crosswind

Alewive Peach Blast...Razzleberry Monkfish...Goldfish au Caramel...

Rejoice all ye therefore!

I can totally relate to not wanting to see anybody anymore. There gets to be a threshold where there's just no point.. Good luck to you, congrats on your loss, bon sante

I think it's a low-cal, low-carb diet. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405506

I literally can not imagine this procedure not working. Even if you ate ice cream and brownies all the time, it just makes no sense that having eliminated hunger along with eighty percent of your stomach you would not at least lose something. I think there are people who gain their weight back -- there is always a small rebound effect with extreme weight loss over time and it might be hard to keep off some of the creep. But there is just * no way* you can fail to become reasonably smaller than you are now. Of course it's going to work. Maybe there's the possibility of ultimately only losing sixty percent of your excess weight over time instead of a hundred, , but as far as it not working at all -- it's not possible.

Two scoops unjury chicken Soup Protein powder. One ramen noodle spice packet. Ate it. Survived.

Thanks wareagle.

I'm skittish about a drain incision infection because from the literature I've read, once these infections take old they can be a sort of gateway to other complications which I can't afford. So I'm worried about packing my gauze -- in the hospital they put two layers of gauze on the wound: one was folded over in half directly over the incision and the other held it in place, full size, over top. I am not sure if they did that because it was meant to be more absorbent over the site, or if there is some advantage to packing the wound more tigthtly. Does anybody know? Also, when I woke up this morning and checked it there was the *smallest* little but of blood at the tip of the brownish drainage. There is a lot less drainage -- just a little every day -- and no real redness, hotness, or inflammation but it does sting a little sometimes and yesterday it started to itch. I read that "bleeding" at the incision site is one thing to look out for -- is what I just described "bleeding" or am I just being a church lady about my incision?

Lol, yay, I'm a church lady. I should be grateful, I guess, that my biggest problem is the tiniest little bit of blood on the gauze. It could be worse!

What you're saying doesn't sound right. If you're eating a thousand calories, working out five times a week, not eating carbs and nothing at all has happened in the past eight months, something is unique here about you. Your metabolism has to be *really* freaking *low*. Dudes are a little different than women though. Women tend to need less carbs because they're little estrogen tornadoes and those carbs push all kinds of imbalances. With you it's testosterone and testosterone likes Protein and needs a few extra carbs to rebuild muscle in the glycogen cycle. One thing you haven't mentioned is your fat intake. Fat is thermogenic. The fat on your body likes the fat you eat because it's then encouraged to burn both. Fat also releases the least amount of insulin -- zero- in your system. Your pancreas turns carbs into burnable sugar but it also turns protein into some percentage of burnable sugar. Fat, it just uses. You really can't get fat eating fat unless you eat the carbs to go with it, because there is no insulin accompanying it to effect the change into burnable sugar. So maybe you need more. So...this is what i would do. I would try keeping my carbs down and adding some fat. Give that a couple days to a week. Any fat is fine -- nuts, a scoop of Peanut Butter, etc. If that didn't work I would switch it up and try adding a few more carbs and keeping the fat stable at about twenty percent of intake. And if that didn't work I would go see a doctor and get a hormone panel because something is definitely off. The only time a thousand calories is normal for a 235 pound man is if he's 97 years old.

