JamieLogical

I remember one time I needed to get food at a hockey game. They had a wrap stand that sold a chicken fejita wrap and a ceasar chicken wrap. I ordered the fajita wrap with no wrap and no lettuce. The woman serving me was very confused, because even though I told her I was doing "low carb" she couldn't understand why I wouldn't at least want the lettuce. Some people are so nosy! But overall, I've managed to eat out dozens (maybe 100+) times post-op and the comments or awkward moments are very few and far between.

@@bellabloom Oh no! That's horrible! I am so sorry you had to deal with that.

I think the really important things to understand are how your life will permanently change post-sleeve. What things will be required of you to have your best chance of success? You really need to get a strong sense of what foods you will be able to eat, what Vitamins you will have to take, what guidelines you will have to stick to, how much exercise you will have to do, etc. The sleeve is just a tool. So it's very important to understand how to USE that tool to your best advantage.

I drank TONS of water pre-op. Usually a gallon a day or more. Post-op, it was initially a struggle to even get in the minimum 64 ounces, but it becomes much easier in the months post-op and I haven't had any trouble with drinking as much as I need since about 3-4 months post-op.

Yay! Congratulations! I know exactly how you feel about wishing you could give everyone this gift. I see people in my own life struggling with their weight and it is heartbreaking that the social stigma against WLS had deterred them from the only option that will likely work for them. All we can do is be a shining, living example of how successful and life-changing WLS can be!

Yikes! That is a long time to be in the hospital! Glad you are getting to go home and I hope everything is okay.

I found that marching in place while sipping helped me get more water and and helped alleviate the gas pain at the same time. Give that a try. And hang in there. Do as much as you can for protein and water and movement each day, but also don't push yourself too far too fast. Nap a lot!

This is completely normal. 99% of sleeve patients go through this exact same thing. Don't stress about it. Stick to your program, get your protein in, get your water in, take your vitamins, and move around as much as possible and you WILL lose weight. I promise!

I have done C25k several times throughout my life. It is crazy how it actually WORKS. You go from only being able to run a minute at a time to being able to run 30+ minutes straight! Some tips from someone who's been through it a few times: Do not hesitate to repeat workouts or entire weeks if you aren't ready to move on. 9 weeks is the MINIMUM. But, don't get stuck in one spot for too long for fear of pushing yourself either. The jump up from Week 3 to Week 4 is pretty brutal. You go from running a total of 9 minutes in Week 3 to 16 minutes in Week 4. You might have to modify the first Week 4 workout a little. I always stretch weeks 5 and 6 out to multiple weeks, because there is a different workout each day and the final workout both of those weeks is a long run with no walking. Here's the way I do it: - Repeat Week 5 Day 1 three times - Repeat Week 5 Day 2 three times - Do Week 5 Day 3 (20 minute run) once - Repeat Week 6 Day 1 three times - Repeat Week 6 Day 2 three times - Do Week 6 Day 3 (22 minute run) once From the end of Week 6 on, it's just adding more time to your one long run, so you can really just ramp that up at your own pace instead of sticking to the schedule. Hope all of that helps! Good luck! It really is a great program and works amazingly well. You won't believe how quickly you progress.

I literally used to drink FOUR glasses of Water through the course of a meal at a restaurant. I am not joking. But I adapted to the not eating and drinking at the same time thing pretty well. Took me maybe a month or two after I was on solid foods? I usually just wouldn't allow myself to have anything to drink within reach while I was eating. Now I can have a glass of water sitting right there and I just won't touch it. My plan allows me to drink right up to the time I start eating (don't have to stop beforehand like some plans call for). And then wait at least 20 minutes after eating. But I usually wait more like 40, just because I'm full from my food and don't feel like I have room for any water for at least that long.

Why in the world do you do that? I'mnot trying to be mean or anything. I am genuinely curious. This was one of the easier changes for me to stick to one I got used to it after the first month or two back on solid foods.

Hmm. I think most protein bars are made in facilities that handle nuts, even if that specific flavor doesn't include them. The bar I have in my hand right now has a warning about that on the wrapper. There are a lot of recipes online for making your own protein bars. You could look into that option. One of my coworkers who had DS makes big batches of homemade protein bars for herself.

I have no doubt their depression and anxiety was real, but mine was nowhere NEAR as bad. There was never a time I was afraid to let my husband touch me or anything. I did refuse to wear shorts or a swimsuit in public. And if I were single, I'm not sure how comfortable I would have been trying to date and getting intimate with new partners.

I don't think you could have her overnight with you, as all guests get sent home eventaully, but OCC does let you have guests in your room. You should call or email and ask.

I'm 17 months post-op. Been maintaining for over 4 months. I am still putting protein first at every single meal. I rely a little more heavily on protein bars than I probably should, but you can't beat the convenience! For lunch I usually have cheese and peanuts. For dinner I have the meat from whatever my husband makes. If I have carbs, it's usually separate from my meals and protein bars to where I already know I'm meeting my protein goal for the day (100 grams). I have chips, ice cream, cookies, candy.... but never very much at once, not every day, and only when I know I'll meet my protein goal. I can do more of that now that I'm maintaining. I only had treats like that VERY rarely while I was losing.

