Miriam

I know how you feel. I've also told only a few people that I'm very close to, and I'm constantly getting admiring comments about my weight loss (it's quite noticeable). Just today someone told me that she found it hard to lose just 10 lbs. and asked me if I had done anything drastic to lose so much weight. Well, I know many consider weight loss surgery drastic, but to me it was the absolutely only solution to my weight issues and therefore sensible, not drasatic. I was able to honestly answer that no, I didn't do anything drastic... but felt guilty nonetheless.

I started my bariatric journey absolutely sure that I was going to do the DS. (We had friends who had done it - as in the whole family, parents and kids - and were thrilled with the results, and that's what even got me to consider bariatric surgery.) But my surgeon (pretty much the only one in my area who had experience with DS and could accept my insurance) refused to allow me to do DS - said it was too extreme for someone with my BMI (around 40 at the time), and offered me the choice of either band or sleeve. I knew that lots of people were unhappy with the band, so decided to go with the sleeve. Truthfully, now I'm so happy that I did that and not DS. My weight loss is going really well, and the idea of having to swallow all those pills (I can't even get in my multivitamin every day) - ugh! Despite certain issues with my sleeve (very restrictive, quite a bit of throwing up), I still LOVE it.

Hey, are we twins or what? Those are my problem areas too! I really love callanetics (not a misspelling), and find the abs exercises terrific - not so intense that I can't do them (a major problem with a lot of abs exercises since my core is so weak) but I definitely do feel the workout. For me, the progress isn't as fast as with some other body parts, but that's no surprise because those were the parts that always responded to any exercise faster, while my pooch is ... I'm sure you know what I mean. But it does work, at least for me.

I don't know if I could eat that much even with slow grazing - my sleeve just doesn't have the capacity at the moment. Oh, and I really don't have that much patience :-) But I know that eventually I will be able to get more in and I do NOT want to get back into the habit of grazing for when that happens. If it works for you, though, that's great.

Sounds like that works well for you, but I definitely don't want to get into the habit of eating and drinking together (among other things, I find that having to separate the two has reduced my grazing to almost zero). I also pack by volume - and I pack VERY little. The problem is that my sleeve capacity can change from one meal to the next (my NUT assured me that this was normal) so I can't necessarily eat one day what I ate the day before. That's part of what gets me into trouble with overeating - I'm so sure I should be able to eat this teeny tiny piece, but sometimes I just can't, regardless of what I can eat at other times. For example, on Friday I cooked myself an egg and made egg salad. (I'm not in the mushy phase but I love egg salad, so why not?) I was able to eat literally about 1/6 (if that much) of that single egg salad. When I showed what was left to my family, they couldn't believe I'd even begun to eat it, and they've seen how little I can eat. The next day, I easily polished off the rest of the salad in one sitting. (Truth to tell I was long overdue for a meal so my sleeve was emptier than usual, but still... those extremes make it really hard to always plan for exact volume.)

So glad to hear that I'm not the only slow learner around here :-) I still tend to overeat way more than I should (by overeat I mean one or two bites more than I should, but that's already enough to make me miserable for hours and hours) and always ask myself the same thing: Why can't I learn from previous mistakes? Am really trying to work on that - any suggestions, anybody?

I felt that way at the two-week mark, too. Actually, I still do from time to time (now exactly 2.5 months out), but pretty rarely. I just had a moment of that today when I opened the fridge to pull out my teeny-tiny supper, but I got over it really fast. And believe me that I was always a food lover as well - and could eat it in tremendous quantities, too. But there's actually something really liberating about not being hungry or eating all the time - it will take time, but I believe that it'll come to you, too. Right now, I think that the feelings that you're experiencing are pretty normal.

Well, I had one or two thoughts of "why did I do this to myself?" in the first couple of days post-op, when I was feeling pretty lousy (nauseous, in pain, etc.) but since I had read beforehand that this was pretty normal, I managed to get over them quite quickly. Since then - NO WAY! I love, love, love my sleeve! Now I'm not going to say that I haven't had any issues as a result of the surgery. I sometimes end up with food stuck in my sleeve if I eat too fast or too much (I really try to eat according to the new rules, but sometimes slip up) and then end up throwing it up so I don't stay uncomfortable for hours and hours. I have a hard time swallowing large vitamin pills. It's not always easy to get in enough protein and liquids. But these are all minor issues compared to the big one (no pun intended), which is, obviously, my weight. That makes me happy enough to easily ignore all the minor issues I have to deal with - especially knowing that this is weight that I will hopefully never put on again.

Good luck with your surgery! Be prepared for a tough first week or two or even longer (sorry if I'm scaring you - I know that some people sail through it - but I certainly wasn't one of them!), but it DOES get better, and when it does, it's great. Now almost 10 weeks post-op and I seriously cannot believe how amazingly my body has changed in such a short time. And I love the fact that I'm so not into food (most of the time - every so often I find myself looking at recipe after recipe that I know I can't even eat...), at least at the moment. I can't even regret not doing the sleeve earlier since I wasn't at a high enough BMI for my insurance to approve it till recently, but I can certainly say that I don't regret my decision to do it whatsoever!

