Healthy_life2

@@goodnuff Use that anger as motivation. You will show that ass H#@l that you are strong and determined Next time you see him, if he has another smart ass comment...Tell him " I will give your professional opinion to my surgeon" Quoted from the wise words of @@LipstickLady

@@ojibway Hang in there. It will be here before you know it.

@@stacyrg1 My inner fat girl had to give myself a comment scale. (1) Appropriate complimentary..I will take and acknowledge. (2) Hilarious. Makes for great stories to tell later. (3) Creepy..Need we say more.... Safety: Pepper spray with dye..Not only does it burn, the dye will stay on the perpetrator for identification...Love it! http://www.amazon.com/SABRE-Red-Pepper-Spray-Strength/dp/B003BORC8A Mix up your route that you jog. I also have a GPS tracker app. My hubby has the password. He can track where I am. Another perk..It automatically logs your exercise in to myfitnesspal. http://www.mapmyrun.com/ Some advice.This is not to scare anyone its just a reality check: Trust yourself when you feel unsafe. Understand that sex offenders are in our population. you can look them up in your area to get an idea of how prevalent they are in society. Also many have not yet been identified or caught by law enforcement... https://www.nsopw.gov/en/Search/Verification

@@CowgirlJane We are all adults here. You can say what you want to say. No need to apologize for stating an opinion.

@@pamelardz91 I was sleeved. June 2014 - Began maintenance phase December 2014 Maintaining is finding your new balance for what scale number your comfortable with. My food choices can make the scale move up. I know it just means some extra time at the gym. For me, I eat healthy and I can indulge once in a while. My relationship with food has changed. I look at food to fuel and nourish my body. I don't feel good if I consume junk food all day. You will only get out of surgery what you are willing to put into it. It's your choice if you follow your plan that was given to you while in weight loss phase. We are adults here right? Just be prepared to accept your outcome. Wishing you the best, Jenn

Just wanted you to know, You are all attractive amazing people before weight loss. Love to see that you are healthy and happy after goal.. Congratulations on your success.

I am blown away by all the responses. I hope all of you give yourselves a pat on the back. You have achieved all of this on your own. My win for the day: Owning who I am now. Feeling pretty damn good about myself.

The thrill is gone and its a fabulous place to be. Life goes on after the honeymoon. The NSV's , The shock from people around you and being driven by weight loss. Looking back I have to laugh. The high from the honeymoon was incredible..I even thought I had the answers to everything bariatric. The transformation is complete. Finding other adventures and things to overcome and conquer. I'm soooo over it!

@@JamieLogical You are not being unrealistic. Intervals are a great way to train.You may even be surprised ho much stronger you will be by April 24th. Just a suggestion.lol Not an expert by far......This just helped me. Building on endurance: Run while listening to music.Run a song walk a song. It will be about 3/3 minuet intervals. Learning if you can sustain your pace: How you breathe is important. Mouth the words as you run. If you get out of breath slow down your intervals until you feel comfortable to sustain an hour. Getting lost in your music will help distract you from concentrating on time.Work your way up to your goal of 4/1 intervals. So excited for you! Keep us updated. I would love to see photo's of your race.

@@usedtobeaskater I can relate Why is it that being overweight so unacceptable for people? Other people (not all) feel the need to place overweight people on the lowest rung of the hierarchy. I’m trying to reconcile this crap with my old self. I'm working on letting go of the bullied kid inside, The disregarded/disrespected obese body I once had, My negative self image and the judgment of my body mirrored to me by the world around me. (yes..I'm in therapy) Old thoughts like this cross my mind once in a while. Still working out this stuff at a year and a half out. .

@@SmilingBeauty Yay you...Celebrate big and treat yourself to a reward.

@@Mrs.Grace It sucks..I'm sure your goal was healthy. Now that your BMI is so low, are you getting help from your surgeons office? Wishing you the best, Jenn

@@Kindle over 5 years and 100 pounds lighter. Going to see your friends is a big event. Having them see how good you look and feel by putting your best self out there. Get crazy and vain with new clothing. Show off that amazing bod. You earned this moment. Revel in your vanity.

