VSGAnn2014

Beef and Black Bean Chili - 1 pound ground beef, 1 15-ounce can of black Beans, 1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes, 1 envelope of McCormick chili seasoning. It's ready in 30-40 minutes and has both meat and plant Protein and lots of veggie Fiber. So delish. I eat it with a tablespoon or two of sour cream. Hard to beat. Lasts 4-6 days for lunch, depending on how hungry I am. Tomato, Bacon, cheese Sandwich Vine-ripened tomatoes in our part of the world are already amazing. Add a couple slices of crisp applewood bacon and 1 ounce of cheddar cheese with a little mayo and toast (yes, more toast ). It's wonderful! Restaurant leftovers -- Mexican, chicken, fish, whatever! Love my leftovers. I get half a meal from a single restaurant serving (used to be 1/3 of a meal). If you order well (veggies, lean meats) half a restaurant serving is seldom more than 300 calories. Stir Fried Chicken and Veggies Just what it sounds like. Saute chicken strips with sliced garlic in coconut oil (doesn't take much at all). When the chicken's a little brown, add some good stir fry veggies like red, green, yellow peppers, Water chestnuts (for more crunch), celery, carrots (baby ones are nice), broccoli flowerets, shiitake mushrooms (canned), a few cilantro leaves, a little lime juice, red pepper flakes (not many), and just enough peanuts and Thai peanut sauce to give it that Thai flavor. You can find online so many variations on this theme. You could get a lot more exotic than this, but the above combo is pretty low cal. Serve it with or without brown rice, depending on whether you're in weight loss or weight maintenance mode. Snacks - Fresh Fruit in Season A cup of in-season fruit makes a delicious snack. Fruits currently in season in my neck of the woods (and my grocery store) include cherries, strawberries, mangos, even melons. Every summer month offers new choices. Enjoy them now and, as much as possible, support your local farmers. Their produce tastes better, too.

I could be really wrong about this, but I get the distinct impression you don't know how much Protein / calories you're really eating. Advice from someone who reached goal (87 pounds) at 8-1/2 weeks post-op: Start counting your protein grams. And as long as you're doing that, count your calories -- at least for a while. You could be right that you're getting enough protein. Or you could be wrong. So why guess? P.S. You're losing weight like a house afire! I lost 10.4 pounds the first month post-op.

Yes, of course you can! You're on the front end of WLS. You have a lot to learn. And you WILL learn it. A year from now, you'll be living the life you wanted to live.

Clearly, there's a lot we don't know from your short post above. But I don't fault your husband for talking to his own brother about his feelings. We all have feelings, and talking about them is usually a good thing. However, it also seems that you and your husband have more communicating to do about this. But at the end of the day, your husband may not wind up feeling the same way you do about WLS. Your overweight is your problem, not his. Therefore, you understand the issues around that better than anyone else ever could. What's important is that YOU make the decisions about your health and your happiness that are right for YOU. This is YOUR decision to make. You can't look to anyone else, including your spouse, to make that decision for you. Thereafter, YOU will have to make the day-to-day behavioral decisions that determine if you'll be successful with WLS. And then there's this: You said your brother-in-law revealed that your husband thinks you "... still won't be happy." What's that about? Have you *always* been unhappy, or is your unhappiness a relatively new condition for you? On the one hand, our moods and attitudes are affected by our health and weight. Yes, it's hard to be happy-happy when we are unhealthy, immobile, and just feel like crap. And in turn, our moods and attitudes DO play a big part in our ability to be successful with WLS. But "happiness" is also something that's to some degree innate within us. Generally unhappy fat people after WLS may continue to be unhappy -- even though they're skinnier. And that's a big subject!

"Eat like a normal person" ... boy, that's a loaded term. Like you, I'm newly at goal. And what I've learned in the last year is that "normal persons" eat pretty badly. They eat lots of processed foods, fast food, boxed food, food laden with sodium, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, hormones, corn syrup, etc. These days, I'm working hard to eat a lot more veggies / fruits and plant Proteins (in addition to animal proteins) than I once did. Does that mean I don't eat what I'm served by a hostess at a dinner party or Fourth of July BBQ? Nope, of course not. But the foods on my daily menus that I do control (by food shopping, cooking, ordering at restaurants) are considerably different than they were pre-op and certainly during the first six months of post-op. WLS offers us a chance to greatly improve our nutrition. I'm pretty sure that what I DO eat from now on is going to be more important in maintaining my newly found health and lower weight than what I DON'T eat. By that, I mean that if I eat healthy foods that meet my body's nutritional needs I'll not crave the highly processed (high sugar/fat/salt) foods I used to eat too much of. And don't misunderstand -- I wasn't a food binger. You don't have to be a food binger to get fat in America. You only have to starve your body of the nutrients it needs and wants. Doing that leads us to the over-processed food trough. Gobble, gobble!

