CowgirlJane

You know another factor that i should mention - I have been physically hungry basically around the clock for YEARS. It has been heavenly to feel some relief from constant hunger. I do get hungry now that i am over a year out, but it is what I believe to be normal hunger. I get hungry when it is time to eat, not 24/7

I never regretted it for a moment, but, I am not claiming it was always easy. I think alot depends on where you are "at" with your health, your relationship with food, and the joy you want to find in other things. I was just OVER food as entertainment. I LOVE being able to run, hike, ride, jump, climb - just be normal. It is worth all the ice cream and pizza on the planet to be able to live a normal but active life. I am not socially isolated, I enjoy good foods, I eat at restaurants, I go to parties, I do all that stuff. I just do it like a nromal/thin woman now. I did a business trip recently and connnected with a "skinny b***h" as she is lovingly called by her work colleagues. We shared meals the whole week and just loved on delicious food in petite quantities. Life is good. Having said that, I am sorry for people who do have regrets. I hope that it is really just part of the adjustment and you find your peace with it. More then that, I hope you find your JOY with the physical changes, improved health and energy it brings.

In the planning phase, I only told my partner. Leading up to the surgery, I told my grown sons and a few trusted friends. Day after surgery, I told my extended family via an email with instructions that their support was welcome, but if they weren't comfortable with it, to please keep it to themselves since it was too late anyway haha. Most were VERY supportive. The silence from a few was noticable, but they all came around in a few months when they saw I was healthy and losing weight. Now, I tell anybody that has the vaguest interest....lol I have lots of reasons for this but part of it is that I tried everything under the sun to lose weight and with a BMI over 50 I was in a bad situation. I now get alot of "hot mama" hubba hubba kind of remarks from friends and family and I know I have been an inspiration to others. It is also part of my accountablility plan. No more secrets no shame - i am just rocking the sleeve and dealing with a serious medical problem I had - obesity.

skinny ginny - Overlake has a support group. I went a few times as a PRE OP, but haven't been there since. I really liked the meeting moderator, but at the time it was mostly RNY. You might check it out as they were very welcoming although they all seemed to have had surgery at Overlake. So, I keep thinking some of us in the area should get together! Nothing elaborate, just a little support group meeting of our own! I am on the Eastside - to the north - Woodinville area.

This thread is over a year old! I had pouch dialation. One doc diagnosed my band as slipped, another said my pouch was just hugely dialited so I don;t know. I have done GREAT with the sleeve... My BMI is very close to normal, almost 25. I could lose more but I am one of those people that feel and look pretty good being on the heavier end - I am at my personal goal and exceeded surgeon's expectations. Check out my profile to see before and afters! I should say that i worked with a nutritionalist how to get the maximum benefit of the sleeve. I did put effort into this - but it was much easier then losing weight on the band!

I am now a card carrying member of DSW... lol Yeah, heels are great now!

It isn't good. Last 20# loss and my D boobs disappeared. I wear 34-36 C but the C is pretty much skin. Plastic surgeon explained that I have mammary glands but about zero fat there. This is why they invented breast lift and augmentation and I am signing up for the "return to D" Program.

Time, good friends who give me honest feedback and consults with plastic surgeons have helped me alot. With each passing week I feel less and less fat. I recognized that the inches I can pinches is skin! Today I met an online friend who is petite, small boned and just little. Instead of feeling like an elephant next to her, I felt like a powerful athletic woman. I have a different body type; doesn't mean it isn't beautiful.

So, I am a cheerleader for the sleeve - but I will also say it isn't without challenges and risks. IT was obvious for me.. I was on a road to early death with a detour through disability due to my weight. It was literally a life and death decision for me. For those of you who are not so heavy, who don't have the health problems... do think hard about the risks. They are real. The risks of leaks and other serious complications are about twice what they are for a virgin sleever. Take it seriously, think about it hard... do the risks versus benefits analysis. I had tried EVERYTHING and i mean everything at least once - most things multiple times and while I never gave up, I just got fatter and fatter. I needed either the sleeve, the RNY or the DS surgery to save my life. I felt the sleeve was the lowest risk and had the "complications" and lifestyle adjustments I was willing to make. My backup plan is to convert to the DS if I every need to because I am NOT returning to being morbidly obese.

