, I only have enough energy to drag myself to bed, with my budget I can prepare for about 6 days, but those are usually for the work week Maybe not the best explanation, and maybe I could make an effort to cook more but I have 2 jobs for a reason, I'm broke and I budget out all my expenses to the cent

Congrats, you've done an awesome job so far! I'm going to tell you now; transitioning to maintenance is HARD. It's scary to start eating more, it's hard to know how much to eat, and it can be challenging for some to eat all the food they actually should be eating. I would also STRONGLY, STRONGLY encourage to to work up to at least 1 hour of cardio 3 days a week and 1 hour of strength training 2 days a week if you are not already doing this level of exercise or more. The data is crystal clear here. Those individuals that get at least the amount of exercise I listed are significantly more likely to be able to maintain their weight loss. Scientists don't entirely know why this level of exercise is needed (it's almost double what someone that was never obese needs to maintain weight), but the most likely explanation at this point has to do with the fact that exercise affects your body in a couple of ways: Regular exercise changes the way the brain regulates hunger and metabolism. Simply put, most of us got as big as we did pre-surgery because our brains weren't good at telling us when to stop eating. Exercise seems to help change the way your brain understands and interprets these signals. Exercise also lowers stress and systemic inflammation, two huge triggers for overeating. Best of luck!

First, let's differentiate between a stall (what you're going through right now), and a plateau. A stall is just a temporary fluctuation in overall weight and is not indicative of an issue. Stalls are perfectly normal and to be expected. After all, your bodyweight is made up of lots of other stuff besides fat, so fluctuations are to be expected. More than likely, you actually have continued to lose fat the entire time, it's just being masked by a concomitant rise in some other component of your overall body weight. The most likely candidates would be fluid retention, or stool weight. Most of the time for a stall, I wouldn't recommend any adjustments since it's unlikely that there is really any issue with fat loss. A plateau is like a stall, but longer. I typically wouldn't consider it a plateau until you've hit more like 6 to 8 weeks without any loss. In that instance, it would be hard to argue the fat loss was being masked by something else. There are things we can do to work through a plateau, but IMO it's too soon for you to worry about that yet.

Usually people experience their first stall at around the 3 week mark +/- and they can last 1-3 weeks. However this isn’t a hard and fast rule. There are some who experience small stalls of only a few days. I was one who wouldn’t see any loss on the scales for only a handful of days and then would drop again. I noticed this simply because I weighed myself daily and recorded my loss. As you weigh once a week you may have missed a brief plateau at around that three week mark and you are having a larger more average length stall now. Your friends may not have noticed stalls if they weighed once a week or less frequently. The only thing you can rely on is regardless of how often you stall or how long there last they will break. Just stick to your plan & everything will be fine when your body is ready to start losing again. Is there a reason you are only eating one real meal a day and your other meals are shakes? At almost three months post surgery most of your nutrients should be coming from real food not shakes. A shake should only be to supplement your protein intake or as an occasional convenient meal alternative (work commitments, travel, etc.). I also wonder if that could impact your weight loss and the length of your plateau. Personally I never had another shake after the first 2 week liquid stage & was eating real food meals from week 3 post surgery. By around week 8 I was eating all meats (fish, beef, chicken, pork, lamb) & 1 or 2 vegetables for lunch and dinner and eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. This is when you should be introducing better food choices and eating habits for the long term. This would be worth a conversation with your dietician & surgeon.

Hello, I had my surgery back on 2/20, so I'm a little less than 3 months post op, so far I have lost a little over 50lbs(yay), I was just wondering, how soon do people start hitting a stall? I weigh myself weekly and for the last 3 weeks I have been at 266, I wasn't sure if this was too soon I've had friends and coworkers who's also done the surgery and they said they didn't start hitting a plateau until almost a year in My diet consist of a protein drink for breakfast, a snack around 10:30, usually a babybel or a sugar free jerky stick, lunch would either be chicken or fish with cactus, another snack around 3pm and when I get home (6pm) I do another protein drink, on days I have to work my 2nd job and get home after 10pm, I add a 3rd protein drink Work out, I still do my hour walk, unless I work my 2nd job, then it's only a 30 min walk during my lunch hour at my 1st job That has been my schedule for the last month in a half, so I wasn't sure if I need to modify anything or maybe increase my walking, any suggestions would be appreciated

Help! I have stalled for the last 4 weeks and haven't lost anything. I am 8 months post op.

I have stalled at 8 months. What can I do differently?

