ItsMe2033

I had gastric sleeve surgery in August, 2013. I've told five friends and one family member (and no one at work) about it. I had the surgery on a Thursday and I was back at work the next Monday. I've been extremely happy about the decision to have the surgery and also the desicion to tell only a few people. It has required only minimal effort to keep the sleeve surgery a secret. I often see threads on the forum about people deciding to keep their weight-loss surgery a secret. I haven't seen threads discussing keeping any follow-up plastic surgery a secret. I had an extended Fleur-De-Lis abdominoplasty on the Friday just over a week ago. My intent is to return to work tomorrow, Monday. I have been out from work for six days. No one at work knows why I was out from work, although my manager and his manager know that I was out for "medical reasons." I have asked both of them to not share that information with others. The challanges involved in keeping each type of surgery a secret differ quite a bit. The biggest issues in keeping the weight-loss surgery a secret involve performing a little sleight-of-hand concerning others watching you when you eat and also having a plausible explanation for the weight loss. Distracting people from watching the way I eat goes on even today, and as far as I can tell, it will forever. For example, when I eat with a group of people, I always put more food on my plate than I will really eat. Otherwise I might attract too much attention for only putting a cup of food on my plate. I always order Water with my meals in public, even though I won't be drinking it, because it calls too much attention to your eating if you don't get anything to drink. All these actions and many more that I haven't named are second nature to me and require no real effort on my part. On the other hand, keeping the abdominoplasty a secret requires a very different action plan. I think most of the effort of keeping it a secret will take place in the next few weeks to months, then after that it shouldn't require any ongoing effort at all (This presupposes that no one will see me without a shirt. I believe I can make that happen) Some of the things that are concerns to me about keeping the abdominoplasty a secret include being careful about the way I walk in front of others in the next few weeks to months. Right now, I can walk fully upright, but I usually still walk somewhat hunched over so as to minimize pulling against my scars and potentially making them larger. My plan is to minimize my walking in front of others (mostly co-workers), but when I do, I will walk upright. Another concern is that I will appear thinner to the people around me than I used to be. Even though I have some swelling, my belly does not stick out as far in front of me as it used to. I thought maybe I would wear two or three t-shirts to try to add back a little bulk. I'm planning to minimize lunches with my co-workers for the first week or two back at the job by saying that I have errands to run at lunchtime. I also have concerns about what to say to my co-workers concerning the time off that I took. My current plan is to say that I had a lot of things to do around the house. Has anyone on here ever kept the plastic surgery from co-workers and selected friends? I welcome any suggestions on how to pull this off. On the weight-loss surgery threads about keeping the surgery a secret, there's often some user who chimes in and asks "Why don't you want everyone to know, are you ashamed of the surgery?" My answer to that type of question is that I don't want to tell the world because I think that limiting the information is what would work best for me.

