AvaFern

I have used a straw since the second week after surgery when I accidentally used one. A straw is not going to hurt you and if anything it might help you get in more fluids. As a note, I feel like your surgeon, who specializes in the actual procedure likely knows a lot more about it than a cardiologist and a nutritionist...

In my experience, it is what you make it. While yes, your stomach is gone forever, the benefits are not forever. Most people many years out have learned to eat around the sleeve so that if they did not learn good food habits while they had restriction, they just return to their old ways. I am three months short of three years out from surgery. I hit goal in April of last year and I have maintained within 3-4 pounds. This morning I woke up a few ounces heavier than usual, so today I get to pay more attention to my food and exercise. Every single day is going to be a fight for the rest of your life, although the sleeve makes it substantially easier. I am never going to get to go on vacation for a week, eat whatever I want like those damn naturally skinny people do, and come back and have gained no weight. I could easily gain 5-8 pounds in a week if I ate sweets, which is my big "gain weight fast" food. Because I like being thin, I don't eat sweets anymore. I wake up and I weigh myself every morning. I missed a day in MyFitnessPal about 2 weeks ago and broke a 230+ day streak, so the last two weeks I haven't been recording my food intake, but really I don't need to anymore. I know what I can and cannot eat. This time three years ago I was 237-ish pounds, I could not manage to lose weight, and I was ashamed and miserable. This morning I weighed 132.8 pounds, I have a closet full of clothes that are 0-4, and I feel like a different person. The sleeve is not something that will make you thin and happy forever, but rather it is something that makes it a lot easier for you to reach and maintain a healthy weight if you are willing to make the sacrifices to do so. Where I live it is 95 degree outside already, I do NOT want to go workout, but in a little bit, I'm going to spray myself with sunscreen, whine as I get into workout clothes, and get my butt outside. I'll log my food today because I gained a bit over the weekend, I'll probably do my ab video, and I won't have any dessert at the Memorial Day party this afternoon. Sure, the sleeve made it easier to get to this size, but at this point the only thing keeping me here are my own daily decisions. So, the sleeve itself is forever, the benefits it provides are great the first year or two and then slowly drop, but you have the potential to use the tool to your advantage to achieve and maintain good health. In the end, it's entirely up to you- not what happens to be left of your stomach.

I'm generally an antisocial hermit, and losing weight hasn't changed that. I have a lot of acquaintances, and a core group of close friends. I don't talk to them more or less now than in the past, although I suppose the big difference is that when I am talked into leaving my desk and work to go out, I feel far more confident. In the past I might have avoided going to dinner, and while I still do, the reason now is because I'd rather be working, whereas the reason in the past was that I was ashamed to be seen in public. Only my three best friends know about my sleeve procedure, which leaves about 5-8 people I talk to regularly, which involves most of them as daily texting, that only know that I lost weight. I have not stopped talking to or had any issues with a single person as a result of weight loss, and the biggest change is in myself. I feel like I'm not embarrassing people when I go out with them any more, haha.

I had this same thought for probably two weeks. OMG, what did I just to do myself?! I literally remember being on the phone with my best friend crying that I had destroyed my life..who in their right mind cuts out their stomach?! I was also very sick the first few days after surgery, the anesthesia made me feel terrible for over a week, my arms would fall asleep randomly, I was nauseous, and I was convinced I had just destroyed my life. I am now three months short of three years from surgery. I have maintained at goal weight for 14 months and I am SO glad that I had the surgery done. I can finally feel like my life is about something other than losing weight. In the end, every bit of misery those first few weeks after surgery is worth it. You might be freaked out now, but a few months from now, maybe a year from now, you will look back on today and think...ha, all those people were right, it was worth it! On a medical note, ask your nurses if they are using both Zofran and Phenergan and ask them for Transderm-Scop (it's a little sticker that goes behind your ear). The only thing that got me past the nausea was to tell them to stop the IV narcotics. I got exponentially better after that, so if you think that might be the problem, they can give you liquid OTC pain meds instead. I had no need for heavy drugs after surgery and the vast improvement in my nausea only started when they stopped giving me the IV drugs.