@@banksdea ... How you feel early on is just that ... how you feel early on, not forever. In time, your stomach will heal, you'll suffer a lot less from the toxins / hormones (which are currently flooding into your body as you lose weight rapidly these early months), you'll be able to eat more good veggies and fruits with Fiber, which will resolve your constipation problems down the road with more fiber. It may take months or even a year for all these things to even out for you. And in the meantime, I strongly endorse your instinct to seek psychological support in the form of a counselor / support group. It's good to know we're not alone in all these WLS changes that unsettle us. What's REALLY tough to confront is just how badly we were eating pre-op and how badly everybody else in our lives is still eating. Like @@Miss Mac says, eating lots of crappy food made us not only fat, but unhealthy. Part of what you're now feeling is the waste products from all those toxins stored in your body fat that are now flooding your body. The longer I go post-op (I'm 9 months, 1 week post-op and already at goal), the more I continue to learn about nutrition. I now understand that I had NO idea how badly I was feeding my body pre-op. I needed a lot more healthy veggies and fruits and whole grains and healthy Protein (both plant and animal) than I was eating. At this point, anything that comes in a box from the grocery store is suspect. If you read food labels you'll find processed foods are full of sodium (preservatives), corn sugar, and artificial flavorings. Sorry for the rant ... it's just really hitting me lately how my body deserved a lot better nutrition than our culture and our food industries encourage us to eat. I'm really rather surprised that I'm turning into a bit of a nutrition enthusiast. As I said, I really did not understand earlier what my body needed and deserved. Live and learn.

My physical NSVs are amazing -- things like walking anywhere I want to go in the city and not being afraid of knee pain and exhaustion and being unable to get back to where I started. Like today -- I mowed the front lawn, the side lawn, the garage lawn, picked up tons of downed timber on our property (storms around here), trimmed rose bushes, weeded flower beds -- and wasn't the least bit tired! Before WLS, I hadn't worked that hard that easily in years! Like this weekend -- we went to hubby's high school reunion (400 miles away), and I kept up all weekend, stood at the cocktail party for an hour without sitting down (!!!), and did half the driving to the event and back. That sounds like nothing now, right? Well, as we all know when we were obese we could no more do that simple trip than a man in the moon, right? We'd have stayed home, right? And maybe hubby would have stayed home, too, right? (Just look at hubby's NSVs about my WLS, eh?) All the things we gradually removed from our lives we're now putting back into our lives. Hubby and I are both so happy about this surgery's physical, emotional, recreational and health benefits!

I lost a LOT of belly / abdomen fat during the last 20 pounds before goal. Just sayin'.

I think you've described wonderfully what your experience was. Congrats on being home and feeling so much better. But with respect, not everyone experiences what you did. There are so many versions of our WLS experiences. For instance, I've never vomited a single time post-op. And I was in the hospital only a single night, and it was completely adequate to my needs. But unlike you, I did have gas pains (as do most people) -- so congrats on that. And I definitely walked. And I did do the pre-op diet with no troubles at all (lost 8 pounds during that phase). The best we can do is share our own experience. That way, newbies can see the range of others' experiences and be prepared for whichever version shows up on their plate. Big congrats to you on making it to the losers' bench. Onward and downward.

Oh, my gosh! I missed this thread. You have done just great. I'm sure your life is completely different, especially if you really are an LA cowgirl. Congrats.

How fortunate you were to have such a great surgeon -- and for all your surgeries. I understand how you'd feel you're losing an important ally. But I hope you really like the new guy. He could be great. As someone on the verge of retirement, I am happy for your old surgeon. I'm sure he deserves this life transition.

