VSGAnn2014

Silly question -- but are you taking any blood pressure medicine (that you were taking pre-op)? If so, you really need to lower the dosage -- or maybe even stop it altogether. If you aren't taking BP meds, ignore this post.

@@theantichick ... You're so welcome. You are such a smart person. Unless you already have some rough eating disorder like binge eating that has you by the throat and that you're trying to overcome (I don't suffer from that malady), I bet you could reason and practice and learn how to move permanently from unhealthy eating to attentive, controlled, mindful eating. Another thing I've found to be true about the WLS experience is that it has become such a workable path -- a *yoga* if you will -- to move into much more mindful living in all areas of my life. As a long-time obese, high-achieving person, for decades and decades I'd put everyone else's needs ahead of mine. BTW, that is how you get straight As in many areas of life -- career, popularity, reputation. After all, if you drop everything to help others out when they need help, bosses do promote you and people do like you. But living life that way (and enjoying the external reinforcement for being "nice") reinforces that everyone else's needs take a higher priority than our own. And, believe me, when you're that nice everyone knows your phone number! Anyway, I'll shut up. This is your thread, not mine. I think you should drag up every objection you can think of against WLS to figure out whether it's YOUR best path. And I will also add that not everyone feels as positively about WLS as I do. Some people have NOT found it to be the grand solution they were hoping for.

I can tell you what my experience has been on the fronts you're concerned about. FYI, I'm 20 months post-op, have lost 100 pounds, am maintaining at 135 pounds and currently averaging 1,800 calories/day and around 90-100 grams of Protein. I try to eat at least 5 healthy veggies / fruits a day. I prefer whole grains to processed ones. I drink a glass of wine OR scotch most days. In other words, if someone else were watching my daily menus I bet they would think I "eat normally" and probably "eat healthy." Uh -- that's not how I eat 20 months post-op. Yes, I spent the first 6-8-10 months being very disciplined about what I ate, when I ate, how I ate. And in doing so I built some new habits. And, badda boom! Now they're habits. I don't count bites or chews or anything like that now. By working hard to build those new habits, I learned how to eat much more slowly, how to chew my food much better, how to recognize what satiety feels like, how to know when I'm approaching "too full" and to stop before I get there. Trust me, I had some awful bad habits pre-op. I bet you do, too. We can't change those bad habits without some serious attention to our behavior. It's not persuasive to say to you, "Trust me, I don't have an eating disorder." But I don't have an eating disorder. What I have is a new lifestyle. I feel very relaxed in this new lifestyle. There's no anxiety about eating. There's no fear, anger, or other upsetting emotions about food. Isn't that what you want? Y'know -- on the front end it does sound *extreme* to remove 85% of your stomach. But on the back end where I am now, it just all feels normal. I just spent a week hanging with some good friends of mine -- all normal-sized and athletic people my own age. We were both eating at home and eating out, too. Some serious partying occurred, as well. What I notice in those settings is that, nearly two years post-op, I am now living the same kind of eating / exercise life they've been living for a long time. They watch what they eat. Read that again: They watch what they eat. Their watching is not obsessive, but it's attentive. I think there's a range of behaviors between obsessive and attentive, and it's intellectually lazy to equate the two end poles of that range. So don't do that. Actually, the barrier to my maintaining past weight losses wasn't the planning -- it was that my plans were so often blown out of the Water because I'd never built any new eating habits beyond the "diet to lose weight" phase. After you lose all your excess weight, after a year or so you can eat so much more than you could right after surgery. The first week after surgery I averaged probably 500 calories/day, all of it liquid. But over the last 20 months I have gone carefully from phase to phase to phase. I didn't go from Dieting one day to Struggling Not to Gain Weight the next day. (How I did all that is a big subject, and one I won't go into here, but it wouldn't surprise you how I did it.) Yesterday, I ate 3 meals and 2 Snacks -- all real food. I do record most days my menus on My Fitness Pal (it takes me all of 5 minutes -- I'm a data hound). Yesterday I ate 1,805 calories, 103 grams of protein, 189 grams of carbs, 67 grams of fat, 23 grams of insoluble Fiber. Girl, that's how a real person who's eating healthy and maintaining her weight eats! Oh, and yesterday morning I went for a hike up a small mountain with my sister and late yesterday afternoon I spread 20 bags of mulch in some flower beds. And I went shopping. I wasn't wearing my pedometer all the time, so don't know how many steps I got, but it was at least 10,000 I'm sure. Am I obsessive? Or am I attentive? You decide. You can also read this post to your therapist and see what she thinks. Last thought: You should not do this surgery unless and until you are really comfortable that it's the right choice for you. Don't let anyone here talk you into it, including me.