I don't super love or not love this idea. Sometimes I edit posts because I read it after it's posted and I wonder where I learned to spell or I somehow missed entire words in my post, so the time limit is effective for that. On two occasions though I edited a post way after this time and I would have been upset if I had been unable to do so. First, I posted a picture of my arms after surgery that I later wanted to delete, and I was glad that I could, and second I posted a long post about how one of my plastic surgeries might not have been a good idea, while I was hopped up on Percocet the day after surgery and freaking out because I thought I was going to end up with an ugly butt (butt is fine btw, lol). I was really glad I could go back and delete the parts that made me sound stupid the next day and I have often raved about my plastic surgeon (who is awesome) and I didn't want anyone to read my post and decide against using him, because I was freaked out about my new butt. Not to be the needy one, but do we have the option of messaging a site manager and having a post removed in this kind of circumstance? Past that, I like the idea that all the wimps who start drama can't go back and delete their post. It's really much less fun for me when I read through all the replies and I can't read the original post. I think if you want to start crap, own it...I have far more value for someone who posts something inflammatory and then stands behind what they said than a coward who goes back and deletes it. If you're going to be a troll, at least be a troll that has a pair.

I think a big reason people on weight loss forums are at goal weight is because they have remained cognizant of the weight loss process and because they feel like they contribute to the forums as a person who, for whatever reason, has been successful. I'll be honest, if I started gaining weight I probably wouldn't post on here a lot because I wouldn't be thinking about my weight (or trying not to) and I'd be ashamed. As for the keys to success, I think in the long term the biggest is to do what works for you, which takes some trial and error. I was never a rule-follower. I drank with straws, I always drink with my meals, I didn't pay a lot of attention to Protein, I eat crackers, I had chocolate a few months after surgery and a few sips of champagne to be polite 3 weeks after surgery. I almost never sit down and eat an actual meal, I mostly eat when I feel hungry and I snack a lot. I used to be big on sweets, but while they often make me feel sick, I really don't have any big cravings for them anymore. When I am somewhere with sweets, I just don't eat any. The one thing I found consistently is that when I sweets, I absolutely gain weight. If I stay away from them, I have a lot more flexibility in my diet. I weigh myself everyday and write the number in a little calendar. I don't workout a lot anymore because I have found I can be lazy and maintain at goal. I think the one thing that has worked for me is the daily weigh-in. Last November I woke up after Halloween at 137, which is 8 pounds over my goal and the most I had weighed since hitting goal. It took me until January to get back to goal, but it was a good lesson that had I not been weighing myself everyday I would have had a lot more than 8 pounds to lose. When surgery is over and your stomach is healed, it comes down to what you can do for the rest of your life. I was not willing to be thirsty during meals for the rest of my life, I wasn't willing to workout every single day for the rest of my life, and I'm not willing to be fat. Somewhere in the middle there is a compromise with myself that has allowed me to be where I want to be and also be happy and live a life that doesn't completely revolve around my weight.

I think this is very much possible. I feel like I spent my entire adult life either just trying to survive (from like 18-23 living on my own), or trying to lose weight while slowly moving away from a pure survival mentality. I never had time to think about moving ahead in life because all of the plans I made were to lose weight. I had to control my diet, I had to get to the gym everyday, I had to be thin- every minute was about food. I could worry about pursuing other dreams when I wasn't fat anymore and until then the only place I had the right to be was on a treadmill. Now that I don't spend everyday planning how I am going to lose weight, I started doing other things with my life. I have a reasonable amount of education, but I avoided doing things in person because I was ashamed of how I look. This year I applied to law school. It was something I wanted to do since I was a kid, but I could never afford it before and after awhile it was something I just accepted I would never get to do. Not only did I get into law school, but I got scholarships at some of the really decent schools and a full scholarship to a somewhat decent school. Although I'm about 3 years older than the median age, I start law school in the fall. I am 100% sure that if my entire life still revolved around food and losing weight and not being good enough to deserve to try new things in life it never would have occurred to me that law school was an option. So, yes, I think that at least for me the confidence has helped me move forward in life, but the biggest part is that I can take the time I spent obsessing about being fat and put it toward far more valuable pursuits.

At 5 weeks there is nothing wrong with a bite or two of cake. If you eat the whole piece, yes, you're probably going to get sick, but if you have a single bite of each sample, you will be fine. I love cake tasting now because I can literally eat a single bite of each option and feel pretty satisfied afterward. I would say that if you know which of thee 5-8 they have you taste you are most likely to choose, pick the three that you think you would like best and that your future husband does like and have a bite of only those. You aren't going to hurt yourself with a few bites of cake and as you said, it's your wedding. The entire point of the sleeve is to be able to live a life you couldn't before surgery. Skipping a taste testing is not living a life.

Target kills me with their mirrors. Full back and front visual of all of my mostly-naked self. Things do improve though...

If that charley horse starts to make your leg feel warm, hard, red or gets worse, go to the ER. Sometimes a DVT starts off feeling a lot like a charley horse and this close after surgery would increase your risk. Highly unlikely, but something to keep in mind. http://bottomlineinc.com/a-charley-horse-or-a-deadly-blood-clot/

Haha! I have a pair of size 5 pants I wore my senior year of high school in 2002, they are STILL really tight, and yet all of my pants now are between a 0 and a 4 and they fit loosely. I'm not complaining, but our sizes have changed just in the last 15 years as well. In 2002 I was the same weight that I am now, except apparently I had a way smaller butt, lol.