Lara I don't think anyone expects you to start running marathons right now. I think fatiigue is perfectly normal, and here is why: Your body has a basal metabolic rate and a weight setpoint that it is attached to. This doesn't just have to do with your calorie intake, it also is locked into your endocrine system and your brain. Even though the sleeve bypasses the problem of the stomach not feeling full enough, a large volume of food, etc: this is not the only system that is in place to keep you from starving. It's like a nuclear reactor: it's a dynamic system. It has backups. So first of all, when you stop eating, your thyroid banks your metabolic fires until it can adjust to a new, lower level of energy input. Your blood sugar typically stays low and that means your brain has very little sugar to burn, which can make a person feel spacey and weak. Part of the reason a lowcarb diet is good for this is because it pushes ketosis and forces your body to burn fat, which it does not like as much because what it means is that out there in the world there are not too many carbs out there, which signals *famine*. On top of that, you just had a major operation. Getting holes punched in you, having your stomach cut apart, and going under general anesthesia are all deeply traumatic to the body and every calorie you have is going to your recovery. So my personal opinion about this is that you should get as much rest as you can now and concentrate most of your focused moments on nutritiion. Take a nap if you need one, go to bed early, don't walk if you don't want to. You have the rest of your life to become ironwoman. I believe that if people push themselves too hard without adequate nutritional energy, they're going to get sick. Listen to your body and don't push. About your hair -- you could be an old lady for a while. Go to the salon on Sunday afternoon after sleeping in and get a wash and blowout, which should last you through Tuesday. Tuesday night, shampoo and blow out before you go to bed. Just do less, you know?

When I made the mistake of getting on the scale in Mexicali I was up about three pounds after surgery. I'm a little confused about my scale: my scale thinks I'm a lot thinner than I apparently am by something like fifteen pounds, which is always comforting except, you know, when you step on somebody else's scale and feel like your reality has been stabbed with a dull knife. However, I think I finally lost a little weight. Maybe ten pounds? Hooray!

Thanks all . Hey Serna, we had the same sleeve date!

Heh. Happen to be there this very moment, typing in the gloom. I miss coffee badly. Badly!

Uh huh. Don't tell me...Minnesota? Lol...

So it's day five and things seem to be going okay. I check my temperature once or twice a day -- normal or low -- especially first thing in the morning. I dont have any pain but every once in a while there will be a kind of an ache on my left side near the drain incision site. I'm sleeping great. I lost about ten pounds maybe. But I am hungry. Let me qualify that. I *feel* something in my general abdominal region that I used to think was hunger but I know that's impossible, First of all my belly has to be swollen from surgery and it's the size of an acorn compared to what it used to be, so what is this gnawing feeling there? Sometimes taking a few gasx strips helps but generally it feels like my belly is hugging my spine almost all the time. I am really aware of my staple line and I could not imagine putting a single bite of food in my mouth right now, but it translates to a kind of restlessness and an ache, maybe like a headache only in my belly. I was thinking about one reason I wanted to get this surgery. I was pretty healthy going in compared to some people, but I was getting sick. I was anemic, My Vitamin counts were low. I was smoking * a lot* more and I was depressed. I had no energy to get up and face the day. And I was 100 pounds overweight. What people usually tell you to do in that case is improve your diet, right? Eat more meat. Get more Protein. Take a vitamin supplement. Buy some miracle juice. Take Vitamin C. Go to a health spa and let them feed you. Or eat comfort food. Or eat wheatgrass. Or eat vitamin-infused Peanut Butter smoothies. Take something and put it in your mouth seems to be the commercial solution to failing health. But as I was lying in my bed one day this winter it occurred to me that what I really needed to do was to put *nothing else* into my body for some period of time. Like say a month. In alternative healthcare they put people on juice or Water fasts -- not to get people to lose weight but to reduce the strain on the internal organs so that they can regenerate -- ESPECIALLY the liver. If you are sick and overweight and depressed and nothing seems to work to help you...maybe you don't need medicine. Medicine goes through the liver. Maybe you don't need more fruits and veggies and complex carbs. Maybe you don't need Prozac. Maybe you need *nothing* in your mouth for a month. Most people in the general population think this is a crazy idea -- it's starvation, it's a fad diet( lIke there is anything else left besides fad diets anymore.) It doesn't serve the commercial world for people to go on extended fasts because they can't sell you anything to fix your problem. I have bought thousands of herbal preparations over the years because I thought they would make me either thinner or happier. But basically they don't do anything because the body is a machine and the machine has to work right, and if your body is working wrong you're going to get sick. This is, among other things, a medically supervised fast. It is actually a protein sparing fast. I thought back then, a couple months ago that this surgery would solve two problems -- one that I was 100 pounds overweight, and the other that I was getting sick: and also that even if I took on this "crazy" idea of a longterm fast once I stopped fasting I would probably gain the weight back again. There are studies coming out now that say that one way to extend the lifespan is to reduce daily calorie intake drastically. Why? Less wear on the system. Filtering and clearing mechanisms are in peak condition. Internally, you start to work better and better. I am not entirely that excited about losing weight -- or at least not at this point when I have 100 pounds to lose. But I want to feel that way, light and energetic and alert and alive. I knew I could never do that without help. Now as long as I heal up correctly: it's inevitable. I can't wait for that

