clk

Take it all with a grain of salt. It's pretty normal for post sleeve patients to get far less than the "Oh my gosh, you're going to put your body in starvation mode" 1,200 calorie "magic" diet in the loss phase, especially. We quite frequently get flack from uneducated nutritionists or doctors for it, but it's fairly normal. And for some of us, we can only lose on the lower amounts. During pregnancy, I'm aiming for 1,400-1,600 a day but more accurately hitting 1,200-1,300 most days. I still have days where I fight to get in 800 calories, honestly, because I don't have a ton of room and most of my Protein options are gone because the baby doesn't like them. For me, it's kind of like those first months post op again: eating is a chore some days and I can go hours and hours without eating before I realize it. I've had to be extra careful. The important thing is that the baby develops well. I've gained weight and the baby is measuring perfectly. Nobody has any reason to complain. Don't let it bother you. It's not as if you could magically make more room to eat extra, anyway! ~Cheri

No, Tricare doesn't cover it, BUT you can find surgeons and MTFs that will provide the procedure. It's similar to how you can meet that odd person here and there that had plastics done (even though Tricare doesn't cover them) or even folks like my husband, who had a vasectomy reversal done (also not covered). It's confusing for a lot of people, actually, because Tricare doesn't even get involved for these "optional" procedures - it's a program run by that specific MTF and the surgeons that do the operations there. That said, it's good to know that Ft. Hood is providing VSG. ~Cheri

You'll find that more people take Prilosec here than just about anything else, and yes, a huge number of people here take a PPI after surgery. You should find your issues resolve a bit once you've been on the meds for about a week. Good luck, ~Cheri

If only I liked Peanut Butter those might go over well...perhaps I could try them with some almond butter or something once I'm back in the states. Has anyone tried the Protein balls subbing in something else? I'll eat cashew butter or almond butter but that's it. Not even Nutella impresses me. ~Cheri

I am not going to be critical of your husband, but I have seen plenty of great soldiers chaptered for weight and PT. They're not given WLS as an option, and are basically beaten down on low calorie diets and tons of PT that doesn't work for many of these poor guys. The military and frankly, every single doctor I've met at a MTF, love to quote from the Bible of weight loss: "It's calories in vs. calories out" "Eat less, exercise more" "If you're not losing weight you must be cheating somewhere or not trying hard enough" Well, if weight loss were one size fits all (and the military is RUN on that one-size-fits-all basis!) we'd all lose weight the first time we gave Weight Watchers a solid go. Sorry, but it's not that easy for anyone here. Nobody here has just woken up twenty pounds overweight and opted for surgery. I had dieted since age TWELVE and resisted my doctor's urging to get a lapband for more than a year before finally choosing a surgery and going with it. In that time I spent thousands of dollars and a huge amount of time on various diets and exercise plans. I failed every single time. I had a sleeve and still took 17 months to lose 107 pounds. I could not eat more than 700-900 calories a day in the loss phase, even with surgery. There is no way on this earth that I, personally, could have achieved my goal without my sleeve. The willpower to stay on a highly restricted diet for seventeen months is something that would challenge anyone, I think. In any case, it's easy for people that don't have a weight problem to dictate how we can be healthier. Every one of us has had a thin doctor, or an overweight family member, even, tell us exactly what we need to do to keep the weight off. I call B.S. Eating right is part of it, but nobody, not even the medical world, really understands obesity. There are other factors at play here that we don't understand, or like I said, simple math in vs. out would yield results for everyone. Even post surgery it's a challenge for some people! My husband never wanted me to have surgery. He wanted me to be happier and healthier, but he loved my larger body and never had a problem with my size. I did what I did because it's my life, literally. I'm the one that had diabetes and couldn't climb stairs and nearly died on a hike in Heidelberg! I'm the one that had to chase two year old twins around but was too tired to play with them at the park for more than half an hour at a time. I love him and I value what he says but I was the one trapped in a fat body, unhappy and unhealthy. With time, he has come around. He might have been attracted to "big Cheri" but he loves the girl he calls "skinny Cheri" just as much. He loves how much more open and outgoing I am, he loves how I'm more comfortable in my skin and he loves that I'm happy. So - all this rambling to say - sorry, it's not about him. It's about you and what you want. Only you know if you've given traditional diets a real solid go, and only you can know if VSG is the right option for you. I promise, your husband, like so many other military men, will understand a bit more about watching what you eat when he's not getting up at five to PT every morning but still eats like he's a busy athlete. My husband has definitely learned a bit more about that as he's hit forty and isn't in a traditional unit. ~Cheri