Enjoy the time while food has no flavor. The more weight you lose in the beginning, the faster you get to goal. I am about 2.5 years post-op and I don't really care about food anymore, which is kind of a cool thing. I used to love sweets and while they are still ok, I rarely eat any because they just don't have the same comforting factor as before. When I eat Breakfast, it's granola because I need the carbs so I can go for a walk or a run. I don't really eat meals throughout the day, which I suppose isn't suggested, but around 2 when I start getting hungry, I have a turkey and cheese roll-up because the Protein is good for me and it fills me up. When I'm kind of hungry but don't really want anything to eat, I'll eat a handful of goldfish crackers because they give me some carbs, they taste good, and they are something to chew on. In general I have no real excitement for food anymore- it's just the fuel I use to make my body relatively happy. This has done great things for maintaining my loss and I am ok with giving up my love of food in exchange for a love of clothing.

Did your doctor do lipo when he did the brachioplasty? A friend of mine had hers done and because her doctor did no lipo, she ended up with arms that she is very unhappy with. When I had my arms done, I made sure to clarify that there would be lipo involved and my doctor said that it is customary to include lipo of the arms when doing a brachioplasty. Perhaps that isn't the case for everywhere? Your arms look better than they did before, however if you are unhappy with them, you can request a redo. I didn't like my thighs so my doctor re-did them for free.

I used to get Subway salads because they were giant and lasted days. I found it annoying that they count out exactly 4 pieces of turkey, but oh well. If they changed their size to much smaller, I would not be ordering it anymore either.

A relationship that lasts is not one that cares about having a partner with a perfect body. I would argue that it is one that requires a mutual level of attraction, however if someone is willing to get to know you as a person before they "know" you in a biblical sense, they don't tend to care as much about a few stretch marks because most women have them and their value is in WHO they are, not in what their butt looks like. My last relationship was with someone I had talked to for six months before we really started dating and almost 8 months before I had to explain why I have plastic surgery scars. At the time I had a giant hole in my back that had to be covered by a huge bandage because my last surgery had an infection. Never once did he seem to care, and now a year and a half later, while we didn't work out as a couple. we're still friends, neither of us has dated anyone else, and I don't have any belief that if I had a perfect body he would have liked me better. As a note, he's 28, rich, and is super hot, so if he isn't shallow enough to care that my thighs are kinda flabby and my butt is not super hot, then I can believe that there are plenty of men in the world that are like him. So, yes, some men are exactly that shallow, but so too are women- the trick is finding someone that is just as shallow as you are- no more, no less, and then you can worry about the things in a relationship that matter.

I had the groin incision lift and I honestly don't know if I made the right choice or not and it's been almost a year and a half. I did not want the scar to my knee, and I know that for whatever reason that incision often has issues with healing. I had a whopping infection in the posterior body lift incision and while the scar is on my butt, so I don't care, if I had that kind of scar on my leg, I would be upset. I actually had the thigh lift done twice, because I didn't like the results of the first version. My doctor is awesome, so he did a second thigh lift at the time we did the posterior body lift. I still hate my legs. If you look at me in a bathing suit, the top half of my is fabulous. I had a brachioplasty, breast lift and augment, tummy tuck, and posterior body lift. There is not a piece of loose skin anywhere- I am tight and I love it. Then though we look at the bottom of me. In clothing I look fine, but without clothing my butt and thighs are covered in cellulite and not attractive. To be fair, I look like a fairly average, out of shape person, however I think if I had the full thigh lift, my thighs would be far tighter and better looking. That being said though, if I'm going to wear a shorter skirt, I wear tights or stockings and my legs look great, which also, had I had the full incision, the same would be true since no one could see the scar anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, I probably would have gotten the full to the knee version, if purely because I can't wear anything now that I wouldn't be able to wear if I had the extra scars. My other scars heeled very well, so in a few years they would be close to invisible, and until then I would not have fat legs in all of the pants and longer dresses I wear. In the end, it's up to your preferences. A groin incision lift fixes the major problems, but it is not going to give you the tight, thighs that you would get with the other version.

Probably about a week or two after I was cleared for full foods. The soft crackers are probably ok on the soft foods plan, but some crackers, like Wheat Thins, tend to have sharp edges. Crackers are one of my sliders, so I am careful about having them in my house. I can eat crackers all day long and not feel full or sick, so while they are completely acceptable to be eat, they are one of the foods you want to really keep track of how many calories you are eating.