I realised my response above was a bit lacking on practical recommendations. Let me try to summarize what I'd suggest: Since you're right where I'd want you to be in terms of weight loss per month, don't change anything at this point. Only consider changing if you find the weight loss completely stops for 2 months or more. If weight loss does stop for at least 2 months, I'd actually recommend UPPING calories by 250-300 calories a day. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, especially considering that a negative energy balance is the only way to lose weight, but let me explain. Remember when I said above that one of the main jobs of our metabolic regulation system is to keep us from dying? No matter what we do, our metabolism slows when we diet. The rationale behind upping calories (by a small amount), is that we want to convince that system that the "bad times" have passed, and it's okay to ratchet up metabolic processes again. I'd recommend eating this increased calorie amount for at least a month, but two months would be better. Somewhat surprisingly, most people won't gain weight if they do this because their metabolism will increase to compensate. After that diet break, only then do we drop calories for a month or two in order to drop some more weight. You can keep up this intermittent dieting (not to be confused with intermittent fasting), until you get to your goal weight. I know this sounds like a slow process, but I promise, in the long run it's actually faster than if you just tried to keep cutting calories to get to your goal. Please keep exercising for your health, but also so that once you do get to your goal, you'll have a much easier time maintaining the loss. I would strongly recommend a minimum of 3 days per week of aerobic exercise and 2 days per week of strength training. This will set you up really well to maintain weight, as well as for excellent health as you get older. Don't be afraid to seek out a good mental health counselor. None of us got as big as we were by having a healthy relationship with food. The vast majority of people that fail to lose weight or that regain lots of weight after bariatric surgery do so because they fall back into old poor eating habits.

1kg a month is perfect right now. Instead of thinking in terms of a specific number you should be losing, think in terms of a percentage of your overall weight. This has an advantage in that the actual number to shoot for drops as your weight goes down. The ideal amount for most people would be one to two percent per month (and certainly no more than three percent). This is right where you're at. Believe it or not, slower is actually better here. The faster your weight loss, the more likely you are to be causing your body to decide you're starving to death. When this happens, your body starts doing things that slow down your metabolism to try to keep you from dying. Of course we know intellectually that we're not actually dying, but your body's metabolic regulation system doesn't know that. It's an amazing system, but it was designed before we had almost instant access to unlimited amounts of highly palatable foods. Thanks for clarifying on the new goal. 65kg sounds like a good goal for now and there's nothing wrong with adjusting up or down even more as you get closer to that. Regarding diet, calories and macros, I'd obviously tell you to defer to your dietitian, though I will say I'm very surprised by the recommendation to lower your protein. When dieting, there are literally hundreds of studies that show the advantages of eating more protein. You should know that overall, I personally am not a huge fan of tracking calories. I know that some people here seem to do so effectively, but for me it just does not work. As I mentioned, most of us aren't very good at actually tracking calorie intake accurately. Even more important to me, none of us have any way at all to know how many calories we are actually burning in a day so tracking intake is only showing you one side of the energy balance equation. Plus, energy expenditure can be highly variable day to day, so even if you did somehow know the exact amount you burned today, it's not going to be the same in one month or one year from now. With all that said, if tracking is working for you, don't change it. Do keep in mind that you may have to reduce calories as you continue to lose since the biggest contributor to metabolism day-to-day is body size. Regarding exercise, I'm going to recommend you stop thinking of exercise as part of your weight loss goal. It simply doesn't work. I don't say this lightly, nor to discourage you, simply to state fact. We have a huge amount of evidence now to show that our bodies tend to slow down in other ways in response to exercise. This is something called the constrained energy model. On a practical level, exercise is still critically important for your overall health. In addition, we do have a lot of data that shows people that have lost a lot of weight are better able to maintain the loss if they exercise on average 1 hour or more per day. In short, do it because you'll feel better, because you'll live longer, AND because once you reach goal, you'll have a much easier time keeping the weight off. I think I can speak for most of us here on this board that we have experienced the exact mental anguish you're feeling. It's normal to worry and let doubt creep in, so know that you are not alone, Mental health is not my area of expertise, so my advice will always be please seek help from a mental health professional if you think you need it.

