Fiddleman

Cool thing about these is you can literally do them anywhere.

Oh man. Major Ouchie! I thought you were talking about dime size or even penny size. Forget the mole skin idea for a blister that is 1/2 your foot. Bandage that sucker with neosporin. Do let it recover.

How true! We do tend to forget about the 1st week of hell. I had some respiratory complication and had to be in ICU for a couple days after surgery. O2 levels were between 75 and 85% for a few days. I could not eat or drink anything for about 4 days (still was in hospital). My heart rate was constantly around 40 during the day and 30 at night until 5th day in hospital. The little alarm was constantly going off so I had the nurse disable it so I could get some sleep. I did not really realize the severity of it all until retroactively thinking about it months later. I was feeling well enough on day 5 to go home, but still took it pretty easy for 3 weeks, always working on my respiratory system with spirometer (sp?) and walking every day multiple times. They did not let me leave until I proved I could drink and pee on my own as well as keep my O2 90% or higher. Sounds pretty rough, huh? I think it had to do with the anesthesia. My wife claims they had trouble waking me in the recovery room, but that is hard to think about. Took 4 hours for me to come to. What if I had not woken up? However, it is a distant memory today and I would still say VSG is worth it 100%. Even when it was rough, I still did not regret VSG at anytime. Regret did not ever enter my mind. You see, VSG was my last hope. I wanted to have a more fulfilling life, did not want to be in chains as a food slave any longer and wanted to be there for my family.

My "3 week stall" actually occurred at week 5. It was 13 days long. My weight loss pattern between month 1 and month six was basically lose for 2 weeks, stall for 2 weeks, repeat. It was frustrating at first, but got used to it after a while. Let me start with a little personal history. A lot of my weight dropped month 1 and 2, with mostly walking. Month 3-5 dropped about 1/2 rate with mostly ellyptical. Month 5-7 dropped a little faster with mostly running. Now trying to improve fitness and gain back some lean muscle with cross fit, incline running and yoga as well as supplements. One suggestion to limit stalls is to eat more good carbs, lots of Protein (120+ and plenty of Water (100+ oz) during weight loss period. I did eat a lot of quality protein and drank a lot of water, but did not eat good carbs until recently and really leaned out in upper body, mostly due to hard running. There are some supplements I have learned about recently that might help preserve lean muscle such as BCAA (amino acids) and catalyst so your exercise does not eat all your lean muscle during loss.

Canned wild salmon from Traded Joe.

You gym vets are gold. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out there. Supplementation knowledge is definitely one of my weaker areas. However, I have been reading Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto (again). I bought his eBook 1/2 a dozen years ago, but did not really let the material set in. I like his approach because it is natural and straight forward. No steroids for him. This time I am going to pay attention. Lol.

Not sure if my diet would be considered typical, but here goes (from a non vet): Breakfast: matrix Protein shake with chia seeds and Water Pre exercise snack: 2 energy squares Post exercise snack: Amplified Wheybolic 60 shake with water Lunch: 3-4 ounces of chicken patty, 1-2 ounces of green veggie or red pepper Snack: nu go slim Protein Bar Dinner: 3-4 ounces of protein (chicken or beef), 1-2 ounces of green veggie Snack: matrix shake with water I try and eat Paleo as much as possible with supplementation to achieve higher daily protein amounts. If I exercise in the afternoon, I switch my morning Snacks with afternoon snack. Morning exercise is running and afternoon exercise is cross fit on alternating days. I try and run between 5 k and 10 k as fast as I can, ramping up the incline for more intensity and for burning of more calories (800-1000). I do not know the calories I burn in cross fit, but it is difficult, intense and about an hour long. On weekend, I usually eat out for one lunch and dinner, but still pay close attention to diet to support fitness. I found it helpful to eat as low carb as possible up to month 5 and eat high protein. I could not eat raw veggies so well so did green drinks. This kept insulin levels normalized and prevented much hunger. As my exercise ramped up at month 5, I began to eat more good carbs. I have found it a little difficult to control hunger if I eat too many grams of sugar in the protein bar. I am currently switching from a protein bar with 2 grams refined sugar to a Paleo protein bar with raw honey and more carbs. So far so good, but time will tell how this changes my hunger. I hope it reduces as I will not be eating those 2 grams of refined sugar any longer. I tracked like a fiend for first 3 months and then stopped. I keep it simple, repetitive so no need to track once it became second nature to live the daily life of post op without much random food planning. I really do not like tracking if it requires more than 10-15 minutes in the morning so made a decision to eat in a way that does not require tracking. Eating the same thing every day is not as bad as it seems. I do not need a lot of variety of I finds food that fits the form and taste I require. Hope this helps!

