crosswind

Thanks sleeve of steel -- and yes, sychadelic, we seem to be about the same. I've seen people losing inside of two years also and the math -- calories in and calories out -- seems to support the possibility. It would be great but this is taking *so long*. I don't wanna wait another year. Although I have to say this seems to be everybody's problem out there in losertown. Really fast losses seem to lead to really depressing regains, and I know that this weight, 210 -- is a solid number possibly forever. Good to know but I wish it were 165

. Hey all: Last time I posted here it was October 1, 2011, and I was nonplussed because my rate of loss was really slowing. I said, tell me I am not stuck at 219. Update: I was not stuck at 219. Today I weigh around 210. That means I'm averaging about five pounds a month now. To me, that is outrageously, unjustly slow but it did renew my faith in the universe.I was hoping to get under 200 by Christmastime and I probably won't, but I'll be *close* and the greatest part about this is that I did it without obsessing *or* dieting. But it is funny how your tastes change. Pre-sleeve I had been starved for carbs for years, and I was sort of a candy, cake, wine, garlic bread type of person. Now I can't imagine that. I can't quite express why Cake is so dumb to now but there you go. My cravings have really diminished and now I find myself wanting food. Every once in a while I'll have popcorn or a muffin but really a week of eating junk makes me feel so gross I will actually stop myself and think okay, kid, THAT is enough of that -- not because it will make me fat but because it makes me feel slow and sick. I'm an adorer of Soup -- especially potato vegetable, I went through a baked potato and vegetarian chili phase and I still drink Sobe Lifewater 0. I'm eight months in and I have 50 pounds to go and I think making it there might be possible. But for a yo-yo dieter like me five pounds a month, while unsexy to the extreme, is a perfect rate of loss.But mostly what I'm happy about is that I am sort of proving my hypothesis, which is that once I refused to obsess about this and just live my life, plus the restrictive action of the sleeve -- I started to crave good nutrition and lost weight without putting myself through emotional torture over what the scale said. Down eighty pounds in eight months. Not dieting. Still going. It might take me another ten months to lose the next fifty pounds but by the end of it I will have learned how to eat like a normal person and for once in my life think about something else. Hallelujah and Happy Christmas.

. Well thanks you guys. To be honest In the past two months I sort of *forgot* about losing weight. When I have forgotten about this before I've gained 40 plus pounds. I kept stepping on the scale and seeing no change, and you know, you get bored with this. That's one of the reasons it's really hard to lose weight normally for me because when there are a lot of pounds to lose....well, I can stick with a program for a month or two but eight months? A year? Eighteen months? It's too hard. What a weird surprise to have forgotten about it, stepped on the scale and have been down ten pounds. This is the way it should be.

I'm about six months out at this point and I've lost seventy pounds. I've been exercising almost every day -- although I have to say I was slow to start that so I could say my *real* exercise journey started a month ago when i got back into Pilates. I look better but the inch loss isn't that great since I started. it just occurred to me that I've lost eight inches off my waist and ten inches off my hips -- all this is grand. But BOY is it slow going now. I am really beginning to wonder if I am going to lose even a single pound more. My hormones are really fluctuating and irregular and this seems to have something to do with the stall pattern -- I usually start a huge drop after my period and another ten pound slide, and then nothing for three weeks. My calories aren't *too* low, and I change from low to high carb; low to high calories just to switch it up and keep it going. But logically, you know even if I were eating two thousand calories per day at 219 pounds with exercise some weight should be coming off. I am not eating 2000 per day -- it averages out to 1300. I have never read this anywhere before -- especially not on these boards -- but are there people who never lose a pound after their bodies lose roughly half of their excess weight? Is it possible my sleeve is done? I am really trying to avoid Drasticland here.

Right. It is weird. Confusing. And really losing ten pounds a month is not some precipitous emergency loss that my body in particular would even mind normally. I try to eat more, eat less, drop carbs, do carbs for a couple days....just doesn't seem to matter in the least.