Hi! Thank you for the detailed questions — I appreciate the time you took to break things down. Here's a full update from my side: 1. Weight Loss Progress: I’m currently losing around 1 kg per month. I know that’s on the slower end post-bypass, but I’m trying to be patient with the process. 2. Goal Weight: My initial goal was 75 kg, and I’ve now revised it to 65 kg. I haven’t updated my profile yet, but that’s the target I’m working toward. 3. Typical Daily Intake: I eat clean, home-cooked food, and I really focus on quality over quantity. Breakfast: 2 eggs and a small side like labneh or some veggies Snack: ½ scoop of whey protein or something light Lunch: Chicken breast or thigh (120–150g) with cooked dhal or sautéed vegetables Dinner: A high-protein meal like steak, paneer, or fish with non-starchy veg I do snack or “cheat” here and there — I’m no angel — but I genuinely try to make good choices most of the time. 4. Caloric and Macro Goals: I was aiming for 115g protein daily, but just yesterday my dietitian told me to reduce that to 65g. I’m adjusting and seeing how my body responds. I try to stay between 1000–1200 kcal, but again, I focus more on food quality than strict numbers. 5. How I Track: I track everything using ChatGPT, not traditional apps like MyFitnessPal. I log my food manually, with weights in grams, and I try to stay mindful and consistent. 6. Activity Level: My workouts have reduced lately. I try to weight train twice a week, and I walk or move throughout the day, but I’ll admit I’ve been slacking a bit. I’m trying to get back on track. 7. Mental State (the honest part): Physically, I look fantastic. But mentally, I feel like I’m failing. I have really bad anxiety that I’m doing something wrong — that I should’ve reached my goal already — and that maybe I’m overeating without realizing it. This fear honestly clouds my progress. I know I’m not alone in this, and I’m trying to work through it. Any advice, especially from others who’ve had slow progress or battled this anxiety, would mean a lot.

At the start of my healing, I had to switch to sleeping on my back, which was tough. It took me about 3-4 weeks before I felt comfortable enough to sleep on my stomach again

For some… cami is hyperemisis syndrome can be problematic as well. Also during your first few weeks… there is a lot of mental health triggering with coming off your food addiction, from conversion to new addictions, hormonal changes, poorly studied effects on gastric motility and canibus mixed with a kinda ridiculously large surgery, and taking what is considered a depressant and appetite stimulant…cannibus is great for many folks and diseases I am sure, but… until we know more of what we are doing….it’s not a great idea. Sorry. For some it may be great, but it’s another bump in the road and we’re not sure about the car during the first few weeks.

My favorite tofu dishes are either agadashi tofu ( firm tofu, drain, pat it dry, roll it in corn starch and bake or fry it) mix 2tbs soy sauce, water, mirin in a bowl with 1 tsp ground fresh ginger, drop tofu in and eat immediately. or tofu tofrites: extra firm tofu (drain, pat dry and allow to dry wrapped in paper towels with a plate on top to squish out water, while you make the batter. I have a bunch of batters. Off the top of my head 1c almond meal/flour, 1/2 c coconut flakes, and like 2 tbs Cajun seasoning. Cut tofu into fat fry sizes and dunk it milk or a scrambled up egg then batter and place on baking sheet with parchment paper (or it sticks and is bad ) 15 min at 400 and or until outside is panko crispy. Salt if needed. Good as is or with dips also great with shrimp. Or tofu chocolate pie/ mouse: everyone likes this with different amounts of sugar (if I eat sugar I suddenly can’t think about anything but binge eating for a week). So I just use the darkest and most cocoa powder chocolate I can get and melt 1.5 cups and toss it in a blender with an already prepped block of silken tofu (prep, wrap it in paper towels 2-3 layers till try, so not squash silken to get out water). I then add a sprinkle of salt and a tap vanilla. Scrape it into cups or a pie tin…. Refrigerate for 2 hours. My sister makes this with a cup of sweetener… I skip. Pardon.. seriously all day I think about food. Get a notebook or notecards. Separate it into categories by how long it is to prepare. Start with your under 5 min, 30, or whatever times you need. Put carb, protein, etc info in the back. Make your recipe set. When you are bored with food… a crazy good recipe like sukiyaki with konjac noodles or muscles in a savory broth, spoil yourself. Or mix up your cards you have saved. Add cards as you like things. But make sure you have a ready supply of “crap I can make with on hand pantry stuff when I didn’t go shopping,” “crap I can make under 5 min, I am starving,” and “crap that freezes great for oamc food prep so you are never having to resort to crap take out.” You will feel like you’ve got the Bariatric eating down after you have your recipe book.

@SpartanMaker is correct. It will likely be from the surgical gas rising behind the lungs & putting pressure on the phrenic nerve. From here it is absorbed into the lungs & you breathe it out. You don’t burn or fart it out. Yes walking helps as does slow deep breathing, marching on the spot (even seated ones), lifting your arms up and down as they help you breathe it out more quickly. A heat pad can help with the shoulder & neck pain. Otherwise it’s just a waiting game. I think it took up to a week for it to abate after my gall removal surgery (I had none with my sleeve). In saying that I had a muscle spasm in my back (I have a weakness there thanks to oozy discs) on day 2 or 3 after sleeve surgery. My surgeon suggested it was likely stress I was holding from the surgery. I had a lot of pain when swallowing due to swelling & I know I was holding myself tightly every time I had to sip or take a tablet. The spasm passed later that day. If it persists fir more than a week & isn’t lessening, contact your team.. All the best.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions: When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues: Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

6 week update: Down to 252. So officially 10 pounds down. I feel good. Clothing is fitting better. Snacking habit broken. More energy from eating better foods.