This is such an exciting journey. We go through so many changes that demand our attention and our acceptance and adaptations. I think it's just wonderful! I hope you do, too.

@@Kindle -- wish we lived near each other. I could take you hiking. I went on a great hike this morning. I read an article lately, emphasizing hiking's great benefits. One of them is that while hiking in the beautiful outdoors we stop ruminating -- that endless crap that runs over and over in our heads like a hamster wheel. About antidepressants and depression -- I've also read the research literature about antidepressants having little more than a placebo effect. But who cares? The placebo effect can be enormous. And I hear you on the "neutral ground" comment. It's Monday, and I'm wondering how you fared over the weekend. Just wanted you to know I am thinking of you out here in Internetland. (hugs) Ann

Like you, I didn't tell anyone but my husband and two good friends who live 1,000 miles away -- and all are 100% supportive. If you hang out here long, you will find so many people who didn't tell anyone. Although some folks are into telling others about WLS, many (a majority?) of WLS patients think, like you, that this is a journey most comfortably traveled without a peanut gallery. Look through the threads here to find conversations on this topic -- there are dozens of them! BTW, your life is about to change in so many good ways. That's what you should be focusing on. It's a big adventure. I wish for you the very best possible outcomes from your WLS.

Google "three week stall." You're right on schedule.

Sounds like you need a plan. An actual plan for eating and for exercise and possibly therapy addressing your issues around self-care. As the old saying goes: Failing to plan is planning to fail. Yeah, boring, but it rings true for me. Very best to you!

So now what's the plan? Diet / exercise? Trainer? Shrink?

Shaking my head. To the OP -- you can be miserable for no good reason or you can act like an adult. And yes, I know you're *only* 22 years old. You're still an adult. None of that drama llama crap you're wallowing in is going to happen. Just follow your surgeon's instructions. Jeez.

What did your surgeon say you would regret -- not getting the sleeve or getting the sleeve? (Wasn't sure what you meant.) Hey! I had GERD pre-sleeve. It's no worse now than it was pre-op. My surgeon repaired my hiatal hernia when he sleeved me. And to the OP -- GERD is not guaranteed for sleeved patients. Lots of sleeved folks here didn't have GERD pre-op and don't have it post-op.

Honest to God, you are overthinking this. Set your own goal. And hit it. And if it's not enough, lose some more. And if it's too much, gain a little. Really ... that's what everybody pretty much does. I will offer one last thought -- you may be blown away by how much you DO lose. Just because you haven't weighed in the normal BMI range in decades or even ever doesn't mean you can't get to that weight after WLS. Many people have been very surprised. I certainly was.

I reached my goal weight (150 pounds) almost a year ago. In the last year I've lost another 15 pounds and have been maintaining at this weight for the last 3 months. Obviously, I averaged under 2 pounds lost each month for the last year. So what worked for me were two simple things: Consistency and patience.

The deal about % of stomach removed is that if the surgeon doesn't remove all the fundus (the stretchy part of the stomach where ghrelin, the hunger hormone, is produced) you won't get the reduced hunger benefits of VSG surgery. My understanding is that the fundus is around 85% of an intact human stomach. You should do some more research about WLS -- to understand what it is and how it works. Best!