. Thanks, this is exactly what I wanted to know. My hormone cycle is a huge problem, and I think I should probably be happy that I weight seventy pounds less than I did just because without the sleeve I would have probably kept gaining. That was one of the things I was thinking in March: I had spent about six months at 265 and then suddenly I was at 289 and there was just no way for me to get it under control or even figure out how to do that anymore. But once I got the sleeve I had this fantasy that I would do a Valerie Bertinelli and get incredibly thin and like go to the Cayman Islands in a string bikini and all like that. Maybe...not. In the past six months I haven't really worried about getting to goal too much. In fact I kept telling myself to just relax because it *had* to come off, at least to a certain point. And I was clear that this was not going to happen overnight. In a year, though,. I expected what I've seen on these boards. It *does* come off. In a year people tend to be really close to goal if not under it. I would absolutely take three pounds a month if I knew they were going to keep coming off. I've averaged more than ten per month over the past six months, but there was a month...I think August, where absolutely nothing happened on the scale for about four weeks. Then I lost another ten. And nothing since then, nothing since maybe the middle of September. This summer I spent a lot more time outside swimming and walking than I have in a couple years. I realized this was really good for me because the fact is, I was really sick emotionally, really disordered and out of sorts. I spent the year before this not going anywhere at all, barely sleeping and hardly ever leaving the house. All of that has to take a toll and I should be glad I'm in the place I'm in now. I'm between a fourteen and a sixteen and I have clothes that fit. The thing I've been avoiding is going on a "diet". I got the surgery and spent the money rationalizing that I had spent so much money already on diets that never worked and yo-yoing wildly trying to get some control. I knew part of this was just...you know, I've got a problem. I am obsessive, dysmorphic, and *happy when I'm thin* and *miserable when I'm fat.* I have all these weird emotional games I play with myself, like I eat and isolate when I'm feeling anxious; like I will get to a brilliant goal weight, my life will change and I'll start to gain and then I can barely think about anything else and then gain wildly. So going on a DIET -- this was what I was never going to do again. Ever. I was simply going to live my life and stop anything that even pulled me up near the intersection where I would go crazy and obsessive about my body. I was going to *teach myself* that I could still be happy, enjoy life, make friends, be myself without pouring Cereal into a cup measure. I've had this idea before -- that women especially could probably rule the world if they weren't constantly in despair over their bodies. There are all kinds of diets, programs, supplements, sprays and toe cream or whatever you can buy to help you lose weight. i could probably name them all. This is what I'm trying to avoid -- the time, energy and emotional suck of weight obsession. It's bad for me. Really, really bad.

I have lost almost exactly 50 percent of my excess weight right now, and that's what got me wondering. Still, it would be weird to stabilize at 33 percent bodyfat. I've seen a couple things out there -- I've seen people who are still losing two years out and people who are at their target weight in eight months, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a person simply stop losing at 50 percent of their excess weight. Guess I'll have to tough it out for the next six months and see....

So here is what I found out about getting insured after the VSG. If you are a self-pay patient because you can not get approved by your regular carrier, or because you have no insurance at this time ( possibly because your BMI is too high) -- then your next option is federal or state PCIP insurance. I am posting this here because even if you have health insurance now, there might come a time later when you lose your job or want to apply for private individual insurance and are denied because the VSG makes you UNINSURABLE. According to the rep at BCBS the surgery needs to be two years old with no complcations in order for them to write a policy. According to AETNA, you may not apply for six weeks after surgery and if complications arise, you are considered uninsurable. According to United Healthcare, you may not have had any bariatric surgery for five years, with no complications. So in the case that you are truly SOL, Obama's Affordable Insurance Act created an opt-in program for all states to provide low-premium affordable health insurance. Information about that is here: http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provisions/preexisting/index.html You can apply immediately and electronically at this link if your state participates in the federal coverage enacted by this law: https://www.pcip.gov/Apply.html There is no waiting period. If your state does not participate in federal PCIP hen they have created their own affordable healthcare state option. Information about your state's PCIP can be found at the top link.