Is it just me, or is it really odd they'd tell you what not to use, but didn't tell you what you should be using? Surely they must have some suggestions that fit what they want here? As far as I know, all meal replacement shakes contain added vitamins as that's sort of the point. They also contain added carbs and fats that most protein shakes don't have. I'd say the vast majority of people here were told to just use protein shakes. That's typically for a few reasons: First, especially if you also take a vitamin supplement, you're not going to suffer any long term harm using protein shakes instead of meal replacement shakes for a few weeks. Second, most meal replacement shakes are lower in protein than a typical protein shake. We want as much protein as possible to help prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue when dieting. Third, most bariatric doctors don't actually want you consuming very many carbs, since one of the main goals of the pre-surgical diet is to shrink your liver to make the surgery safer. The best way to do that is a very low carb diet. (The liver is one of the main ways your body stores glycogen, so by depleting it of glycogen (carbs), it will get smaller, even if no other changes take place.) TL;DR: Ask your team what they want you to use.

I have a tentative surgery date of June 17th so I'll be starting my 2 week liver shrink / pre-op diet the first week of June. My nutritionist said I will have to drink meal replacement shakes for breakfast, lunch, & supper. I have Premier Protein powder at home, but he said that is not a meal REPLACEMENT, it's just a high protein shake. What meal replacement shakes do you recommend? Which ones tastes the best? I don't think I can drink the ones that have a heavy vitamin taste.

I am going to ask you a question that I also ask myself when I have periods of consuming things I know I should not have. How did it get in your house? It's one thing to be in a place where temptation strikes. Maybe you go to a wedding and you are handed a glass of champagne. Maybe you go to your friend's birthday party and you take a piece of cake because everyone else has one. Okay, fine. This is not likely to be an ongoing issue unless your social calendar is booked constantly (in which case you need a plan). (But also, not fine because you are at 8 weeks out and your stomach is like a delicate baby that you are feeding trash. More like fine a year from now.) But if you are on day 6 of drinking wine while watching TV at night, all snug on your sofa... why is there wine in your house? Did you buy it? Did someone else bring it in? Is it left over from something? The easiest way not to drink alcohol casually is to have no alcohol in the house. The easiest way not to eat chips, or chocolate, or ice cream is... to not have it around. Get rid of it. I know a lot of us have issues with "wasting" food or drink. What I've come to realize only slowly is that there is no difference between me eating junk I don't need that is not good for me and putting it down the garbage disposal. Except in the second scenario, I don't gain weight. After Easter, I bought a big bag of jelly beans on clearance. They weren't very good. Even so, I kept eating them. I put them in the cupboard and kept getting a handful every time I walked past. And then I would eat a few and say these are really not very good. And then I would KEEP EATING THEM! Finally, after I did this several times, I stopped and asked myself what I was doing. Why was I eating these? Why did I buy them? And my only answer was because I was bored, and a little stressed, and they were there. Also, I like jelly beans. Only I didn't like them. So, I threw them away. An almost full bag, in the garbage. I know! The waste! But I didn't need them, I didn't like them, and they were making me crave all sorts of other sweets. I just kept thinking about the fact they were there. It made me want them. When they were gone, I could no longer eat them, and I didn't care enough to go buy more. For the first year, I did most of my grocery shopping through curbside pick up. I planned what to buy based on a menu plan, and that's all I got. No impulse buys. No clearance bins. No getting a dozen bags of something bad for me because it was on sale. I gave away all my alcohol or poured it down the drain. I threw away the junk food and organized my pantry so I could find things at a glance. I made a list of healthy things that were easy to eat or take along because I know I will always eat what's easy and not what's difficult. I meal prep for the week so that I don't have to cook and prep every single day and I have no excuse to eat out. I'll also be honest that the hardest times for me were before surgery when I was trying to follow a nutrition plan but had a lot of hunger and cravings, and from around 9 months out when weight loss had slowed and my appetite was becoming more noticeable and my weight loss naturally slowed. The fact that you're feeling like this at 8 weeks is concerning because this is the time when your ability to stay motivated should be highest (constant reinforcement when you step on the scale and lose weight almost every day), and your ability to eat is the least. Don't let this drag on without addressing it. Talk to your team. Because it's only going to get harder. Maybe you're bored. Or scared of change. Or you don't believe the surgery will work and you're turning it into a self fulfilling prophecy because that's easier emotionally than trying and failing. Or you just can't help yourself when the food or alcohol is in the house because you're addicted. Whatever it is, the best day to fix it is today. And ask your family and friends for help. Be accountable to others and to yourself. Because you can fix this, but if you don't, you won't reach your goal.