Mickey, I see you are pre-sleeve as well. I am not sure you have been banded, but I would like to gently suggest that you are leaping to some conclusions here. The band works for a while for some people, but it is a pretty crappy tool for most. You can tell me that I "Failed the band" too and I take full responsibility for my part in that debacle, BUT, it really is different then the sleeve. I was hungry all the freaking time but then I would eat - feel pain, but still feel hunger. It was awful and it drove me to eat foods that didn't cause pain - we call em sliders. It was better over time, it was better when it had no Fluid because I could eat more normal foods. Please accept from some of us who have traveled the road that you don't necessarily have an eating disorder or emotional problems to have had poor results with the band. I hesitated to post this because I am very aware that this is a hot topic, emotions run high among people considering the sleeve surgery and people who are early days post op. I am not trying to tick anybody off or hurt any feelings, but lots of people read these posts that never comment and I want them to hear the voice of someone who spent TEN LONG YEARS with the lapband and now 15 months with the sleeve. I am not an expert either, but I have the miles under my belt so to speak... The sleeve delivers what the band promised... but didn't deliver.

And my point is that most men (especially the adult grown up type you WANT to date) will feel exactly that same way. They will find you vibrant and interesting and exciting because you FEEL that way and will be projecting that energy.

Oh, and my doc told me that my extra skin is probably only about 4 pounds. In my eyes, it looks like it should be closer to 40... lol... but I guess skin isn't that heavy?

I am booked with a plastic surgeon locally here but i am having second (and third, and fourth) thoughts. It is a day surgery and they send you home - good luck! All follow ups I have to be driven back. Since it is day surgery, they will only do a little at a time - I will need 3 surgeries!!! That will take me years because I need the time off for each recovery. I am looking into a well known out of country option that uses a different anesthesia so you can stay "under" longer and get more done at once. It is alot less money, but money aside, it seems like a better situation. They keep you in the surgical facility for 2-3 days and then you stay in a local hotel another 12 days and are visited daily by both a nurse AND the surgeon. to me, that sounds like better after care then my usa doc has planned. This is a hard and scary decision but the out of country doc has great before and after photos and a ton of satisfied patients. I am still thinking.... Back to the OP- would you be brave enough to share your pre-plastics photos? I suspect they weren't as scary as my current pics look like since I lost 150 (well 170 from my highest weight). I basically have skin for two people...lol

My personal opinion/what was helpful to me was the Kessler book. He talked alot about the physical part of the addiction. I have never gotten much out of the Roth books - and i have read them. so, my current thinking - after losing alot of weight and changing my eating... I was pretty "over" food as comfort. I had a lifetime of food treating me badly... lol... and wanted a new relationship with it. I could not do it myself because I had a metabolic problem (I still do!) that led to my obesity. That obesity, that metabolic problem drove me to be hungry all the time - I mean 24/7, within an hour or two of a large meal kinda constant hunger. Some relief from the hunger helped me regain control over my food intake and make better choices. I still had to work, I still have to make good choices, I still have to do without things that I might "want" but it is not such a hardship. On an emotional level, i think I used food at times as a mood ballast. That means when I was feeling overly amped or anxious, food could calm me. When I felt low, good could energize me. It doesn't do that anymore. What i have had to get used to is FEELING those emotions rather then dulling them with food. 90% of the time I LIKE feeling those emotions. It is like my life is in high definition technicolor and it used to be a little dulled color. SOMETIMES, that intensity is alot. I think about it, I use my brain to tell myself... "it is okay to FEEL this so intensely". I watch for addiction transferance because i can see that possibility but other then loving my coffee, I am doing okay. So, for me, I don't now and never really did miss overeating. I didn't like overeating - it was not an emotional compulsion, it was a physical one. I am not denying there is an emotional component though. Food is like any other "Substance" we take in, it affects how you feel. If I overdo it now, and eat something too rich or sugary... I feel like crap. Then I remember, I used to feel this way ALOT. I like NOT feeling like crap, so I don't do that. A rich dessert isn't worth feeling like crap... gee... simpy isn't it but it is just so much clearer for me now. anyway, it is complicated but I am sharing my own story because I think we hear over and over that our heads need fixing... and yes.. there is an element of that (for some people more so). I went to two freaking years of counseling to deal with my "food issues" a few decades ago and honestly it never made a lick of difference because I was hungry ALL the time. I restarted counseling as a last ditch effort before I was sleeved and she accused me of not being honest - I must be eating due to emotional problems. She never believed me that I was actually hungry. Anyway, lets just say I am a skeptic - talk therapy does not solve everything but it can be a useful tool so be open to it. It won't make you less hungry though.

it worked! thank you! I don't find the profile maintenance on this site to be very intuitive!

I found one person who has done this and she can't figure out how she did it. It is very frustrating as I have gone to my profile, I see the outlines where my before and afters should go... i click edit profile, and that disappears. I know how to put pictures in a gallery but i don't know how to put a before and after as part of my gallery. It can't be that hard but it sure isn't obvious to me!