@@B-52 My son (who sees me weekly) told me he does not remember me being big anymore. I don't feel the need to remind people where I was in the past. Just living for today and looking forward to where things will take me in life.

@@glitter eyes love it. Life is short live it up.

@@Babbs Nothing wrong with that at all. Bring on spring and summer!

@@Djmohr Life experiences can be simple things. Discover new things in your area. Wow. I'm kind of jealous. I posted a link to local events. http://www.travelwisconsin.com/events

@@jess9395 My big want right now is to travel. I'm feeling restless. I cant wait to get better weather. I still compete in distance runs. still training. I live for the moments when I can run past a 20 year old's. I want to continue until I'm too old and broke down to do it. This month was the first time in my life I have been snowshoeing. Beautiful views. I'm hiking this spring. I'm already looking up new areas to explore. I mountain biked the end of last summer. I have a friend who wants me to join him to do the Seattle to Portland bike ride. Its a challenge. I have to work up to that. I learned to Kayak at my gyms pool for my first birthday after surgery. Now I going to take one out to the river. Can't wait. Have not zip lined yet...On my bucket list.

After being an apple shape for a long time. I was surprised to find out I am a inverted triangle body type.

@@CaptainJohn I'm a year and a half out. No complications after surgery. I still have no complications. I bounced back quickly. There is pain with every surgery...I had good perspective going into this.... I watched my mother struggle with serious pain dying from stage four cancer. The least I could do is to buck up and get my life back. I made the choice to have surgery. I have absolutely no regret. Here is my video from my high weight to goal..Its dedicated to my mother: http://www.bariatricpal.com/videos/view-10-goal/

Again I'm no Dr. I do not diagnose. I'm careful to trust anything I read on the internet. Just shooting some information for you to look at. It may or may not fit. It might be worth mentioning to your dietitian https://www.acsm.org/docs/brochures/the-female-athlete-triad.pdf

@@cherri2082 My low blood sugars are not just in the morning. Have you consulted with your dietitian?