Disney I think they put us on a wing they don't normally use. Dr. Aceves said the hospital was a bit more crowded than it had been in the past and there was another space in the hospital they kept bariatric patients more often. I think. I might have been riding the blue pill when I heard him say that... Oh edit -- When I had my mini-conference with the anesthesiologist he said -- our goal for you, for tomorrow, is no pain, no nausea, and no vomiting. I said, hooray! I love that goal!( I think in fact when he told me I was getting a morphine mix I gave the guy a high five.) He said one reason for all that was that of course getting your stomach cut out under normal conditions would hurt like Jesus Mary and Joseph and a person in pain doesn't breathe right. Shallow, panicked, breathing, tons of stress hormones. Etc. He said that was one big contributor to pneumonia. So I don't think they manage the pain like that because they want to give the Americanos a good time. I think they do it because it's better for the outcome.

Go to Dr. Aceves? He'll finance you. If your doc is amenable he can write any subsequent claims and checkups as routine for something else. In fact if all goes well and you go down there the Insurance Borg doesn't even have to know you're missing part of your stomach for a long, long time.

I had a thought like that -- that I just would not be able to eat as much. What I finally concluded was that "eating normally" for me is apparently normal also for a linebacker or a Russian lumberjack. I'm not really a food addict -- you know how peope say oh my gosh, however will I live without my chocolate and all of that? I can live without chocolate. I can live without anything really. I just have a little problem putting my fork down. Over time, you won't really miss your appetite, is my theory. Or my fondest hope, you pick.

. Just wanted to thank those who opined positively about my writing. I don't do it for a living. I'm from the Midwest and I'm over 40. Anybody who is from the Midwest and over 40 is a pretty good writer. I think it's because our public schools back in the day were full of failed novelists. We were therefore encouraged to express ourselves as unique beautiful DNA from the stars and so forth. I know they didn't do that when my mom went to school and these days if you feel a need to express yourself you can put it on a facebook page with a video of your cat and all the songs you like. It's much cooler to make an app than it is to write a sentence. I'm an accident of history .

I am sitting here with a mug of Knox chicken bullion and it's got to be the best thing I ever tasted in my whole life. I also had an ecstatic bliss experience over iced apple juice and cherry sugar free jello. Even water tastes amazing. Am I losing it?

Lol, that was a great thing to say.

Yeah there was something about that apple juice, man. It's like this new discovery for me. Apple juice on the plane, two glasses, and then there was apple juice in the house when I got home. Hey! Apple juice! Yay! And it's best with lots of ice. It's completely weird. Just tried my first swallow of Isopure blue raspberry zero carb whatsis. That stuff is probably repackaged antifreeze. I hadn't had any Protein in five days though. My brother said I was on it like a steak.

Hey Indiana! Glad to see you guys made it back okay. I was in Walgreens today buying...stuff...gauze and tape and a thermometer and the lady behind the counter told me that when she went in to have her "easy" gallbladder surgery the surgeon nicked an artery. She started bleeding out and almost died. Later the surgeon said, " You know, for someone who almost didn't make it, you look pretty good." I instantly thought, hell, if I ever need my gallbladder out I'm going back to Mexicali . Good to see you on here. I had such a...well, I had such a not-exactly-good time the past few days I'm thinking about going back to get my 3 month checkup at Almater. Never did get to see Seaworld. Let me know if you two are up for that later on .

CRAP. I'm hosed. Okay, problem solved and real Isopure obtained. Wow, that was tricky -- I had to go to another GNC. Boys and girls, don't let this happen to you!