These are unanswerable questions in many ways. I was the the one terrified of failure, terrified that I would "fail again". There are no guarantees and I need to be honest - some people do not have stellar results with the sleeve and while i have guesses, I don't really know why. Having said that, I failed miserably, and I mean miserably with the band and have had great success with the sleeve. It is just a BETTER procedure and I picked a surgeon with BETTER support and follow up and I chose to learn from my mistakes and try to make different ones at least. In my mind, there is almost no comparison between the two. I am also a little skeptical about the whole food addiction thing... yes.. there is a huge emotional component but there is also a big physical component of the DRIVE to OVEREAT. The band did not address that hunger drive for me, and the sleeve did. It did not solve the mental/emotional aspects but removing the 85% of my bottomless pit/always hungry feeling removed 85% of my problem.

Lol.. acid queen skinny b***h ! I never had reflux till the lapband and then it was part of my life in band hell only I was still obese! It took me a long time to accept that it might get worse post sleeve.. but i finally decided it was worth the risk. Thank my lucky stars I am reflux free...but as a skinny b***h I too would say it is worth the risk.

Well, since being sleeved my idea of what constitutues meals has changed...lol I love eggs for breakfast, but they are a little light on the Protein actually. Sometimes I have an egg and a sausage... yummy. i have also diced them and used them inside dishes but mostly I have one for breakfast. It is not super italian tasting. It is mild. I am not a huge sausage lover, but these are good. A typical lunch is sandwich meat, thin sliced cheese and lettuce... kind of a lettuce wrap sandwich. I treat myself with a little cream cheese or maybe a sweet mustard as the condiment.

All this cowgirl talk has made me self conscious about my screen name...LOL I really AM a cowgirl. I ride a horse... really.

You people are hardcore. My goodness, the recovery wasn't THAT hard but I guess I was a wimp. I was sleeping in a recliner, doing my little walks but terrified of engaging the ab muscles. Well, that is because I made a mistake of using my abs the day after the surgery and about fainted from the pain - otherwise I really wasn't in pain, but I babied those ab muscles! I also felt gross because I had drains for the first week - I was a revision from the band and so it was just extra pre-caution. Nothing says unsexy like a couple of drains, trust me on that one! I also felt hugely hugely hugely fat because they pumped me up with fluids like a thanksgiving turkey. Sex was the last think on my mind those early days post op...lol I am alot more fun now

Dee, welcome! I think you have very realistic views but, you might be surprised too. I was pretty outgoing and felt self confident in most aspects of my life too. I have been obese most ofmy life and at some level had some peace with it. Well, I thought I did - I don't see it quite the same now. Anyway, the inspiration I want to share that for a person who is motivated, who understands that the road won't always be easy and how to ask for help and actually USE the information provided - you can be wildly successfull. That is how I feel anyway! It took me 14 months to lose 150#. I could have lost it faster, but after I lost the first.... 110-120 or so I took a little break before pushing for the homestretch. I needed the mental break - surprise surprise... I discovered I wasn't actually sure I wanted to be that "normal sized". I am sure glad I did though! Even my family... the people who see me everyday are shocked to see my before pictures. Somehow we were all in a little denial... Don't I just look happier now? I sure do feel better..

And several of you have mentioned the work and support - I agree with that too. I intentionally picked a surgical practice with a mandatory support follow up (nutrition and exercise). I knew that I would deny I needed it, but i would need it. I am quite sure that was what took me from losing maybe 70-80% of my excess to getting to goal. I work out, i watch what I eat... hey wait, you mean I am behaving like most "naturally" think women my age do to maintain their weight? What - you mean it isn't just EASY for everybody else and I am the only one? Alot of it is you need to get over yourself and just do the work, do what needs doing - just like everybody else has to. The surgery just helped me, gave me a fighting chance, it is still up to me.

I can't speak for others, but as it applies to me... I needed to be just "over" food as a hobby and recreation and emotional support and whatever else I thought it gave me before I was ready for the sleeve. I wrestled with the decision for a couple of years, and that is from someone who was previously banded and failed miserably at it. It was like breaking up with a bad boyfriend...lol. I did that BEFORE my surgery but my hunger is what drove me to eat and I needed the surgery to help me with the hunger - the bottomless pit of a stomach. The sleeve... set me free. I was able to not only dump the "bad boyfriend", but sent him packing with no regrets! Everyone should be crystal clear - the sleeve does NOT fix the brain and emotions... In fact, the sleeve will introduce NEW emotional challenges so screw that head on straight before going under the knife.