Leaderboard

Woooooooow

No thanks would be ideal hut if your family and friends are like mine and just won’t let up sometimes a little white lie Iis in order. What i did with my sleeve at Thanksgiving and Christmas was just to take the food, eat my tiny portion say it was delicious and tell them I will be hungry in another hour and I plan to finish it at home. (I tossed whatever my hubby wouldn’t eat but it spared them feeling as if I didn’t enjoy it). There was WAY too much food so it would’ve ended up getting tossed anyways. Even after leftover week. If you haven’t told anyone about your surgery you can just say that it’s delicious but your stomach just feels a bit off and again take a plate with you to eat later and give it to someone who can have it. If it will tempt you though, just say no thanks and be persistent. I was actually thinking about a holiday dilemna too. I am always invited to an annual cookie day. Everyone brings their supplies for a recipe and makes like 2 dozen cookies and the host makes tons of sugar cookies the night before for the kids to decorate while the cookies are baking. It’s a while day of eating junk, drinking and smelling cookies. I don’t think I can do it this year, I’m too early out. I think I’m just gonna be honest since they do know about my surgery. Tell her I will pop by and say hello but I am not gonna stay.

I am 3 years out this month. I track my food religiously every day. I try to eat clean and cook almost all of my food. My calories are on average 1500 a day and as this was my first trial number at maintenance, I was lucky. I don't restrict myself to diet foods. I eat full fat versions. It eat good quality food, even chocolate. I weigh myself every few days. My exercise is limited to walking a few miles, a few times a week. Oh and window shopping in town, once a week. I also stay on this site and read it almost every day as it seems to keep my focus.

for me: (1) continuing to track my food intake (via MFP) and weighing myself daily...and making adjustments when a moving weight trend shows up in either direction i dont really want. also, (2) regular exercise (which morphed into a love for exercise) and (3) striving to maintain an angst-free existence: understanding that i am not perfect, that nothing is forever, that i believe i can and will adapt, accept OR change, whatever the circumstances. i am 6 years post op next week and have maintained below goal weight this entire time, following my own advice above. i know that my M.O. is not for everyone...but i also know that each one of us can figure out what works for us (and what doesn't) and act accordingly, if we choose to.

I am coming at this thread from a slightly different perspective. I'm not a long termer (whose experience I know you were asking for) so please do place more weight on those people's posts. I do rely SO MUCH on the stalwarts here to be my guiding stars and four of them have shared their wisdom already. I have struggled a bit to maintain my loss. I reached my original goal weight about a year after my surgery. The second year or so I lost much more slowly but ended up about 20lbs under my goal. In my third year I slowly regained 16lbs. I eat pretty well I think. I cannot, and never have, eaten breakfast. Coffee only before about 11am. Looking at the link above I do wonder whether I should just start stuffing something down. I think my regain has been due to bits of sneaky sugar creeping in, and alcohol (totally empty calories - if you can do without then this is the smart way forward, I simply cannot completely LOL). I reached a point a couple of months back when I was unhappy, thought I'd gone beyond the well known third year rebound and decided to cut out the sugar and (mostly!) the alcohol. Since then I've lost 10lbs of the 15 I gained. Still loosing now. My maintenance calorific intake seems to be 1500 or a little less. I am pretty tall and moderately active. It's weird because I lost large amounts of weight consistently on much more than this a year ago. I think some people get blessed with a new set point weight that is easier to maintain with a much higher calorific intake and some get cursed with a lower set point so that inhaling a random breath of air containing just a whiff of bacon can disrupt. Sadly I appear to be in the latter category now. Take home message - everyone's weight loss in the initial and the maintenance phases seems to be individual to them. Yes we can look for patterns and try to emulate those in order to maximise our own losses, but it doesn't mean our own loss will follow any particular trajectory. Sugar and alcohol are our enemies. I wish you all the best after your op OP. Keep posting, it's endlessly fascinating to hear others' experiences.

Hi all it’s been awhile since i have talked but it’s finally here my surgery date is tomorrow. Im excited and very nervous at the same time.

That sounds like a solid plan to me!

it's very unusual for "normal" weight loss patients (that is, those of us who aren't the size of the folks on "My 600 lb Life") to lose that much weight (the 30 or 40 lbs you mentioned) the first month. I have been involved nationally - both on forums and at conferences - with WLS for years, and I've never known anyone to lose that kind of weight (maybe 30 lbs - but even those folks are outliers. Forty pounds? Never). Most of us lose somewhere in the 15-25 lb range that first month, so you are right where you need to be. I lost 17 lbs my first month, and I started out at well over 300 lbs. I went on to lose 235 lbs (have gained some of it back, as most people do, but I'm still over 200 lbs lighter at nine years post surgery). Your loss is absolutely normal.

Yea well I’m not going to say that exercise is as fun as your favorite pasttime to start. It took motivation on my part to get started. Even at a smaller BMI than you I started by just going to the end of my street and worked my way up, But seeing the progress of being able to do it without being out of breath or my knees hurting as bad as I went further and further motivated me to do even more. Exercise is never going to be fun for most people. Although at this point I am doing different group classes and I like the ladies that I get to do it with so it’s about as fun as it can be. The surgery will help with losing weight and that makes it a bit easier to get around. You may also find you have a bit more energy. You will start with just getting around the house better, but if you try to do a bit more as your body can do it safely, you will see that it’s up to you at a certain point. . Everyone starts in a different place, if you are pretty much couch bound, talk to your doctor about a physical therapist to help you get started. I actually asked if they could have one help me just to do some of these exercises safely so I didn’t hurt my knees or my neck, but they said they are not trainers. They will help if your doctor thinks you really need it, though. If you just need motivation, Hopefully whoever you have as your support system will cheer you on if that’s all you need. I know that my husband sees how hard I am trying with my food choices and even the exercise that I do at home so he is doing everything he can to help with it if I have a late class for aerobics and he makes dinner or he got me some headphones so that I could listen to music while I’m walking. My friend helped me to get started by talking to me on the phone and she was walking at her house while I was walking around mine. Also, if you have local support group, i have been going to that and it really helps. But I don’t want to overwhelm you thinking about doing exercise that sounds unattainable right now. I was only trying to let you know that his surgery is life-changing and give you something to look forward to. You don’t have to think about all of that right now just focus on small goals Just being able to get around the house better will be a really good start. Some people choose not to ever really exercise. And of course that’s your choice too. Losing weight will still make you healthier, even without exercise.

I didn’t do the bath or swim yet. I believe it was 6 weeks they said the outside was fully healed (double check on that though because there are different types of closure techniques that may heal slower). My team cleared us for anything but weights at 6 weeks but I noticed that some of the stuff that focuses on the core area in Yoga pulled so I just didn’t do that for a couple weeks (I needed the rest in between anyways 🤣). Tried again this morning in fact and it didn’t pull. I will be 10 weeks out tomorrow. I didn’t realize that I was that far out actually. Probably would’ve tried last week. Anyways, just with anything new, start slow and if you feel it in your tummy, stop!! That’s what I did.