AvaFern

I'm 29 months post-op and I can't have anything that has been fried, anything with oil, anything creamy (like salad dressing, sour cream, cream Soup, anything milk based), milk that is anything other than skim or almond/soy, fish, cheese, most sugars (although that is hit or miss- sometimes I'm fine, sometimes I puke), and periodically random things that don't usually make me sick- like today my granola bar made me barf. Basically my new stomach hates all forms of junk food and dairy, which is completely fine with me. If you can't eat badly without puking, it's a lot easier to not re-gain weight.

So the idea to document it is a good one, however in the mean time, try using deodorant. Not the goopy, gel kind but the solid, white stick kind. Slather that all in the crease, and it will help to keep it dry and prevent chafing. I used to get heat rash under my breasts because the skin liked to get hot there and chafe and when I started using deodorant under them, I never had the problem again. Also, then I had plastics and now I no longer need the deodorant, which could work out just as well for you!

I had a fibroadenoma in one of my breasts, which is a benign lump and since it was monitored with an ultrasound every year there wasn't a need to have it removed. I had a breast lift and augment when I was still 24 pounds from goal during which time they removed my extra lump (and it was still totally benign). Generally the rule is that if you are within 15% of goal you are fine to start with plastics. My goal was 129 and I weighed 153 on the morning of my first plastics procedure. By the time I hit my second procedure I was at like 142-ish (maybe 137- don't remember) I think and my last procedure I went in at 134. I have maintained between 129 my goal and 132 since last April, except for a brief spike where I gained about 5 pounds and had to lose it again. My boobs and stomach were my first surgery and despite having at one point weighed 126, so almost 28 pounds beneath my pre-plastics weight, they still look exactly how they should. Losing an additional 30 pounds should not substantially impact your results, however your surgeon will also be able to give you more info.

I have a sleeve and in theory yes, a patient should be physically able to eat whatever they want once they are healed after surgery. Medically there is not a limit that says you can't have Pasta or you can't drink beer. In my case, my stomach hates food that has oils, some sugars, fats, anything that has been anywhere near a fryer, and a variety of other things like fish and cheese. If I eat these things I can usually count on puking within a few minutes. Past that though, throughout the entire time I have had the sleeve I have eaten what I want to and it sort of irks me when people get on their high horse about how if you have a sleeve you should be eating Protein, veggies, and healthy stuff all the time. No, I did not have my stomach cut out so I could spend the rest of my life on the same diet I was on for the first part of my life. My problem has never been that I don't eat healthy food, just that I ate way too much of it. So now, I'll have oatmeal and granola for Breakfast, just like I used to, except i heat 1/2-1/3 the bowl instead. I'll have a handful of crackers as a snack now, instead of eating the whole box. I'll have a lunchable for lunch, except eat only half of it. I basically eat whatever I want to with far smaller portions and I have not had a hard time maintaining at my goal weight. That being said, "whatever I want to" is not ice cream, pizza and beer. All of that makes me sick anyway, so that was helpful. I noticed that I can eat some Desserts and that was the one thing that resulted in almost instant weight regain. So now, I don't eat sweets. If I am at a birthday party, I might have a few bites of cake, or if I am at a picnic I have no problem eating a few bites of pie, but I don't bring it into my house because then I will eat it all and gain weight. There isn't anything that is strictly off limits for me if I want to eat something and I don't mind puking, however because I'm not limited I have no real great desire to eat stuff that ultimately just makes me feel crummy. So, no, if you want to eat all the same food you used to in far smaller portions, then go for it. If you can maintain your weight loss doing this, then good for you. 1200 calories is 1200 calories...sure we feel better if we eat that in protein and healthy food and our health is much better, but if you have a day where you eat 1200 calories in donuts every once in a while, so what. Life is for living, not for choking down chicken and broccoli everyday for the rest of your life.

I'm 29 months post-op and I still get full at far less than it ever took before. As a comparison, when I first ate oatmeal after surgery I could eat about half a bowl of instant oatmeal before I was full. Now, I make a packet of instant oatmeal and pour some granola into the bowl and I can eat about 1/3 to 1/2 and I feel full enough that I don't think I can eat another bite. Dense food still makes me feel very full very quickly.