You know, I am sure that you could find some dried ones in the same aisle at the Beans at your local grocery. If not there, definitely by the Hispanic foods section, because I know for a fact that Goya sells dried garbanzo beans/chickpeas. I have to buy them this way (I'm overseas) and I just soak them at least overnight (usually closer to 18 hours), changing the Water once. Then I drain them and put them in a big pot covered with several inches of cold water. Do not add any seasoning or salt to beans before you cook them or they'll stay tough. Then I cook them over med-high heat until I get a nice simmer going (turn it down if they get to boiling too high) and let them cook anywhere from 30 minutes to 75 minutes. It's such a range because you cook them until they're the texture you want. If they're for roasting, you don't mind if they're a bit tougher or have more bite, but if they're for salads or hummus you cook them until they're nice and soft. Just test one every now and again to check the texture. Keep an eye on the level of the water, too. Always keep the beans covered by at least an inch of water. If they get foamier than you expect, just lay a wooden spoon across the top of the pan and it will keep it from overflowing. Once they're cooked, proceed from there. I suppose it might seem like a lot of work but I cook and bake a lot, and living overseas have just had to learn to live without a large variety of the canned goods we take for granted in the states. I suggest you make a double batch of the chickpeas and puree half into a yummy hummus dip or make the whole chickpeas into a delicious salad. Several snacks/meals with minimal effort. ~Cheri

There's a military spouse group on here that has a post about MTFs that do the procedure. I chose not to use a MTF because I wanted the sleeve and it wasn't offered where I lived. I self-paid and don't regret at all, even though the loan is only going to be paid off this July (3 years post op) and I had to travel pretty far to use the surgeon of my choice. I don't wish to fear monger, either, but I do think a huge part of avoiding complications is to have a skilled and experienced surgeon. So before trusting a surgeon at the MTF to do the procedure I would want to talk to others that had experience with that surgeon, first, the same way I did because I self-paid. There are plenty of ladies here that had surgery on base and had a great experience. My concern would be the same if I wanted plastics - I'm not going to the doctor that does them once in a while to practice, between other procedures. I'd rather have a skilled surgeon that does my procedure regularly and has great results with the absolute minimum of complications. Good luck. And if you do manage to get the procedures done, please post how it went and what MTF was used, along with the surgeon's info so that there's more experience out there for those researching. Any little bit can help the next person, too. ~Cheri

I'm noticing an upsurge in binge and compulsive overeating threads so I thought I'd bump this up so it's visible again. How is everyone coping lately? I know that for me, at least, there was no overnight solution. Even now, in times of stress it is easy to fall back on the habits I had for most of my life, rather than the ones I've newly built in the last two years. I hope everyone is doing okay, and that we'll see some more contributions to this thread. It's kind of the elephant in the room - talking about disordered eating, that is. We focus on our surgery, the scales, the counting calories, achieving goal, getting to the gym, etc. but so many of us completely disregard this very obvious issue in our lives with the hopes that it will just resolve on it's own post op. ~Cheri