Wow, Here I go. I would like the issue of eating disorders after bariatric surgery to be addressed some how. I am very much supportive of bariatrics. This issue is not intended to scare people away from surgery. I appreciate @@bellabloom honesty. I found this info on the web. I'm trying to find statistics and more recent studies. @@Alex Brecher do you have any info on this? By COURTNEY HUTCHISON ABC NEWS MEDICAL UNITJune 13, 2011 Weight-loss surgery was supposed to be Chevese Turner's salvation -- a last resort in her battle against obesity and binge eating. Instead, her 2007 lap band procedure catapulted her into full-blown bulimia. "I had always struggled with binge eating, and my relationships with food didn't change just because of the lap band. Even though binging is really painful when your stomach is restricted like that, I would still binge knowing that I would throw it up. I felt like finally I could be bulimic, like this was what I wanted all along," says Turner, 43, of Soverna Park, Md. Turner knew she had a binge eating disorder going into surgery, but after experiencing cardiac complications attributed to a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, she was desperate to lose weight. Instead of solving her overeating problem, however, the surgery only changed its form: for 18 months following the surgery Turner regularly binged and purged. Only after going into intensive therapy to cope with the binging behavior she had experienced since age 5 did Turner, who now runs the Binge Eating Disorder Association, build a healthy relationship with food and her body. When multiple traditional diet methods fail, weight-loss procedures such as the band are seen as a last hope for getting obese patients to eat more healthfully and lose weight. For an underrecognized minority of patients, however, the surgery only triggers a different kind of disordered eating. For Turner, it was bulimia, for others, it's anorexia. For one fellow patient in Turner's community, the anorexia was so severe that it ultimately took his life. Sixty percent of individuals seeking treatment for obesity have some kind of eating disorder, usually binge eating, according to a 2007 Harvard study. It is these individuals, who already have an unhealthy relationship with food and their bodies, who are at most risk of developing further eating disorders post-surgery, says Lisa Lilenfeld, a psychologist and president of the Eating Disorders Coalition at Argosy University in Washington, D.C. Lap band or gastric bypass surgery is not likely to create an eating disorder where there wasn't one, she explains, but "the most likely thing is that people had untreated or unsuccessfully treated binge eating disorders before surgery will continue to have problems after surgery. The problem is, it becomes physically challenging and potentially dangerous to binge like this because of the structural changes in the stomach," she says. On the other end of the spectrum, patients who used to overeat now overshoot with their weight loss, severely limiting their caloric intake to the point of malnutrition and anorexia. "I've had a number of patients go from very obese to very underweight, so much so that they need to be rehabilitated with intravenous nutrition," says Dr. Donald Kirby, a gastroenterologist at the Cleveland Clinic who treats patients undergoing bariatric weight-loss surgery. Because there are so no statistics on how many of these patients experience eating disorders post-op, it's difficult to gauge the scope of this issue and there is much debate over its prevalence between the surgeons who perform the procedures and the therapists who treat eating disorders down the line. Dr. Mitch Roslin, a bariatric surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, has performed thousands of bariatric surgeries and he says he only sees one or two cases a year of eating disorders, but psychologist Lilenfeld believes it's much more common than that. Binge Eating: Hiding an Eating Disorder Technically, those with diagnosable eating disorders are not advised to undergo weight-loss procedures, but because each hospital and insurance company has different psychological screening requirements, many patients with mental health problems slip through the cracks. In some cases, psychological screenings consist of asking only a couple of basic questions that don't even address eating disorders or mental health concerns, says Dr. Leslie Seppinni, a therapist who specializes in treating obesity. "Then after the surgery, most doctors fail their patients in terms of follow-up. There are some group sessions with other patients, but that's about it." In Turner's case, however, her health insurance had relatively rigorous requirements for surgery approval, including an eating disorder screening and a letter from her therapist. But for those who are desperate to get the surgery at all costs, she says it's relatively easy to get around these requirements by answering the questions "right," as she did. Because of insufficient screening or deception, Lilenfeld says about a third of all patients who undergo weight-loss procedures are believed to have "severe binge eating disorder" going into surgery, though not all of these patients will go on to develop other eating disorders post-op. Anorexia/Bulimia After Surgery: Medical or Emotional? One of the reasons that true anorexia and bulimia may not be recognized after bariatric surgery is that the symptoms of these eating disorders can mimic some of the expected adverse affects of the surgery. In the months following surgery, the stomach has to heal and slowly expand, which makes eating difficult and sometimes painful. Patients who eat too much will sometimes throw up because it's the only way to relieve the pain in their stomach, not because they are compulsively trying to get rid of calories. Similarly, the indigestion, diarrhea and acid reflux that can occur post-op leads some patients to avoid eating altogether just because eating becomes an unpleasant experience. These patients will become malnourished and resemble anorexics, but the psychological aspect of the disorder is not there. It is important to distinguish between these medical reasons for anorexic/bulimic behavior and true, psychological cases of eating disorders, says Seppinni, who has traveled the country interviewing people about their experience with obesity, weight loss and bariatric surgery. In true cases of eating disorders, it's about the addiction to overeating getting transmuted into another addiction. For some, they become compulsive exercisers, for others, alcoholics, for still others, anorexics. "You take away the coping strategy they've been using all their lives, and the addiction has to go somewhere else," she says. The "loss" of binging as a coping strategy was palpable for Turner following her surgery. "I lay in bed and cried for a week because I couldn't eat. Eating was the way I soothed myself my whole life. As soon as I could binge again, even though it was extremely painful, I did," she says.

Its funny no one asked me..... How much have you gained? Or for my scale number at my high weight. After goal I took a flight to see a good friend. On my visit they introduced me to a group of their friends. This is our friend Jenn who lost a lot of weight. Then put me on the spot to tell everyone how much. I told them a person.( WOW awkward moment) I confronted my friends when we were alone. I wanted them to understand I am much more than my weight loss. I will be glad when they can relax and treat me..as this is just me.