There was another post exactly like this a few months ago...maybe you can find it and see the replies. In terms of aesthetics, corsets just squish the skin, so not super awesome. Also, as someone else said, yes, your stomach does get squished to the point you can't eat. I have a few pair of tights that have a high waste and when I wear them, my stomach is so smushed that I can't eat anything. I also noticed after I had plastics, while wearing the compression garments your stomach is also so smashed you barf a lot. Real corsets are a lot tighter and more constricting than tights and compression garments (compression garments are just like being in a big sausage wrapper, as opposed to the targeted compression of a corset), so while you can wear them, especially if you don't want to eat a lot at night, you might not love the way the skin looks or the way you can't eat or drink anything without wanting to barf.

@@Elode If you just want the lift and implants, usually that should be around 8K. That is what that part of my procedure cost, and had I not needed a lift, just implants would have been 5K. Have you looked on realself.com at all? I am also a big researcher and I can completely appreciate how overwhelming it all seems. I chose not to go to Mexico just because I was afraid of complications and I wanted my doctor to be close to where I live to fix anything that went wrong. Part of the cost of surgery here is that you get all of the follow-up care for free. Like I said, I didn't like my one leg, so he did them both again for free as part of my arm surgery. I got a whopping seroma in my stomach that took an extra month to heal, and I got to visit him once or twice a week during that time to have it drained, and at one point he had to cut my stomach back open to put in a drain, all of which was covered in the cost I paid. During my last procedure I ended up with a UTI, probably from the catheter, but I get them occasionally, so who knows, but he called in a prescription for that so I didn't have to go to the doctor. I had an allergic reaction to the Percocet, which given this was the third time I had used it, was annoying, but my doctor called in Tramadol for me at 8 at night. Then the midline of my incision separated, which required a whole extra in-office procedure of cutting out the dead part and re-suturing the midline of my back. And then, worst of all, I ended up with a whopping infection in my back incision that became cellulitis and left a fist sized hole in my back...not kidding, i could fit a good part of my hand in the hole once it had been drained. Fortunately, I've worked in healthcare so I knew immediately when there was an issue, immediately when to let my doctor know I needed antibiotics for the infection, and I was comfortable packing the wound for the three months it took to close. Had I used a surgeon in Mexico I would have had to pay out of pocket to go to a doctor here for all of this and while it ended up costing probably three times as much, the comfort of having my doctor a text-message away whenever I needed him and knowing that my follow-up care was 100% covered was worth it to me. Also, while my first two surgeries healed beautifully, the last one left a jagged jacked-up scar across my entire lower back, which no one can see even in a bathing suit, but in my birthday suit, something that bothers me a little. The cost of that scar revision, to get rid of all of the scar tissue that my giant hole left on my back is also covered in the cost I paid, whenever I am ready to go get it fixed. So..that is my reason for staying here...also I got to recover in the comfort of my home without worrying about traveling, let alone dealing with customs or being worried about any surgical issues related to flying. So...it is overwhelming to decide on a surgeon and a procedure, and I would absolutely insist on doing the lift and the implants at the same time- my surgeon did lift, implants, tummy tuck, and lipo on my thighs and back during my procedure so asking for both implants and a lift is not asking too much. Go with the doctor that makes you feel comfortable...I am a huge fan of my doctor not just because he was great at being a surgeon, but because he was super nice to me and never made me feel uncomfortable, which is important since your surgeon spends about 20 minutes drawing all over your totally naked body with a marker at the start of surgery, lol.

That is shady. As someone who has worked in healthcare, when a doctor wants cash and literally green money is all he is taking, that is not a reputable surgeon. I can understand why they don't like credit because they get billed a percentage of the fee to use your card, which my thing is that's the cost of doing business, but to an extent I can see a preference for a cashier's check. Also, you can dispute the charge on a credit card and it's not like they can put your stomach back together if you refuse to pay the fee. Past that though, a doctor who wants cash and won't take a check from your bank is not someone you should trust to chop out your stomach. I was self pay and my surgery was 18K in the United States...so 10K here, with a decent hospital, follow-up care, and the correct anesthesia and equipment also seems to be a stretch. Much as we all make our own decisions, I wasn't willing to go for a discount on something as serious as surgery and any doctor who insists on cash is a super, super bad route to go down when it comes to literally trusting him with your life and the future quality of your life.

