VSGAnn2014

Jeez, @@jane13 ... what a sad story. And what creepy in-laws. :-( As they say down South, he came by his bad traits naturally.

You're losing weight faster now than you ever will. Your body / bloodstream / everything is just flooded with waste products and old hormones that have been stored in your fat cells. At least that's what I've read many times online. The good news is that this won't continue indefinitely. But in the meantime, it's time to drink lots of Water and to exercise as much as you can to release the tension you're feeling. It really will help. Hang in there.

Gee, I'm so sorry. I also "liked" your post, but only in sympathy. I really, really hope you get this fixed up and it heals fast and well. (hugs!)

Here's the deal -- the goal isn't to make her adore you after you end the relationship. The goal is to end the relationship.

Bill, just saw this -- your results are just awesome. Huge congratulations to you. Here's to our second surgiversaries being as awesome as our firsts!

You raise some interesting questions, @@reallyrosy : 1. What limits (if any) are there to how we can control our eating / drinking / exercise behaviors post-op? 2. Does our ability to control our eating / drinking / exercise behaviors vary person to person, environment to environment, day to day, and in other ways? 3. How can we increase or improve our healthy (not obsessive) controls over our eating / drinking / exercise behaviors? 4. How great a role does self-discipline play in our eating / drinking / exercise? Let me be clear that I think dual classification systems (either/or categories like right/wrong, healthy/unhealthy, etc.) are inappropriate ways to describe all WLS patients and their behavior. WLS patients and their situations are much too varied for that. But there's no escaping the fact that, ultimately, our actual behaviors will determine our WLS success. (I'm defining "WLS success" as losing our excess weight, maintaining a lower, healthier weight, and becoming healthier than we once were.) Or course, over-eating is just one behavior in what could be a long chain of preceding behaviors and immutable factors that lead to over-eating. It's up to each of us to tease out what those preceding behaviors and factors are and to improve our responses so we can remain healthy. That's what I see a lot of vets doing -- continuously uncovering and overcoming barriers to their success, whether those are surgical complications, psychological or mental or emotional challenges, or responding in healthy ways to life's constant stresses. Sadly, I believe that some WLS patients don't have the resources to do this. I also believe that other WLS patients make explicit choices not to utilize the resources they have that might make them successful. That's another way of saying some WLS patients choose to remain addicted to food and unhealthy old habits. Fighting for our recovery from obesity probably never ends. P.S. I am only 19 months post-op. I imagine I'll understand this all a lot better several years down the road.

Really don't like to hear about surgeons who lie to their patients. It truly is insulting. And in the long run, it can hamper our recovery and our ability to create and adhere to a healthy lifestyle.

By "earn their regain" I mean that some WLS patients who don't suffer from complications or physical or psychological challenges affirmatively ignore the behavioral instructions they received pre-op. Saliently, they graze on slider foods, drink a lot of calories, don't take supplements, and don't exercise. In my earlier post I referred specifically to the story @@dove1 had told about her relative who, after pregnancy, gained 75 pounds, having "... made the decision to start partying and drinking and eating all sorts."

P.S. You probably already know this, but the extent and rigor of your sleeve's restriction depends greatly on what you are eating. The sleeve REALLY restricts Protein. But it doesn't restrict at all what are called "slider foods" -- highly processed, high-carb foods that require little digestion, turn to mush almost immediately, and slide on right down the pyloric valve into the small intestine. In other words, you can eat potato chips, Cookies, ice cream, and stuff like that all day long and never feel much restriction. And you can eat little bits of all kinds of food all day long ("grazing") and eat a helluva lot of food without feeling much restriction. And if you drink with your food, you'll push the food sooner down into the intestine -- again, leaving your stomach empty and able to accept more food.

LOL! No.

LOL! No. P.S. Tomorrow I'll be 19 months post-op. I've lost 100 pounds. Have maintained my weight loss for nearly a year and now weigh 135 pounds. I've not had a single cold, the flu or any other illness since WLS surgery. I'm 70 years old.