I want to preface by saying that I am not trying to be judgmental or critical or harsh. But you CAN stop eating. The issue with allowing yourself to address the problem (compulsive overeating, binges, grazing) this way is that you could easily do the same POST OP, too. Many binge/graze/overeating habits rear their ugly heads post op. And if you can't sit down and eat an entire box of Cookies in one sitting post op, it's entirely possible to slowly consume the whole box in one day once you're healed. Nothing will stop that behavior or impulse but you. Let me again preface this portion of my advice by saying that there is no "right" or "best" way to achieve goal or approach your diet post op. That said, I very firmly believe that moderation is key. Okay, I'm not advocating cheesecake in the soft foods stage. But telling yourself before you're even sleeved that you'll "never eat certain foods again" is going to cause a sense of deprivation and resentment, which does (as you're experiencing) lead to binges, overeating and grazing behavior. Any food you love and enjoy right now is entirely possible to eat post op. Yes, you need to heal. And yes, you're probably going to have a Protein heavy diet in the beginning because you won't have room for much else and protein is the priority. But once you're nearing goal you will have to learn to incorporate a more balanced approach to food. Maintenance is not a diet. You cannot (or rather, should not) approach the sleeve as part B of your new diet. You cannot (again, should not) approach your diet as an all-or-nothing frantic race to goal...but then just throw off the diet and expect the sleeve, on it's own, to keep you there. You are not likely to fix this prior to surgery. I don't mean that to be defeatist. It takes a long time to break a lifelong bad habit and replace it with a good one. Food funerals are normal to some extent. But there is a definite line to walk and you should be very careful not to excuse a habit that you will need to confront and resolve later because you feel out of control around food right now. I hope that something there helps. There is a great thread (and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it) that has a mix of pre and post op people discussing disordered eating, and you should check it out. You aren't alone. Many of us have to fix these head/emotional food issues in ourselves before we can happily and successfully maintain. http://www.verticalsleevetalk.com/topic/63618-if-you-were-a-binge-eater-before/ Good luck, ~Cheri

COOPS! I've missed your posts, lady! I just wanted to say that it's nice to see you. And you look wonderful, surgeon's goal be damned. It's been a long, hard road for you, but you're maintaining and doing well and that's something to be thankful for in any case. ~Cheri

Good on you for researching and finding a possible solution. No need to suffer if you can do something simple that can help. I hope the PPI helps and what you're describing sounds exactly like how I felt once I got pregnant. Early post VSG I felt the acid and heartburn that let me know it was an acid problem. But this time around it started with me feeling hungry all the time. A few days on the PPI and even the occasional nighttime heartburn isn't an issue any longer. Good luck, ~Cheri

Some of these things last well past the preop phase, too. There are still far less dishes to wash in my house. My refrigerator is never overloaded and cluttered (unless I'm catering an event or entertaining, anyway) and tends to stay nice and clean. And I never iron. Ever. It was one of the rules before I married my husband. He can iron or he can pay someone else to do it for him, but I never, ever iron. ~Cheri

Butterthebean is right. It's not really considered a stall until you're three weeks at one weight. And please, put your scale away. You will drop the largest portion of weight in the first four to six months, but weighing daily will make you bonkers. I'm speaking from experience - my own, and a couple years of reading about it on the boards here. In the beginning, weigh every few days or once a week. You'll see better results and won't be driven batty by the small daily ups and downs that are perfectly normal. In maintenance, it's important to weigh daily to stay accountable, but early on it only makes you frustrated. It's not a race. The restrictive diet you're on and the major surgery you're recuperating from have you wanting instant gratification but it doesn't work that way. Slow and steady, and a heavy dose of patience, are the way to go here. Good luck, and congrats on your new sleeve, ~Cheri

I think that it depends on a lot of factors and honestly, you're not going to know until you're closer. I had a dream weight of something in the 120s (I'm now 32, 5'1" and started at 242) which would put me in my ideal BMI range. It was not going to happen. I lost at a pretty poky pace all along and those last fifteen pounds took me five months. Once I hit my "realistic" goal of 135 (BMI of 25.5) my body did not want to stay there. It was a constant struggle to keep the scale under 137 pounds. I could eat anything I wanted and stay between 137-139 pounds, though. Keeping it lower took so much dedication and restriction that I was losing my mind. In maintenance, I was between 135-139 on the scale on any given day and am perfectly comfortable with this range. That puts me at a BMI of 25.5-26.3 - in other words, overweight. Bottom line: my body doesn't give a damn what the BMI chart says. It doesn't care what my doctor says. He thinks I should weigh in the one-teens! My body does not care about my vanity, and the fact that I'd like to weigh as much as I should have weighed in high school. Perhaps after plastics I'll lose those additional pounds; I do have excess skin that will need to be removed. But my point is that you can't really know how far your body will go. Determination, good choices, getting active, etc. are all going to push you ahead on your journey and get you far. But those extra steps might be more of a challenge than you can/should take on. You won't know until you're there. Some folks get right to their dream goal and even blow past it. I think more of us settle into a pretty comfortable range of weight that's far healthier than we used to be, allows us to look great but isn't perhaps as small as we'd *like* to be. So my real opinion is to keep on slugging away and see how far you can take it without living on a restrictive diet for the rest of your life. Keep that number in mind as your goal weight, but be open enough to change it if need be. Accept that the REAL goal we should all have is maintaining our losses for life, not reaching a "magic" number on the scale (no matter how much it pleases our vanity to do so). The journey is only just starting once you reach goal. Maintenance is forever. Good luck, ~Cheri

