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I agree with the previous posts. Pregnancy is hard on a body. I have a friend that had bypass, did plastics and never planned to get married or have kids. And then she did...and it was actually painful to have her body stretch and the damage afterward was terrible, just because they had already pulled the skin in that area so tight. In the end, she wound up paying twice for the same thing to be done and had to get another full tummy tuck with muscle tightening after her second child to put everything back again. Unless you experience a huge amount of sagging - something you are more likely to avoid since you weren't extremely heavy beforehand - I'd wait. In addition, I'd say that between one year and two years post sleeve my body rebounded tremendously. My fat deposits moved back to my bottom and breasts, giving me back my hourglass figure. My stomach was still saggy, but I'm down more than 140 pounds from my highest ever weight and I've also had twins. But even that bounced back a lot. You might find that you can avoid some of the surgeries you think you want just by waiting for your skin to recover naturally. Certain areas on my body went from saggy to not needing any plastics at all. Now I'm in the postpartum phase and trying to get back to goal and wait for my skin to readjust AGAIN so that I can finally pursue my plastics. Good luck, and great job with the loss in such a short time, ~Cheri

I had horrible heartburn the whole pregnancy. I had to get back on my daily PPI, so talk to your OB about this and get on one that they're okay with you taking for the duration. I didn't have many issues during pregnancy other than morning sickness and food aversions but afterward I had a very bad UTI and THREE back to back rounds of mastitis. Yuck. I hope it gets easier for you. Definitely talk to your doctor about getting onto Prilosec or something. It helped me a lot, and even with that I still needed Tums on occasion in the evening. ~Cheri

To keep on working on myself. I want my inside to match my outside...whereas before surgery and goal I really felt that the outside was what needed changing. In fact, my problems started inside and the weight was just a sign of the problems in my life. I spent years being fat because I was hiding myself and didn't want/feel I deserved to have real relationships with other people. Slap on an extra 100 pounds and a mean look and people leave you alone, you know? I have been told how pretty I am my whole life and I suppose that due to a myriad of totally screwed up experiences I tried to distract from that with ugly behavior. I want to be more grateful. I want to be happier just as I am...without feeling like I need something else to happen before I'll allow happiness into my life. I have come so far in my life and I have done an amazing job taking care of my family and being a mom to my kids...things that, quite frankly, have taken a lot of work and effort for me, because I grew up in such a terribly messed up home. If you learn how to parent and how to have relationships from your family as a child, who teaches you how to do things properly if they're completely backwards and harmful? Loving people or letting people close to me does not come naturally. Being nice, being friendly, being open, being unselfish...those things take effort though they are becoming more natural as I continue to work on them. So for me, the most important thing is to make sure that who I am inside and how I'm feeling match the woman on the outside, who is pretty and smiling and looks like she has it together. I want kindness and forgiveness to be my first responses, not irritation or frustration. It's hard. I'm a work in progress and I want to keep working. I also want to remember that I always get to try again tomorrow. And every day I work on me, the REAL me, not just my body, it gets easier and I feel less like I'm acting or performing. That's got to be progress. ~Cheri

I can't believe you're already in jeans after your plastics! Great job on your loss. Enjoy this, you worked hard for it! ~Cheri

There are some old threads about this that are still very relevant that you should search out. Overeating can very easily transition into grazing and/or binges post op (once you're healed and able to eat) if you aren't careful and don't address it. The good news is that it's not a new issue to come up here and you should be able to find plenty of support if you post about it and keep yourself accountable. For me, finding the causes behind my compulsion to overeat was important. Sure, I liked food, but I wasn't eating an entire pizza because I wanted it so badly, you know? I think that really taking advantage of that time immediately post op when eating isn't as appealing and you can't eat much is critical. It's easy to notice head hunger at that point and pinpoint the reasons you get the urge to eat. From there, it's a matter of modifying behavior. Good luck! It's possible and the sleeve definitely makes it easier. But the thing to remember is that you have to address the HOW of your obesity before goal. Maintenance is forever, and if you don't address these bad habits or head issues, it's incredibly difficult to stay at goal. In my experience, it's easier for bad habits and sloppy eating to crop up when you're happy with your body and not striving to reach a goal. ~Cheri