After staring at the same number for two weeks, the scale finally moved. Hooray! I always love to see this, even if it's not much, because a new number on the scale, no matter how small, usually means I broke through a plateau. There's hope yet

So it's been six months and I've lost seventy pounds. I am very happy I lost seventy pounds. I am thrilled I lost seventy pounds. The thing is, I'm still fat. I knew this would happen and I knew at some point around the not-yet-under-200 mark I would start to get a tad annoyed. And now I'm starting to get impatient, which is what I've been trying not to do all along, because emotionally just focusing on "being thin" has been a horrible habit for me and, well, you see where it got me. My body has been dependably going through a strange cycle of loss. I will typically lose nothing for like three weeks, and then in a couple days just drop ten pounds. I'm trying to stay away from scale but that scale has been distracting me lately in all kinds of ways. I've been swimming almost every day and doing Pilates *every* day, and I am eating lower and lower carb just because I hate the way things like bread feel going down my throat. It's like there's something down there that bread is terrified of and is going to *kill me* trying to get out. So seventy pounds is seventy pounds, but I am still dreaming about the next seventy pounds and wondering if I'm gonna get there. Logically, if I am eating low carb and under 1200 calories a day and working out every day -- this really should work. And I mean -- there's no more nuclear an option I can take aside from starting to cut parts of myself off with a steak knife. But I am getting impatient. I wanna be thin!

I'm trying not to worry about it. It can't be over, right? I guess I'd be happy if that was all I got but I was sort of hoping to get to my high school weight with this. One thing I will say is that I am so much more interested in exercising than I was six months ago. Six months ago not only did I not see the point, I felt like I could barely walk across the street. I guess we gotta take our positives where we get them...

Oh man, my FAVORITE!!!

I honestly believe you should eat whatever you want. And I don't mean, oh, just have a little bite of this or that, or spit it out, or reserve it for the weekends or whatever. I think you should eat whatever you want, whenever you want. With the following rules: Protein first. get your supplements, and manage your nutrition. When fitness people and nutritionists say that denying yourself too much will result in you "feeling deprived, " that's a reality. Your brain, your subconcious and your appetite feedback system equates stress and deprivation with those foods and then you get focused on them. It's a head trip. Just eat what you want. Even if you go nuts for a while I guarantee you eventually your body and brain will get sick of the stuff and put it in proper perspective. Sooner than you think it will, too.

OOPS! Sorry, this should have gone in recipes.... This is one from my old lowcarb recipe repertoire that I've been eating lately in the morning. For some reason it goes down better than eggs and it's less boring than my old standby cottage cheese. Ready? 1/4 cup flaxseeds One egg Touch of breve cream, coffee creamer or whipping cream sweetener sea salt pepper lemon butter maple syrup extract Grind the flaxseeds in a coffee grinder until you get a moist flour. Dump it in a bowl with the egg and a dab of whipping cream. Add sweetener, a pinch of salt, and one grind of pepper. Put a half teaspoon of butter in a frying pan, and pour the batter in. Make a panacke When it's finished, you can twist a little lemon on the top. Flax is a little more bitter than regular flour and the lemon can cut that and put a bit of freshness into the flavor. You can skip that if you want. You can just top it with a sprinkle of sweetener OR, you can do this: Take another half teaspoon of butter, put it in a bowl with a sprinkle of maple flavor extract and a packet of sweetener, and nuke it for ten to fifteen seconds. Result? Maple syrup flavored butter, one carb. OR: Replace the breve cream with sour cream, and ad a second pinch of salt:do not add sweetener. Serve it with sour cream on the side for a faux potato pancake. Brillant!

Yesterday I woke up with a neckache and a backache and a jawache. There was some kind of weird effluvia on my pillow and I was in a terrible mood. Not stormy terrible, not the kind of terrible where you call up AT&T to complain about service cutoffs to telephones that don't exist -- terrible as in teary and and panicky, like I was just about to turn on the news and find out my town was most definitely going to be sucked into the center of the earth due to a lack of liquor sacrifices to the Town God. I watched a woman have a fullon meltdown in the lobby of a hotel and wanted to smack her silly. She was one of those blonde sucked-in too-skinny women close to fifty who always seem to have sequins on them somewwhere; with the shortish yellow madonna hair that screamed she'd been cute all her life and planned to make everyone around her suffer at whim. Then I thought I lost my debit card and called the bank, who refused to send me a new one to my new address because I got my security questions WRONG. I was exhausted. I needed a nap. It was beautiful outside and that just made me cranky. Then it dawned on me. I'm sick! And I was. I went to the clinic and got liquid Keflex for an ear infection that was so bad it had by that time crept into both ears and had turned me into an emotional toddler. I was seriously dehydrated and suddenly understood why my incision was still an incision and not a scar. No wonder I had been crying all week. By yesterday I had nothing in my head except a black crayon scribble. I had gotten books out of the library and couldn't concentrate through half a chapter. All of this, I thought, was because I got my stomach cut out less than three weeks ago. But apparently not. I feel a little better today but my big plan to dive into the pool on Day 21 has been scrapped. Anyway I guess the moral of the story here is that not everything is attributable to surgery. You can get sick *in addittion* to having no stomach and the results are specacularly miserable. It's hard to know exactly what's normal but I'm thinking the ability to read and comprehend sentences might be a clue. On antibiotics for ten days. Sill grounded. Eleven days to solid food. Suck. Oh...and I lost 25 pounds. So there *is* that.