That's because their "after" video was still so soon after surgery. It takes literally MONTHS for the swelling to go down and YEARS for the scars to fade. I'm over 4 years post plastics and you can see pics of my scars here: http://www.bariatricpal.com/topic/349852-tt-scar-pics/

I hadn't run in almost 5 months. My last 5k race was August 15, the same day that my husband and I first looked at a new house. We weren't actually in the market for a new house. We had purchased some land a couple years ago and ultimately planned to build on it in another couple of years. But somehow I stumbled upon a listing for a house that seemed to have almost everything we wanted in our "dream house" with the added bonus of already existing in this world. So we went to check it out in person. From that day forward, my life was a chaotic whirlwind. We decided we wanted the house. A couple of problems there. First of all, our current house was in no shape to list for sale. We hadn't intended to sell it for a few more years, so there were lots of little updates and repairs needed to get it ready to list and show. On top of that, my sister and her four children were currently living with us! Two of those children were todlers (2 & 3 years old) and it was summer break, so even the older ones (7 & 9 years old) were home all day. My husband and I worked like CRAZY to try to get the house in some semblance of order. We had professionals make repairs to the porch, seal the driveway, and carpet the living room. But we did tons of other projects ourselves... scraping and painting the wood on the exterior of the house, weeding, landscaping, power washing and sealing the deck, power washing and sealing the patio, electrical work, and SO MUCH cleaning and packing! One weekend we put TWENTY SEVEN 30-gallon trash bags out for the trash, plus tons of other big, loose items! We packed up everything we could live without for a couple of months and moved it into a storage unit. We also paid for an helped move all of my sister's stuff into storage (she had been storing it in our garage). We put in our offer for the new house before our house was even officially listed, but they still accepted it with a contingency for the sale of our house by Oct. 2. Luckily our house sold in exactly one week! Technically kind of less than that. We listed our house on a Monday. The people who ultimately bought our house submitted their first offer on a Wednesday. But we went through a couple of counter-offers with them, so their final offer wasn't accepted until the following Monday (Labor Day). We helped my sister and her kids move into THEIR new house on Sept. 19. Then it was tons of packing and preparing and fixing the things that had come up in the inspection up until we were set to close on Oct. 30. We didn't actually close on Oct. 30th though. It got delayed until Nov. 6. That first week of November we had already been scheduled to go on vacation to Virginia, so we were only down there a couple of days when we got the call that closing was set, so we had to rush back up here and hire movers, call all the utility companies, and scrable to do our final packing push. Once we were in the new house, it was non-stop projects to get the house exactly as we wanted it before we unpacked and settled in. Remember how I said this house was already close to being our dream house? Well that didn't mean there weren't a million projects. I worked us until 2:00 am most nights trying to get everything done as quickly as possible. We painted every room, replaced every light fixture, replaced every single piece of door hardware (so many doors!), replaced nearly all the faucets and drains, replaced all the towel rings, towel bars, and toilet paper holders in ALL FOUR bathrooms, put up a chair rail in the office, put up beadboard wainscoting in one of the bathrooms, hung up pegboard rails in the garage, replaced the garbage disposal and all the kitchen appliances, put together all the new furniture we bought.... the list goes on and on! Plus we had to decorate for Christmas! Anyway, by the time we were done with all of that madness, it was the Holidays. My parents came for Thanksgiving then again for Christmas. We had a housewarming party just after Christmas. And now things are FINALLY settled down. We finally got a workout area set up in our finished basement. And I ran for the first time in FIVE months on Tuesday. It went much better than I thought it would. I had visions of having to start back over in like Week 2 of Couch to 5k (maybe even Week 1!). But, I did a little self-assessment run on Tuesday after work. I managed to run for 10 minutes straight without stopping to walk. I then went on to walk for 3 minutes, run for 7, walk for 5, run for 5, walk for 4. So a total of 26 minutes of running. MUCH better than I had hoped. So tonight I'm actually going to pick up in Week 6 of C25k and I am really hoping it won't take long for me to be running a full 5k again without stopping. I want to be doing races again come spring.

One of the hardest things for me to get my head around once I was sleeved was that I wasn't on a "diet". There was no finish line. I would never be "done" with my sleeve the way I'd been done with diets in the past. Once I embraced that concept, I was much less frustrated with the scale, even though I was a "slow" loser by most standards.

There is no "should" when it comes to rate of loss and comparing yourself to others will only bring tears and misery. You are doing way better than I was! I "only" lost 14 pounds my first month. But you know what? I still got to goal and have been maintaining for going on 5 months. Those "only"s add up over time. And you have plenty of time. You have your whole life with the sleeve. There is no race to the finish line with WLS.

Yeah. I'm still a little stiff from Tuesday's run so maybe I'll only do Week 5 instead of Week 6. I'll definitely be repeating the Week 6 workouts a few times at least, because Week 7 just has you running for like 22 minutes straight or something like that and I KNOW I'm more than a week away from being able to pull that off!

"Mouthfuls" is pretty non-descriptive. Can you give it to us in ounces or grams?

Low sodium is a real thing. I had a precipitous drop in my blood pressure post-sleeve due to not getting enough sodium. It got to the point where my doctor's patient plan for me literally said "liberally increase intake of salt". It was hard for me to figure out ways of getting more sodium. I G2 or Powerade Zero might help you.

Like everyone else has said, once you are on solid foods, it's pretty easy to find SOMETHING you can eat just about anywhere. Ask for a to-go box at the beginning and put the extra in there before you even start eating. That helped me a lot when I was still having trouble with my eyes being bigger than my stomach and eating too much before the "full" feeling kicked in. I don't have to do that anymore at 16+ months out, but at like 4 months out, it was pretty helpful.

I was told nothing with a skin or husk for 3 months post-op. And no seeds for that long either.

P.S. I'm eating 1700 - 2000 calories/day now to maintain my current weight. That seems to be about what it takes for me to maintain if I'm not exercising. I've held steady at 160-165 for the past 5 months without a regular exercise routine (see my post about why here if you care). I've finally started exercising again this week and with tracking my exercise, I decided to track my food for a bit too. I am in the 1700-2000 calorie range, but I'm really worried that by getting back to exercising, I'm going to have to figure out some way of increasing my caloric intake in order not to LOSE anymore weight. Talk about a problem I thought I'd never have!