Three years out next month and I still do not like to eat rice or Pasta - sometimes I can eat a few bites and other times I feel overfull and sick after just one bite. I also avoid soft tortillas - same issue - I cannot eat more than one bite or so and they make me feel sick. And I still can't eat large quantities of iceberg lettuce, though other greens and types of lettuce are just fine. I can eat anything else, though, just not that much of it. ~Cheri

I think that it's important that you really focus on this issue and other similar ones you might have. There's a thread on the vet forum about happiness post sleeve that might make good reading, too. I was overweight all of my adult life and I blamed my unhappiness solely on my body but I can tell you that as you shed the weight you WILL feel better about yourself but you will also realize that the weight (in most cases) is not the cause of your unhappiness...it's a symptom of something else for those of us that have battled obesity since childhood. Many, many ladies here wind up on medications and in counseling, or battling depression or anxiety after surgery. That is not a bad thing at all. But it's definitely something to be fully aware of going in because it could also happen to you. We are all different and our baggage (emotional and physical) is personal. But I really did expect to just be "happy" and love myself completely once I lost weight and hit goal. It did not happen that way. In fact, until I started confronting and dealing with past issues things got worse for a while, because I wasn't able to eat my emotions, blame my weight for everything or focus on a new diet to distract myself and I still didn't have new non-food coping mechanisms in place. I'm still learning. And I'm still struggling with the old habits of abusing myself because it's a habit, or because it's the easy thing to attack. Once you lose weight, you will definitely feel better about a lot of things. But if you're determined to hate yourself or if you have underlying issues that need to be addressed, you'll just find a new thing to be unhappy about (restriction, maintenance or loose skin) so try to start thinking about these things now. Good luck. I wouldn't trade my sleeve for anything. And I'm thankful that it gave me a chance to not only be the size I never dreamed I'd achieve but also to shed a bunch of emotional baggage I hadn't even been aware was weighing me down. ~Cheri

So, the Inova meeting isn't working out for me but I found a few folks on Meetup that do a once monthly thing and I'm going to check that out. If there are folks that would really like to get a group together on here, what would make you most comfortable with actually doing it? If someone hosted at their home, would you be more comfortable, or would you rather meet out at a public place? What days/times work for most folks here? Weekends? That can be hard for folks with kids. And how far are people willing to drive? For instance, to get this started, I'm willing to host a sort of sleeve open house at my place (I'm in Alexandria, south of Old Town, not far off Rt. 1) if someone else will take over and offer to host (either at their place or in public) the next one. Any interest in this? Either quote this in your response here on the thread or PM me and we'll work something out. I see a lot of "I'd love a support group" but not a lot of suggestions on how to get one running. I'm happy to start it out if that's what we need to get the ball rolling. Oh, and to whoever asked about Mexico for sleeve, you can PM me if you're interested in details - I used Aceves and didn't have any issues with aftercare. All I ever needed were labs done and my PCM had no issues with that. ~Cheri

You can compare but there's really no telling where you'll wind up. I was stuck between 700-900 in loss and if I ate more than 1,000 calories a day I couldn't lose at all and might gain. In maintenance I expected to be really limited but my body accepted a window anywhere from 1,200-1,600 calories a day without much movement on the scale. In pregnancy I ate a consistent 1,400-1,700 a day or thereabouts. And in loss again I'm stuck with 700-900 or the scale won't budge at all. Carbs are different for everyone. Some folks are super sensitive to them and others aren't. I was super low at first and eventually between 70-90 a day (I think) in loss. Closer to 100-120 in maintenance, maybe more on occasion. If you exercise, you need more carbs for sure. But your body is going to tell you where you should be, and a constant feeling of deprivation is a sure sign that you're not eating the right balance for your individual needs. Maintenance is more about finding a combination of foods you can eat and feel satisfied with, both physically and mentally, while not seeing a bounce on the scale. Leave the figuring of calories to something you do at the end of the day - log your food AFTER the day in maintenance for a few weeks and you'll see your window and how you're doing. If the scale's not moving, there's no need to limit yourself to less and continue restricting. Good luck, ~Cheri