YES!! This is exactly it. I feel like a broken record sometimes, but I really feel that the longer period gave me time that I really needed to make those new changes into habits I could keep up for the long haul. I had so much time to work on why I ate and how to stop the emotional eating or grazing. The end result as far as my weight loss is still the same, I just feel like I had a better foundation for maintenance than I would have had if I'd flown to goal within a six to nine month time frame. That's not to say that people that take less time can't maintain successfully. I just think that taking the time to do the head work and really get those habits incorporated into normal life is critical. I also think it's harder to focus on the bigger head/emotional issues if you're flying to goal with no stops or stalls on the way. I've seen too many really great, inspirational people stop posting here because they didn't want to keep posting once their weight jumped up a bit after reaching goal, or once they stopped the all-or-nothing approach to food or exercise. Neither one of those things makes anyone a failure but I think a lot of people feel that way about it because they never do shake that dieting mindset. ~Cheri

You shouldn't have to do that! You could argue that you've made very serious lifestyle and diet changes to support your swift loss, too. It's not as if you got within twenty pounds of goal so quickly by eating 400 no carb calories a day and watching television all day. In any case, I'm always jealous because the boys lose so much faster than the girls. I can't think of a single guy posting about months long stalls or consistently slow loss! ~Cheri

I didn't puree anything - the idea of just pureeing a "normal" food and eating it is absolutely repulsive to me, as is the idea of eating baby food from a jar. I didn't even feed that stuff to my kids - I made my own. I did eat soft foods like small curd cottage cheese, ricotta, refried Beans, homemade sorbets, yogurt, etc. I started to realize I had lactose intolerance around this time, too, though, and finished up the very short soft foods stage with things like non-dairy smoothies, mashed bananas, cream of wheat, beans, etc. Good luck, ~Cheri

The biggest thing that will help you - and this applies before or after surgery - is discovering WHY you're an overeater and dealing with whatever issues were at the start of the behavior. Life after surgery will make this a little easier, but it will not fix the issue for you. It will still have to be confronted and resolved for long term success. You are not alone in this struggle. Everyone here has some measure of disordered eating and all of us have poor habits. The idea is to confront them and deal with them. If counseling is not helping to address the actual cause of the problem, perhaps OA will help if you try again. If not, there area number of books that will share personal stories of people that have dealt with these issues. There is also a thread here: http://www.verticalsleevetalk.com/topic/63618-if-you-were-a-binge-eater-before/ with people both pre and post op discussing disordered eating and how to cope. Many people transition from overeating or binge eating into out of control, mindless grazing. You can definitely achieve great success with the sleeve, but the easiest way to sabotage yourself would be allowing that transition happen and set you up with new bad habits. Good luck, ~Cheri

You should be fine eating the chicken and cheese. The tortilla and lettuce might cause you real grief. I'm not a super strict carb counter but you might be. If you're not, the yogurt parfait might be a nice carb splurge, and the oatmeal would be good for a nice Fiber boost (you're likely not getting much at seven weeks out). Salads are hard for many people. I still cannot eat iceberg and I'm more than two years out. I can eat other greens but I'm not sure they offer those options at McD's. Online menus are your friend. There is a balance to be learned as far as eating well but living a normal life is also important. Find the middle ground and do what works for you. ~Cheri