Well, another post above says that maybe we shouldn't set very ambitious goals (e.g., 115 lbs.) so I'm a little embarrassed to even mention my goal, which is more ambitious than that (approx. 105 lbs.). But see, I know that even when I was 115 lbs. (way back at the beginning of high school, but the same height that I am now - 5'2"), I was more than a bit pudgy, even though I was only a size 8 or so. At 140 lbs. or so, I was a size 12, but I have videos and pictures from that time and believe me that I was very noticeably overweight. So maybe now my ambitious goal makes more sense. Having said that, I know two things which I think are very important for everyone to keep in mind: 1) Even if I never get down beyond 140, I will still be very happy, because it's a heck of a lot better than I ever could have done without the sleeve. (With the most intense diet that I was ever on, I got down to around 155, but only managed to maintain that for a month or so before beginning to regain all the weight plus more). So 105 is certainly not a "make or break" goal for me, just something for me to aim at. 2) I am aware that my weight loss this time around (combined with the exercise I'm doing) is giving my body a very different shape compared to previous weight loss attempts. I seem to be losing more of my stomach (yay! As an apple-shape that's especially imortant.), etc. So I might find out that when I hit 140 or 130 I'm a much smaller size than I anticipated being at that weight. So again, this goal is not carved in stone. In general, that final weight goal is the only sleeve goal I have that I've expressed in weight. All my other goals are size related (When I go on summer vacation I'll be a size 14-16, when I travel in the winter I'll be a size 6-8, etc.). I find that to be much more useful (and pleasurable!) than weight goals. But when I get to size 6-8, my brain stops working - I literally cannot picture myself that size, let alone smaller. So that's where the weight goal comes into play.

Love it! Can't wait to get there as well - in the meantime I'm still plowing through all the clothes I've put into storage over the years. I'm currently in this weird in between size (there are some clothes I have in two sizes - the bigger is way too big and the smaller is still too small) but hey, as long as I'm getting smaller, that should be my biggest complaint!

Thanks for sharing - very inspirational! And I do empathize with you on the throwing up - I have issues with that as well. I can't wait to be at the stage that you're at, but even now, throwing up and all, the journey is quite amazing.

Very similar stats to yours - I'm about 5'2", started off at 230 and size 22/24. Eight weeks later - am down to a size 18 and what's amazing to me, things that totally didn't fit one week fit great the next - the changes are so constant that there's no way to predict exactly what will fit next and when. But here's what's interesting - Cheri started off with similar height / weight stats but a much smaller size and took longer to go down one size (despite an impressive weight loss) - and I'm sure that every other person has their own individual story which will somewhat differ from the next person's story, so just be assured that you WILL be thinner three months out, but by how much? Only your body can tell! Best of luck with the surgery and everything that comes afterwards, Miriam

Hey, I really like your idea of keeping a weight in the car for arm exercises! I think I'll do the same - thanks for that!

I do indoor / treadmill walking and other exercise while watching The Biggest Loser (there's a great site with lots of shows including Biggest Loser Australia) - only watch while exercising, so if I want to know what happens next, I've got to exercise! I also have to add that my energy levels have gone up tremendously since I started exercising about 5 or 6 weeks post-op and I feel a difference even if I've missed only one day of exercise. So that is an addiitonal motivator for me to keep on track with my exercise program.

Oh my gosh! We must be twins! I also have piles of clothes albeit with a slightly larger range of sizes (around 12-24, but only very few 12s). I'm already down to 20, and starting to move towards an 18. Almost as much fun as rediscovering old favorites is emptying out my closet of the clothes that are too big for me so I can GIVE THEM AWAY - not stuff them in storage for when I regain the weight. No matter how well my diet's gone in the past, I've always kept some bigger clothes somewhere on the side, because I somehow knew that the weight would eventually come back. At the same time, I was optimistic enough to save all those smaller size clothes. Now I'm really happy I did that!

Congrats! Keep up the great weight loss!

One more food suggestion: Very smoothly chopped liver salad - was on my doc's list of mashed foods and one of the first I ate - I figured that between the Protein and Iron, that was a good food choice. (Not to mention that I happen to love liver!)

You poor thing! I really feel for you - no wonder you feel terrible. Good luck with the correction - hope you are on to solids real soon 'cause they'll make you feel SO much better.

Thanks for posting this. Although overall I'm doing well (8th week post-op), I have had some slip-ups, relatively small 'cause how much can I eat already, but they do worry me because I see them as a regression to my old behavior. So I can definitely identify with what you're going through. As another poster wrote, recognizing the problem is the first step toward fixing it. So good luck and please continue to post any enlightenment you have along your weight loss journey!

I second that! Beautifully written and expresses the feelings that I believe that everyone on this forum shares.

You're right - I don't like your answer :-) But the truth is that I know that I would NEVER reach the weight you've reached through regular dieting, so reaching goal after 17 months is still a lot better than never. I do hope that I'll get to size 14 without TOO much difficulty - it's what happens after that that I have real difficulty imagining. (The last time I was below that size was when I was in my teens...) So I will remember your story and use it to stay optimistic that even if the weight doesn't come off as fast as I would like, it will come off eventually.

Yes, I'd also love to know how long that took you. Thanks so much for posting, because even with a great initial weight loss, I can't help but having this niggling feeling that my weight loss will suddenly stop or slow down to a trickle. So every success story I read really spurs me on!

Yes, we can! Best of luck to you!

I'm 5'2" - started at 225 and am currently around 185 seven weeks post-op. The difference is already amazing, and I still have a while to go (I've set myself a pretty ambitious weight goal). I have no doubt that you'll love your sleeve - it's the best thing I've ever done, period.