I think you hit it when you used the word "mindfulness" because that's where we need to be. Old (bad, bad, bad) habits we had before sleeves: Eating quickly Not tasting our food Not focusing on our meal and taking time to enjoy it Making easy choices, not good ones Being mindful about food helps a lot for me. And I have to be very careful about this as I've transitioned from maintenance to loss again. It's not the same way of eating, and it does hit home that I really did indulge in sloppy eating habits in maintenance, simply because I could do it and not gain any weight. I start my day and first thing I log my food plan for the day in MFP. Then I stick to it. And I find that for me, this works. I don't think about food or fantasize about what I might eat later...I just stick to my plan. Provided I'm not feeling particularly stressed or hormonal, it's like it trips a trigger and I all of a sudden just don't care about food. I'm not busying planning my next meal; I've already done it. I'm not wondering what's in the kitchen for snacking; I've logged my snack already. In fact, instead of sitting around grazing, I'm missing meal times again like the early days. When it's time to eat, I'm mindful about my food. When it's time to live life, I try to focus on all the other things I have in my life. And when all else fails and that head hunger won't go away? I exercise...some jumping jacks, push ups and crunches or half an hour dancing with the kids on the XBox and I've forgotten I wanted to eat in the first place. ~Cheri

I'm just curious how you folks handle PMs from newbies. I get quite a few of them and usually do not mind helping out and answering. For fear of this becoming a rant or something that will get locked, I'll just generalize, but I get a lot of messages that are more along the lines of "justify this surgery to me" or "do my research for me" or "give me the magic answer for my weight loss pace/struggle/scale woes/etc." and similar things. I get plenty of folks that actually have a similar situation or stats and feel more comfortable sending a message off there. And of course I love comparing stories with other folks that have reached goal or are close to it and have seen a post of mine and want to talk more about it privately. I feel like there's a line here, too, and I walk too close to burning my self out completely on VST sometimes. I have a life outside of WLS - a new baby on the way, five year old twins and I just moved 8,000 miles and am staying in my in-laws house until my husband can join me and we can start the final leg of our journey. And we still have to find a place to live! Ninety percent of why I'm active on VST really is to help other people out, but I am not Google, you know? What ways have you other vets found to deal with this kindly and politely? I do want to help but the vast majority of PMs are about things I've discussed on the forum already and that other folks have talked about a million times, too. But I'd also feel guilty just deleting messages or ignoring them, too. ~Cheri

Globe - I do not mean to offend you in any way and I certainly do not view you as a failure. But you are one of the few here that has really, truly, genuinely tried very hard to find something that works for you...and nothing is working. If you are viewing yourself as a failure, I wish you would try not to do that. I think that more truthfully, in your case, something else was going on that is causing the sleeve not to work as well for you. And most certainly the extreme levels of stress that you seem to live under at all times cannot be helping your body. I do not care what doctors or surgeons say. The hows and whys of weight loss are not fully understood by anyone just yet. If it were simple math and calories in vs. out, we'd all come by success fairly easily and that would the end of it. But that is not the case fora certain percentage of people here. I never reached my ideal goal and I've come to terms with that - but I'm only ten pounds up from that dream goal, not fifty or sixty. I also had to eat very little to lose weight, though I was thankfully able to eat more carbs than many and to incorporate a more balanced diet approach long before reaching goal. It helped a lot. For those that are still nowhere near goal and are still forced onto 20-40 grams of carbs a day and several hours of exercise every day just to maintain I would say that considering the next step is something I might do, too. So if you want to do it, start your research. I'd be scared for you - it's the only other surgery I would have considered myself but it is SO drastic. And the streamlined, stripped down way you eat now simply would not work with serious malabsorption like that - you'd have to "relearn" some less healthy habits just to keep your nutrient levels up. But you are deeply unhappy with your progress and it's apparent. Maybe it is time to consider another step. I don't know. None of us have the answers here! We can say what worked for us and why we think it did, but that's about all we can offer. I do not view you as a failure any more than I view coops or M2G as failures. You are women that have worked exceptionally hard to reach goal and have done everything we're supposed to do but without the same results, even accounting for slower loss. I think that if you want to take it further and explore DS, do it. But I also think you need to work on measuring your success solely by reaching your ideal weight. You are accomplished, you have a career, you have lost a huge amount of weight, you have learned new habits and incorporated them and you have endured a particularly hellish couple of years. Try to cut yourself some slack. I've been learning, slowly, that happiness doesn't just show up the day the scale says (close enough to) what you want it to. Start to applaud your successes now, because if you cannot appreciate how far you've come already, once you reach goal (and I do think you will, someway, somehow) you will find yourself looking in the mirror wondering why you didn't also stumble into instant happiness and love yourself a bit more when those numbers showed up. Or at least, that was my experience! It sounds trite, but happiness is NOT a number on the scale. It helps, but only a little bit. Good luck, girl. Keep us posted. ~Cheri