Thanks Jane for your gentle, kind concern. Although going back to work soon does perhaps provide me a little more cover, my main motivation for returning back to work so soon was first that I'm totally ready to go back, both physically and mentally and secondly that I don't have the luxury of paid sick leave. I prepared for it starting about two months prior to the surgery. I always work out 3 times per week at the gym with about 2 hours per session. Starting about 2 months prior to the surgery I added about 8 hours of cardio per week, mostly on days I was not going to the gym for resistance training. Both my sleeve surgeon and my plastic surgeon told me that was the most important change I could make (assuming I already had good nutritional status) to speed my recovery time after surgery. When I arranged the time off from work I arranged for one week off for sure and possibly all or part of a second week. My number one concern was to make sure that I had good healing. I had read all the stories about the intensity and duration of the pain. Honestly mine wasn't really that bad. I spent one night in the hospital. The first two days I had quite a bit of pain, especially if I did anything involving my poor plicated abs. By the third day I was no longer taking pain pills during the day. That was actually my surgeon's sole criteria for returning to work, but of course I could not have returned to work then. By Wednesday, the fifth day after surgery, I went outside the house and walked a few hundred feet. I didn't think then that I would be able to return to work by Monday. I also sat at my computer desk (practice for work) for about 4 hours total. On day 6 I walked a half-mile and was doing well, but later that day I had a series of coughs (I got my pillow by cough 4) that really took a lot out me and I was wiped out for the rest of the day. On Friday, day 7, I drove for the first time since the surgery. I ran 4 errands. When I got back home I walked about 1.5 miles. I really should have done this as 3 half-mile walks with an hour of rest between each one, but it didn't seem to cause me any problems. I also sat at my computer desk for about 6 hours and didn't take any naps that day, although I did take some rest breaks. I realized on Friday that I had done more than I would have to do for a day's worth of work. Saturday brought with it the ability to walk fully upright if I chose to, without feeling any pulling at all. I actually took it a little easier on Saturday, but late that afternoon I went out for a few hours with a friend to help them look for a car On Sunday, day 9, I went to WalMart for a few hours, then spent an hour at Home Depot. I went home and rested for a few hours, then went into work for 5 hours. That gave me a chance to identify any problems areas there and a chance to fix those problems out of view of my fellow employees. On Monday, day 10 after surgery, I had an early follow-up appointment with the surgeon, then after that I was back at work with the surgeon's blessing . I feel that it was a combination of luck and skill that got me back to work in this short a timespan. It was not simply a pig-headed determination that I would be back at work despite any cost, but without a determined effort on my part to build up for my return to work, it could have easily taken quite a bit longer. My surgeon told me to begin with that I would probably recover quickly for several reasons and I feel he was right. I know that everyone's experiences are different. Some people will have much more difficulty returning to work, even when their jobs are not physically demanding. If your job is physically demanding then I can see it taking far longer to be able to return to work. I think that in this area, like most things in life, some planning and preparation really pays off. If you push yourself just a little too much, and overdo it just a little bit, the penalty will probably be low. If you really push too much and overdo it a by a lot then your penalty could be very high and you could undermine the success you are aiming for in the first place.

I had surgery 18 months ago, and I've told four friends, one family member, and my girlfriend. I've been very happy with that decision. You should make the decision based on what suits your needs. One thing lots of people agree on is that even if you are going to eventually let everyone know, it's often easiest to limit the number of people who know about the surgery beforehand to a bare minimum. I've only had one twinge of regret about not telling everyone. For the most part when people noticed that I had lost weight and asked how I did it, I told them that I was carefully watching what I was eating and that I had increased my exercise substantially. I know for the most part those people are just asking that as a superficial question and I don't mind giving them a superficial answer. I had one guy who works out at my gym quiz me much more in depth about my weight loss. He's very overweight and he was looking for a real solution that he could use. I gave him my best, in-depth diet advice including a lot of the eating techniques that we learn about after surgery. If there had been an easy way to tell him about the surgery without his telling others I would have, but I didn't think he would keep my secret, so I didn't mention the surgery to him. The tone in this thread has been generally very supportive, but you need to be aware that some people will attempt to shame you unless you are willing to be a goodwill ambassador for WLS. I've seen many threads where posters imply that if you aren't telling people it means that you're ashamed of having the surgery. For most people who don't tell, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sometime around 6 or 8 months ago I ran across a medical journal article concerning a study that showed that WLS patients who had plastic surgery afterward had a better chance of keeping their lost weight off than patients who did not have plastic surgery. I thought I had bookmarked it, but now I can't find it. I thought that I had found the link on here, but I can't find it by searching here, and I can't find it by searching Google or Google Scholar. Can anyone point me to the study. Thanks

I want to thank everyone for finding these links for me. I think this paper really speaks to the value of plastic surgery after bariatric surgery. After looking at the summaries that you have posted here, I found a copy of the paper online at the following link. I encourage you to download and save a copy since this site I am linking to is not the publisher's site, and it might not have this paper there forever. http://www3.med.unipmn.it/papers/2013/LWW_Journals/2013-10-04_lww/Plastic_Surgery_Improves_Long_Term_Weight_Control.17.pdf