Ignore that person. To be fair, we are cheaters, lol, but only someone who has had a sleeve gets to judge themselves as such. I am 100% sure I could never stay as small as I am if I hadn't paid someone to cut out 80% of my stomach. I am cool with being a cheater because in the end it got me to where I needed to be. Also, in exchange for cheating, I will likely spend the rest of my life barfing certain types of food, I will never get to enjoy a big meal again, and I have to be careful with my Vitamins and any potential long term effects. I understand people who think that bariatric surgery is cheating, however most of them have not struggled with their weight extensively and if they have, often calling someone else a cheater is out of jealousy. Do for you what you need to do and if someone else wants to have an opinion, that's their right, just as it is your right to ignore them.

@@Elode I had the abdominoplasty and boobs done at the same time and the cost your surgeon gave you for both is roughly what mine cost. I also had sillicone implants but I had a few places of lipo done at the same times as the boobs and stomach, so my first procedure was $19.9K. You will LOVE the results. My second procedure was a brachioplasty and groin incision thigh lift, which was great, and my last procedure was the back part of the 360degree lift with an autoaugment of the butt and a redo on the thighs (my one thigh had a wrinkle, lol so my doc redid them both for free). In terms of pain, I had almost no pain after the boobs and tummy tuck. I had a friend stay with me the first 2 days, but I was fine on my own. I had my next two procedures and I just had a friend drop me off at home and I was fine by myself afterward. Each surgery I used the Percocet for 3 days and then didn't need anything else. Basically the first day you feel great because you are still blitzed from the drugs in surgery and you get to take drugs at home. The second and third day you feel like you got hit by a truck, just exhausted and sort of sore, but not any major pain, although you're still taking drugs every few hours. By the 4th day I was off drugs and as long as you move slowly, it's more the feeling you get when you do too many crunches or when you bruise something and your skin feels tight. Just make sure you don't have to reach over your head to get anything (like to get a plate out of a cabinet), keep hunched over for about a week, sleep in lawnchair position, and recovery is not bad at all. I was walking 5-10 miles a day after the first week, which FYI, don't do that, I gave myself a seroma which lengthened recovery, but in terms of pain, I felt completely fine. Also, I wore compression for about 4 weeks non-stop, and then an extra two weeks because I screwed myself with the seroma. It makes you feel better to have it on. You will love your results. I am now 10 months out from my last surgery and about 18 months out from my first one and I still love my results. My flat stomach and fabulous boobs make me feel so much more confident than I ever imagined that they would. It is SO awesome to be able to wear dresses and never have to worry that your stomach isn't flat enough, and even better, you can wear all of the cute shirts because you no longer need a bra. I ended up being a 34DDD and while I do tend to wear a bra in most shirts just because I feel more comfortable, a good portion of my tighter dresses and strapless tops require no bra at all, which is probably one of my favorite parts of the procedure. Good luck!

If it makes you feel better, I have had less than 10 Protein shakes in the last 29 months. Past the first week or two post-op, I never drank Protein Shakes again. I went through a brief phase where I would blend almond milk, frozen greek yogurt, PB2, and Protein powder, which is really good and has a ton of protein, but I got tired of washing the blender everyday, lol. You will be back to eating normal foods again and as someone who has maintained at goal weight for 10 months now, I can say you really don't need to drink protein shakes to be successful past the point where you can have normal food again.

I have never seen any ads on this site outside of Bariatric Pal products. I also use Firefox and have never had any pop-up issues. If you have an iPhone and you have it linked to a Mac, or any other iPads or iPhones on your account that your family uses, sometimes it can pull in activity from websearches that are done on those devices. I know this because my iPad that I generally just use to look at email on had some Facebook ads for a website I only ever visit on my Mac. My Macbook also has some cookie-generated things for ebay that I had looked at on my Mac, but never looked at on the laptop. If you're on a family network, maybe that could be the issue.