If every day were like a diet for me, I could not do this long term. For me, the adjustment back into loss from living in maintenance was very hard. But after a few days to reset, adhering to my diet got easier. But oh, do the hormones ever trigger head hunger! I have to ask myself why I feel hungry and I do have to go back to those old tricks of a glass of Water before a light snack, or some crunchy vegetables to give me that satisfied feeling. However, in every single case where I have felt the urge to just eat, eat, eat there is an underlying cause. Stress, usually. Actually, make that hormones and stress. As I'm relearning how to deal with it and how to say now when I'm not really hungry, it gets easier. And usually I find that I'm eating either too much junk (and triggering cravings) or too little overall (and am genuinely hungry) and I need to adjust my diet. But it takes practice and yes, willpower (which I'm sorely lacking) to get over that hurdle. Track what you eat. Really. It stinks and I hate to do it and I'm so sick of it after nearly three years. But if you don't cheat yourself of those minutes, it's hard to miss what's going on with your body/mind and it's far easier to stay on top of your goals for weight and nutrition. As for support 3+ years out, I can see why that would be a real issue. It's hard to use VST as a safe place for support even with a vet's forum. There's always someone waiting to be offended or scared by what you post. I'm starting to attend in person support meetings this coming week, and I hope they provide that outlet I need to at least bounce ideas and thoughts off of people when I need to do it. By three years out, we're at goal (or close to it) and it gets harder to be vigilant about your diet and exercise when you're not miserably unhappy about your body. It's easy to be complacent when you don't log your food daily, when you don't weigh and when you fit in your clothes and like what you see in the mirror. It's far easier to just slide into old, ingrained habits during stressful periods if you've been living fairly lax in maintenance. All you can do is try to be accountable and to stick with it. If you know you have an issue and need to lose, the answer is always the same. All of us know how to lose weight; we're vets here. It's harder to start over again after a few years, sure. But we know how to do it, right? ~Cheri

You are missed, for sure, by those of us that remember your upbeat and positive posts. But you hit it - I don't come around much anymore because I'm tired of giving and getting snark or silence in response to my questions or posts. ~Cheri

Oh, I can also admit to leaning over in front of the mirror or pinching up my skin and seeing what's underneath! Like all women, I have my days where I'm just not feeling in love with my naked self (particularly in this postpartum phase) and I'll just feel sloppy and unhappy about the skin in my middle. But then I'll pull it all up to where it would be if I had my plastics and yeah...there's a FLAT stomach and a SKINNY woman under that loose skin. It's not any stretch to think that plastics would take care of it and get me down to my dream goal in the mid-high 120s (assuming I do lose the final 8 pounds back to my maintenance weight!) and maybe I'd even lose a pant size in the process. Not sure, but it could happen! I like what my shapewear does for me, but a life free of it would be SO wonderful. I'm already saving my pennies and hope to have surgery by next summer. We'll see! I hope you're not feeling too nervous as you count down to your surgery date. How exciting! ~Cheri

