BigTink2LilTink

Hey all. Its been a minute since I've posted in here. Been dealing with my own stall and weight regain over the last year. Been a rough year with job stress and buying a home, that it really didn't take that much for meto fall off track and let old habits creep back in. Over the last four weeks I've refoced and went back to the basics again. Counting callories, avoiding the things that don't help as much as I can (at least during the week), and hitting the gym more consistently. This time around where some things are easier to cope with, other things aren't. Its why I'm here. Needing that reminder that this isn't a race but a marathon of continued work, focus, and dedication to being a healthier person. Acknowledging that my success will come from the work I put in. My honeymoon phase from surgery is long long gone. So when you get stress out, or slip up with the eating/diet/exercise remember this: 1.You didn't get to where you got in a week, and you won't get to where you need to be in a week. 2. It takes time. Learn to acknowledge your mistakes and learn to move past them. Even if that means starting from the basics (calorie counting, meal prepping/planning, walking, water intake, etc). 3. Remember/remind youself that you can do this. Surgery was the hard part. Working out isn't **** compared to having your stomach/body altered. 4. Celebrate your success, because they do count. Whether its making it to 2 miles on the treadmill, staying at your caloric goal for a day/week/month, fitting in smaller clothes,or dropping an inch off the waist line celebrate it. Because not everyday that scale is gonna cooperate with you. When that happens remember that you are changing in other ways. Yeah and days you feel like its still not working look at that picture of you prior to surgery, and then look at you now. Your light years away from where you started. Because you decided to start. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

Today was more cardio and arms day. It was hard but I powered through it. I haven't been losing, but I'm not gaining either. I'm still toying around with liquid fasting for a week. The down side to that is if I do that I can't lift or really work out to hard.

I will be the first to say finding the motivation can be hard. What got me back on track were three things. 1st. Not reaching my weight goal. Going from being 10lbs away from goal to now 100lbs away is the wakeup call I needed. 2nd. Clothes starting to not fit loose like they where in the past. Nope that's a negative trend gents that I wish to not start. So that was the "okay a*****e get back on your grind" talk I had with myself. 3rd. The old eating habits creeping back in. Now they aren't at pre-surgery levels (eating 8-10k calories a day), but I can get about 3-4k calories in especially if I eat junk like carbs and high sugar **** (Reeses still my weakness). So to combat that I try to make it a goal to burn at least 500-1k daily if I can. Get my water in and try to keep my carbs back to early post surgery levels. And to have some sort of cheat day (usually Saturdays) but eat as clean as possible during the work week, where I can stick to a schedule. Tonight was leg day at the gym. I've been on a walk right into the gym work out and go home. No locker room no changing. Get in and get the hell out as soon as possible.

Last few days I've been working out in my street clothes. Its just makes it easier if I skip the locker room and walk into the gym right into cardio. Some look at me crazy but I'm stilk in there getting the routines that I need to complete completed. I will admit the jeans are heavier and make my normal 3 miles on the elliptical seem like 6 miles. But the key here for me is trying to restore some consistency in my workout schedule and routine so that my body doesn't do another heart plateau again.

No problem @J San

I would work on just non-weighted squats. Get a exercise ball put it up against the wall and your back and use that to squat. Work on your form and get that down before you move on to do it without the ball, then no wall, and then with a bar, and finally with a weighted bar. That helped me with my back issues while I was still carrying a lot of body mass. I think after I lost my first 150lbs I started working on pushups and planks. The one think I keep having to remind myself is that no matter what this isn't a race. Its a marathon, and that as long as you keep moving forward doing the work consistently then you will get to goal. Some of use can get there faster than others, but you will get there when you get there. And that is all that really matters, you getting there. Another thing I have done is I do change up routine every few months. It to kinda shock the body out of routine. Like right now I'm back to outdoor biking. I'm gonna do that from now till maybe early Dec (It gets cold here in MO by then), and I'll stitch it to indoor swimming at the gym during the winter. Then spring I'll go back to outdoor biking again.

For me I started working on my core, back, and legs first. That means a lot of crunches, planks, and leg lifts, dips, leg press, leg curls, lunges, jump squats, squats in general, jump rope, jumping jacks. You can use your own body weight for this but for starting out I wouldn't go beyond 10/15lbs max. The ideal as you are starting out is to get get the form down so you minimize injury risk, while getting your body use to working out in general. I would work on that for at least 8 to 12 weeks before increasing weight. And even when you do increase in weight, do so very moderately and only after a good 6 to 8 weeks of consistency with the current weight. For example if you are doing leg lifts at 50lbs and you've been doing it okay for about 8 weeks at that weight and its easy to you, then go up to about 60/65lbs. The ideal is to ease into more resistance, while minimizing the chances of injury that will cause you to miss more time working out. I do workout my arms and chest too, but I didn't focus on that till maybe a good 16 weeks into working out more. I do curls, pressing both bench, and hammer, curl rows, push ups, lat pull downs. I do alternate days and I do focus training, where I will spend one day working on either legs and back, and then the next on arms and core (gut). I try to average at least 3 to 5 days a week working out with weights. However for Cardio I try to do that damn near daily. Walking daily helps. the more you can average per day the better.