My first post-op alcohol (a glass of wine) was 6 months after surgery. Since then (I'm 20 months post-op and have been at or below my weight goal for almost a year now) I've had one glass of wine or 1.5 ounces of scotch most days. I almost never drink more than the "social drinker" definition (for women) of 7 drinks a week. I don't "party" -- in the sense of drinking lots of alcohol in a single day / night. I've done marijuana once since WLS. I've never done cocaine. So can't advise you there. However, I *know* that, had I ever done cocaine, I'd have instantly become an addict and that the outcome would have been ugly. I agree with those who encourage you to consider what you think a healthy lifestyle for you would look like. I'll also say that losing the weight is the *easiest* part of this whole deal. Creating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life is the big upside opportunity here. Only you know what the downside of your obesity has been and what the potential upside for you can become. Very best to you!

I had a glass of wine when I was 6 months out.

I've delayed responding to this because there was not a single moment in which the heavens parted, angels sang, and a banner unfurled with the words, "I choose WLS!" I finally chose WLS because I'd exhausted every other weight loss / weight maintenance option. WLS was the only thing I hadn't done. I finally chose the last door. My foundational decision is that I simply refused to die fat. And now I won't!

You *need* to *own it*? Good grief.

John, what an AWESOME TED talk. You really have contributed to society. Thank you. Ann

Alex, you ask some good questions! food still plays an important role in my life, obviously. But now I take so much more care planning my food -- shopping, menu-planning, cooking, making an attractive table, making meals and even Snacks an event. As someone here posted earlier today, I now enjoy food so much more than I did pre-op. And mealtime and snack time are for conversation now with hubby -- much more than we used to talk. We actually plan our topics for each day's afternoon coffee break. Today it was political, yesterday it was literature, day before it was a Canadian train trip we're planning. Tomorrow hubby's planning the topic, so I don't know what it will be. I care for myself much better in other ways than I used to -- through personal grooming (clothes, skin care, hair, makeup, etc.). I leave the house more for extracurricular activities. I run more errands that hubby used to bear the total responsibility for. I read -- Lord, am I reading more these days, and not grazing or nibbling while I'm reading. I don't do that at all anymore. We travel more than we did immediately pre-op when I had become so obesity-disabled and agoraphobic. It's hard to admit that. But I was. Destinations range from the local grocery store to Manhattan to Down Under. Clothes shopping -- hey, that's never going to end. House cleaning and gardening -- I'm so much more active on that front than I was for many years prior to WLS. As a result, I love our home more than I have in years. I walk like I haven't walked in a long, long time. I absolutely love it. I walked 8 miles one day last week. Wow! For the last two years I've seen a therapist. That helps a lot.

Good on you for walking out. She's a fucking idiot -- uninformed and passing along wrong information to people who need good info. Jeez!

Ah, the sweet tea addicts. I think those people are insane. I know several people who've regained ALL their lost weight after WLS thanks to their sweet tea addictions. How can you not give up sweet tea to get rid of obesity?! I swear -- some people really fucking deserve to be fat.

I've lost 100 pounds -- now maintaining at 135 pounds. I have severe knee arthritis (especially in the right knee). I took two Aleve every day for decades prior to WLS. I haven't had any NSAIDs for nearly two years now. And my knees don't hurt! I walk as far as 7-8 miles a day. I've taken my knee replacement surgeries off the calendar. Don't need 'em now, my PCP says. (That might change in the future, of course.) My lower back pain is gone. One thing is odd -- the last 15 pounds I lost had the greatest impact on my pain cessation. So please try to get into the "normal" weight zone to see if that won't help you a lot. As always, your mileage may vary.

First of all, if your surgeon removes only half of your stomach, she/he won't be removing all of the "fundus" -- the stretchy part of your stomach that produces ghrelin, the hunger hormone. So you won't have that normal benefit of a full VSG. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, Google is your friend.) Seriously -- you need a third opinion. Seriously.

For some reason, "air and cigarettes" sounded pretty good just now. Weird!