I'll have to make a decision of the level of BLIS protection that I will take and I wanted to get input to see how other people reach that decision. If you are a self-pay patient, how did you decide (how will you decide) what level of complication protection to take if your surgeon offers the BLIS complication protection coverage. For those who may not know, some US surgeons offer a complication protection program for their self-pay patients through a company named BLIS. It's not legally considered an insurance policy for the patient, but if you think of it that way you won't be too far off. In a nutshell, what it does is, for a fee, it will provide you protection for certain covered complications for a period of time after surgery. The premiums vary from surgeon to surgeon depending on how many "claims" have been filed by that surgeon's patients. So the coverage is offered in three different parts. What is covered and the approximate costs for my surgeon is shown below: A. Cardiopulmonary/thromboembolic (90 days) $500. B. Bleeding, Infection, Leak, Perforation (90 days) $1300. C. Stenosis (90 days) $200 (My surgeon requires you to get some level of stenosis protection) Stenosis (36 months) $300 (there are some other Stenois packages that I am omitting) So for me to take all the coverages I would need to pay around $2,000, which I view as a big chunk of money. I could skip most of the coverage and probably be OK. After all I think the rate of any complication from getting sleeved is in the range of 5% and the risk of serious complications in the first 30 days is around 1%. That means the odds are between 100 to 1 and 20 to 1 in my favor that I will never need the protection. On the other hand, if I do have a problem, the costs could be very high. I wish they were more transparent as a company and that they disclosed what percentage of the premiums are actually paid out in claims. I never buy the extended warranty on cars, or microwaves or TV sets because I know what a bad financial deal they are, and if something like that goes bad, I can somehow come up with the money to buy another. On the other hand, I've always heard that it makes good sense to take insurance against the risks you cannot afford to pay out of pocket. If I had a very serious complication, I would not be able to afford to pay for it. What I would like to know is what level of BLIS protection you got (or you will get) and why you made that decision.

If you ask for a to go box at the time you place your food order you cue the waitress in to the fact that you won't be eating much, so they usually won't try to verify that everything was OK.

I'm seeing this problem as well on the iPhone app. On some threads I can go past page one and others I can't.

Congratulations on hitting goal.

Check with your Nut or the written plan the surgeon gave you. If you do decide to have one even though it's not on plan, I suggest that you take the salad and chop everything as finely as you possibly can. Be sure to take small bites and chew very well. And the first time you do it, you should only eat about half as much as you would with other foods.

I think this approach is fine for trying to get to goal. I recommend that you consider a cycle something like this: 1 month Protein shakes 2 - 4 weeks low carb, regular food 2 months of eating how you were eating prior to starting the Protein shakes If you don't have any regain during the 2 months of normal eating, then you could repeat the cycle again if you wanted to lose any more weight. If you regain weight during the cycle then you may be at as low a weight as your body can sustain, and so I don't recommend repeating the cycle in that case.

I can understand the desire to have stability after a period of rapid change, and of course you have to do what you feel is best. It is a basic fact of human psychology that the easiest time to implement change in your life is during a period of time when there is already a lot of change going on in your life, or immediately after a period of rapid change. Once you "rest up" after change, you can still change, but it takes more effort.

You won't become a social outcast for eating only two bites. In fact, if you carefully manage it, most people won't even know or notice unless you want them to. The exception to this is during the first couple of months after surgery where your food choices are restricted. Then you have to be smart and order something compatible with your plan such as some type of Soup, etc. The complications from the surgery are usually minor and tend to occur within the first month or two after surgery. There are some people who do have more serious complications. This does not happen too often, but it does happen, so you should read a lot of threads on this forum and acquaint yourself with the complications so that you are satisfied that the benefits outweigh the risks. For most people the benefits far outweigh the risks. I don't think the surgery is too drastic for you.

I have read about a few cases of someone losing too much weight, but it is very rare. It should be very easy to increase your caloric intake as you get closer to goal weight.

