TheGamer

Bluegrass did my surgery, too Dr. Oldham did my surgery in Louisville at Baptist East.

Congrats! Hopefully I'll be joining you there under 300 next week

I live by the tiny storage containers. Every day I pack up what I'm going to eat that day at work and it helps keep me eating on a schedule and with properly controlled portions.

I've worked desk jobs and non-desk jobs. I've worked all day sitting on my butt and all day on my feet. In both situations I was overweight. Sitting or standing has never made one bit of difference as to my size. While sitting may be worse for your health, sitting is not, and will never be, what's making you fat. While there are a lot of current studies and speculation as to the role of sitting vs standing in overall health (this is part of the reason we've seen a real surge in "standing" desks in the last few years), the primary reason most of us are gaining weight really does just come down to the dietary choices that we make. This kind of echoes previous studies about those who fidget vs those who do not. Guess who burns more calories in a day? That's right, people who can't sit still. In short, it all comes down to "the more you move the more calories you burn". However, this study wasn't really about losing weight, it was about overall health differences between people who sit all day at a desk job vs people who don't.

I know there have been times I've just closed a thread rather than reply because the level of "advice" going on in it just hurt my head. It's not that I don't want to be helpful, but that it's impossible to *be* helpful when you're being shouted down by people who focus on giving bad or alarmist information (everything's a leak or infection!). The lack of preparation that I've seen does, occasionally, just boggle the mind. Also, lack of using the search function. I'm sure that if it's annoying at times at this point, it will continue to be that way as I get further out. All I can hope is that other sane sleevers stick around, too. There are some places that I've found some very rational and level headed people, and you learn who to listen to and who to avoid. Thanks for giving me a much needed laugh this morning, even though it came from your frustration. The same things that annoy you do annoy others

Age, weight, skin resilience, and other factors play in to if you'll have it, and if so, how much. Generally though, the younger you are with less weight = less excess skin and better elasticity.

Yeah, if anything I had *less* aches and pains after surgery. Having *more* just seems... off.

I had a drain after surgery. It was really no big deal.

I've only tried stevia once, but I remember it being touted as an "all natural" sweetener. To me, it had the worst kind of aftertaste and I haven't tried it again. Sucralose is born and raised in the lab, as far as I know. I figure, though, out of all the chemicals I've ever ingested, one more doesn't hurt

When I lost weight my feet got smaller, too. Not in terms of length, but overall, yes! I wear birks and used to have them on the last hole and they'd still dent my feet (water retention). Now, I've taken them in 2-3 notches and they feel just fine.

Sucralose (the stuff in splenda that makes it taste like sugar) is good. However, Splenda does have carbs in it. Each tiny packet is 1g of carb. So a packet here or there is not so bad, but if you're like me and you're using it to sweeten just about *everything* you drink in a day (I love tea!) that can add up to an extra 15-20 carbs a day. Of course, that goes for any artificial sweetener that is powdered (equal, sweet n low). What I do is I use liquid sucralose, which has no carbs at all. You can get it through Amazon under the brand EZSweetz, or elsewhere on the internet. Just do a search for liquid sucralose and you'll find tons of it. I buy the EZSweetz in the 3 pack that runs about $20 (yeah, it's pricy >.>) but each drop is equal to 2 teaspoons of sugar in terms of sweetness and It takes me a month or more to go through even one bottle.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm going "Gawd, I wish I was that skinny..." and lamenting that for me, that's another 70 pounds away

Nearly a pound a day is very good I lose about 4 pounds a week, now that I'm a few months out. Remember, it's not about how much you can lose how fast. Make sure that you're being good to yourself and doing the healthy thing and the weight will come off, regardless

I worried a lot about that initially. Every time the scale didn't budge I got frustrated. Then, I started tracking my weight daily (or almost daily - I only record the days I lose weight ). What I found is that my body, for whatever reason, likes to lose in fits and starts. I'll lose for a few days, then I won't lose a day or two, then lose some more, then not lose. By learning what my body does, it took away that "I'm not losing anything!" fear so that if, like yesterday, I didn't lose anything, I knew either today or tomorrow, I'd drop some weight.

