JamieLogical

Wow! Some people!

Sending positive thoughts and energy your way for safe travels and a smooth surgery.

I seriously doubt a bite of Pasta caused you to gain 1.5 pounds of real weight, That's not 1.5 pounds of FAT magically back on your body from one bite of food. It's Water. Might not even have anything to do with the pasta. It might be the sodium from the sauce. LOTS of things can cause your weight to fluctuate from day to day. What you want to be watching for is a general downward trend. Log your weight once a week. If the daily fluctuations are making your crazy, stop weighing daily and only weigh that once a week that you plan to log. If you follow the plan, get all your Protein and water in, and exercise, you ARE going to lose weight. Unfortunately the rate of loss is going to be on your body's own terms.

I think the mistake a lot of WLS patients make is thinking about weight loss the same way they might if they were on a diet. When you are on a diet, you want to lose weight FAST and get to goal ASAP so the diet will be "over". With WLS, it's never "over". So whether it takes you 6 months or 16 months to get to goal, it doesn't matter. As long as you eventually get there and can MAINTAIN it once you are there. Ten years from now, no one's going to be looking back and saying to themselves "if only I could have gotten to goal one month sooner!".

Seems like it just depends on your surgeon. They either use drains or they don't If you want to find out whether yours does, just give him a call.

I wish you the absolute best of luck getting back on track. I'm sure you know all the "rules", so if you stick to the plan, you should be able to get things back under control. Obviously, some folks are going to have some questions about how/when you gained the weight back. Me included. I completely understand if you don't want to answer all of these. I just really feel like it might benefit some of us to know where things went wrong so we can try to avoid similar situations for ourselves. Feel free to completely ignore these questions. You need to focus on yourself and getting back on track, so if considering these sends you in the wrong direction, you should definitely just steer clear. How much weight did you initially lose post-op? Over what period of time? While you were losing weight, do you feel you stuck to the plan fairly well? Was there an event that sent you off your plan or did it happen gradually? When did you start going off track? How long did it take you to regain the weight once you went off track? What sorts of bad eating habits crept back in that allowed you to regain the weight?

Compared to the plastics I had 4 years ago, the pain from sleeve was NOTHING. Besides, pain is temporary, your sleeve is forever. The pain of the sleeve, isn't going to KILL you and it will only last at most a week or two. You'll be enjoying the benefits of your sleeve for years to come. Small price to pay.

When I had my plastics, my nurses in the recovery house were AMAZING. I felt not only well-cared for, but genuinely loved. All three of my nurses CRIED the day I left to go home. They were the sweetest ever! Edit: I just want to say that my sister's a nurse and I have so much respect and admiration for what nurses do. They remain compassionate and caring through some very disgusting situations. I guess it's a bit like being a parent. You love your kids through vomiting and dirty diaper changing and all that gross stuff. Nurses do that for perfect strangers! Definitely takes a special kind of person. When I first had my plastics, I HATED depending on the nurses for everything and asking them to help me with gross stuff like going to the bathoom or cleaning up my vomit. But they did it and somehow they were more than happy to do it and didn't resent me for it. They were lovely lovely people.

My main source of pain post-op was gas and my drain. The drain felt like menstrual cramping. Went way the second it was pulled out. The gas pain lasted several days, especially in my left shoulder. I hardly had any incision pain or pain in my abs.

The pre-op diet isn't about weight loss, it's about shrinking your liver. But I agree that it doesn't seem fair to NOT lose weight when you are starving yourself!

@@birdmadgirl I'd choose a Quest Bar over a cookie any day of the week! I am so addicted to them! It's good that you are putting protein first and taking steps to get back on track. Keep with it and hopefully this "reset" will be just what you need to pick up momentum again.

Oh I do cardio 5-6 times a week. Sorry. I thought you were looking for strength training routine. I work out at home where I have a treadmill and a stationary recumbent bike. My cardio schedule is like this: Day 1: Run Day 2: Bike Day 3: Run Day 4: Rest I just repeat that cycle over and over. If I have to miss a day for whatever reason that's not a scheduled rest day, then I just start the cycle over again. I usually do about 40-45 minutes, including warm-up and cool-down time.

It's tough to know 100% whether the people who are posting are actual patients or work for the surgeon. The best tactic is to go to their profile and look at their other forum activity. If they've got a couple hundred posts that have NOTHING to do with the surgeon they are recommending, then they probably aren't shills. If, every other post is about their surgeon and how great he/she is, then yeah, they are probably coordinators or hired hands. I researched a LOT before my surgery and based my decision on a lot of factors. There was a great thread about OCC and Ariel Ortiz on these forums for a long time that was over 200 pages with posts from legitimate patients, but a few shills posting there, ruined it for everyone and the thread was taken down. It's too bad, because that thread had some good info in it! But that wasn't the only deciding factor for me. I looked at media, credentials, etc. as well. It's definitely wise to do your due diligence and make sure you make a decision you are 100% confident and comfortable with.

