Miss Mac

At 105 pounds, it looks to me like she needs to find a weight at which she is going to be healthy, especially since she has become athletic. She didn't look short, so I would assume that 105 pounds will not support athleticism for very long. So yeah, she needs to let it go and eat a sandwich.

It took me one week to lose the surgery IV fluids weight, then I dropped 17 pounds real fast, the hit a plateau, which I am coming out of after two weeks.

I am so sorry to hear that yet another sleever has suffered from that awful trapped CO2. In my last pre-op visit with my surgeon, I asked him how his team manages shoulder gas. He said, and I quote "We extract as much as possible". Consequently, I did not have a trapped gas problem. If preventing it is that easy, then what the H@#& is the matter with all of these other doctors that just stitch, glue, and tape you back together, leaving you to deal with it????? WTH?

My NUT has me taking prune juice at bedtime. Also, Walgreens carries the Smooth Move Tea, but the local stores did not have it. I ordered it online and it arrived in 4 days. Yes, it works, and they have several different flavors.

One thing that was submitted with my packet was a letter I wrote myself explaining all of my co-morbidities and how they were limiting my quality of life. It sounds like what the others here are saying - that an item of information is missing. You'll get there. Just keep giving them what they want.

Behrat, here is how my endoscopy went.....they gave me a nap and when I woke up, they were done. Had a little bit of a sore throat fro a couple of days.....no big deal.

Seems like our doctors will order any test the insurance will pay for!

I was sleeved in December, too, on 12/23. Of the 42 pounds I have lost, 17 are post-op. I have been in a stall for over two weeks, but I am trying not to be too bummed out about it. My exercise schedule is consistent, including strength training every other day. So, I am hoping here is some muscle exchange going on here. A stall at this point is quite normal. Although I am cleared for regular food, I think I will fall back a notch and do full liquids for a couple of days. If I can't sustain my exercise that way, then I will need to create a plan B. So, don't feel so bad about yourself. Losing weight slower gives our skin time to shrink back a little better. Just keep on doing what your team told you to do. We just have to be The Little Engine That Could......I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.....

I can tolerate tomato soup, but diced tomatoes went through me like a sieve.

They will even stay on in the shower.

In my exercise DVD collection (which includes everything from bedfast to Zumba) my favorites are: 1. Leslie Sansone's Walk Your Belly Flat. This one is my "go to" when walking is all I have energy for. It has three 1 mile increments for walking in the house. I try to walk one mile in house every morning even if I am not able to do other exercises later in the day. Sometimes I have to use my walker to keep going, but I am determined to get in at least one 12 minute mile. 2. Joel Harper's Firming After 50. It is a complete upper and lower body workout (with a bonus section on ab work)without equipment. Joel does the advanced level, his 30-ish assistant does the normal version, and his mother does an adjusted version. I follow along with his mother. 3. Boomers Workout with Sunshine (doesn't give her real name). This is upper and lower body strength training using hand held barbells. She also has one with resistance bands. On alternate days when I am not doing strength training, I may pull out Sweating to the Oldies, Hula Abs and Buns, or Hip Hop Abs (I look ridiculous, but laughter is the best medicine, right?

Oh, man......I have almost 40 exercise DVD's to eliminate boredom with my exercise. Pilates for Wimps was difficult enough, but I saw Belly Dance Pilates on sale on Amazon, so I bought it, thinking it might be more fun.. Today is the first day I tried, and only got through 15 minutes of it. Gotta tell ya, I am exhausted! This was harder than my every-other-day weight training. Maybe it will be more fun in another 30 pounds or so. Right now, my belly almost dances by itself when I walk.....and my butt still looks like two twerking cats in a sack! Rant over.

Be patient for sure. I am 5 1/2 weeks out and in a stall, but I am keeping up with my weight training and exercise. My hope is that my body is in a muscle exchange, then loss will kick in eventually. Exasperating - yes. Uncommon - no.