Lots and lots and lots of us have survived divorce. Most of the time, divorce totally sucks. Especially the limbo part. And then you're divorced. And then you can make new plans. And make progress toward YOUR plans.

Tomorrow I'll be 19 months post-op. I've lost 100 pounds and have maintained my weight (135 pounds) for nearly a year now. I eat 1500 - 2000 calories a day, averaging 1700-1800 calories. My Protein grams average around 90-100 grams/day. I'm not a gym rat, but I'm very active in daily life. Feel great, doing great, looking great. My restriction is still very good. I eat 2-4 ounces of protein at each meal and have one or two Snacks a day (which include at least a little protein). I almost always eat protein first at each meal. It's just a habit now. I eat 4-5 veggies and fruits a day. I eat bread, Pasta, sweets, and wine. But please note that I eat these things in moderation. EDIT: I also always eat at least 21 grams of unsoluble Fiber daily, which just shows how hard I work to eat not only protein, but veggies, fruits, and whole grains each day. I'm not allergic to any foods. I have NEVER thrown up since my VSG surgery. I love food. It tastes great. I plan my menus daily. I still track my food in My Fitness Pal. I never get sick. My blood panels are perfecto. I dunno if and how much all this will change in the years to come. There are lots of discussions on here about weight regain over time. In most instances (but not all instances), it seems that as the years go along people tend to eat less protein and more processed carbs, graze more throughout the day, don't take their Vitamins and supplements as religiously as they once did, exercise less than they once did (often due to training injuries), and revert to medicating themselves with food to alleviate life's stresses. My shrink says he sees successful bariatric patients continue to create new goals that engage their healthy lifestyles. He says some patients suffer because they get bored after achieving their weight loss, after the compliments end, after the initial support they relied on from family members and others fades away, and their new life becomes no longer new. Words to consider. I'm doing great now. I think I'll continue to do well. I will also underscore what @@CowgirlJane and others have said ... my skinny friends fret about their weight all the time. I reckon I'll just become one of those folks.

I'm nervous about using Groupon ads for cosmetic injectibles (Botox, Restylane, Juviderm, etc.) administered by random people without medical degrees of any kind who work in strip mall shops. I'm OK with trying out a new hairdresser I've never used before. But NOT for cosmetic injectibles!

I'm not about to make this a blanket comment, but clearly some people who have regained their weight have seriously earned the regain. That's some story, @@dove1 .

One therapy session isn't how therapy works. Therapy's sort of like "eating well," in that one healthy meal doesn't make you healthy. It's a process. I've been seeing a therapist for the last 21 months (mostly once a month) -- started two months pre-op. I've found a great one -- he works with bariatric patients (although not exclusively), so he knows the WLS and obesity territory. I don't know that a therapist without that kind of experience would be all that helpful to someone in our situations. Oh ... and my surgeon told me pre-op when I asked him what does he think distinguishes best between those patients who lose all their weight and keep it off from those who don't, "Bottom line, those who don't lose touch with us, who always keep all their appointments, are the ones who do the best." Very best to you! Your future is in YOUR hands.

Congrats, @@CowgirlJane . I hope this is the end of that!

Brag on! Nothing wrong with bragging if you earned it. And you certainly have!

@@Babbs already said it, but ... This is an awesome thread with some AWESOME posts. Thank you everybody who is doubling down on the importance of staying focused and patient. My big epiphany on the WLS path has been that I must focus FIRST on my own self-care -- rather than everyone else's. I've spent a lifetime taking better care of EVERYBODY than myself. Believe me, I'm really good at taking care of everybody. But I never got good at taking care of ME. Not saying that's the OP's problem. Am just testifying.

