Indigo1991

When I went to my surgeon, the first thing he said was that he wasn't there to persuade me to have the surgery - I was there to convince him that I understood what surgery entailed beyond losing weight and that I could accept the changes were permanent. Having had a friend who had been sleeved, I had seen close up how major the whole thing had been and had no illusions about the risks of surgery or the commitment required to make the changes needed to make the surgery work. But despite me doing this with my eyes wide open, the theory versus the reality was pretty different. Even knowing what was going to happen, it was initially harder than I thought, physically and emotionally. I think I was probably in shock for the first couple of weeks as the enormity of what I had done sunk in. Then came the eating/drinking issues, followed quickly by the emotional/mental difficulties. But now almost at goal and having been round the roller coaster ride a few times, I would do it all again such is the transformation in my life. At times, I am so happy I could cry - and I don't think I would have ever got here without my sleeve. Would I recommend being sleeved to someone else? If I was asked for my experience, I would tell it, warts and all. I would say how much I love my sleeve and that I believe it has saved my life. But I would never tell anyone to do it just because it has worked for me. Not just on medical grounds but also because we all have to arrive at decisions that are right for us at the right time. My moment came, it was right for me to be sleeved and, like many others, I came through with few problems. OP, it's not your fault what happened to your coworker, so please don't beat yourself up.

...compared to a couple of months ago... Lol!

At 7 months out, food is enjoyable again, less of a chore. Still cut it into small pieces and chew well but I can eat pretty much anything and that happened almost overnight. I am making lots of pot meals as that makes most meats tender enough for my tummy. Had my first fillet steak since surgery last weekend, managed half which is better than I hoped - my son was very happy to help me out and eat the other half :-) Had red deer loin yesterday and managed 2/3 of the portion. I admit I had convinced myself that I couldn't eat meat other than turkey, chicken etc but it's a bit like me trying on my clothes every week to see what still fits - think I need to try new food each week as I think I might be surprised at just how wide my food repertoire is now compared to a couple of. Onths ago. Will stop me getting bored...

I can vouch for that - but as an ex fat person, let me tell you it's been a bit of a desert since I lost weight )))

Couldn't agree more Mistysj. I had forgotten the eating in the car... my car side pockets were always crammed with the evidence of my secret eating. Just realised I haven't had to clean them out since surgery.... There is real pleasure in having control over my eating which makes me feel more normal. I had a chocolate yesterday. One. And I was happy. No urge to eat any more. For me, this is almost a miracle and I am grateful for every small victory.

LL, glad I found this post ... realise that I have no pics of large swathes of my life and that makes me very sad. None with my son at the various stages of his life other than the very early obligatory new mummy poses. None with my ex husband beyond our wedding pics. None with my wider family. None with my friends, some of whom are no longer here. None capturing any of the exciting or unique things I have done in life. All because I couldn't bear to see my fat self in a pic.... I probably have had more pics taken in the last 3 months than I have had in the last 20+ years. Can't capture the past but I hope I can start to record life now with the people I love and who love me, irrespective of the odd bingo wing Thought provoking blog, thanks for sharing.

Not dramatic, just telling it like it is. And I get the need for you to get one break, even a small one, to stop the cycle of one thing after another wearing you down. As for having the strength to keep fighting, you have already shown you have deep reserves. What you need now is get them replenished. A break would help but your friends on this site will give you support and let you rant and rave to your heart's delight if that's what it takes to keep you strong. Without saying too much, I have been where you are and have said "enough, no more, I can't be expected to take this". But the next day came, I got up and fought til exhausted, went to bed, cried, then the day after came when I didn't want it to, but I got up and fought til exhausted, cried - and I did this day after day until it got easier. And it did get easier... hang in there. Onwards and upwards x