You still have to stick to a diet and you should exercise. It will be easier to stick to the diet than if you hadn't had the surgery, but it still takes some effort. After the first several months after surgery it doesn't force you to adhere to the diet, you can "eat around it," but it does make it easier to comply with the diet than if you hadn't had the surgery. Without the surgery, but with enough willpower, you might be able to lose a lot of weight, but the issue would be keeping it off. It's possible to muster a lot of will and lose a lot of weight. Besides the sleeve, I have lost over 70 pounds at least three other times in my life, but after each time, I eventually gained the weight back, usually with some additional pounds to go along with it. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It has made it so much easier to lose weight, and it has given me a fighting chance to keep the weight off. Here's one way you should think about the sleeve. Imagine that your car had no engine, and you had to push it everywhere you went. That would be tough, and you probably wouldn't ever go anywhere. That's like your body without the sleeve. Now imagine that your car now has an engine. It can take you places, but if you don't step on the gas, or brakes, or steer the car, the car still won't take you anywhere. That's like your body with the sleeve. It has much more capability, but you have to steer it (eat the right foods), and apply the brakes (avoid the wrong foods) and step on the gas (exercise). It's not a magical car that just drives itself, but it gives you a reasonable way to get where you want to be. But if you take your eyes off the road, you just might end up in a ditch (regaining weight).

If he does have to lose 70 pounds it might not be as difficult as you think. Almost 25 years ago I was on Optifast for 3 months and lost 72 pounds. Of course in my case I regained it all, plus quite a bit more over the course of the next two years after that. There have been two other times in my life (besides this time with the sleeve) where I have lost over 70 pounds. In your husband's case, all he has to do is to lose the weight, then the surgery will help keep it off. If you read the stories in this forum, there are many people who have lost over 70 pounds on one diet or another, they just couldn't keep it off prior to surgery. Best of luck to you and your husband.

How long was your preop diet?

Did you have surgery in Mexico. If so I can see why the charge might not have been approved. Although I can't say with certainty, I believe that this should be able to be charged to a Flex card at a provider in the US.

It's hard to know much about someone from just a brief post on the internet, but here's my best assessment based on what you have said. First, congratulations on deciding to get the sleeve. I don't think that you are too young. I do think that because of your age it's important to research this more someone might when the are in their 30s or 40s or later. So I think you should read thousands of posts on this forum, and other internet forums. Get all the information that you can. I think there is a real advantage in having the surgery at such a young age. That way you will do a lot less damage to your body than if you skipped the surgery and waited 20 years to have it. Secondly, looking at your profile, your goal is to lose 100% of your excess body fat. You want to lose down to 170 pounds (BMI 25.8), which is just above the upper range of normal body weight (164 pounds) for someone your height. That is a very ambitious goal -- not impossible, but very ambitious. You should ask yourself if you will be satisfied with somewhat less loss. If you will not be willing to accept less loss, you should look at the other weight loss surgeries as well. Although I think that the sleeve is an awesome surgery, some of the other surgeries give somewhat more weight loss, at the cost of more side effects. Right now, you probably have no way of losing this weight and keeping it off without surgery. Realistically the chances that you could lose down to 170 pounds and stay that way just through diet and exercise are almost zero. I think your dad is scared of this surgery and I can understand why. Try as best as you can to gently educate him about it. Have you gotten support from your parents in general, but just not about the surgery, or are your parents not very supportive in general? I think that if you want to obtain the goal that you stated you will have to dedicate yourself for at least two years after the surgery to making maximal efforts. That involves maximal efforts in what you eat, and maximal efforts in your level of exercise, and maximal efforts in addressing any underlying issues. I'm sure you've heard that this surgery is a tool, but not a magical solution to problems. The difference between before the surgery and after is that without having the surgery there is almost no chance you can lose the weight and keep it off, no matter how hard you work. After the surgery there is a chance that you can reach your goal, but you must be willing to work with your tool as hard as is required if you want to meet your goals. So the surgery gives you a way to get to your goal, but it's up to you if you get there or not. If you are not ready to work as hard as is required for you to meet your goal then you are not yet ready to have the surgery. I'm hoping this is crystal clear. After the surgery it will be much easier for you to stick to 1000 calories per day than it is right now. Maybe it will only take 3/4, or 1/2 or 1/4 of the effort, but it still takes effort. You must make sure that you are ready to put forth that effort and sustain it. It's not simply the case that you can have the surgery and a year or two later be at your goal and live your life normally from there on. After several months after the surgery you'll be able to eat any type of food that you want, and you will be able to have treats from time to time, but if you want to get to your goal and stay there, giving yourself treats should be a low priority matter to you. You should be able to answer this question: What is more important to you, to weigh what you want to weigh, or to eat what you want to eat? You may not be able to have both. There are many factors that enter into determining your body weight. One way to classify those factors is to divide them into physiological factors such as resting metabolic rate, endocrine issues (such as low thyroid), level of activity, etc, and psychological factors such as eating habits, eating disorders, using food for emotional comfort, etc. The surgery can help you with some of the physiological factors by reducing your appetite levels, but it is not surgery on your head. It does not address the psychological factors. It will be very important for you to work closely with a Nutritionist to help you learn how and what to eat, and a psychologist to help you address any eating disorders or any other psychological factors tied to food. I wish you the very best of luck. Please stay in touch with this board and let us know how you are progressing in your journey.

