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The simple answer is yes. Just getting a small stomach does not cure your brain. It is hard wired to feast whenever there is a glut of food and unfortunately that is what is all around us these days. I waited 30 years for this surgery so this is me - I allow myself 1500 calories a day. I religiously track them I could easily eat around my sleeve, I love chocolate and dont have any will power. If I open a bar then I eat it. So I buy the packs of tiny 25gram bars. I have increased my activity. I walk everywhere. I shop better for quality protein rich foods and menu plan, You may find when your new stomach has healed, about 6 - 12 weeks out, you will hopefully feel your restriction kick in. You should feel the full signals. Certain foods fill me longer than other. I physically can not eat or drink for two hours after eating meat. Mince it and I can go again after an hour. Its a massive learning curve.

First of all, congrats on your amazing progress! 🎉🎉 You're doing incredible, and hitting 6 months with such a huge loss is definitely something to celebrate! About your BMI question, BMI is always calculated based on current height and weight, not your tallest height. While bones do have weight, the difference from losing an inch in height isn’t usually significant enough to impact BMI drastically. So, if you’ve shrunk, your BMI would be based on your new height. That being said, BMI is just a tool—it doesn’t account for muscle, bone density, or body composition, so don’t stress too much about the exact number! I can totally relate to the excitement (and overanalyzing) as I’m coming up on my 6-month “surgiversary” on February 14th! ❤️ I started at 109.5 kg (241.5 lbs) and now I’m 84.2 kg (185.7 lbs)—which means I’ve lost 25.3 kg (55.8 lbs) so far. Like you, I feel great, but seeing these milestones makes me reflect on the numbers too. It’s such a wild ride! You're so close to a “normal” BMI—27.3 is amazing! Keep going, and I have no doubt you’ll get there soon. Let’s celebrate our progress and keep pushing forward! 🎉💪✨

I can't use any student loans for these certifications. I tried a loan and my credit isn't good enough. Part of the reason I want to get the certifications is so I can make more money and repair my credit. And also to catch up on bills and finally build my nest egg back up. My husband is disabled and I'm the main breadwinner, so this is REALLY important. I don't have anything left to sell, so the crowd funding is all I have left to try. But I'm not going to let it get to me. Or at least, I'm going to try not to. I'm going on a hike in a little while and then I'm going to take a long shower and take a nap. And then I'm going to spend the rest of the day chillaxing and watching true crime on youtube.

Wow that was alot of typos. I woke up and I thought I was wide awake but apparently not. lol. I was trying to say that my husband joked about me being all peppy and positive when I got into my groove with exercising because I was feeling so good but now I’m still the same way it’s just that he’s used to it. It’s really how I was when he met me and before I got overweight and out of shape and wasn’t moving my body it’s just that it had been so long overtime. I guess I got cranky and he got used to it. 😂 My thought was what if you could do something for like an hour at night instead of dedicated exercise something that would make you a little bit of money like dog walking or going around the neighborhood and dragging people’s trash cans in or something like that. Even washing cars or mowing laws if you can handle that physically (I know I couldn’t handle the heat but they are just random ideas). You may be able to think of something that would work for you. I mean, it wouldn’t be a ton of money for a few hours, but it would be moving your body and making a little extra at the same time to put towards your goal. My friend is a single mom and she cleans offices at night for extra cash and says that’s actually a pretty good workout because she gets paid by the job so she moves her butt to get it done. 🤷‍♀️

This did happen to a very good friend of mine. Her teeth started crumbling away. It should be noted though, that she hadnt been taking her vitamins at all for several months. When I started talking about having surgery, the very first thing she warned me about was to not mess around and skip vitamins because she didn't want that to happen to me too.