Sorry to hear that! The texture on mine is crunchy - my husband says they're like corn nuts but I'm not sure I agree. They're definitely closer to a roasted nut and not soft at all. If you're willing to give them another shot, I'd either cook them at 450 instead of 400 or cook them longer. ~Cheri

I think that you're right - to some degree vanity has to enter into the equation. Yes, we can be influenced by co-morbids or lifestyle changes that will make our lives better. But in so many cases we want to feel normal and we want to feel comfortable in our bodies. I still have a face shot, but you can see my collarbones and tell I'm livin life at goal. Of course I do have a full body shot on my profile. There will always be some people uncomfortable with posting their pictures on the internet. It amazes me the range of people we have here - some folks bare all and do before and after shots in a bikini...something I would never, ever feel comfortable doing at any stage of my journey. Not even after plastics! I'm just never going to be okay with showing that much of me to anyone but my husband! ~Cheri

Perfect answer, CowgirlJane. There is no honeymoon at all, ever. The closer you are to goal and the less you have to lose, the slower those pounds come off. ~Cheri

I was seriously deficient in Iron and B12 and am slowly improving now that I've been on B12 shots and a prescription iron for the past year. I will admit that until sometime around one year post op I was hit or miss on my Vitamins, mostly because they made me so sick. Now I take them every morning and every evening, with shots taken twice a month for B12 and I feel so much better. In my case, taking my vitamins and getting on better supplements made a huge difference because I was very fatigued, forgetful and had dizzy spells before I started taking them regularly. I (usually) eat a very balanced diet but have always had issues with anemia, being borderline anemic at the best of times. It's been that way since childhood and I should have known it would worsen with WLS. Ah well. It's worth putting in the time and effort to find a pill regimen that works if you've got a deficiency, for sure. ~Cheri

This is exactly the approach I used (prior to baby) and can honestly say that once the habits of choosing better foods and not grazing or eating emotionally were under control I almost never had to track my food. I stayed very easily and comfortably in a four pound window and had no real troubles regardless of what I was choosing to eat. I could "afford" a splurge like dessert because I chose good things 90% of the time. The challenge comes in when you love food and are surrounded by tasty but not so healthy choices all the time. I imagine a long vacation would hurt me, especially eating out all the time. But there's no reason that "maintenance window" can't work. I think most of us do that, don't we? ~Cheri

I have to laugh, actually. I have read so many "OH is so much more positive" posts lately but here's the funny thing. When I went to visit the other day I ran into a rant posted on the 23rd that was JUST LIKE MINE. Well...not to brag but mine was way more better. Anyway, the reason I prefer VST is the way OH does their sleeve forum. There aren't separate boards. All the posts go into one board and you have to actually sift through all of the questions that are exactly the reason I get so frustrated to find the one or two that is posted by a person that is actually open to help and advice, not just looking for validation or for someone else to do their research for them. It makes me crazy. I'd post a link to the post that was similar to mine (though shorter) but I'm pretty sure they'd frown upon that here. Anyway, I don't mind new folks coming here - it's not like you're magically more knowledgeable as soon as you cross the one year line. But I do not want to see "our" forum turned into a place where I'm giving even more support back to the new folks instead of having a place to socialize and discuss with people that have made it farther out. It's DRAINING to just give advice (often the same advice again and again and again) and never get any support or replies to your posts in return, you know? Having this place be a safe zone from that nonsense is likely to help us vets actually stick around. Getting bombarded by more questions about loose skin, stalls and how many carbs to eat is going to make me snippy with people. So, consider yourselves forewarned: Cheri plans to get a bit territorial about this area. I don't care how far out from surgery you are if you have relevant VET topics to discuss and contribute to. But DO NOT (please, DO NOT) make this your "ask a vet directly for advice" forum. Cause the vets will leave. At least I will! Eh. Hormones make me less, erm...diplomatic than I could be. Plus, I'm hungry. Literally, I mean. It's noon and I forgot to eat. That makes me cranky. I'm off to eat at my friend's lovely western style cafe/coffee shop, the only one of it's kind in Bishkek. Later folks! ~Cheri