. Hey, Miss Meggie. I'm down around 60 pounds in four and a half months so who's the slow loser? Lol My carbs have been going down slowly, sort of accidentally. Sleevie just does not like most starches -- I can't quite explain the feeling, it's like getting stuffed with packing peanuts. So even though I let myself eat anything I want, over time the carbs just have sort of gone away. Now it's cottage cheese, chicken salad, shaved beef and etcetera. If I order a sandwich or a burger, I just take off the bun because those things are *huge* and I'd rather just have the nutrition. But! For the past two weeks or so I'm on a serious stall. I've been walking and swimming and all of that but there's just nothing happening on the scale. In fact I wonder, since my exercise has really gone through the roof this past month if I'm shifting or my metabolism is starting to adjust. Either way, can' t complain about the sixty pounds. Go you!

Meggie I believe that is what your surgeon says and I also believe there is a period of optimized weight loss. But there is such a period for any patient who experiences significant weight loss whether they get surgery or not. The thinner you get, the slower it goes, and the harder it is to take off. Anyone who only has twenty pounds to lose is going to take much longer to lose it than it takes for us at 40 plus BMI to lose the same amount of weight. When we're down near goal, it's all going to slow down or possibly stop. Let me put it this way: A person who weighs 275 pounds is suddenly restricted to one thousand calories per day. if he keeps up that way, the weight is going to fall off *fast* and then stall while the body adjusts. If calories are still restricted, weight will still come off. However, as your weight goes down so does your caloric requirement so...naturally.,..unless you eat even less the loss will slow or stop. So when he gets to 235 things slow down. When he gets to 195, they slow down a lot more. By this time, what time is it? Six to nine months. I haven't seen any case study showing that a sleeve has stretched -- only the theory that it's possible. And I have also seen surgeons publish skepticism about that. Some say they think it's possible, but unlikely. But even if it's true -- if your sleeve can hold a quarter cup of food at seven weeks but the expectation is that it will double in size -- that's still only half a cup. Double that again. One cup, down from seven to eight cups of food in a normal stomach with the fundus still intact. It's still significant lifelong restriction. It doesn't make sense that with significant lifelong restriction it's going to suddenly be impossible to lose another ten pounds,, even if it's *not as much* restriction. Unless there is some organ or other magical mechanism I haven't read about. In fact, what makes the most logical sense is that since we will forevermore be eating fewer calories than we require over time, *eventually* we all get to goal. Anyway I think the docs make some of these recommendations based on theoretical possibility. They want to give their patients the best possible outcome for the time, misery and money spent and recommending lowcarb to push very fast weight loss gives a satisfactory outcome in the short term. I don't think bariatric surgeons recommend stuff just because they just had nothing else to do that day. But there's just no logical evidence I have seen that tells me we're all doomed at nine months, especially if loss is slow or average. In fact what I've seen is the opposite: barring some odd twist of metabolic fate, this time everybody gets there.

You know personally I don't understand this. Losing sixty pounds is quite an accomplishment ( I think I'll be roughly where you are at four months -- I've lost 54 in 14 weeks) and the real issue is your health. My blood pressure is way down. I don't have the back/knee issues that I did, and I can exercise and move around more. I was not diabetic but I'm sure my blood glucose levels are better and more stable. I don't understand the reasoning behind pushing a patient to lose. I can kind of see the "honeymoon period" thing coming in to play, but quite honestly I haven't seen a single study that supports that idea. In fact if you look this up on the internet the only "honeymoon period" that comes up is on Vertical Sleeve Talk! There is also no published proof that in practice the sleeve "stretches", especially not within the first year. There are other possibilities regarding why it is harder to lose after a certain period of time - for example general adaptation hormonally, but...some of this, since the procedure is so new, seems like superstition or theoretical projection. Published studies reiterate that most people get to where they want to be within two years. All patients have stopped losing at that point, most because they're at goal or under it. People keep saying you have to "work the sleeve" for results and of course eating well and healthily is non-negotiable. This is not a license to eat tootsie rolls all day. But if you had to work the sleeve *so hard*, why even get the thing? It has to be doing at least some of the work on its own.