I've had ice cream probably 4-5 times in the 29 months since I've had the sleeve. My stomach doesn't really like milk very much, but it is oddly tolerant of ice cream. Ice cream is one of those foods that if it doesn't make me sick, I will eat it all the time, so I just keep it out of my house. If I really want some, I'll have some, however I find that the one thing that makes me gain weight is sweets, so I just generally avoid them. There's nothing wrong with eating ice cream, it's yummy, but I just don't have it much because I like it a little bit more than I should.

I hit my goal weight of 129 last April, I dropped to 126 in June, then I was right back up to 128-129 about a week later, where I stayed most of the summer. I fluctuated up to 132 and then back to 129 until Halloween where I managed to wake up November 1st at 137 pounds. I then very quickly got back on board with eating correctly and I was back to 133 by Christmas and then back to 131 by New Year and since then on an average week I usually max out at about 132.8 and then drop to about 130.2. So...roughly at 29 months post op and 10 months at maintenance, as of this morning I was 1 pound over goal.

I am 29 months post-op and compared to the calories I probably should be eating, I'm a pig, lol. I can maintain at my goal weight with a fluctuation of 2-3 pounds on 1500-1800 calories a day, however I weigh everyday, so if I see that my weight is creeping up, I pay more attention to what I eat that day. I also have days where I'm just not hungry, which on a day like today where I have no real interest in food, I've had about 400 calories so far and will probably have another 400 before I go to sleep. I enjoy the days when I'm not hungry because they offset the other days where I snack my way well into the 1800 calorie range. For the first year or two I stayed around 1200 calories a day, and then after that I stayed around 1500. Now that I'm not losing anymore I just change my calories based upon my weight.

I am 29 months post-op as of next week and I don't portion food in the sense that I don't measure it out. I know that for Breakfast I make a bowl of instant oatmeal, mix in some honey, and pour in some granola...I then eat 1/3 to 1/2 of the bowl and I set it down when I get to that point because I know if I keep eating I'm going to feel miserable. I really like the Protein blends healthy steamers, and I know that I can eat half a bag (which is actually a lot for someone with a sleeve) without feeling sick, so I dump half the bag in the bowl and leave the rest in the fridge for later. If I eat Chick-Fil-A which is really the only fast food or non-homemade food that I eat, I only put half a sandwich on my plate, or 5 nuggets, so that when I'm done eating that I know that I'm done, even if it takes me 15 minutes or so to realize that I'm not hungry anymore. I learned how to eat according to portions based on how much different food and sizes made me sick, so while I don't formally mete out specific amounts of food, trial and error and almost 2.5 years after surgery has given me an understanding of visually what I can eat without feeling full or sick.

I didn't tell anyone until after my surgery and to this day (28 months post-op) only my three best friends knew I had the procedure done. It is entirely possible to keep it a secret and I have always been happy that I chose to go that route. In hindsight, I would have only told one of my three best friends, primarily because she is a nurse and I am a private person. All three have been very supportive and have never once made me feel badly about my decisions, so it is probably unfair to say I wish I hadn't told them.

Ugh, I hate this. Years ago when I was at a fat point someone yelled out their car window "Run, fatty, run!". While I then threw my metal Water bottle at their car and dinged it, which made me feel moderately better, it is something I have always remembered. I hate when people yell things at you, especially guys because it makes me feel unsafe to a certain extent. There have been women who have yelled out their car window "you go girl!" or something else supportive, and that doesn't bother me- I just smile, wave, and keep going. I try to keep in mind that now that I am a normal size most people are being complimentary and not intentionally making me feel frazzled, but like someone else said, I really don't think any woman enjoys being catcalled. If it is obnoxious, I ignore it, which then makes them mad and say rude things, which then makes me mad, and they better hope they are in a car and not on the street or I will spin around, jog on back, and give them a piece of my mind. So yes, agreed, yelling out your car window or any form of catcall is not only embarrassing, but it makes me feel unsafe, which is not always a logical feeling, but it's how I feel.

