elfnow

WOW!!!! You're doing so amazing!!!

"Haha! I'm only so focused because I'm looking forward to the surgery!" Seriously that was my motivation when I was doing low-carb last year (lost a few lbs) before my surgery... it was because I just wanted to make sure I could do it... LOL. I did low-carb for like a month, from thanksgiving til Christmas... Then I basically felt like "well it's not like they've scheduled my surgery...." So I went on a Key Lime Pie binge vacation! I was down in the Keys and decided to just have everyone's version of Key Lime Pie. LOL. Idk how much I lost while low-carb vs how much I gained back... (Overall I was down from 392 to 375 at my pre-surgery appt) But the week after NewYears, my doc office finally called to schedule me... And then I started my "food funerals". Which of course included more key lime pie...as well as mcdonalds, pizza, etc.... (On the plus side, most Greek yogurt comes in Key Lime flavor, so yay for that!! LOL.) But seriously... The motivation of there being an END to the counting and dieting and such... That's what got me through the pre-surgery diet, etc. And sure it was awesome to lose 20 lbs in two weeks on the pre-surgery diet... But that diet sucked!!! No way I could have sustained it any longer. I was so relieved to finally just have surgery, so part of my brain could rest.

*all the swearing*

Just be honest, don't try to answer what you "think the right answer is".

I have toyed with surgery ideas for almost 15 years... Always said I wanted to wait til after I had a baby, always felt a little squeamish about the RnY procedure.... And never in the right emotionally supportive place. A year ago, I was holding my six-month-old daughter, thinking about how hard it is for girls in school, being called names, teased for any extra pounds, and what kind of message she'd get from a 400-pound mother saying "awww honey you're healthy!" I thought about how I'd been seeing my psychiatrist for a year and am comfortable and happy with the care I am receiving... And I thought again about all the obese mothers who have "chubby" little girls... And I thought... "I'm ready." And I looked it up, saw that Sleeve Gastrectomy was now available, liked that idea, and called a surgeon. I saw my surgeon 6/10, weighing in at 392 lbs. I was miserable, I couldn't tie my shoes, I couldn't breathe well... My surgery was delayed a bit because on 6/11 I was in a car accident and broke my leg ... I needed to get better and be walking again!! We were self-pay, and my surgery was 2/10/14. I'm down 75+ pounds and I feel sexy and happy!! Aiming for 170. . Best of all, I'm getting in shape, getting more fit, and when my little girl grows up and has trouble at school, it'll be a healthy mother who tells her she's a healthy little girl.

I suspect that the heightened sense of smell is the body's way of dealing with trauma to the stomach. You have to eat clean, high-quality food (nothing even a little rotten!) and so your sense of smell ramps up to hound-nose quality so you can smell anything even remotely bad from a light year away! That's my theory anyway.

It's a medically-supervised "crash" diet... It is NOT a sustainable weight-loss option. having said that, I lost 40 lbs in my first 30 days (pre-surgery diet and 2+ weeks post-surgery). Then I halted for a week as I reintroduced food

I think this is extra funny because we see dietitians, not nutritionists... Dietitians have specific certifications...

TOM took me a second; I usually say AF

There's no deleting that I've found... But you're fine.

Pretty_in_purple, just say it out loud here in a comment - Bea is the only person who can actually edit the sheet I think!

It's one of the rules that's COMPLETELY counter to non-WLS weight loss.... Without WLS people say "drink a big glass of Water before your meal so you're more full" and post WLS it's like "never drink ever! When we're out at a restaurant, I drink 'til the salad comes - it's not a full 30 mins pre-food but it's at least 10.... My nurse was like "close enough, just don't drink AFTER"

It's so you don't flush the food out of your stomach too fast... And believe me it is a hard rule to follow!! Sooooo hard! It's so easy to be like "hey I'm done so I'll just sip my Water while you all finish".... NOOOOoooo that doesn't work! Ugh. Personally I feel downright rotten if I drink anything right after eating... And 10 weeks out I am STILL messing that up!! Some folks are even told to not use sauces / condiments (ketchup, mayo, BBQ sauce, etc) to keep food from sliding on through.

