JamieLogical

Well, I'm 4 years post-plastics, so I've had lots of time to heal and for my scars to fade. Definitely well worth all the pain and suffering now, since it's all such a distant memory!

I am 4 years post-plastics and have VERY little numbness now. It definitely took well over a year for me to get sensation back in my abdomen and upper pubic region. Probably more like over two years really. But, now, at 4 years, very little numbness and no more phantom itching.

My nutritionist wanted me to aim for 100g a day right away, but I didn't realistically get there probably until I was on solid foods. It's pretty easy to get 100 grams if you do a couple bars or shakes a day and make sure you are doing protein first with every snack or meal. I would say, once I was on solids, my day looked something like this: Breakfast: Bar or shake (~20 grams) Morning Snack: String cheese (8 grams) Lunch: about 3 oz. of meat, usually leftover from a previous dinner (16-20 grams) Afternoon Snack: Greek Yogurt (12 grams) Dinner: about 3 oz. of meat (16-20 grams) Evening Snack: Bar or Shake (~20 grams) Now I can usually get closer to 4-5 ounces of meat in at once and I can get some carbs in, like I put kashi Cereal or granola into my yogurt. I also haven't been doing the string cheese in the morning lately and just get another Protein Bar in somewhere during the day.

At my weekly weigh-in on Monday, I officially beat my goal weight by one pound and Tuesday was my 1 year surgiversary. Great news, right? Well, the reason I was able to make/beat goal on Monday was that I had lost over 5 pounds in the past two weeks. My husband and I were scrambling to get our house ready to list for sale after we stumbled upon another house that we want to buy. We hadn't been planning to sell our house for another year or two at least, but then when we found this new house, it became this crazy whirlwind to get our house fixed/cleaned up and ready to list. It's been an insane amount of work. From the time this all started back around the 15th of August until now, we have literally spent every single waking moment at work or working on the house. From the time we get home from work until about 1:00 am every night. And every minute of every weekend. It's been a massive amount of physical labor. Monday morning we put TWENTY SEVEN 35-gallon garbage bags full out with the trash, plus some smaller kitchen bags and a bunch of loose items. We've moved over half of our non-furniture possessions into storage. We've done a massive amount of DIY projects to fix up the house. It's been crazy and exhausting. I will admit to forgetting to eat, especially on the weekends and days I've taken off work. I'll eat Breakfast before I get started at around 8:00 am and next thing I know, it's 3:30! So between all the physical work and the reduced food intake, I lost over 5 pounds in two weeks, where I'd been lucky to lose half a pound a week lately with just eating on plan and exercising 4-5 times a week. And now I'm unofficially down another pound since my Monday weigh-in. That means I'm now two pounds below goal, which is no big deal. I had planned to have a 3-5 pound cushion anyway. But I'm worried that I won't be able to stop this train and I'll get way below my goal weight. I don't want to do that! I know I need to make sure I am at least eating on a schedule and not let myself forget to eat. But any other suggestions about how to slow down my loss without resorting to eating really unhealthy stuff?

@@saflo438 I was pretty lucky with my hair loss. It started around 3.5 months post-op and only lasted until about 5 months. It wasn't falling out "in clumps" but there was a lot of it all over the bathroom. I joked with my husband that hair were blood, our bathroom would look like a horror scene. Fortunately, I started with very thick hair so the visible loss was really only noticeable to me. I think everyone else was distracted by the haircut, which was the plan. It started growing back right away, as soon as it finished falling out. Now I'm a year out and my new growth is a few inches long.

@ I've actually worked really hard through all of this to retain as much muscle as possible. I get 100 grams of protein per day at least, do cardio 4-6 days per week (mostly running, but some biking), and do strength training. I think that's why my loss was pretty "slow" compared to a lot of people. It took me a full year to lose the 71 pounds. According to my bathroom scale (which obviously isn't SUPER accurate) I went from 48.2% body fat to 23%. That means on my surgery date, I had almost 114 pounds of fat and now I have 37.5 pounds of fat. So theoretically I lost 76.5 pounds of fat, but only 73 pounds of weight. Which means I might have actually put ON a little muscle so far.

@@saflo438 I cut it off about 2 months post-op as a preemptive strike for when I started losing my hair. But I really liked it that length, so I think I want to maintain it there.

@@pimmar It is very common to get counseling throughout the WLS process and afterward. As you often hear on these forums, you have surgery on your stomach, not your brain. So counseling is a necessary step for many people. I would strongly recommend it, at least in the beginning, if you think you will need the extra support.

@@Dawny28 As you said, everyone is different. You will definitely lose some weight by week 8. I was down about 23 pounds at two months out? Some people are down 40-50 by then. As for eating, I was allowed solid foods at 40 days post-op, but nothing crunchy until 3 months post-op. Again, every plan is different, so yo should definitely stick to your surgeon's/nutritionist's plan for you. I'm a full year out and I still can't eat raw vegetable without getting super burpy and uncomfortable. But I don't know of too many people on here who have that problem. So no salads for me ever again I don't think. Fruit I was able to do pretty early on, but nothing with the skins on until I was further out. For your time at Disney World, look for string cheese, those cups with cubed cheese and/or pepperoni, beef/turkey sticks, and yogurt. I haven't been to Disney post-op, but I have been to a couple of other amusement parks and they usually have those sorts of things available at their snack stands.