I was also self-pay and ended up with an extra $500 in bills later. I called the office and while I got stuck with a $50 bill, they handled the rest. It turns out that they had paid for the services, but I still ended up being billed for them before their payment had been posted. You paid for the fee for the surgery and if you are billed anything additional, this is your surgeon's office's responsibility. If they don't want to be cooperative tell them that you will be happy to contact your attorney. Chances are it's a mistake, but if it isn't, then they need to be held accountable.

Well that was crappy of him. If someone pulled that with me we would have a conversation about the behavior being unacceptable. If it happened again, we would have a conversation about when he would be moving out. I can understand a husband who tries to be supportive by very un-wisely telling you that you shoudn't be eating junk food because you're trying to lose weight. That is just being insensitive. I cannot understand anyone finding it acceptable to be hurtful and cruel and I would have zero tolerance for that. You let him know that his actions don't work for you and unless he can be supportive and the damn man he is supposed to be instead of a whiny little B boy, he can pack his stuff and leave. If he argues about it, start packing his stuff for him. Controlling men are only as controlling as you let them be and when they find a woman who won't tolerate their crap, suddenly they can behave like they should have behaved all along.

I'm at 28 months post-op and since I was a little under a year out my stomach is intolerant of a lot of food. I was super sick the first week after surgery, then I was mostly ok, for the first 3-6 months or so, if I remember correctly. After that I slowly became more intolerant of certain foods. By the time I was a year out I was barfing fairly regularly and that remained fairly consistent over the next 16 months. I doubt that our issues are the same, however your point that our stomachs now have a different acid balance is interesting to me. I assumed I just had a slight stricture, and I don't care much because it's only food that is really bad for me that makes me sick. Having a condition where I can't eat food too quickly, too much of it, or anything with sugar, butter, or oil really does good things for weight maintenance. For the most part, I know what I can eat and some weeks I make it 4-5 days without a barfing incident (I'm current on a recent record- I haven't puked in 5 days), while some weeks it seems like my stomach just hates everything and even things that are usually fine come spewing back up. So, while again we are at very different points post-surgery, once you find the foods that your stomach will tolerate and you can eat and drink somewhat normally again, having a stomach that is picky is really not the worst thing.

I lost a total of 111, which was 3 pounds past the goal weight I hit at 18 months. I have maintained a loss of 106-108 pounds, depending upon the day- I go up and down the same two pounds.

I had the sleeve at 29 and went from 237 to 153. I then had my first plastics procedure because I had super saggy skin. I had my second plastics surgery 3 months later and then my third plastics procedure 4 months after that. I hit goal of 129 about 2 weeks after my last plastics procedure, although I had been within 5 pounds of goal since my second plastics procedure. Ultimately it doesn't really help you lose weight, but once you've lost a lot of weight, you will have extra skin. Research shows that those who have skin removal surgery retain their lost weight more often than those who do not, which is what ultimately made me decide to have everything done.

I hit my goal at 18 months post-op and have maintained now for 10 months. I never had a problem losing weight before, however I always gained it right back. As an adult, my lowest weight after I hit my 20's was 137 which I literally maintained for a day, haha. I gained it all back within a year, as was the case for every other time where I would usually hit the 140's then start to gain. I have stayed within a few pounds of goal for almost a year now with relatively little effort. I have found that if I eat sweets, I gain, so I had one month where I jumped up to like 8 pounds over goal. It took me weeks to lose that weight and as long as I avoid Desserts, I don't have to exercise all that often and I seem to be able to maintain at not only a lower weight than before I had the sleeve but with a lot less misery and effort.

I remember being rolled in to surgery and then I remember waking up in recovery feeling like garbage with a super dry mouth and a nurse who gave me a coconut flavored cotton swab mouth wetter popsicle. Lol, I also learned not to take the Valium before surgery so you can actually remember getting into the OR, getting onto the table, and being knocked out with the good stuff. It took me until my second plastic surgery to figure that part out. Also, valium killed my memory in both my sleeve and my first plastics procedure for days. I have big gaps of missing time, while when I skipped the pre-OR valium, I remembered almost everything from the time I woke up afterwards.