*Lexie*

How scary, I would have trouble sleeping at all.

I was really having a down day today but your post made me feel better. What great progress! And you are right, I have lost around 35lbs and no one has really noticed.

@cryssyd3 Good luck with surgery tomorrow!

I have had the pain too many times because sometimes I don't eat slow enough. Luckily I've never thrown up but a few times I sort of wished I could. I notice that I burp when I get full. Not a girly belch, but repeated burping. My sweet spot is right before I get the burps. Measuring usually cures this but sometimes my sleeve can't hold the measured amount so I really have to pay attention.

I agree with everyone who says to measure your food. I would like to add to eat slow, pausing between bites. Sometimes I can eat the measured amount and other times I can't. Tonight for dinner I had a pizza made with chicken breast for the crust. Usually I can eat a piece about the size of 2" x 3" but tonight I ate about half and got overfilled and almost threw up (because I wasn't eating slow enough to notice it was filling me up faster than normal). But I do have those half cup containers and I'm totally going to take @@joatsaint advice and eat no more than that at each meal. Great idea!

I was glad to see this post and to read through it all, I found it interesting from all points of view. I would love to be a perfect bariatric patient but find myself somewhere in the middle. I work out pretty strenuously and track everything I eat but I don't make perfect choices all the time. My calories are always below 1000 but there's a day or two where I may not get my Protein. Combine that with being a slow loser and I often feel like a failure and beat myself up a lot. Maybe our mental state effects how we interpret other people's posts.

Mine was peanut butter mixed with maple syrup. To this day I can't keep maple syrup in the house out of fear that I'll give into the temptation. Each ingredient by itself doesn't do anything for me but together it's a bit of paradise.

That's a great reward, they work pretty good? I was worried about interference, especially in a gym. I have a few things in mind when I get near or at goal. One is Botox and the other is a cute pair of Uggs that I have my eye on. They are tall and I've never been able to wear tall boots because my big calves.

@@MeAndTinyTina I meant to say Canine Good Citizen test. Here's a link with the requirements. https://www.akc.org/events/cgc/training_testing.cfm It's much easier than agility, basic obedience and such. Your dogs are cute. :-) And you are right, dogs are good for a healthier lifestyle. My dogs are always willing to clean my plate (though I don't let them all the time) and they love to go for walks, rain or shine.

It's safe to say that not many people lose weight on the week of Thanksgiving. But I'm going to lose weight this week!! Who's with me?

So interesting to read about all the various things that people can't tolerate. For me it's bread and anything fried. I am pleased with this because it makes resisting these things simple as I dislike pain. So much easier than willpower.

I have dealt with anxiety in the past and deal with it currently with my son. When I was pregnant, it intensified and I'm almost embarrassed to admit the things I worried about. I worried about getting in a car accident and having a miscarriage. I worried about falling and having a miscarriage. I worried about someone trying to steal my baby by cutting it out of me (saw that on a show once). My point is, the brain fixates on these things when you have anxiety. Worrying that you might get in a car accident and die every time you drive, etc. And guess how a lot of us deal with anxiety? Oh yeah, with food. I read a book before surgery that helped, it's called Mastering your Anxiety Workbook. My psych recommended it because she could tell I still had some small anxiety issues. I am not at all implying that you have anxiety. It's just that I have worried like that before and it's an awful feeling. I have also had issues with flying and Xanax helps a lot. Just saying...

My insurance covered the sleeve. A few phone calls and you should be able to find out if your insurance covers it. I'm 2 months post op so I'm not an expert but I will help however I can. I was/am afraid that I could eat around the sleeve. I definitely have my food demons and am slowly working my way through them. It's harder to eat around the sleeve early on but I know it's possible later on. If I eat bread or any fried food, I have a lot of pain. This is a great negative reinforcer. I sure won't touch bread for anything (and I LOVE it). I had a hard time understanding what it meant when people say it's a tool and now I'm starting to understand. I could drink milkshakes and eat chocolate all day long and not lose any weight. But if I follow my doctor's diet (which is so much easier when you don't get hungry), then I lose weight. When I lose weight, I feel better and then workout. Then I lose more weight and want to keep working out. I have lost weight slowly since surgery but I haven't gained any weight and I would never have gotten this far without surgery. It does take work but it doesn't feel like a diet that I can just go off of. If I fall off the wagon, I still get stuffed after a few bites of food. Best of luck as you make your decision. P.S. When I went for my first consultation, I wanted to check on the Lap Band and quickly found out that my doctor was taking them out frequently due to people having complications and wouldn't put anymore in.

@@MeAndTinyTina OMG, I want a shirt that says "My best friends have hairy legs"! I love my 2 shelter mutts. They just got their companion dog certification. I'm going to work on the 2nd level next. Not as intense as agility but it sure is fun. Good luck this weekend, I hope you win.