Discomfort. Not mental "I'm worried about showing my body" discomfort but actual discomfort. Red marks, pinching, having to readjust your clothes constantly because they're riding up or down - those are the signs of poorly fitted clothing. You need an honest friend with good fashion sense to shop with you, or yes, a trip to an upscale shop for a professional's assistance. It took me a long time to overcome that feeling of almost vulnerability every time I ventured out in anything that wasn't bulky, saggy or baggy. I still sometimes see lumps, bumps and unattractive bulges where other people simply do not. We are hypercritical and insecure in our new bodies for a while so it's actually not surprising that we have trouble dressing ourselves or being confident about what we see in the mirror. I'm very petite and rise or hems are a HUGE issue. Even being in a small and having something fit everywhere else if the rise is off it will look completely wrong, or if the hem hits in the wrong place I'll go from hourglass shape to looking like a block. These are things many of us didn't pay attention to prior to losing weight. I just wanted to hide my fat; I wasn't concerned about being attractive or fashionable and I certainly wasn't revealing anything other than a bit of cleavage! One thing: absolutely DO NOT wear pants that pinch the midsection or are the wrong rise. Over time your body will get used to that and start to shape up that way. I had the "two belly" syndrome - I wore pants that pinched me right around my waist and it caused a smaller waist with a permanent muffin top above and an apron below. Wear things that fit properly and your body will thank you and you will look much better. You just had plastics and admitted you have much swelling - and you will for a while yet! Don't worry about that muffin top you see just yet. Be prepared to buy a slightly larger size to accommodate the swelling and to size down or alter your pants later. I'm sure you look lovely, friend. This little mental hiccup is ongoing for many of us, but you're just now accepting that you're a success and starting to dress like it. It takes practice and there are times I still have to ask a random stranger for an honest opinion in a dressing room - if I ask a woman if she'd wear the same thing and demand an honest answer, I'll usually get one. I see flaws everywhere, and more often, other women (and men, surely) just see a small woman who dresses nicely. Now, if you asked about age appropriateness I'd need help, too. I like to think I dress suitably for my age, but the other moms on the playground are all in yoga pants and I feel like I'm trying too hard to recapture my twenties even when all I'm doing is showing my shape (modestly covered), so there you go - another mental hurdle to overcome. I want to see pictures once your swelling goes down and you're rocking some adorable jeans you never thought you'd be able to wear! ~Cheri

Um, yeah. I experienced quite a bit of pelvic bruising until I learned my new body and found that I can move differently. Who knew hips and what-not could actually hurt so much? And how do super skinny women actually DO it with all those bones jutting out? It simply can't be comfortable...

Keep working on it - undergoing a drastic surgery without being in the right place is asking for trouble, so I agree with your choice to delay. I know you were suffering from quite a bit of anxiety. Work on those traumas and put it behind you. No sense being in the body you want if you're not in the right frame of mind. I think that starting a very strenuous workout regimen at the same time you scale back your calories might be a challenge, though. Don't be afraid to experiment and find what works for you. If you're feeling genuine hunger, that is not surprising if you've worked out very hard and burned almost as many calories as you've consumed in a day. Don't beat yourself up with a strictness you may not need. If it works and you're happy, do it. If it's a struggle every day even after a few weeks, it's time to readjust. And you know the weight comes off slowly when we're small, so be nice to yourself. My advice (unsolicited, I know) is to use this time to focus on being stronger and getting to the right mental place. I hope that those thighs come along and you don't need plastics for them. Who knows? I still see small improvements showing up in the way my skin lies or in my shape as time goes on, even now while I'm feeling overweight and ungainly. Though if you do dodge the thigh lift bullet, you must post your workout regimen so others can benefit as well! My thighs are much better than they were even a year ago, but it's a hard place to improve easily. Best - ~Cheri

I found that the buttaches faded with time as I got used to less padding. No, I won't be hiding from my kids in the bathroom reading a novel on the toilet anymore but hey - I no longer get achy from sitting at the table for dinner. I also feel more fragile. I know that I have lost muscle but I agree with butterthebean and it's simple physics. I can't help my husband lift and carry like before but I'm also half the size. I'm able to do more - stand longer, walk farther, do those pushups and squats, etc. but I'm not able to do those very physical things I relied on my bulk to help me accomplish. All in all, it's a fair tradeoff, I'd say. I'm sure strength training would help to some extent because if you challenged yourself you would get stronger. But I doubt that'll stop the wind from blowing you around. ~Cheri

Here's where I got my info: http://www.inova.org/healthcare-services/bariatric-surgery/patient-support/groups-and-education It appears they do a first Monday meeting for those 2+ years out and one on the third Monday that seems more general and includes a speaker. My intent is to go to the one on the third Monday of the month, which would be the 20th. ~Cheri

