JamieLogical

You'l be heading to OCC almost exactly one year after I had my sleeve surgery there! I was sleeved on 9/1/14 and everything went great! You'll be well take care of! Let me know if you have any questions about what to expect or what to bring.

@@HousecallsNP Welcome! Most of the people in the VIP forums are "vets" or at least had their surgeries a while ago, so I am sure you can get a lot of answers to your questions here.

I didn't even have stitches for my PCP to take out. My incisions had sub-dermal sutures that dissolved over time and the outside layer of skin had dermabond, which is like a glue, that just wore off in about 2 weeks. As for bloodwork, I met with my PCP before I went to Mexico and arranged a follow-up appointment and bloodwork with her for 1 month post op. She continued to do follow-up visits and blood work at the 2 month, 4 month, and 8 month marks. My next is scheduled for the 1 year mark.

I've noticed my restriction can vary some from day-to-day. Some days I can just eat more than others. But it has LOT to do with WHAT I'm eating as well. Dense Protein definitely triggers my restriction much more quickly than anything soft or carb-y.

I had implants pre-sleeve. The nice thing is that my boobs haven't shrunk visibly at all. In fact they look bigger now in relation to the rest of my body. The bad news is, my left implant has now become malpositioned due to the loss of real breast tissue above it and I will likely want a revision. Though I'm going to wait until I'm done losing for that. It's not really that noticeable. I notice it, but even my husband didn't notice it until I pointed it out to him. I was thin when I got my boobs. I pray they still look good when I drop these lbs. I was "thin" too when I got my boobs. I had lift with implants done at the same time as my tummy tuck after having lost 90 pounds "on my own". But then I regained 80 pounds before I was sleeved. Now, post-sleeve, I re-lost those 80 pounds, plus 7 more. My tummy tuck held up GREAT through the re-gain and loss. My only issue is that I now have this malpositioning of my left implant. I don't know if re-gaining breast tissue pushed it around a bit and then it because obvious when I lost that new breast tissue again or what. All I know is that I will probably end up getting a revision. Not in a rush though. It's really only noticeable to me. My husband doesn't care and you can't possibly notice it if I'm wearing clothes or a bra.

My hubby is definitely the real saint here!

I'm allowed caffeine and have been since 30 days post-op. I just drank a cup of coffee and a 5-hour Energy this morning! Edit: The 5-Hour Energy isn't a normal thing for me, I just didn't get any sleep last night. Found out my sister and brother-in-law are separating and my sister and her 4 kids are moving in with me temporarily, so I'm a little stressed out!

Where did this 800 calories come from? That seems low for 5 months post-op. I wouldn't be surprised if your stall is due to not getting ENOUGH calories.

Definitely not. I had a stage 1 compression garment for about 4 weeks, then a stage 2 garment for 6 weeks, then wasn't allowed spanx until 10 weeks.

@@jaczim My surgeon was Dr. Ariel Ortiz at Obesity Control Center. My interaction with Dr. Ortiz himself was pretty limited, but he is a world renowned surgeon with impeccable credentials, so I felt very safe in his hands. For me, the big feature of OCC is the full team. I got quick and helpful answers to all of my questions from the staff both pre and post-op and I received excellent care at the clinic. The nutritionist has been a godsend providing me with all the pre and post-op diet instructions, answering all my questions about Vitamins, following up with me many times post-op to check on my progress, and just generally being awesome. In fact, I just emailed her with a question this past Sunday. I'm almost 10 months post-op, but had a question about the change in formula of my Multivitamin. I sent the email around 7:00pm and she had replied by 10:00. This was on a Sunday no less! Remember, these people got my money 10 months ago. They won't be getting any more money from me. Yet they still take the time to respond quickly to all of my questions and provide excellent service. I was pretty impressed with that. The other doctors at OCC were similarly responsive. Dr. Jimenez answered my questions about when to stop and restart my vitamins and prescription meds around my surgery. Dr. So helped me when I thought my drain site might be infected post-op. I sent him photos and he called me within minutes to let me know he didn't think it was infected, but with instructions on how to care for it and advice for what to do if I really was concerned about infection. Turned out it wasn't infected after all, but I was impressed that he called me literally within minutes of me emailing him photos.