That damned Week 3 Stall gets all of us!

The clear liquid part was actually easier for me. I think it was mostly because the surgery was SO close at that point and I was scrambling to get everything organized and I was so amped up and anxious. Didn't have as much time to think about food.

It's pretty normal to have short stalls (or even long ones) in the first couple of weeks as your body adjusts. I lost a lot of weight in my first week of my pre-op diet, then hardly any the second week. Then post-op, I lost a pound a day the first week, then hardly any the second and third weeks. It was frustrating at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, my weight was trending downward and I'm only 10 pounds from goal now. It's important to be patient, follow the plan, and just let your body handle things the way it needs to. It will adjust and adapt as you go along.

That's actually untrue. There are typically internal stitches that dissolve over time and then the outside layer of skin is sealed with surgical glue that just wears off over the course of a couple of weeks. So there are no VISIBLE stitches, but they are actually there. Glue alone would not be enough to close a wound that goes through ALL of your layers of skin. Edit: Here's the quote from my surgical report about the incisions: "Initial incision site closure with Polypropylene 1-0 suture. The skin was closed with 5-0 Monocryl subdermal sutures and Dermabond."

Yes, the recovery time is less if you don't have muscle repair, because then it's just skin, nerve, and lymphatic system healing. The skin will heal pretty quickly. And while the nerve and lymphatic system will take longer to heal, their healing doesn't actually impede your activity. You will just experience numbness, phantom pain and itching, and a lot of swelling/water retention. But I *highly* recommend the muscle repair as well. It is what will give you a truly flat stomach and the ability to see some definition in your abs if/when you are able to work on strengthening them again. The recovery takes longer, but in the grand scheme of things, you will enjoy the benefit of it for years and years. If you are already having surgery anyway and already going to have to have SOME recovery time, it's worth the temporary pain and extra recovery time.

I have that situation going on with my fake boobs right now and I'm still 175 pounds! No one could accuse me of looking sickly!

I could not agree more! I do not know how I would have gotten through my pre-op or post-op journeys without it!

Yeah, it's a shame. I've been to Mexico twice for surgery and I hardly got to sight see on either trip. The time I went for plastics, I was there for two full weeks and toward the end of the trip, two of my nurses took me to the beach for part of the day. That was the extent of my sightseeing. When I went for my sleeve, I didn't see anything but the drive from the border to the Marriott, the drive from the Marriott to OCC and back, and then I did go out walking a LITTLE tiny bit on the street that the Marriott is on. I only made it to the corner convenience store, though, not the plaza with the Walmart up the hill. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to try to get there a day or two early and do a little sightseeing BEFORE your surgery?

I was really really worried about this too. I LOVE Water. It's all I ever drank even before surgery. So, I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to drink it post-op or that I wouldn't like it anymore. I won't lie. It was SUPER rough getting in my water in the beginning. My post-op internal swelling made even the tiniest sip of water a huge ordeal for the first two weeks or so. Once the swelling was down, it was a lot easier, but I still wasn't able to get ALL of my water in, until I realized that it was much easier for me to drink SUPER cold water. Once I discovered that, I got a double-walled thermos-style water bottle, filled it with ice, and drank super cold water all day. Now I have no issues getting my water in. It's only ever a problem if I'm in an environment where I can't get ice water. Like somewhere that only has "cold" bottles of water. I need ICE in there. It has to be near freezing. So my advice to you is, if you are having issues getting your water in post-op, experiment with different temperatures. I know some people do a lot better with hot beverages post-op. And some people do better with room temperature water.

I agree. It's pretty disgraceful that any surgeon would perform surgery on a patient without ensuring they are FULLY informed about all of the steps they will have to take post-op to ensure the best possibly recovery and outcome. It reflects badly on the surgeons if their patients fail, so you would think it would be in their best interests to do everything in their power to help them succeed!

As counter-intuitive as it is, eating less will make you stall longer. The reason you stall out in week 3 is that your body is freaking out about all the changes. Eating too little just prolongs the freak-out and sends you into full-on self preservation mode. Trust and believe that getting in all of your Protein and sticking to the plan WILL make the scale move in the right direction again.

@@RNsleever715 If you haven't already, I highly recommend you ask the nutritionist to send you a copy of the post-op diet stages as well. I found it very useful for planning purposes, so I could be prepared for when I got home from Mexico.