You will not really encounter a "full" sensation until you are on solids at week 4-6. We all start solids at a different post op date depending on the advice of the doctor and NUT. For example, I started at week 5. However, once you do start solids, follow the basic eating rules better then I did!! 1. Do take 20-30 minutes to eat a meal. Best I could do was 10 minutes. This was my primary cause of sliming, burping, sneezing, farting and hiccuping. Imagine doing all of these at the same time and you will not be surprised when your wife/husband has 911 on speed dial. Lol. 2. Put your fork down in between bites; it is not going to walk away. Never could do this very well and it might have contributed to 1. 3. Do not drink with food (wait 15 min after last drink and wait 45 minutes for another drink). Did not violate this one. 4. Eat high quality Protein first. Start out 1-3 ounces and work your way up to 3-5 ounces as the months go by. I had no issue with this one. 5. Measure your food to be no more then 1/3 a cup or 3 ounces on the scale. I could do this well. Document your food quantities for as long as you need to. Again, heed my pain comments above a couple posts. Not fun. Gets old after x times. If you follow rule the rules above, you should be able to stop before full and not go into pain zone. Good luck!!

I was being a little tongue in cheek on my ferret comment above because I think we can be like that from time to time in a marriage!! Just found it funny.

Just bought one and going to start using it, as soon as I determine how.

That is such a good idea to make a photo journey in the same positions. Too bad we all were not that well organized. You look fabulous and have really done well. Great job!

No, you should sliming, hiccuping, burping and gassing all at the same time. Lol.

I was going to say the same thing. In the beginning there are the burps, the hiccups, the runny nose if you get close to full. And then the pain if you eat past that. After a while, you finally get a 6th sense to just know before the triggers even kick in. However, you do need to listen and take notes in order to develop and be aware of the sense.

Even your under wear will start to feel lose after a while. If this happens, you know you have a good thing going. Little small things like this are little reminders when the scale is dead and has no pulse. At this time, you could do the humane thing by shooting it and putting it out of it's misery.

I have found only one person who has admitted to loving burpees. There must be a reason for that. And what planet are they from anyways. Maybe one where there is way less gravitational pull. Lol.

Getting on the treadmill at 5 weeks is pretty decent. I know everyone has their own fitness levels and their own recovery process. I remember not exercising too much at 5 weeks; still walked a bunch with my dog.

You bet! VSG has been a game changer for me emotionally, physically and psychologically. I am a different person now, literally. I would never go back to the person I was for most of my adult life: Fat, depressed and angry at the world. Food had me in a choke hold for so long. Now I am free to be who I want to be.

I like to eat good carbs (energy squares from nuts.com) before running and drink tons of water all morning. I follow up with a recovery protein shake mixed with water. This is when I run at 9 am. I also run about a mile when I pop out of bed at 5:30 am to get my circulation going, especially in my legs because I sit most of the day for my day job. For that run, usually I run empty. I do not bother with any food or water. It is not intense run as I try and get it done in about 9 minutes, maybe .5-1% incline. The hard stuff comes during my 9 am workout. The easiest way to fuel around a workout is good carbs before and protein immediately after. Hope this helps!