Rootman

Almanza too. Perfectly adequate, you will not get the bells and whistles but will get the same procedure at a lower cost. The facility is safe, clean and, well adequate. It has worked wonders for me.

I have a friend who worked at a hospital ER room, she relates a story about a mother and daughter who came in complaining of green poop and cramps. After a lot of questions that got no where they took blood tests and an x-ray and asked if one or both could provide a sample. It was green - florescent green, far to green to be caused by natural causes. After more questioning the finally fessed up to eating 3 whole packages of Christmas cookie dough - EACH, the stuff with the green Christmas tree in the center! The cramps were just their colons getting packed up with the raw dough.

Loose skin depends on a lot of factors, most of which are out of your control. Factors like genetics, age, skin elasticity and seems like just sheer luck play a role. Most of us have SOME excess skin when it's all over, how much just depends. Yeah it sucks but as Jhayze points out it's better than being fat. Save up and get a lift. Or just wear modest clothes and cover it up.

We all wish you the best and hope you get to feeling better and taking in calories soon. BTW: I don't know if you actually like Gatorade or not but I think it's nasty tasting, I did however use Pedialite, I know it's for kids but the taste is tolerable and it did the trick.

Yeah, same for us. We use so little - even my wife since I've been eating healthier she has too. With the small amount we eat I don't expect it matters what you use. I had a toasted cheese sandwich the other night, first amount of butter i've used in weeks. Just pick something you like the taste of and watch the portions like a hawk.

Unfortunately we sometimes don't lose directly in the areas that need the larger sizes, this seems to be more so for females than males. The pants will get baggy in the legs and perhaps the seat but the waist is still the same for instance. I know I am down to a 38 and should be in 36's but the waist is too tight in 36's yet, even though the legs and seat fit fine. It will come.

Sounds like sensational BS to me, though I have to admit that I don't know anyone that has had the surgery more than a few years ago. My sister had a bypass years ago and now has heart issues although every indication points to it being the same congenital issue that our mother suffered from. My older brother had a bypass too about 3 years ago or so and is doing fine although he gained back some of the weight that he lost initially. This board is dedicated to people who have a VSG - which is NOT a bypass, this eliminates MOST of the issues associated with a bypass, mainly of malnutrition due to malabsorbtion as NO part of the intestinal tract is bypassed, the stomach is simply made smaller to create a physical restriction. The VSG has only been done for the last 5 years or so, so not much long term data is available. However, removal of parts of or even the entire stomach has been done for decades, sometimes in the case of disease, sometime due to injury or situation like massive ulcers. I've even read about a couple of families that had a double whammy of genes that made it quite certain that they would come down with a certain stomach cancer, they all elected to have their stomachs removed entirely to eliminate the disease taking their lives later. They seem to be doing fine. The people who have this done survive and thrive if they adhere to a proper diet that provides proper balanced nutrition. It's hard to tell if any such data is real or just sensationalism. So your home work and come to your own conclusion. For me it is a god send.

Primary Care Physician, your regular doctor

Yes, as Marie said there are probably slightly better choices but in the long run I don't really think it matters. Slim-Fast is cheap and readily available. You could do a lot worse. Just don't slam a few a day and use it at first for a liquid replacement, after a few months slack off and just use them as a Meal Replacement a few times a week. I personally use Boost! nutritional drink. Smaller portions and the taste isn't quite as yucky as a few others I tasted.

I too was a man given to large appetite. I too enjoyed food immensely and was worried that I would really be denying myself and living miserably without it. For me it worked out just the opposite. After the sleeve the absolute gnawing hunger and desire I had for food is pretty much gone. It was really after 6 months before I honestly could say that I felt any real hunger, some people claim they never do and a few claim the ALWAYS do, so YMMV. I eat very small portions and I immediately fill up and cannot eat any more or else I am miserable and in a lot of pain as my stomach rebels and keeps telling me NO MORE-NO MORE! When you're full with the sleeve the difference between FULL and TOO MUCH is the matter of a few bites, not another whole portion. I feel satisfied after a meal, I enjoy the food in smaller portions just as much as I did before and appreciate going out to eat MORE now than I did then, for one reason is that we eat out less, another is that I am not entirely focused on the food and enjoy the conversation and people watching more than I did before. My tastes have changed, many things are just too sweet for me to eat and I avoid them, cakes and ice cream and such just don't excite me the way they did. I always loved chocolate, especially milk chocolate. Now all I like is the bitter taste of dark chocolate. I was a moderate coffee drinker of 3 or 4 cups a day, now its maybe 3 or 4 a WEEK, just not the same as it was before. I was a salt-o-holic and loaded up nearly everything up with salt, now many things are a real turn off because they are too salty. I always enjoyed fairly spicy food, now I REALLY enjoy spicy food. Things seem to have real flavor now. Dr. Pepper was always my favorite drink and now I can actually taste some of the distinct flavoring that it has. I enjoy it a lot more. So you ARE taking a chance of shutting out a chapter of your life that you have thoroughly enjoyed but are opening a new one, one that will probably have far healthier consequences and perhaps allow you to live longer. IT'S WORTH IT!