Here is a mental trick that I use to handle cravings for the unhealthy foods that got me in this place. My former favorite drive-throughs are now: McPoisons, Poison King, Poison Castle, Wendy's Poison Palace, Poison Hut, etc......Looney, but it helps. As for Pasta, bread, cake, etc., I just can't. It doesn't influence my thinking like it used to. When I get a craving for that kind of stuff, I just go do some exercise. (That means some days I exercise a lot). I was more depressed about my disabilities caused by my weight, than I will ever be about these adjustments I have to make to get healthy.

If there is an ATI Therapy near you, it wouldn't hurt to ask if they could waive the co-pay. When I fell and tore 3 of the 4 tendons in my rotator cuff (and had to have subsequent surgery and therapy), my pain was high and my funds were low. Three sessions a week would have cost me $300 a month I did not have. ATI waived my co-pays so that I could get treatment. They are making hundreds of dollars off of each session from the insurance companies, anyway. When I had to have therapy post-stroke, they even provided transportation, and charged the insurance for that, too.

See if you can get a referral to a pain clinic. If what you have is indeed sciatica, there is relief available for you - don't be a pain martyr and be suffering. My pain doctor is an anesthesiologist at my hospital. The spinal epidural shots every 3-4 months have helped me put off spinal fusion in my lower back for years. I finally had to give in and get a three level fusion in my neck last year. The steroid in the epidural bathes raw nerve endings in liquid comfort, which makes a difference in my quality of life. The last one I had was September 7, and my sleeve date was 12/23. I have lost 40 pounds so far, and I think it already has made a difference for me. I also have femoral nerve pain, which the spinal epidural relieves. There is not so much belly pressing on the femoral nerve, so it has quieted down. So, who needs to be in pain when they don't have to be? I used to not believe so much in medication, but now that I am older and more things ache, I think of it as better living through chemistry!

While you are waiting on a prescription, drink cranberry juice. Also, Walgreens has cranberry tablets that are fairly small to swallow. Cranberries have a chemical that creates a Teflon-like coating on the urinary tract so that bacteria can't stick around. Some studies say it's true, some not so much.....but the last two times I got a UTI after surgery, my primary doctor has prescribed Metronidazole, cranberry tablets, and cranberry juice. Provides relief for me.

Same here.....even though I have dropped over 40 pounds now, I feel like I have gone from a giant blob to a pencil with a tractor tire around the middle. It's just sheer grit and gumption that keeps me going. I am really pushing the exercise, and I must say that I am sleeping a lot better. But the mirror - I just want to drape it in black cloth and wait until summer to look at it again.

That's what I am doing with my adjustment process, too......embracing the gray.

No regrets.....textbook recovery.....age 62, lost 42 pounds so far, arthritis doesn't bother me so much, walking better than I have in ten years, have enough energy for strength training now, overall feeling better in many ways. Even overall inflammation has backed off.

I am in week five now and took a preemptive strike against hair loss. When I saw Rita Moreno's hair at the 2014 SAG Awards, I knew that would be the cut for me. It is a multi-layered chop cut, so hair falling out and growing in at an unpredictable rate might not look as funky as it would if I do nothing. My hair dresser who did the cut agreed that it would be suitable for this purpose, and she has done the same or similar cut for many cancer survivors. Since my hair has always been bountifully thick, I am hoping for the best. Worst case scenario - I will buy a wig for going out of the house.

Same as Blondiee, my program used the starting weight for submission. Now that I am out of the liquid diet and post-op, my Nutritionist advised me to hold the Protein shakes to one a day and try to get the rest of my protein from real food. Once you consume your protein first at each meal, there is little, if no room left for anything else. Fair warning........When you consume Protein Shakes and are eating less Fiber from fruits and veggies, take preventative measures against constipation. Good luck with your program.

WendyT, you will learn so much during the pre-op nutrition phase of your journey. The biggest take-a-way for me was portion control. Portions were a whole lot smaller than I thought. My eyes were bigger than my stomach. Now, my eyes really are bigger than my stomach. Welcome to the forum.

Yesterday I had the WonderSlim Cran-Grape for the first time, which I made in sugar free cranberry juice. Not so bad, and better than some other combinations I have had.

Dude, Congratulations......awesome job!