I hated when people didn't mind their own business, but I accepted that 95% of them were not being rude on purpose. Most people who have not had weight issues think that telling you you've lost weight is this big compliment, and that asking how much gives you a chance to brag. It made me feel like a monster, but I get that people who were not fat have no idea what it feels like. If it makes you feel better, once you've been at goal for awhile, no one asks rude questions and people tend to forget that you were once fat. No one has told me I look thin in probably a year other than my mom who told me I look too thin and my friends who tell me I look skinny because they know it makes me happy, haha.

I'm not really an old timer, but my surgery was in September 2013, I hit goal of 129 in April of 2015, and it is now may of 2016 and I am still semi-at goal. I fluctuate between 129-133 and I have stayed mostly in this range for the last year. I am lucky that my sleeve hates food. I have no real interest in eating anything bad for me because it just makes me sick. It took awhile to get past eating stuff anyway, but I have largely lost my relationship with food as an emotional connection. Food is now just fuel- I eat when I need it and I don't think about it much otherwise. The sleeve gave me the chance to focus on something in life other than my weight. I hope I don't gain weight back, but for now I am happy with my choice.

I had botox in my forehead, Voluma in my cheeks, and Juvederm in my lips. They were fun, but I think of all of them I probably liked the Voluma the best. I had my dermatologist do most of it and a surgeon do the botox (mostly because the surgeon was having a botox party). I thought it was cool that my forehead didn't wrinkle for a few months, but other than that, I really don't notice a difference in my lips and my cheek change was minimal. I feel like when I am a little older I would like to go to a good plastic surgeon for a face lift because it has the longest lasting results. I'm also a little cheap and a forehead of botox was $300, a syringe of Voluma, half in each cheek was $800, and a syringe of Juvederm in my lips was I think $500. The botox has to be done every 4 months and usually it is closer to $500 (in my experience) and the Juvederm in the lips is once a year, while Voluma is about every two years. At least with a facelift it's a one time big expense and you aren't having stuff injected into your face a few times a year for the rest of your life.

Since everyone else gave you the pep talk version of advice, I'm going to give you the opposite version. Embrace the misery. food tastes terrible and you don't want to eat? Good!! That's how you lose weight! You're unhappy and don't want to go out? Good! That means you're not tempted by booze and food you shouldn't be eating. You have a slim window of opportunity to lose the most weight as possible and being unhappy and hating food is a really great way to maximize on that time. I read a book once and it said that most people don't lose weight because they haven't gotten quite miserable enough. No one has been mean enough to them, they haven't been hurt quite enough yet to really motivate them to do what needs to be done. At the time I thought, umm, well that's mean, but in hindsight it's true. I don't lose weight when I'm happy, but rather when I feel like a worthless loser that no one loves. The trick though is to not be sad and stuff your face to feel better, which it sounds like isn't your problem. So, while yes, you're probably depressed, use it to your advantage. If you had to have a time in life where food disgusts you and you don't have much of a desire to socialize, immediately after the sleeve when you have the best chance to lose the most weight is pretty great timing.

Miss Mac's post is great and good advice. I am over 2.5 years post-op and I still meausure new foods and use MyFitnessPal everyday. While I generally know how much of certain foods equates to a serving because I tend to eat the same things a lot, just yesterday I used a measuring cup to measure some Cereal because I wasn't sure how much a serving was. Also, fluctuating a pound up isn't a big deal. It could be Water retention or just a fluke. I fluctuate roughly 2-3 pounds throughout the month and when I hit the top range of that, I pay extra attention to my foods for a few days and I drop right back down. The trick to long term weight loss, at least from what I can tell, is being constantly vigilant. I am not someone that gets to eat whatever I want to. If I want to stay thin it is an every single day thing I need to pay attention to.

Nah, I doubt it. It's May, so that's 5 months. I was self-pay, so not quite the same thing, but I decided I wanted surgery and 2 weeks later I had my stomach cut out. I think you saying 5 months is an entirely appropriate answer.

Just wait until your dream clothing becomes your real clothing...life gets expensive, lol. I still love scrolling through clothing stores on my phone and wandering around stores looking at clothes, except now they all fit me, and they look good, and my credit card is sad, lol.

Ceviche is a good dish, if your stomach likes it. I see the word "ceviche" and I start to sweat and heave a little. I had a ceviche dish about a year after surgery and within 20 minutes I was puking, which turned into dry heaving, sweating, laying on the floor sick as a dog, for almost 8 hours. Hands-down the sickest food has made me since I had surgery, lol and very likely either something in the dish or something my stomach just didn't like, but oh gosh ceviche and I hate each other.