Aside from urging people to calm down about how fast they lose, that's something I more than suspect. The studies say that in one years' time, sleevers are expected to lose something close to all of their excess weight, and I've seen higher numbers over eighteen months. What I've read here and elsewhere is exactly the same thing, no matter what people are eating and no matter how much they're exercising. Low carb eating is really good for you for a number of reasons, especially if you have a comorbid health condition, and exercise is *great* for you for all kinds of reasons also. But the human body can change shape and size only so fast. What I suspect is that the "fast track" turns into the slow track when you hit a setpoint; too much undereating forces the body into doing little tricks on you to get you to eat more or move less; and overall people who are losing slowly will catch up to the people who are losing quickly so that we all reach the finish line at *about* the same time. So why beat yourself up? You *got your stomach cut out*. That's enough anxiety already.

Oh, Megs, I forgot you're almost two months behind me. When I was at seven weeks I was probably exactly where you are now -- five to six hundred calories. Within a month of that, they'd doubled. Back at seven weeks I didn't think I could ever eat more than what I was eating and when my intake went up I sort of freaked out. But then I realized it was probably better to eat as much as I could as long as I was still losing. Your tummy is still healing and eventually, probably by the end of the month, your cals will probably go up. In the meantime -- don't try to eat more! The rise in capacity seems to happen naturally. But when you're still in recovery there actually really is not that much room in there and if you don't want the food there's no point in eating it. When thumbelina heals up a little more there will probably be room for a carb or two if you want them.

I start the day with my favorite Protein Bar and then after a while get interested in lunch, which, if it's got carbs in it will also have protein. Like if I want a handful of crackers, its crackers and cottage cheese or mozzarella. If I order Pasta at a restaurant I get something with chicken and make sure I eat the chicken and not around it. There's only enough room left after that for a bite or two of the carb and that's enough to satisfy. i buy sweets sometimes and eat them, but I'm getting less and less interested. They look good at the store but for some reason they just lose their appeal going down. I bought a red velvet cupcake today and cut myself a quarter of it. Boring. When I was on vacation I bought black licorice and ate on it for a couple days and threw out the rest. Just lost interest. Lowcarb is awesome and it really is the fastest way to lose weight. it's also really good for blood sugar disorders, fatty liver, and now they say even cancer. I was a hardcore lowcarber for years but my personal opinion now is that it can have a backlash later on. This is my personal experience and I would never argue with another person's medical protocol, especially not after major surgery. However, there are some disadvantages to being lowcarb *forever*. One is, when you stop eating that way, you get rebound hyperinsulinemia, which means you can gain weight back from eating a higher carb diet if it just breathes on you. This is not just the rush of a fast glycogen fill: bodybuilders for example are constantly shrinking and expanding due to carb overloads when they're out of training: I call this the puff and stuff effect. Also, carbohydrate ( healthy carbohydrate including fruits and vegetables) has other benefits besides having antioxidants. In moderation they regulate mood and anxiety, promote sleep, increase serotonin and regulate brain function. Some people say they love lowcarb and they would never go back but there are a certain number of us ex-speedracers who found that after a couple years with carbs pushed down under 40 we were nervous wrecks. The answer to that was supplements and drugs, valium, alcohol..etc. Anything but eat a potato. So...now to me eating clean is eating everything in moderation. Fruit. Watermelon. White wine. Cheese and crackers. Drunken Thai noodles. Crockpot chili. Whatever. My stomach is tiny too, and I *have* to stop when I'm full. I was a serious yo yo dieter before, really my whole life, and healing my metabolism from that means eating everything, but eating less of it, over time. I tried the other way -- down to nine hundred, 20 carbs with "cheat days" that turned into "cheat years" and all of that. All I got for my trouble was more eating disorder. As far as the "honeymoon effect"...well -- it lasts two years. That's plenty of time. I would rather figure out how to eat everything than walk around terrified of English muffins. Not that I even really like those anymore. But that's my deal Meggie. I'm reading people here who have their flux capacitors set to six hundred and that's that, and they're doing great on their journeys too. My point was that we don't have stomachs anymore, and undereating to basal metabolism is enough. Starvation isn't necessary, and neither is staring down the scale. The time is going to pass and we're all going to get there.