I'm sorry your husband is being so weird about this. I'm one of the lucky ones -- my husband said, "However you want to tackle this is fine with me. How can I support you?" I really hope your guy can get his act together. If not, .... You're going to feel so good when you reach your goals.

I'd strongly advise you after you have surgery to stop worrying about how much and how varied a diet you can eat how soon and instead focus on eating what you need to eat to lose as much weight as possible in the first six months. Seriously -- if you're jonesing for corn, you can have it next summer. It's not leaving the planet.

The sleeve won't solve your eating / overweight / obesity problems. It will help. A lot. But you'll have to exert discipline, a positive attitude, healthy self-talk, personal accountability, question and change the way you eat, understand that this journey is never over, and possibly seek the help of a counselor / therapist / psychologist to deal with weight-related issues. You may even have to go on a (gasp!) diet and exercise! I'm being sarcastic. You will have to go on a diet and exercise. Seriously. What the sleeve basically does is make it POSSIBLE for you to stick to a diet and (eventually) an exercise plan. That's how you lose weight: by eating less and moving more. Best wishes to you on a successful surgery and an easy recovery.

I know someone (one) who lost 65-70 pounds about 10 years ago and has maintained it since then.

I have no sympathy for those who think "I paid for this surgery because I wanted to eat normally." Then they proceed to "eat normally," don't lose weight, and get pissed because surely their surgeons made their stomachs too big. Some people are so stupid that they think they don't have to eat fewer calories than their body burns to lose weight. Problem is, you can't fix stupid.

Hot tea is great for me -- chamomile.

I think those of you for whom the weight is not just falling off should ask for a refund. After all, you paid for the surgery. That's all you needed to do.

While losing weight I removed from my closet immediately and donated / any clothes that had become too big for me. Never did that before. Ever. I had plenty of clothes all the way down through 14s. BTW, donating all my 14s (I had GREAT fat clothes) was painful. And then I hit size 12 -- I had a few of those. Happily, I then discovered an amazing high-end consignment shop in our town. I've been buying 10s -- St. John, Laurel, etc. at prices that blow me away: $15, $38, $58. Most I've ever paid is $108 for a three-piece St. John twin-set and navy slacks. I don't really know how low I'll go -- it's possible I'll hit size 8. So I'm not investing much money in post-op clothes until then. In the meantime, I'm wearing a lot of skinny jeans, white shirts, and sexy shoes.

Love your observation about the non-sacred nature of emotions. Also appreciate your pointing out the power of habit. At bottom,our obesity is more mundane than mystical. Just do it.

I was never a ketosis kid either. I was very intent on avoiding post-bariatric reactive hypoglycemia, so I always tried to eat at least as many carbs as Proteins (grams). I reached goal (150 pounds at 5'5" and 69 years old) at 8-1/2 months post-op. And now I'm 3 pounds below that while trying to stop losing. I'm averaging about 1400 calories/day the last few weeks. But still losing very slowly. I eat extremely healthy -- lots of good veggies and fruits, typically 100 grams of Protein daily, whole grains, very little refined sugar and other refined carbs. Always take my vits/mins, and my big four-page blood panel results found everything was normal and good. Feeling good. Looking good. All going good here. So here's my challenge of the moment: It's a challenge for me to mentally *agree* to stop losing. Seeing the scale go down, even 0.2 pounds, is definitely a more positive feeling than seeing it stand still. Honestly, I'm a little worried about that. The idea that I could become anorexic is ridiculous to me. But I do realize that I've got to change my attitude into one that feels rewarded by seeing my weight stabilize. Anybody got any thoughts on that front? BTW, many thanks to @@Rogofulm for lobbying Alex to open this maintenance forum. Thank you, Rog.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Alex. Thank you.

Wow! Those are some big-ass pants! Sometimes (as when looking at those pants) this whole transformation we've been through seems just a bit unreal. Living the fantasy is really possible, eh?

My take on the sleeve is the same as Rog's. The surgery makes it possible (finally) for us to behave consistently in ways that help us lose weight and maintain our weight loss. That is all. And boy, is that a lot!

Sweater! Funny. Yeah, you need a new doc. Sounds like the kind of person who generalizes to everything / all the time based on one thing he heard from somebody who knew somebody whose cousin read something in a newspaper. Even those kinds of idjits can become doctors. And other people have deeply wired prejudices that no amount of education can correct.