RJ, wish there was a button to push to show support. This is tough on you and I don't really have an answer. But having read your posts and your story in recent months, it's clear you have come a long way because you are a fighter. Yes, sometimes even fighters think "what now?" and "will it ever end?" but once you have drawn breath, you will go back to kicking ass. As you get better, you will get back on track and reach your goal. Nothing surer... as with every bad time in life, this too will pass, even if that's a bit slower than you would like :-) At the risk of sounding slightly flaky in Buddhist philosophy, there is a belief that we only are given the amount of suffering we can cope with. If we reach the "will this ever end?" moment, it's because we have been given a little extra to save someone else pain because they cant cope in the way we can. That has made some of my bad times a bit easier to bear. Or I might just be deluding myself :-) Good luck, we are all rooting for you.

Misty, in the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency announced yesterday that it is to review morning-after pills with a view to deciding if they need to carry a warning about weight. This comes two years after a study by Edinburgh Uni found that obese women were more than 3 times likely than normal weight women to become pregnant after taking some morning-after pills. Apparently, that link was particularly strong for levonorgestrel-based pills. Advice here is to follow your doctor's advice until a decision is made. Seems something is happening about this globally...

That should have read "Awwww" not awkward but can't get edit function to work :-((((

Awkward, Artymama, don't cry, it will get better. The weird thing is if I had lost this much hair with my big round face, I would have been even more upset. As it is, I now have a small face and short hair - probably an ok combo. But it still doesn't look like me... And I can't hide behind my hair like I used to lol....

I have a skinny latte with a half of a single shot of coffee, no sugar. It's like milk with a hint of coffee :-) But it's welcome extra protein and I like sitting feeling like part of the "normal" world...

The biggest change for me towards being "normal" is having stopped using food as a reward or compensation and regarding it as fuel first and foremost. I don't have treats any more - if it's Friday night, it's not chocolate night cos I had a bad week. It's not cake night on a Tues night because I worked a 12 hour shift. It's not ice cream sundae on a Sunday (with choc sauce, nuts etc) cos I deserve it with a shitty week ahead. Compensating for what was wrong with my life had to stop - and it has, for the most part. Nowadays, I don't keep crap foods at home so if I want to eat something that isn't good quality Protein, veggies etc, I have to leave the house and buy it. Most of the time, I can't be arsed! But if I am out and want a scoop of ice cream, then I have it. To me, being "normal" is about moderation. I know that denial has been as bad for me as a free-for-all when it comes to eating. Finding the balance and sticking with it is what I am striving for. That's my normal, where I can take or leave food, where I can eat a cookie not a packet and where food is in it's place, not occupying my every waking thought. Normal is not being a secret eater any more, not having secret stashes of food everywhere and not eating until I can't move. Not having done any of this since my sleeve 7 months, I think I am on the way to being my version of normal. But my normal isn't necessarily your normal....

7 months out and still losing hair... i have cut it shorter and am trying different styles to cover the gaps. But have started looking at ways of supplementing my hair. We have a place called Lucinda Ellery and they provide hair filling services for women losing hair. The results are amazing but not cheap. But am getting close to a consultation if this continues....

Couldn't agree more about not telling him - that's just to make you feel better - what would it do to him and you efforts to make this right going forward? The very best of luck, we will all be rooting for you x