I had my hideous beast of a period on my way there, in the hospital, during my checkin, all through the surgery and all through the days I stayed in the hospital afterward. They got me pads in the hospital and let me keep my underpants on when I got on the gurney. Downside is that I was on the rag the whole time. Upside? Drugs. I barely cared if I was bleeding or not. The whole thing might have been gross for them but I was unconscious and/or high as a kite so it didn't bother me at all. Can't beat morphine for cramps

I admit I've been in kind of a terrible mood lately. Mostly it's my divorce kicking my ass. I'll be in a decent mood, envisioning how I am going to restart my life on the terrible scorched earth coordinates wherein nothing intersects with nowhere; and then the ex will call. Lately? The ex wants to instruct me and give his impeccable expertise on the pursuit of happiness. For example: you need to learn to be satisfied with the little things, like the sunshine and the trees and the flowers, he'll say. I could tell you why that infuriates me, but i think you can imagine the whole backstory yourself. After this happens, I will hang up and fly into a rage that lasts several days. I was in the middle of one of these when I realized it had been THREE MONTHS since I flew down to Mexicali Mexico to get my stomach cut out. So I went to the pool to burn off some poison and get a weigh-in. Result? 237. Down 51 pounds. Not only that, when I came here to share the news I saw all the new progress and anniversary picks here and I just want to say: THANK YOU!!!! Once I saw all you guys and your progress my mood improved an awful lot. I'm averaging about 1200 calories and losing 1.5-2 pounds a week, and doing a little exercise -- say three times a week I'll walk for an hour and swim. I had to buy all new clothes for summer since I had nothing and I am now a SIXTEEN, which is not an eight I know, but it's all so much better than it used to be even though I rarely pay attention since I'm in a post-divorce rage an awful lot of the time. I remember at the beginning of this thinking that three months is an incredibly long time. It was too long to wait to lose fifty one pounds. I was right. It is too long, and if I had a better alternative I would take it. It takes so long for the scars to heal and your stomach to start to forgive you. It takes so long to figure out how to eat again and get your energy back. It takes a long time to lose weight, especially if you have a lot to lose. It's like emptying an olympic swimming pool with a teaspoon. But here's the real benefit to all of this. It never stops coming off. Little by little, week by week, day by day, that scale just keeps giving up more and more territory. I wasn't really excited about doing this in beginning because I was sooooo fat and it was just going to take ninety years it seemed to me to get anywhere close to where I wanted to be. I just knew I had to do something and nothing I had tried before in 46 years had worked. But now I'm starting to get a little excited. I have a sleeveless tank top. I am wearing a size sixteen swimming suit. I am probably going to be under 200 before the end of the year, Christmas when I go home to see all my relatives. Can't wait. No really.

. Rootman, I was including you on the fast track, but part of the reason you're such a lean machine is because you're a guy. *Any* dude is going to lose faster than any female, and usually like a lot faster, like sickeningly faster, because of your excess dude muscles and also because you don't have to swim in the ocean of hormones we do. It's *quite* unfair really. It's a little *annoying* if you want to know the truth. But you're right! If you're losing you're winning, and if you can't possibly eat more than a very generous 1200 calories per day, *something* is bound to happen to all of us.

. Yeah. I've been thinking about how the next three months are going to go. 12 weeks is three months -- times 2 pounds a week --- 24 pounds in the next three months. This means that by my birthday in October I will still be over two hundred. By January, at the same rate - 188. That's *if* I don't stall out for a month and get set back eight to ten pounds. It's still a long time to wait, but what can you do? Go back to the store and return your sleeve? Go to bed and not wake up til next year? You can either enjoy the ride or hate your whole life until you get to your "perfect" weight but part of the reason I decided to do this was because at 46, I was out of time to be unhappy.