You'll need to work closely with your doctor, obstetrician, and surgeon's office (bariatric coordinator/nutritionist). Of primary importance will be getting your (and the baby's) nutritional needs met, even though you've been sleeved. I would get in touch with them right away.

One thing you'll hear a lot during your journey is that this is a tool, not a fix. It's entirely true. It will be what you make of it. You can use it to lose weight and get to your goals, or you can sabotage yourself. The sleeve doesn't fix food issues, it only restricts the amount (not type!) of food you can consume, so we still have to make good choices. I don't have the stats off the top of my head, but VSG does have a decent success rate, even with limited data. VSG is a relatively new procedure, surgically speaking, and so there's less information on the long term effects for this particular type of surgery than others. There are a lot of good, honest (sometimes brutally) posts about the day to day struggles we have dealing with our new lives and how our old ones are sometimes difficult to lay to rest.

I know this sounds silly, but some of the items I own that are elastic banded have been great. I seem to get a lot more use out of them than the others because they're usually designed to be flowing in the first place, so that extra loss isn't quite so noticeable. I can pull in the elastic a bit and then they're fitting again (for a little while!). Other than that, I'm trying to limit myself to one pair of fitted pants per size. I haven't had to worry about shirts... yet... but there are a lot of things I wore immediately before surgery that I just can't any more because they've become indecent

There's no harm in going out and trying things on, unless you hate that sort of thing (personally I don't like trying on clothes ). I think your family is just excited and want to go have a girl's day, perhaps? You'll get an idea for the styles you like. Then, just hold off until much closer to your date to actually get a dress because we all know if you get something now there's absolutely no way it's going to fit in 4 months!

My favorite RTD is GNC's Total Lean meal replacement. It's got 25g of protein and only 6 carbs (2g sugar). I'm not a breakfast person, so I always drink my breakfast. I literally have an entire cabinet full of protein powders and drinks that I couldn't stomach after surgery. So much wasted money

Bring a firm pillow or other support for your stomach. Comfy comfy clothes, too. I took a sun dress with me (not so bad in October) just so I wouldn't have anything around my midsection at all. Stock up on GasX strips, too!

Tons. It really made it easier to move. I had especially bad inflammation in my shoulders and would have severe pain because of prior injury. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to function if it came to lifting things over my head.

I was taking indomethacin twice a day, 50mg.

I was sleeved on 10/22 and have had just a great time. My only real post-surgery complication was esophageal spasms due to stricture between the stomach and esophagus that hindered me being able to get off liquids and on to eating solids consistently. Once they stretched out the opening I've been eating real food and loving it. I'm sticking close to my dietary requirements, eating mostly white meat and fish, with a good supply of dairy and I've started including at least a serving of vegetables once a day. I am down from a 32 pant to a loose 26 and am fitting in 2x shirts down from 5x. While I'm still on my blood pressure medication, it's down from about 140/100 to 100/60 at my last doctor visit, so I expect I'll be off it soon. I'm off my joint inflammation medication, too. I'm losing steady at about 4-5 pounds a week, and will probably be down almost 100 from my starting point of 383 by the end of January. I'm very close to being under 300 for the first time in almost 8 years. This was the best thing I ever did.

Make sure that it's not: head hunger, acid, or gas. I learned the hard way that esophageal spasms feel just like OMG STARVING hunger. My surgeon actually recommended Zegerid over Prilosec because Zegerid has sodium bicarbonate that helps with absorption.

I find that most of my differences in weighing in at various places (doctor, surgeon, home) has to do with one of a few things - how much clothing I'm wearing, what type of clothing I'm wearing, and how much I've had to eat or drink in a given day. I use my home one for personal tracking and don't really worry one way or the other about what I'm being weighed at in different places.