Couldn't agree more with many of these posts, including M.Rev's thoughtful advice, but especially Nurse B when she says don't divorce your husband for another man. Be together with him or divorce him because of the relationship the two of you have together - forget the third party who just seems to be plugging the gaps of what's missing in your life. If you were happy with your husband, would you have given the other man a second look? My ex-husband had an emotional relationship with a colleague that turned into a full blown affair. When I found out, I could deal with the sex but I couldn't cope with someone else being the one he turned to, talked to and spent time with rather than me. But I knew that I didn't want "her" to be the reason my marriage failed, I wanted to know why he had done what he did and if there were things we could fix. So we tried, took time to work through things and I had therapy. And once I got past being hurt and territorial (I didn't want someone to take him away from me), and stepped back, I realised our relationship wasn't really what I wanted or needed any more. After 29 years, I saw that I hadn't been happy and that I deserved more. He was shocked when I ended our marriage because, by that time, he had stopped seeing "her". He thought that was all it would take for me to let him stay. But he hadn't done enough to keep me by changing his behaviours ... Post affair he went back to the old ways and didn't see that if he/we changed nothing, one of us would cheat in future because the old issues remained unresolved and neither of us were really any happier. Three years later, was it the right thing? Yes. But only because I tried to fix it first before I ended my marriage and because I did it for the right reasons - not the affair but because we just didn't work any more. So that's my advice for what it's worth. Set aside the other man, he's a symptom of your unhappiness of your life with your husband. Put the effort into talking to your husband, be honest and don't hide how close to the edge you are. Give him a proper opportunity to make things better. If you do all of that and either he fails to step up or it's still not right for you, then be honourable and leave him. Don't mess with someone else, it won't help. My only regret is that my ex didn't do me that courtesy before he went off and had an affair. If he had, I would have listened and we might have got over things together before the added complications of betrayal and no trust were added to a sad situation.

M. Rev, think you need to go with recovering from a dose of the runs. That way, you can say you are being careful and can't eat a lot. But not sure that explains the weightloss which I think she might clock...

Just woken up, logged on to see what I missed overnight - and it appears medical science has moved on apace while I slept... pooping staples??? Ah, that explains the constipation in the early days... but how come so many of us have been landed with old fashioned titanium staples in our stomachs when there's someone in the world working miracles with poopable staples??? But seriously, such ignorance dressed up as wide eyed "just saying" scares me now that I see the thread. It's always going to happen but you'd think that after interventions by vet sleevers people would stop dribbling. Laura, u tried but got sneered at for suggesting these were wound staples - hell, doncha know that medical miracle workers GLUE wounds now? :-)))) it would be funny if people weren't reading this shitED and giving credence to it. Not going to read any more of that ignorant rubbish, only out my bed for 30 mins and am agitated and pissed off, lol!!!! Happy weekend everyone, aren't you pleased and relieved to be sleeved and part of such a well informed group

I have gone from a size 18 to a 6/8 since March and on the way have shed 24 sacks of clothes, all to local charity shops. Yes, I was also a shopaholic as well as a food addict. Doing everything to excess seems to be a thread running through my life..... The majority of the clothes had been accumulated over the years to cover all eventualities, some are the same thing in a couple of sizes to allow for "fat days" or maybe that should have been "fatter days"! The rest were bought and barely worn as I swept through the different sizes, sometimes in the course of only a month. I have kept three items from when I was at my biggest. When I feel like I am not making progress and start looking at myself with an unnecessarily self-critical eye, I dig out the jacket, dress and trousers. All of them were clothes that made me feel good and they still do cos I laugh when I wrap the jacket round me or put two legs into one leg of my trousers. So in the euphoria of clearing, keep even just one thing so that when you begin to forget how you looked (and you will!!!) and start to fret about how well you are doing, you can dig it out and see the real difference you have made and how far you have come :-)

Brilliant idea - I have gone with BMI to date but it is just one indicator... it isn't the whole picture. That's why I loved the % calculator. Can't wait to see what your son comes up with x

GG, you have done so many of us a huge favour by putting our weightloss in perspective. I have stopped telling people the number of pounds I have lost - thanks to you, I now say that I have lost 92% of my excess weight. Then I wait for jaws to drop, lol!!!! Thanks again

Lipstick - fattie????? Er, no I don't think so, based on recent photo.... :-)))

My dietician also had a rule of 20 mins to eat your protein and you stopped eating at that point. The reason being is if you eat slowly for an hour, your stomach is emptying as you keep filling it and you will bypass the full feeling- and eat more.

You look amazing, congratulations - and any spare hair you have, send some it in my direction :-)

Nooooooooo, I am 5'2" and I can't afford to lose even a fraction of an inch....