There are averages and calculators out there you can use. A conservative estimate is 60% of your excess weight. So you figure out what your weight would be when your BMI is in the normal range and then subtract that number from 430. That is your excess weight. Take that number and multiply it by .6 and that's the average weight loss. i.e. My starting weight was 257 and my ideal weight is 140 so my excess weight is 117lbs. If I lose 60% of my excess weight, that would be 70lbs which would put me at 187. Of course my goal is to get lower than 187 and I plan to do the work to make sure I get there. Definitely understand your fear and I felt that myself. I've been losing slowly but I know if I hadn't had surgery, I would be at or above 257 right now.

My doctor's office is opposite of yours, he is primarily doing sleeves now. But he educates patients and let's us make an informed decision. I have wondered if maybe I should have gone with bypass. I respond well to negative reinforcement like dumping syndrome. i get really sick when I eat bread and you best believe I wouldn't touch it for anything. But I can eat sweets and I worry that my bad habits will creep back into place. I have also been losing slowly and would like the fast weight loss of RNY. (and that speech about slow weight loss being so great only sounds good if you're not the one losing at a snail's pace) I will say that I learned a lot reading this thread. My doctor's office said that we can stretch the sleeve out but I read on here that bypass pouches stretch but not the sleeve. I sure hope that's true. Mine is still small and tight (like I hope my tush will be one day) LOL. So I wish I had at least considered and researched RNY. I may have ended up making the same decision. Either way, it's done now and I will make it work. You will lose weight no matter which surgery you choose. Best of luck!

I am definitely going to try these. They sound good.

That was about right for me too a few weeks ago. Even now I can usually only eat 2 oz. Every once in a while I can eat more. last night I had 3 oz of ground beef with a little lettuce and was satisfied. The day before I couldn't finish a 2oz crab cake. It's weird how it fluctuates.

You look like you've lost a hundred pounds. Fantastic progress! I would love to lose 60lbs in 4 months but my weight loss has been a little slower so it will probably take me a bit longer.

What I notice that feels different is if I eat a bite too much and I have that stuffed feeling, my pants aren't any tighter in the waist like they were before surgery.

​I have lost 36lbs total and 23lbs since surgery. -Surgery recovery is such a small part of the process. Before surgery, my focus was on the surgery and the few weeks after but now I realize that period of time is very brief. In retrospect, recovery was very easy and fast. -I lost weight a lot slower than I expected. That fed into my obsessive behavior. I really wanted to fall back into old thinking and try dieting versus following my doctor's instructions and trusting the process. As soon as I calmed down and started following doctor's orders, the weight slowly started coming off again. I am still frustrated by slow weight loss but on the bright side, I haven't gained more than a few ounces since surgery so it's nice not to worry about gaining. The other benefit of losing slowly is that I don't have to explain rapid weight loss to all those people that don't know I had surgery. -I already feel better. My knees don't hurt anymore. When I first started working out, I really didn't have the energy to do much more than go for a walk. Now I'm taking some classes like Zumba. Zumba is serious business, they are constantly jumping and running in my Zumba class and they are cheerful about it. I hope to be one of those crazy Zumba enthusiasts one day. -Bread is the devil. It causes pain in my chest and in my back for about 2 hours. It's amazing how a negative experience makes it incredibly easy to resist my once favorite food. I sort of wish some other bad foods had the same effect so they'd be easy to resist. -I am one of the lucky people that only needed to take tiny bites and chew a lot for about a week. I can gulp Water and chew like a normal person without any negative effect. I just need to make sure I've measured out my food and don't take one bite too many or else I'm going to be uncomfortable. -I totally get why everyone kept harping on surgery being a "tool". I wish I was one of those lucky people that had surgery and just lost weight no matter what I did or ate. I think that happens to a lucky few. For the rest of us, rules must be followed, food weighed and tracked, no drinking during meals, resist snacking/grazing and of course exercising like crazy. -It rarely bothers me that I can't eat very much. I thought this would really be the difficult part of surgery but it's amazing what you can get used to. I am really excited that I will be one of the few people that will lose weight this holiday season instead of gaining.

I'm not a year out but the only thing I would like to add is maybe take the piece of pie home or have it once people leave just in case it gives you dumping syndrome. If you haven't had anything sweet, who knows how your body will react. That would be my only fear. Don't want to get sick in the middle of a big family gathering.

Mine is around $60K. Of course that's what the hospital bills, not what will end up being paid. My out of pocket is $2400. Well worth it.

I think it's completely normal. I had a few of those last meals and cheated on my pre-op diet a few times. I don't look back and wish I had eaten more of certain foods. Except maybe bread because it causes me a lot of pain and I can't have it at all now.

I found out after surgery that they repaired a hiatal hernia during my vsg surgery. I did have a lot of issues with heartburn and a little reflux. Since surgery, all of my symptoms are completely gone. What a relief not to deal with that anymore.