JamieLogical

My nutritionist requires: 3x multivitamin daily 2x calcium +D3 (two pills each time) 1x liquid B12 1x probiotic In addition to that I take: 2x Omeprazole (PPI for acid reflux) 1x Vitamin C 1x coq10 1x Omega 3 1x vitamin E 1x Beef Gelatin 1x vitamin D3 (only in winter for extra) Most of those "additional" things I was already taking for years pre-op. I was also taking a normal multivitamin and some Tums for calcium pre-op, so while I take MORE Multivitamins now and calcium citrate instead of Calcium Carbonate, it's not that much extra from what I was already doing. The only new things for me post-op have been B12, the probiotic, and the Beef Gelatin (supposed to help with skin elasticity).

Maybe this would be a good place to start when discussing your obesity and food addiction with him. He might be able to sympathize. Ask him how well he would have done at dealing with his alcoholism if he was still required to have a small amount of alcohol on a daily basis. Food can be like any other addiction with the MAJOR difference being we can't go cold turkey. We have to eat to live. Imagine if he was handed a beer (or whatever his drink of choice was) three times a day and told to only drink one sip of it.

Well if the heartburn and nausea are still terrible even on your meds, I would definitely talk to your surgeon.

Day 2 will suck more. Day 3 will suck more-ER! Day 4 will be a turning point. Hang in there! TRUTH!

EXACTLY. If I am not going to be able to log accurately and have to guestimate a bunch of stuff if I eat out or I eat food someone else has prepared, then why log at all? The whole point of logging (in my eyes) is to have accurate information on which to base decisions about potential changes in your behavior. If I'm not going to weigh my food or track single bites here and there, then how is there any value in the inaccurate information I'm storing up? Thus my need to be completely OCD about it when I do track. There's no fudging or grey areas for me. Either I am tracking 100% accurately and driving myself and everyone around me completely insane, or I am not tracking at all. Post-sleeve, beyond the first couple months of solid foods, I have chosen not to track at all. Unless I have any cause for concern. Then I might track for a bit to see what's up. I have also been know to do a couple "spot-checks" will I will enter one day's worth of food on a day when I am eating very "typically" just to make sure my ranges are about where I think they are.

Glad to hear all went well!

I haven't experienced anything like you are describing, but I hope you will get some answers! I did have some pain near that lower left incision the first couple weeks post-op, but that was very clearly muscle pain to me.

@@JaeValentine Are you on a PPI for the heartburn?

Well that sounds promising. Hopefully you can have a real, full conversation about it tonight and get through to him about why you think this is your best option. Maybe he can come to an info session or bariatric support group meeting with you to learn a bit more about obesity and why it's not as easy to overcome as he might think. Obesity as a disease and food addiction are just VERY hard for other people to understand. Even if they are otherwise kind and caring people. It sounds to me that, his harping on your weight, is genuinely coming from a place of love, even if he is going about it in a horrible way. He wants you to be happy and healthy and able to participate in life with your family. Those are good things to want for you! He just isn't capable of understanding that your obesity doesn't mean you don't want those things as well. You are just more in tune with what it will really take to achieve those things. So try to educate him. Send him to these forums even so he can read the experiences of others. Coming from you he might not put as much stock in it as he might if it came from strangers. Everyone takes in and processes information differently.

I just walked some, did a lot of marching in place while drinking (it helped), and watched a lot of TV. Oh and napped a fair amount!

Good luck and be safe!

Haha! Yeah. There is a BIG difference between yogurt and meat. I always love the posts that ask how much people can eat. It definitely depends on WHAT you are eating. 5 oz. of yogurt is EASY. But I STILL can't eat more than 2 oz. of tuna.

@@back2barb78 Sorry about your gall bladder situation. Hopefully you'll have a quick recovery and can get back on track with your workouts and get your plastics consult ASAP.

It was a document OCC provided to me that was supposed to give me some medical priority while crossing the border back into the US, but there wasn't much of a line anyway, so I didn't end up needing to use it.

4 oz. of meat at 17 days post-op would have been a LOT. I'm over 6 months out and I rarely can get over 3 oz. of meat in..... I got 4 ounces of pulled chicken in for dinner last night and I was SUPER proud of myself. Even showed off my clean bowl to my husband.

Not necessarily. That depends on your insurance. I had to self-pay because insurance wouldn't cover my WLS, but I confirmed with them that they WOULD cover any post-op complications.

I prefer EAS AdvantEDGE carb control. 17g of protein and 110 calories. The Rich Dark chocolate is super yummy!

I have logged food religiously in the past and I did NOT want to be logging food for the rest of my life post-sleeve. Logging is easy for normal days. Most sites let you set up favorite foods and meal groupings that you eat regularly. So it's a very quick task to go in and pre-log your food in the morning, then just make adjustments throughout the day as needed. The actual task of logging is not what deterred me from logging forever. For me, the unpleasant part of logging was when any non-normal eating came up. Going out to dinner at a place that doesn't have their nutritional info online. Not knowing all the ingredients used in a meal when I went to my in-law's or my sister's or my parents'. Not knowing the exact weight of the things I might eat at a party or cookout. When I do something, I am like OCD about it. So guestimating or approximating was not an option for me. I would sit through an entire party and not eat a single bite of anything rather than try to figure out the nutritional content of anything I might eat there. I would refuse to go out. I would ask my mother-in-law for not only the ingredients she used in her dinner, but the BRANDS of those ingredients. It was ridiculous and NOT the way I want to live the rest of my life. While I was able to do that for a few months, or even over a year, pre-sleeve, I don't want to be doing it for the next 60 years of my life and I really see no point in it. If I lose the weight and maintain it by putting Protein first and eating on a schedule, then why do I need to track? I see the value in tracking when there is information to be gleaned when figuring out what might be slowing your loss or causing you to gain. But I see no value in it for living a normal life and maintaining a normal relationship with food (unless you do have food allergies or deficiencies and need to be concerned with more than just protein).

In Mexico self-pay seems to range from about $3000-$7500. Mine was towards the upper end of that range, but that was with a world renowned surgeon.

I was able to borrow against my retirement account. Not withdraw from it, since that would incur fees and taxes. This was basically a loan through my retirement company that let me borrow the money with my retirement as collateral. The best part is that I am essentially paying myself back the interest and the interest rate is really low anyway.

This was my list when I went in September: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11I51ulCBco9cimQj882eV1KfMWodyiIO6X4gNaLpDDc/edit?usp=sharing

You will be fine. There will be a lot of trial and error ahead. You WILL get overfull many many times as you try new foods, overestimate how much you can eat at once, accidentally eat too fast, etc. You won't stretch your sleeve. If making yourself overfull one time.... or even twenty times... stretched our sleeves, we would all be doomed!

I don't really see the point in tracking unless you aren't losing or maintaining (depending on where you are in your journey). If you are struggling to lose or you're gaining weight, then sure, track and try to figure out what the problem is. But if you are on track, then why worry about tracking anything other than maybe protein? I find it easy enough to keep a tally of protein in my my head without writing it down. As long as I get my protein and my water and I am losing weight, what's the point of tracking anything else?

I never met my coordinator when I went to TJ for my sleeve surgery. I was taken to the clinic where I met the office administrator, the nutritionist, the cardiologist, several nurses, Dr. Ortiz (my surgeon), the anesthesiologist, and the radiologist, none of whom I tipped. When I went to TJ several years ago for plastics, I spent LOTS of quality time with my coordinator, my surgeon, and all of the recovery house staff. I didn't tip any of them either.

You're not wrong. It does seem pretty random. There's just no predicting how an individual body will react. Hopefully any complications you experience will be minor and temporary.