Happens to all of us!! You'll do just fine!!

I guess it's kind of endemic to a religious-morals-based society (not knocking any religions, just saying....) the US was founded on John Henryism (just work really really hard, and if you don't have what you need you aren't working hard enough)... And I think the "personal struggle" is often glorified over the actual results.

IMHO you SHOULD weigh in, not to see how you did, but to re-calculate anesthesia meds!! Since that stuff is calculated by milligrams per kilogram... If you've lost a couple kg, they need to check the anesthesia doses. 5 lbs is about 2.25 kg - 20 lbs is 9kg... To my mind they NEED to weigh you... I was prepared to argue about being weighed in before my surgery for exactly this reason, but they weighed me in as part of intake that day.

Start me at 299.5

(Hit send by accident) ..... It's not like we're fooling anyone or luring someone away from a more righteous path by being thin but "secretly one of those fat people inside". We aren't defined by being obese persons trying to blend in.... We are each defined by our own beautiful selves.... And this is all part of the journey.

I thought about this some since the original post. I think the problem is the idea of penance for immorality. Like if you screw up, you should do x times the amount of penance to show you're REALLY sorry... Obesity is pervasively seen as some kind of moral failing (and believe me, I KNOW IT'S NOT!!) but so many of us felt like we needed to find "real" reasons for our obesity, beyond "ate too much and didn't exercise", because there is SO MUCH JUDGMENT about obesity!! So we look for reasons: genetics that cause us to store extra fat, physical ailments that prevented us from being active, family who taught us to eat the wrong things, medications that made us eat too much ("body by prednisone!") etc. Anything to not be "that fat lazy **** on the couch", to not be some nameless faceless statistic, but instead to be a real person who has a real need for help. Now comes the penance! We still feel like obesity is some sort of moral failing, so we feel like we need to work extra hard to show how "sorry" we are! Extreme diets! Hellish workouts! Pain and suffering!! And if we're successful, we can say we've finally "won", we've appeased the almighty cosmic scoreboard!! Somehow we're now "even" with someone who had a healthy relationship with food and exercise from day 1. Maybe we're even a little better than that person, since we now have experience and compassion, and that person has looked down at our "failing" all along. Or they would if they knew us. Or they'd have compassion if they REALLY knew us because it IS NOT a failing of our personal morality, but a product of so many experiences that leaves us in this predicament. What would surgery do? It might erase the shame and humiliation that we think we HAVE to feel... Without all the self-flagellation and punishment! It's like cutting in line!! "Good" people might not recognize that we're secretly awfully immoral inside....they might love us as people like we've been worthy of it all along... THIS WHOLE LINE OF THINKING IS COMPLETE BULLPUCKEY. WE ARE REAL PEOPLE. We are not nameless statistics for some news outlet to bombard the rest of society!! We are not immoral, and we DO NOT NEED REASONS. We are beautiful humans, with all the amazing perfections and flaws that ALL HUMANS HAVE. We are astounding creations - whether you believe we're creations of God or we've evolved to this point, the fact remains that it's FREAKING AMAZING. And we don't need to feel guilty, or bad, or like failures, or like we need to do penance for sins that we didn't commit alone. We will anyway, that's part of humanity... But there is no "erasing", and it's not like

She said the weigh-ins are Mondays, so I'm assuming "observed"

Me too!! <3 my goal is to be in the 280's, STRETCH GOAL is to hit 270's.

CONGRATS!!! Especially congrats on your 5K! I did one recently and came in at 1:18 (and last)... I plan to do another one next weekend....

I have eaten too many carbs lately... I need to re-focus...

>_< up to 299.5 .... Aahhhhh!! The carbs got really easy all of a sudden!! Nooooooo.

I have those dreams all the time!! It's when I'm really focusing on not eating certain foods... The other night I dreamed that I just COULDN'T STOP drinking a big cup of soda! And I paused and was like "wait this is bad for me! Oh well" *chug chug chug*. HAHAH!