Are you using a prescription sleep medicine -- and possibly sleep-eating? I wouldn't ask this (and would assume you're just eating more than you used to / more than your body maintains at). But if you're truly logging all your food, then I wondered about the sleep-eating possibility. And if you're not logging all your food, I'd suggest you measure and log every morsel to confirm for yourself what and how much you're eating. Also -- I've found that all calories aren't "the same." Sugar calories affect my weight a lot more than Protein calories do, for instance.

I think I see your problem: YOU'RE GRAZING … I am snacking between meals YOU'RE EATING TOO LITTLE Protein … I don't eat meat..and after surgery I had a lot of Protein shakes to keep my protein up, but thats also stopped too. I do eat fish and chicken but not that often. YOU'RE NOT EXERCISING … I had started exercising … but fell off the wagon, so currently do not do any form of exercise …. YOU'RE NOT TAKING YOUR Vitamins … I've also stopped taking Vitamins …. YOU'RE EATING SLIDER FOODS AND SELF-MEDICATING WITH food … I've been under a lot of stress lately and have reverted back to my comfort eating Every single person who does what you're doing now will not lose weight. And most people who do all that will gain weight. You didn’t eat like this when you were post-op in months 1-6. And that’s when you lost weight. Instead of doing something unusual, why can’t you just go back to WLS basics? Eat at least 80 grams protein daily. Eat protein first at every meal. Eat 3 meals a day. Drink 60-70 ounces of Water daily. Do not drink before (15 minutes), during or after meals (30 minutes). Chew your food fully and wait between bites – to eat more slowly. Take your vitamins daily. Move more than you’re moving now, e.g., buy a Fitbit and get in 10,000 steps a day. Do all those other things you knew you were supposed to do right after WLS. I have lost 100 pounds and kept it off for a year now. I didn’t do anything wild or weird or crazy. I just did the basics. And I’ve kept on doing them. Oh, and since my WLS 19 months ago I’ve had four deaths in the family and my husband now has cancer. S**t happens to us all. We can’t avoid it. IMHO, we should just plan on it happening and accept it. What we can do is do what we can – which is make every day the best day we can. P.S. I have used (and still use) My Fitness Pal. It's a great tool. You don't need a special WLS app -- just go back to basics and log all your food and drink.

There's a wide range of attitudes about WLS and commitment levels that people who are pre-op demonstrate in getting their pre-act together pre-op. But I have no idea whether those who "eat and act better" pre-op do better long-term than those who don't. My surgery took for freakin' ever to get scheduled. I was so frustrated that a month before they let me know my surgery date I just went ahead and put myself on a 1400 calorie/day diet. Simply could not stand waiting anymore. I started using My Fitness Pal, stopped drinking sodas, cut down on coffee, started walking more, drinking more Water, eating slower, not drinking with meals, using small plates, etc. The benefits I received were that I (1) lost 11 pounds in 2 months, which I didn't have to lose after surgery, (2) got a head-start building up new behaviors I needed post-op anyway, (3) didn't have to go through severe caffeine and soda withdrawals while I was on my surgeon's two-week pre-op diet, (4) regained a strong sense of self-control, which had been badly missing for a long time and (5) built up my self-confidence that I could handle what was coming pre-op and could build a new lifestyle that was quite different from how I'd been living for years. I believe that making those changes pre-op helped me lose all my excess weight and maintain my weight loss for the last year. But as always, others' mileage may vary.

I feel your pain about the unwarranted assumptions some people (including MDs) make about obese people and/or people in general. You had FAR more self control than I would have in that situation. Sounds like you're doing GREAT on all fronts.

Pregnant women don't drink. Smart women who are trying to get pregnant don't drink. Recovering alcoholics don't drink. Some people are just teetotalers due to their beliefs. People who are on some antibiotics, anti-anxiotics, anti-depressants and other medications don't drink. If you don't drink, you're likely not going to be the only person in the restaurant who's not drinking.

@@CowgirlJane ... I know a couple of folks over on "the other GS forum" who say they still have very strong capacity four years out. I'll have to go look their names up when I have more time than right now.