I've just been far too busy to post an update, so forgive the delay. We didn't just welcome a new baby, we're also still in the midst of an overseas move and life has been both crazy and sleep deprived. We welcomed our newest daughter Elisheva (Shevi) on 21 March. She was 6 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long at birth. Delivery went as planned without complications. She's absolutely adorable, and she's been a lot of fun for our whole family since her arrival. If only we weren't so busy we'd enjoy this time a bit more! Our twins are adjusting well and my daughter, in particular, hovers constantly just thrilled to be a big sister. I have mentioned many times that my post-sleeve pregnancy was actually more challenging in some ways for me. I had more morning sickness, I was more tired, I had a great deal of trouble eating, etc. But I can say without a doubt that delivery and postpartum are totally different post sleeve, and I have never felt quite so good this quickly after a baby. Delivery went very quickly and smoothly and I never needed pain medications afterward. Within two days I felt tired but basically back to normal. Now that I'm twelve days out, the only difference in pre-pregnancy and post is that my body isn't back to normal yet. Recovery was about 1,000 times easier without the excess weight, which I found to be a pleasant surprise. I've also had a better milk supply than ever before. In the past I've struggled to maintain supply (I exclusively pump as every one of my four has had latching issues and pumping was easier for us) but this time around I'm pumping more than twice what I need each day and I already have a refrigerator and freezer full of milk. Again, this is different than before. I think it's mostly due to me just being a healthier person all around - I drink more Water, eat good foods, take my rest seriously (and whenever I can!) than I was in the past. As for weight I gained a total of 32 pounds with my pregnancy. My scale is currently packed in a box and I'm in a hotel room that lacks a scale (darn Army lodging) but as of the 28th I was already down 18 pounds. I'm sure when I'm able to weigh again I'll be down somewhere between 22-25 pounds. I am already able to wear my pre-pregnancy 5/6 jeans...but they would have a bit of unsightly muffin top just now so I'm waiting to actually wear them out. Other than that, I'm back to my usual sizes in everything but bras. Those I'll need to special order, apparently! I'll post some pictures of myself in a few days, but the reality is that even though I feel a bit messy and "loose" around the middle, there is no way I look like I just gave birth less than two weeks ago. If I had some decent shapewear (again, packed in boxes) I think I'd be able to wear most of my pre-pregnancy wardrobe. In any case, we're all doing well we're just really busy. We're enjoying Elisheva as best we can with the stressful move, and we can't wait to be settled in our house so we can relax a bit! Attached are a few pictures of our adorable little princess. ~Cheri

Ugh. I HATED walking around Manas to run errands or mail a box out or anything. If I wanted American food and went to the DFAC it was so painfully awkward. It's about 98% men out there and when entire tables swivel their heads to track you walking by - even when I had my kids in tow! - and I'd have to just keep my eyes ahead and pretend dozens of sex-starved men aren't eyeballing me like I'm dinner. It's just so unnerving. I can't imagine trying to get a decent workout in with the same thing happening! I really feel for the women deployed with a lot of those groups because especially in the combat arms you'll see men that haven't worked with more than a handful of women for an entire deployment. ~Cheri

A protein shake made with coffee as the liquid.

Is anyone else here postpartum trying to shed those pesky pregnancy pounds? I'd love to get an accountability thread started so we can cheer each other on as we work our way back to goal while dealing with new babies! Getting to the gym is SO not an option for me with two five year olds that don't start school until the fall and a five week old that's just too young to be in gym daycare. I gained 32 pounds and have 9 pounds left to my pre-pregnancy weight. I'd like to lose those 9 and perhaps an extra 6 or so, but we'll see how that goes. I'd like to invite other new mommies (and even not-so-new mommies!) out of the woodwork to post how they're doing now that pregnancy is over. The biggest question we get here is about losing weight post op, and I'm sure that participating can help not only us, but other sleevers considering a child post sleeve. How are you eating? How are you getting enough rest? How easily is the weight coming off? Is exercise an option for you? What are you doing to help shed pounds? Let's get some conversation going here! ~Cheri

Thanks for the info, and you're absolutely right about it being reconstructive surgery! ~cheri