Just to make sure everyone understands completely, it's not the CELERY per-se that is "hard" to digest, it's he long strings of indigestible (that means UN-digestible) fiber along the outside of the celery stalk that may get stuck in the narrow confines of a sleeve. These strings are very tough and when eaten by a person with a normal stomach have not problem passing right through into the intestines and are pretty much passed through to the stool unchanged. When a sleever gets celery the long strands may ball up in the tiny stomach and refuse to pass through the pyloric valve into the gut. They get stuck in the stomach and may pick up other "hitch hikers" and form a bezoar ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bezoar ) or a ball of indigestible matter than lodges in the stomach. Cat's get these from eating hair and they are called HAIR BALLS. Medication tablets and bits of other matter can get stuck in them as the original indigestible matter provides a "shell" for the stuff to hide in. If they get real bad they need to be removed surgically. I would thing that if the celery were chopped up finely, say in a Soup, that there would be no harm. But I err on the side of caution and choose NOT to eat it. As others have stated you can PEEL the back off the celery and just leave the tender heart portion and be OK too.

OMG! You just made me crave a food for the first time in a long time! These sound absolutely delicious! Shame on you

NO, weight fluctuations are normal. Water retention, waste retention and a trade off between fat and heavier muscle mass are some of the issues. Females are more prone to this, especially during the TOM. Just stick with a good meal plan and the scale WILL move.

PICS or it didn't happen!

He doesn't have to be physically fat to be a "fat" jerk! His head alone probably fills the bill for fat anyways,

FULL arrives very quickly and while it used to be another helping to reach it now it takes just a few bites to get full - over full can get painful real quick and last maybe 10 minutes or more, like when you used pile on that next piece of pie at Thanksgiving. Very uncomfortable.

Never though of it, but perhaps Steve? Steve the Sleeve

Wow for me too, just freakin' WOW!

Congrats Coops and I agree with the girls, that dress is da'bomb!

Thanks for the translation Alex, appears the surgery was COSMETIC surgery and not WLS in this case. There are bad doctors in EVERY country and EVERY field. On a personal note, it seems like I've met quite a few of them too. My original PCP was asked to "leave" the medical system he was in, strongly urged to "leave immediately" is what I heard, before the malpractice suits started rolling in. I had left him soon after I met him, it was obvious he was a bozo.

Off the shelf cal-cit tablets. I don't seem to have any issue swallowing, or should I say stomaching them.

SF is typically low cal but if you have problems with it like my wife (gives her diarrhea ) than just avoid it, watch your portion size and total caloric intake and you will do fine.

NO, be there for your kids future. Fat does NOT equal healthy.

Tamz, it DOES get better at 6 months out. Your capacity will increase and all the funny feelings should drop away. I too enjoyed food immensely and felt shorted when I could not partake, but I now enjoy the conversation and fellowship more than I ever did the food. I feel SO much better physically that it MORE than makes up for missing it. I also enjoy the small amount of food I eat just as much as I used to enjoy the masses. We went to Red Robin and we ordered garlic steak fries and I ate maybe two, I had a little less than half my bunless burger too and enjoyed it too. It WILL get better, especially when you pass the 6 month mark.

DELETE him! Do it! He's a jerk, and probably a FAT jerk! You DON'T need a "friend" like that. YES, it is "easier" in that it provides an (almost) foolproof way of losing weight. I suppose you should just tough it out without insulin if you're diabetic, you should just put up with chest pains and throw the nitro tablets away if you have angina. What modern medicine has to offer IS the "easy way out" when used correctly because it's far, far harder to put up with the health issues without the benefits it provides.