Things like Oreos are a triple whammy: 1) They are calorically dense, so you get a lot of calories without eating much food. 2) Because they stimulate the pleasure centers, people will eat more of them than they would a lot of other foods. 3) Because they are a combination of a fat and a carbohydrate, your body will much more quickly remove the excess calories from your bloodstream and pack them away into your fat cells. This is because the carbohydrate stimulates an insulin release, which opens the fat cells to storing the fat and the conversion of the carbohydrate to fat and then that being stored. This means that after you eat 500 calories of oreos you will be hungry much quicker than if you had eaten 500 calories of bacon.

I encourage you to work out at home, but to also join a gym and work out there as well some of the time. I've been working out at a gym for over 20 years. A few years prior to joining a gym, I was trying to work out at home. I did it for a while, but I found it difficult to stick to. Once I joined the gym and got into the habit of going regularly, I found it much easier to stick to working out.

Yes, you lose fast at first. After 2 - 4 weeks, you may hit a stall for up to a week. After about the first month or six weeks you will lose about 2 - 2 1/2 pounds per week. All totally normal. You should make sure that you are getting whatever Protein intake your NUT recommended. For many people it's around 80 grams per day. Also make sure that you drink plenty of Water, and focus on getting in a good bit of exercise.

You will feel more restriction later when you are eating more solid foods. Some people feel it at this stage and some people don't. I was one of those people who didn't feel restriction at that stage, but I certainly do now.

Hi Nikki, You really can ask a friend to lunch. Just order an appetizer and if you don't eat it all take the rest home with you. When you ask a friend to lunch you should not be going because of the food -- after all you could eat the food by yourself. Instead, you should be going because of the companionship of your friend, and you get that companionship regardless of how much or how little you eat. Just don't make the lunch be focused on how little you are able to eat, or any other focus on yourself. I encourage you to try this approach of having lunch with friends and focusing on the companionship. It may take a little work at first, but once you accomplish it, I think it will be a big step in your healing process.

One of the things you can do is to set your goals lower for a while. I don't know if you work out at a gym, but if you do, and if you have gone for one hour sessions in the past, just make yourself go for 1/2 hour sessions for a week or two. If you've been walking two miles, then just walk for a mile at a time for a week or two. If you haven't been going to the gym, just make yourself go for 10 minutes per session for the first week, or the same with walking. The key is to get yourself to do something. Once you are doing something then it's not so difficult to make yourself do more of it later. You can also change up whatever you are doing for exercise as well.