I had implants pre-sleeve. The nice thing is that my boobs haven't shrunk visibly at all. In fact they look bigger now in relation to the rest of my body. The bad news is, my left implant has now become malpositioned due to the loss of real breast tissue above it and I will likely want a revision. Though I'm going to wait until I'm done losing for that. It's not really that noticeable. I notice it, but even my husband didn't notice it until I pointed it out to him.

The first couple of weeks were rough. Not going to lie. I just tried to take it one hour at a time. I sipped on my water, marched in place a lot, watched a lot of TV, and slept a lot. Luckily I was allowed protein shakes earlier than you were, so I had a bit more energy, but it still sucked. You just have to have patience and hang in there. You really will feel a little better every day and soon enough you will look back and realize you've recovered pretty quickly, though it felt like an eternity in the moment.

You shouldn't compare your progress to others. That is the path to frustration and misery. Every body is different and everyone loses at t different pace. A "slow" loss is not necessarily any reflection on your effort or how "bad" you are doing. Pace of loss is something that is very much out of your control. It's much more important to focus on the things you CAN control and trust in the process.

Wait. You had surgery 7 weeks ago and you feel like a failure to not have lost 60 pounds already!?!?! I'm almost 10 months post op and have lost 62 pounds.... Am I missing something?

No one complimented my weight loss at all, but I attributed that to the fact that I have lost and regained weight so many times over the years, that people are hesitant to say anything anymore.

I had actually been dieting and exercising for over a month, pretty hard-core, prior to starting my pre-op diet. I lost 12.6 pounds between 7/7/14 and 8/18/14, but STILL lost 8.6 pounds during the first week of my pre-op liquid diet. Second week of my pre-op diet I only lost 2.2 pounds though.

Woohoo! I know you were frustrated hovering around that 300 pound mark for a while. Congratulations!

Eating on a schedule definitely seems to be the best plan. I now eat 6 times a day: Breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and evening snack. Doing that gives me enough structure to where I can avoid grazing, but also allows me to eat frequently enough to stave off hunger. When you eat every 2-3 hours, it easier to avoid eating out of boredom or head hunger too, because you've always either just eaten or will be eating again in an hour or so.

The restriction is always going to be more for sleeve versus RNY, not because of stretching, but because sleeve patients still have their pyloric valve. RNY bypasses the pyloric valve, so food just "falls" straight through the stomach pouch into the small intestine. Whereas, food is held in the sleeve by the pyloric valve for some period of time as it begins digesting before it moves into the small intestine. Edit: To be clear, RNY patients can have food sit in their stomach for SOME period of time, because the connection between their pouch and intestine is small and therefor acts as a bit of a bottleneck, but that connection is always open and food will immediately begin passing through it so long as it's been adequately chewed. Whereas, with the sleeve, the pyloric valve will remain completely closed and not pass any food through it until it has been adequately mixed with stomach acids.

That's so interesting I think, not bothersome but just weird. I've seen people be a size 4 after this and I'm like holy crap that's never happening for me, I don't think I want it to, I'd be sickly looking and underweight to get down that far lol Well, some people set their weight goals a lot lower than mine. I am sticking to the goal that my nutritionist set for me, though I still have kind of a secret hope of getting to 10 pounds lower than that so I can fall in the "healthy" BMI range. At my nutritionist's goal of 165, I will still technically be overweight. Also, I carry all my weight in my hips and thighs, so while I'm in a size 14 pants still, I'm now in a size 10 dress and medium shirts.

Now that you mention hypoglycemia, that jogged my memory of another post I read a couple months ago from a woman you had a similar experience after having a couple of glasses of wine. I think you may be right!

Like @@Stevehud said. You need to eat VERY VERY slowly. Take tiny bites. Chew them to death. Set your fork down between bites. Don't take another bite until you are sure the first one is staying down.

Has your doctor been doing regular blood work? A B12 deficiency should have shown up there.

My NUT didn't give me any guidelines for carbs. She just gave me a protein goal of 100 grams. In the beginning, that didn't leave much room for carbs at all, since I couldn't eat very much. I'm now almost 10 months out and getting in about 1200 calories a day. I easily make my 100 gram protein target and probably get about 45-ish net carbs a day?