Depression can definitely impact motivation, so your husband may be on to something? That said, there is a difference between clinical depression and situational depression. Clinical depression is generally a lot more serious and long lasting, whereas situational depression tends to be less severe and tends to get better over time once you are further out from the triggering event. I'm not a mental health professional, but it certainly seems more like situational depression to me if you're really stressed about the work/funding situation. I think if you are concerned, the best course of action would be to talk to a mental health professional. We all go through some rough stuff every now and again, so if you need help, please get it. With that out of the way, I do also want to give you my thoughts on general overall motivation to exercise when you are struggling with that. What people often fail to understand is that humans are literally designed to conserve calorie expenditure. This is a key survival instinct, or at least it was back when food was a lot more scarce than it is today. I mention this because sometimes people think there's something wrong with them when they are not motivated to workout. Actually just the opposite is true. That feeling to want to do just about anything else other than workout is instinctual. So what do we do about this? well, since calorie conservation is such a strong instinct, we need even stronger things to overcome that feeling. Below are some ways we can do that. These are roughly in order of importance (at least in my opinion): Probably the single most important thing is to really understand your why. By that I mean if you don't really know why you want to exercise, or if the reason is somewhat vague (such as just feeling like you're supposed to), that just may never be enough. Really explore what caused you to want to make this change. If the reason is sufficiently important (for me it was not wanting to die an early death), then it makes everything else a lot easier because you can always refer back to the why when you'd rather just do something else. Make it a habit. Let's be honest. There are certain things you do in life that are just habits and you don't really need motivation to do them. They may not even be things you enjoy, but you do them anyway. For me that's things like laundry or dishes. Showering or brushing my teeth might be more examples. I don't really need a lot of motivation to do them, I just do them because that's part of what I do day to day. What we want to do is get to the point that exercising is just another habit. This could be a pretty long post in and of itself, but one tip I have is something called "habit stacking". I blatantly stole this idea from a book by author James Clear called "Atomic Habits". (I Highly recommend reading it by the way.) The idea here is to attach the new habit you want, such as working out, to an existing one you already do like eating dinner. It might look like this: "After I eat dinner, I will go for a walk around the block" Set realistic goals and update them as you progress. Realistic is the key here because I often find that people either set too easy of a goal, or much more likely, too hard of a goal. If your goal is to workout 5 days a week for 30 minutes at a time when right now, you're basically doing nothing, that's simply too much at once. A much better goal would be something like "I'm going to go to the gym once this week". For some people, just getting out the door and to the gym is the hardest part, so if the goal is just getting there, it overcomes the biggest challenge. Most likely, once you're there, you'll at least do something (you won't just turn around and come home). The same can be true if you're goal is walking around the neighborhood. Often just getting out the door is the hardest part, so instead of saying I'm going to walk 30 minutes a day, simply make the goal getting out the door once this week. This one is a little harder, but you need to explore your feelings and determine what your intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are. Some people are motivated almost exclusively by one of the other, but my experience is that most people are motivated at least in part by both internal and external things. When you know what these things are, it makes motivation a lot easier. As an example, I really love the way working out makes me feel, which is a strong internal motivator. That said, I also really enjoy looking fit. (I'm vain, sue me). I use these two things to my advantage. Put it on your schedule. Way too many people say they are just too busy to workout, but most of the time, that's just an excuse. If it's important, then you'll put it on your calendar just like anything else that's important. "Pre-prep" for your workout. This can vary depending on what you do, but a lot of people that workout in the morning (or immediately after work), find that if they lay out their workout clothes, or pack their gym bags before they go to bet the night before, it takes away one of the biggest challenges they have to getting the workout started. This removes an excuse not to do the workout, and in addition, serves as a reminder to actually do the workout. These are the biggest ones that come to mind for me. There are other tricks and tips I could give (like finding an accountability partner), but this post is already pretty long. One final thing I wanted to mention. A lot of people have found (and research backs this up), that regular exercise can actually significantly lessen symptoms of depression. While I do still recommend talking to a professional, you may find that working out actually helps you feel better. Best of luck!

@NeonRaven8919 thats why were here! Vent away, we are here to support you through your highs and lows!

First, avoid the Facebook groups. They tend to be negative, critical & offer bad or simply wrong information. I even stumbled upon one where they told people how to purée burgers & fries. It’s why I appreciate this forum so much: supportive, great advice & suggestions, not judgemental, lots of experience. Second, 100% agree with what @ChunkCat’s said in her post. For. many of us, we used food as a source of comfort, a way to sooth ourselves when in emotional turmoil. After surgery, we can experience quite an emotional rollercoaster, all the changes, an overload of information which can cause doubts, then surgery itself is hard on our bodies & emotions, our hormones can be crazy too. Before surgery you would have turned to food to ease your panic, anxiety, sadness, etc. but you can’t now which only makes that hunger & your food voices louder. This is head hunger not real hunger. Of course knowing this doesn’t make it easier to manage or ignore. Many find using distraction helpful: read, craft, garden, go for a walk, check your social & this forum, sip a warm drink (green or herbal tea can be very soothing & count towards your fluids - yay!). Also, many find therapy helpful. Did you see a therapist as part of your pre surgical process? If not ask for a referral. You don’t have to do this alone & they will support you work through these & any other issues. All the best.

One of the therapeutic approaches they use for eating disorders is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT is obviously more complex but one component is replacing an undesired behavior with a new healthy behavior. This sounds so simple and like it couldn’t possibly work (to me anyways) but believe it or not this helped with my self diagnosed Nightime Eating Disorder. NES is a disorder that is characterized by waking up feeling like you can’t fall back to sleep without eating and eating more than 25% of your calories at night after dinner. I believe this is just a form of head hunger. My therapist who uses a different approach said that CBT would suggest that when I wake up wanting to eat that I do something like my crochet instead. Well. It hasn’t been easy but this has worked for five nights thus far. Not one snack and I used to have around 4-6 snacks every night after doing so well with my diet all day. Basically I have a protein yogurt before bed so I know I am not actually hungry and when I feel hungry through the night I just tell myself that I am not hungry and that I can get up and crochet instead if I can’t sleep. I haven’t even had to actually crochet many times. Apparently just knowing that there is a replacement option is enough to help me go back to sleep. That or I’m just too lazy But hey whatever works 😂 Anyways, I found it kinda absurd that the solution was that simple to just do something else like I am dealing with a kid but I’m serious. It worked. There are also CBT workbooks for disordered eating (Amazon has several) which probably get more in depth and journaling about what you are feeling at the time to get to the root of why you feel hungry helps for some. But try doing something else as well Like I said it’s been five nights for me and it’s worked. Each night it has gotten a little easier too. I put a towel through the handles of the fridge in case I forget and I have woken up and walked to the kitchen less and less each night. After the first night I realized that the yogurt was enough to get me through the night and each night after just reinforces that. My friend said it makes sense to her because It’s like when people quit smoking and everytime they want a cigarette they chew gum instead. I did lollipops but it’s true, that did work for me as well. It’s Still not easy, but it works. If your at work I guess your limited on alternate options but maybe having a glass of tea or taking a short walk (depending on your job). You said you are already drinking your water but maybe try a whole new behavior. I hope I don’t sound too crazy and you try this. I hope it helps you as well.

Prepare instant mashed potatoes as directed on package, substituting milk for water. Dissolve unflavored protein powder (I like unjury) in milk- add mixture to the mashed potatoes to thin them. For flavor, add a little garlic salt, fresh ground black pepper, and a dash of spicy mustard.