MissMac

There are so many more stereotypes about overweight people besides being lazy and taking the perceived "easy way out" with bariatric surgery. People think we are poor. Gina Rinehart of Australia, who owns a mineral exploration company, is the richest woman in the world. It looks like from her pictures that she may weigh around 300 pounds, more or less. People think we are stupid. Obviously, none of her fat-shaming critics are as smart as she is, or they would be as rich as she is. As for our critics, they don't count our street-smarts, life experiences and common sense either. My Grandfather was a farmer, but what he knew about agricultural science, meteorology, and animal husbandry would put any smarty pants to shame in a debate about those subjects. He was obese. People think we are lazy. Grandpa got up before dawn to milk the cows and he was busy until time to go to bed, never wasting a moment of daylight. I have a college degree which I got at the age of 58. I have worked too hard all of my life and finally worked myself into a stroke on the job. Anyone who wants to call me lazy can meet my fist. People think we are dirty and have poor hygiene. Well, excuuuuuuse me. I shower every day and keep my house clean enough that you can at least see where the furniture is when you come in the door. People think we are ignorant about nutrition. I dare say that most of us have fought our weight and dieted so much that we are experts on nutrition. But when Pepsi is cheaper than milk and Twinkies are cheaper than produce, it is easy to bring poor choices home. I believe that for the most part, our obesity has been due to: 1) our family environment and what we were fed growing up 2) obesogenic medications 3) medical conditions such as PCOS or thyroid disturbances, and then 4) portion distortion, clean your plate syndrome, and drive-through-itis, which is a chronic addiction perpetuated by fast food restaurants through the use of salt, grease, and sugar. The first three listed ingredients in their fries are potatoes, oil, dextrose (which is sugar). I asked my dad one time when I was little about why is it that most poor people are fat instead of skinny. He explained that the cheapest foods are potatoes, Pasta, and rice and that the more nutritious foods are often too expensive for them. Personally, I grew up on Kraft mac and cheese, hot dogs, and Pop-Tarts. My whole family is obese. There definitley is a double standard when it comes to obesity. Given the odds stacked against us, I think bariatric surgery is the smartest way to go. Haters are just ignorant of the facts.

Not unless you have a five pound ball.

I wayyyyy overbought on the large canisters of Protein powder. At the end of two years I threw a lot of it out. I bought so many Protein Bars that they got dried out and stale. I threw them out too. I would have been better off just picking up a few things at the store once in a while.

You don't have to lie, but you don't have to tell everything you know.

You won't lose who you are as much as you will find who you are. The real you has been hiding inside a fat suit and wants out. Because you will have more energy, more confidence and better health, you will be able to express the real you in a more genuine way. You will be able to dump all of those toxic people who were keeping you down. Even sex will be better because you will have more energy and be more flexible and maybe even feel friskier and sexy. Look at your surgery as an outstanding opportunity to reinvent yourself.......kind of like going into witness protection. This whole process is definitely an adventure. Hang in there.

Hi..I am in a southwest suburban neighborhood of Chicago and had my sleeve done at Loyola University Medical Center on Dec 23, 2013.

Heads up shoulder gas......... That was one thing I asked my surgeon about. What do you do for pain management, and is there anything you can do to prevent this shoulder gas I am hearing about? He said that the shoulder gas is caused by the CO2 that is used to plump up the sbdominal cavity during surgery so that he can more easily manipulate his tools and see what he is doing. He said that he would extract as much as possible. Consequently, I had NO shoulder gas issue. Make sure you ask your surgeon about it - pre-op.

They gave me nice nap. When I came to, I went home.

You might even ask for your insurance to assign you a case manager so that you will have the same person to talk to every time you call. I have BCBS Federal Employee, and they give me a case manager for anything major that I have done. They have done it for a knee replacement, a stroke, and my sleeve.

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Chicken and steak teriyaki on a skewer

I had the same bandaging on all four of my incisions, but two of them got blisters under the band-aids and two did not. I had to just wait it out, but I did put Benadryl cream around them.

I had to wait until about 6 weeks because of the small bits. Even then, I could not eat more than 1/2 of one.

My initial weight was used.

Don't give away your power. You will find out that as you lose weight you will gain confidence and courage. My favorite thing to say to haters is "Thanks for your concern. Now, let's talk about your weight." I agree with everyone else's comments. Give her one fair warning that discussing your health and weight when you did not ask for input, is just cause to make a harassment complaint with HR. Also, the older you get, the less you will care about other people's opinions. It is no secret here that bariatric surgery will expose the raw dynamics of your relationships. People just can't keep their mouths shut. You will find out just exactly how people really see you because they drop that veil of silence. This is not a bad thing, even though it stings. It is good to know where you stand so that you can respond in an appropriate, if not sarcastic way.

Here is a list of common co-morbidities recognized by insurance adjusters. https://www.nationalbariatriclink.org/comorbidities-insurancequalification.html

Are you planning on using insurance? Those who cover it usually require a BMI of 40, or 35 with a couple of life threatening co-morbidities. There is always Mexico. And I agree....the older I get, the less I care about a lot of stuff.

Never heard of that procedure. I wouldn't go to a surgeon who hasn't done at least 100 of them. I don't want to be the guinea pig. The sleeve incisions aren't so bad. I had four in various positions near my belly button. Three were very small, and the fourth was not much larger, but is where they pulled out the excess stomach out to discard. That one was sore four a couple of weeks, but I did not need any pain meds. At 2 1/2 years out, I have to look hard to find the three smaller scars, and I know where they are. The largest now is no bigger than a mosquito bite and just slightly pink. personally, I would rather have the external surgery than to have someone shoving tools down my throat.

My shoe size went from 9 wide to 8 1/2 narrow. I switched from diabetic socks to regular socks.

Welcome to the forum. You have come to the right place. My doctor scolded me one time for trying to self-diagnose on the internet. He called it "Google-itis. When looking up medical info, you are better off going to sites for places like the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, etc. If you want to find threads here to address a certain topic, go to the search box and type in a key word (like - PROTEIN). If you use two words or more, like "SOY PROTEIN" , put it in quotation marks. Before you click to search, check that faint little teensty weensty down arrow to the right. It will open a drop down menu that will help you define your search. I get the best results from FORUMS. That will give you a list of threads that mention that topic. Here is my favorite thread. It currently shares 1,322 reasons why we decided to follow through with bariatric surgery. You may as well bookmark because it will probably take you a week to read them all. http://www.bariatricpal.com/topic/219831-what-was-your-final-straw-that-broke-the-camels-back/?hl=%20final%20%20straw

2 1/2 years out.......................it's that weighing, measuring, and logging that is crucial for me. It only takes me a couple of days of "eyeballing" to run off the rails. And the scales..........I know, some doctors say to weigh once in a while, but weighing every morning keeps me in check. It is so much easier to recover from a small gain than a large one.

If it were United Health Care that I had years ago, I would say run away in the opposite direction as fast as you can. However, when I had that darn stroke, my current insurance BCBS Federal offered a case manager. Since I had to have help with therapy, home health care, and having a Power of Attorney handle major decisions for me, the Case Manager was a gift from God. She helped us navigate through all that mess and gave us ONE person to talk to when dealing with the red tape. I was not punished or denied care in any way. So, I would say it depends on which carrier you have.

Human Resources. That's crossing the line.

Night Eating.

My original goal was to get from 235 down to 135. The doctor says that she is quite happy with 150 and that a panniculectomy and liposuction would get rid of another 10.