gmanbat

Note to self: Cancel the homeless shelter. Do volunteer work at the hospital stess echo lab.

What a good idea! Do me a favor. Stay on this forum even after you get to goal. We need clear thinkers around here. I can't carry the whole load. (kidding)

Hang on, Elaine. This is just one part of your life. There are many more factors that define your worth. Don't let the past oppress you. There is a giant rising up in you. You will get past your past. There is good reason to believe you will beat this. You are mad. Good. Turn the anger on fat itself, not you as a person. Love you, hate fat. You will find a new life soon. Make it happen. Don't take no.

Vertical sleeve is to dieting what Bruce Lee is to a fistfight.

So there I was ...330 pounds of exhausted, heavy breathing, high blood pressured, diabetic, sleep apnea laden, shell of his former self humanity. I had taken the "normal" way many times, the slippery slope of hundreds of diets, miracle cures, and sure fire programs only to tumble back down in a heap, more unhealthy than before. My wife began talking to me about weight loss surgery. She had been up that slope as many times as me and fell down with the same result. I was appalled that she would choose such a drastic step, I volunteered to hold a gun at her head at dinner time... in my mind the same as what she proposed. The batting of her big, beautiful eyes melted me down as it always does and I ended up at an "information" meeting held by the surgeon at our local Center of Excellence bariatric hospital. My steely resistence melted away when I detected the sound of sound science and saw the many results obtained by the patients there. I came away from the meeting sleeve-minded to the shock and delight of my bride. Now, a year and a half later, I am free of excess fat, diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and all that accompanies them. The only heavy breathing I do is when I run up a steep hill with 2 1/2 pound weights on each foot, carrying a 20 pound kettle bell, full speed, 12 times. Even then I am back to normal breathing before I hit the shower back home. This from a guy that used to compare the steps to the upstairs bedroom with Mt. Everest. So now I feel guity. It was a lot easier to get the operation than suffer with the effects of obesity. It was easier to make an effective intervention than run down a thousand more dead end streets. It was easier to take a chance on life than taking a dirt nap that odds are would have happened by now. But, you know, guilt can be earned or slapped on you by ignorant people. The same folks that charge you with the high crime of "taking the easy way out" would take the same route in a heartbeat if they weren't such lilly-livered cowards. So I will file the guilt of "easiness" away in the same folder with the shock belt I bought some years ago that was supposed to melt away fat but succeeded in just making burn marks on my belly; the folder of dumb ideas.

Looking back and moving forward you are kicking it! Good work!

Most of my pass out feeling times were from lack of water. Be sure to keep that up.

(African cornmeal mush) Known as ugali in Kenya and Tanzania, this starchy, polenta-like side dish goes by different names in sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi and Zambia it is called nsima or nshima. The South African name for it is pap or mealie pap. (pronounced pop). When I lived in South Africa, my family and I could not ask for a pop if who we were asking was not used to Americans. "You want mush?" "Why?" I'd like to see an international pop or sody chart. Iowa's apparent switch to pop must be the result of tourists, corn fields you know. Speaking of Africa, do coconuts migrate?

Well, us Iowans have an inward sense that we have the superior grasp on just about everything including how to say sody. Folks think we are just about corn and pigs and nothing to do but we bask in our own greatness to occupy our time.

You're 5 feet tall, 180 pounds, 35 BMI, and lost 7 pounds on a 10 day liquid diet, right? I predict...65-70 pounds. That'll be 20 dollars. Kidding.

Good work!

Wow! If you had squealed on a gangster at your heaviest you could safely live anywhere now, no witness protection. Good work!!!

WW is great for many. For guys like me it's like driving up a steep, icy road. Lotta spinning, eventually going backward. Sharing was great in the commune but for losing fat it was like p****** on a forest fire.

Peoples ain't bad, especially if they are chewing peppermint gum.

It's a good thing I am typing instead of talking, pretty hard with my mouth hanging open! Wow! Congratualtions!

There would just be an empty shop and one of us left in the morning with a big belly. Oh....I forgot....sleeved.

I think Joatsaint was kidding, toungue in cheek unless it was bitten off and eaten.

Any of you guys ever been far enough gone to put together a 6 course gorge in a big bowl? Layers: 1. Mac and cheese, extra cheese 2. pizza sliced up, extra cheese 3. tomato sauce or ketchup, which ever was handy 4. hamburger or sausage or both crumbled, more cheese 5. fried eggs 6. onions, hot sauce, doritos aaaaand..cheese! Tossed in a micro wave until it was a disgusting bubbling mass, fat butt flopped in front of droning TV, down she goes. Belches and gas releases, sleep of stupor. Ahhh, that was the life.

I went for a long time as the standard "Sleeve Master". I am not into B&D so I did not dig it but didn't know how to change it. A sleever said I reminded him of a hippy uncle, full of mystical sayings and quite eccentric. I was "Apple" in the 60's, a painted guru and self-absorbed cloud flyer. I was sufficiently flattered and found out how to change that part: Click the little arrow by your name in the upper right, My Settings, scroll down, fill in blank in front of Member Title

Maybe we should have a "What you want to hear" section. It would have to have a big disclaimer on top warning that the answers are probably bad advice. Folks could post there knowing they would merely be agreed with. Kind of like when my wife says something.

My people, (Iowans), called it sody (sew-dee) pop.

John, I had a drug induced backout in the 60's. I suspected that during that time I was cloned. I now suspect that you were it. You sound just like me.

You've got your **** together, John Latte!

Ya, that little biity water looks like Lake Michigan. You got your eyes on the prize, good. It'll get better.