gmanbat

Great! All my best to you! Hope everything goes smoothly!

Welcome, Jed121! Being nervous about the operation just means you are human and realize what it is. I was nervous, too. I calculated the risks, both immediate and long term. Getting the operation won out over continued obesity and poor health. I calculated correctly. If I had stayed the way I was I would not likely be here to type this message. You must decide for yourself. Research helps doubts. All my best to you!

Is that Siesta Key?

My advice is pretty simple. Half squats and push ups from the knees. Keep adding more repetitions and sets. Do as many as you can. Do more the next time. 3-4 times a week.

It is great that you have a supporting husband.The family friend that is not doing well is not you. You have a different body and a different mind. If I were you I would investigate if possible and find out the particulars of what this friend is doing. There could be many explanations and you could learn what to avoid. I am sitting here over 2 years after sleeving, at and past goal for a year, weight stable, health restored, and looking good, (according to my wife, anyway ). Would your family be interested in coming on this forum and seeing the success stories of thousands of people or are they content with using just one example?

Stretching the sleeve is not the proper way to defeat it. Eating non-stop.....eating more when you sense there is room...is the road to failure. That new stomach is pretty stubborn about it's shape, it's more or less a muscle not just skin. Muscles can stretch but it's pretty difficult and they only stretch so much. Relax with Mickey! If you are in Florida you have a great day for it, I'm on my patio with Italian Dark Roast Keurig coffee with butter pecan creamer, bare feet, shorts, listening to the birdies, watching the bicycle riders go by. This is a great time of year here before the advent of the steam bath.

After you recover you can do what you did before, probably better. Giving the proper recovery time is the trick. I wouldn't do crunches our even full push-ups until about a year out, but some guys aren't that careful. I was babying my surgery area. Also, I was 64 and don't heal as fast.

The first thing on my bucket list was kicking the bucket down the road. Got that done, should have been dead years ago, prostate cancer. Losing the fat helps. I now ride the roller coasters, buy clothes without trying them on, unabashedly go shirtless, run, laugh, smile, enjoy living. The rest requires money to do but I have already covered the important stuff. World travel, buying wife a great home, cruises, giving larger to charities.

It is amazing how poorly people count. They can't seem to count to one, that's the number of lives each of us have. No one yet has lived for two people. The brain in each head is supposed to control what it's body does. We are sovereign territory which only we have the deed to. The truth is you have to fight for your right to own your own life. Power hungry life hackers seek to have points of control in as many heads as their coercion skill allows. It is up to us to keep possession of that which is ours. It is our life, our body, our right to our own thinking and life direction. If running my own life comes at the expense of losing the companionship of those who wish to direct my destiny by whipping me with insult and slander, it is a price that I am happily prepared to pay.

Fiber is not that difficult to get in. However, getting enough vegetable and fruit nutrition in in a whole form is difficult given our small tummies. Juicing gets in the essential part of vegetables and can be counted as liquid intake. The benefits are enormous. Metamucil, Benefiber, a bit of high fiber Cereal, lots of ways to get fiber in. I love green drinks such as Amazing Green Grass, http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=amazing+green+superfood&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=6465976176&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15203947331706117811&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=t&ref=pd_sl_58ighfio9c_e . In a bit of a money pinch right now or I would be hitting that every day.

Wow, does look a lot better! It will take a while for everyone to get used to having it around again. I will test out the functions.

I have a couple of friends that get on an exercise kick and buy equipment. Stationary bikes, treadmills, barbells.....sit gathering dust.....avoided. Tools don't use themselves.

I have a good juicer. What I don't have is enough gumption to use it. I was just talking to my RNY wife how we need to use it even though it is a pain to clean up. We need to get more vegetables in, this is the best way. It can count for Water intake but with Vitamins and enzymes. Trouble is, you can't juice a bunch and store it, it loses enzymes and nutrition. You have to juice what you can eat on the spot to get the full benefit. We were brainstorming about juicing in the morning, giving it a quick clean, then juice throughout the day with quick cleans and then a thorough cleaning at the end of the day. Right now what we are nuts about is our Keurig machine, too much coffee could be replaced by something more nutritious. A big concern is thorough cleaning of vegetables to get all the crap off that farmers and grocers put on them. Some folks use a vegetable spray cleaner. We could use some tips, too.

You are doing it! Looking good!

(Twerking comment deleted) She sings good, though.

I used to be on a bodybuilders forum. Had to leave. The influence of the intellectual vacuum was causing my verbal functions to shut down. I wanted to look like the Hulk, not talk like him.

I don't need any forum butt kickers. I'm married.

I am just a kid of 65 but I am very proud of you! I am a cancer survivor too.

Wow! Good work! Looking great!

Looking mighty good!

I have relatives in Greensboro, NC. Beautiful area, the weather this year is not typical, even they are talking Florida.. They have pretty mild winters though, in my memory.

Super good article as usual, Alex! You gave me an idea...I am low budget right now but, by golly, I can buy some seeds with the wife and we can start some new life for our Florida landscaping in some inside and outside pots. Some vegetables and herbs are on the agenda, too. Thanks!

In the old days I ate like an elephant because I was working out and thought the added food would be burned up. It wasn't. I got fat no matter how hard I worked out. After the sleeve things changed. When I started an extremely strenuous job my big concern was eating enough. I lost weight, I lost fat. The extra eating I do when getting extreme exercise is still much less than before the sleeve. I have become accustomed to the smaller portions and don't give them a second thought. I just eat more often...to get the Protein in. Off the subject...I think you write extremely well!

Great, Carol! Peanut butter has been my friend ever since I was far enough out to eat it. I like natural peanut butter, the kind that just has peanuts on the ingredient list. It's a pain because the oil separates and you have to mix it but it is worth it. I put it in my shakes and just get spoonfuls from time to time.

Sometimes everything but the waistline appears to be getting smaller thus making the waistline look bigger.