@@sashamp Sounds like your post-op experience was similar to mine and a lot of others on these boards. The first few days you are just focused on not dying. But then it becomes about adapting to your new stomach and learning to work with it. You have done amazing!

Funny I was looking at it from a - "damn, am I going to be able to buy another dress within that time period?" way when I asked the question. I'm not worried about IF weight loss is going to happen. I know it will. I really wasn't expecting to be approved, or that I would even have the surgery this year. If I had, I would have waited to buy the dress. Glad to hear it. I was worried you were going to set some impossible weight-loss goal for your wedding date (pretty common in brides, even those who don't have WLS) and set yourself up for disappointment. Luckily, wedding dresses can be altered!

I was allowed to take my really tiny pills (omeprazole and birth control) immediately post-op. I was taking all my pills of various sizes at 7 days post-op... including my big honking calcium pills.

No carbs definitely seems extreme. I don't get *many* carbs, since I am always putting protein first and aiming to reach my 100 grams/day of protein, but if my protein comes with some carbs, I will have them. Plus I do manage to fit in the occasionally treat. I was told by my NUT to never have JUST carbs, always have protein with my carbs, and always put protein first. So if I have a little toast, put peanut butter on it. Or have some tuna salad with my crackers... that sort of thing. I will say that I never eat rice or pasta because they just take up too much room and I can't get my protein in if I have them.

Oh this is a VERY dangerous road to go down. Trying to set deadlines for weight loss is never ever good. Ever person's body handles WLS differently and there is no way to predict how quickly you will lose. You will drive yourself completely insane comparing yourself to others or trying to set time-based goals. You need to work your plan and the weight loss WILL happen, but focusing on how long it takes or how much you can lose in a certain period of time is a recipe for disaster.

What?!?!?! 4 months?!!?! I was allowed to swallow pills at 7 days post-op and have been with no ill effect ever since!

I'm surprised you're still losing a lot of hair a full year post-op. What is your Protein intake like? If you aren't getting enough protein, that might also be why you aren't staying full for very long. What's your activity level like? I imagine it's pretty low right now with your back pain, but what was it like prior to your back issue? As for NSAIDs, they are very damaging to the stomach, even in healthy people with their full-sized stomachs. So they can be particularly damaging to WLS patients with our smaller stomachs. They can cause ulcers and stomach bleeds. The real risk seems to be with daily use for a chronic condition. So if you take one or two here and there, it's less likely to cause a problem, but you still really want to try to limit their use as much as possible. For example, I hurt my back last week moving stuff into storage. I was in so much pain that I couldn't even sleep that night. So at 4:00 am I broke down and took one Alieve and that at least let me sleep a little. But I didn't take any the next day, even though I was still in a lot of pain. I just stuck to tylenol and really trying to baby my back and avoid movements and positions that caused me anymore pain. If your back pain is more of the chronic variety, where you would need to be taking an NSAID for a week or more, you really really should talk to your doctor about alternative ways of relieving the pain and inflammation.

My personal situation got even more complicated a few weeks ago. My husband and I saw a house on the market and decided to go check it out. Well, once we did that, we HAD to have it. Of course, we didn't even have our house listed! We hadn't planned on moving out of our house for at least another year or two, so had done nothing in terms of prepping it to sell. PLUS, we had my sister and her four kids and ALL of their stuff in our house and garage! So it has been non-stop work these last couple of weeks to get our house in some sort of shape to list. We made my sister get a storage unit and got one of our own and moved a TON of stuff into storage. Yesterday morning my husband and I put TWENTY SEVEN 35-gallon garbage bags full of stuff, plus a ton of loose larger items out with the trash. We had our driveway sealed, our living room carpeted, our porch redone.... We have literally worked from the time we got home from work until about 1:00 in the morning every single weeknight and from 8:00am until 1:00am every weekend day to get everything done. We got the house listed on Sunday and had two showings yesterday. We have two more scheduled for tomorrow and we have an open house on Sunday. I've lost 5 pounds in the last two weeks between all the hard physical labor I've been doing and not finding the time to eat. At this point, you know how much 5 pounds in two weeks is! I was lucky to be losing a half a pound a week prior to this with just eating on plan and working out 4-5 times a week. As for the plastics... I *highly* recommend them. I definitely look great now, especially clothed. The real issue I have left is my thighs. I have a lot of loose skin on my upper thighs. Someday I'm hoping for a thigh lift, but now with trying to buy this new house, the finances for that won't work for a while!

I went to Mexico for a couple of reasons. I didn't qualify for WLS through my insurance. They had a requirement that you had to have a 5-year documented history of a BMI over 40 or over 35 with comorbidities. Well, I had lost 90 pounds "on my own" back in 2010/2011 and it took me a while to gain it all back, so my BMI had been well below 40 for a big chunk of the past 5 years and had just peaked back over 40 when I started looking into WLS. I couldn't afford to pay out-of-pocket for surgery in the US. I'd been to Mexico for surgery before (cosmetic surgery after my earlier 90-pound weight loss) and it was an incredibly positive experience, so I had no concerns about returning to Mexico for surgery.