This ^^ here. I did it about 20 months ago when I was in a stall. I did the 1 week reset and while it did help to get me out of my stall, it was harder. I found myself getting headaches and body aches over that time period. I was going to do it again at the beginning of Dec to mark my 4 year surgery anniversary. The whole thing from liquid diet fasting. But as with this any anything else related to your gut health, I would probably run it through your doctor before hand.

Yeah its all about accountability here. And that the realization that the surgery is this magical cure all be all needs to be squashed. It take work and focus to get there. The surgery, diets, working out are all tools that need to be used in tangent to one another in order to reach that goal. I got lazy part of the way and now I'm dealing with losing weight that I had already lost before. It sucks, but its reality. We all have peaks and valleys to deal with here. I choose to recognize my peak moments and then trying to get my ass back down to the bottom of that valley. Can't stay on this mountain of fat for too much longer.

You're very gorgeous. Keep up with that awesome work. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

Yeah I try to squat about twice a week. Nothing too insane, but enough to give a bit a resistance and to make sure my form is key. Last thing I wanna do is hurt myself, especially my back.

I lost track with the St. Louis group. From what I remembered they met up down at the South City Library once a month, but that was like a year ago the last time I heard from them. I am willing to start up a meet up if enough people are interested in it. I live in Hazelwood but work downtown off Chouteau and Jefferson. So I can meet up basically anywhere.

Last few weeks I've been averaging around 8500 steps per day. Some days I'm good and well over 15k steps and other days I'm like barely at 7k. I've started a downwards trend again on the scale going down again after last stall regain. Hopeful that by the end of May I'll finally reach that elusive goal weight I was so close to reaching around this time last year. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

Have any of you guys experienced skin related issues post surgery? Things like rashing, irriated skin, jock itch, and/or things like that post surgery? I've notice since having the surgery I've had more issues with my skin than anything else. More ache in my face, and more like jock itch issues. What gives?

The first 6/7 months I was averaging about 6/7lbs per week or about 20/25lbs per month. My weight lost tapered down after about 18 months post the operations. From that point on all my loss and gains has been through diet and exercise alone.

I may try the salt water deal. I currently use clomitrazol or cortazal creame and Lotrimin to help combat my jock itch issues. and it seems to only be a temp and not a more perminant solution. And it appears that when the weather is either too cold or too hot I break out.

Yeah my next stop maybe a dermatologist. I just hate feeling this way honestly. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

That link is broken for me. It takes me nowhere. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

As someone that is 6'5 and when I started this process well above the 450lb mark I can say that the skin issue while it maybe minimal for you isn't as big of an issue as the stuff you will face being obese. I have it and the skin hasn't stopped me from doing the things that I needed to do or being happy. It hasn't stopped me from having meaningful relationships with people, or hindered me from working out. The skin at best is a mental thing. A reminder from where I've come from and sometimes, no a lot of times a reminder of what I did to myself. DO NOT LET THE SKIN SCARE YOU FROM DOING WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO GET HEALTHY! Don't let that be the deterring factor.

I have a can do attitude and a need to not go back into a 40+ waist line ever again honestly. Just going to the gym for 3 out of the last 7 days and tracking food helped get an inch off the waistline. Its those small reminders of why I have to be consistent at the gym that helped. Plus my girlfriend has been on my ass as of late about getting back on track. She's trying to lose weight too and is making sure that I focus on a more healthier me and not the old unhealthy me. So yeah I need to be better cause I motivate her to be better. So no need to blame others for mistakes that I made. No need to beat myself up, because that's not gonna solve the issue. Just put the head phones on, hit the iron, do the planks, run on the treadmill, sweat on the elliptical, and log what I put into my body. That what time it is.

Yeah it's easy to slip up especially when you can process and eat a lot of the old things that you know the surgery was preventing you to eat early before. I had to take a step back look at what I've been consuming of a few weeks span put all that stuff right back into MyFitnessPal to see that I was indeed overeating and not properly burning off the calories that I was consuming. But now it's a new year and I've been tracking what I've been doing over the last 5 days and I can see where the pattern is wrong and I'm making the adjustments accordingly. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

They were until I saw a 60lbs regain from over this past fall. Seriously was upset with that,but there are two thing I can do. Whine about and do nothing, or change up with I'm doing personally and fix it. I'm choosing the latter of those two options. I know I can lose the weight becase I've done it before. It truly a mind over matter sort of thing. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

I will look into that app, but I've been using MFP off and on over the last year or so. I just recently updated it and notice that it now easily syncs my Samsung fitness information to MFP database for tracking my workouts and calories burned. So I'm excited about that. Fell off the wagon a bit over the fall here, and now I'm refocused on getting to my goal so I'm like full steam ahead in the gym and calorie counting.

I can relate to where you are at right now because I was there right after I had my surgery to. Add to it all the complications I was having from dumping and the memory loss due to the anesthesia from surgery and vitamin deficiency and you had someone who totally at the time regret it having their stomach altered. And I stayed that way for damn near 7 if not 8 months. But then after I drop my first 120 lb, man you could not believe how happy I was. When I was able to get rid of my Casual Male big and tall card, and start buying clothes out of Walmart, you couldn't believe how happy I was. When I was able to run for over a mile and not feel like my lungs were going to collapse you cannot believe how happy I was. When I no longer required insulin to function normally or no longer having back pains due to the damn near 400lbs of excessive weight I was carrying on my frame, you couldn't believe how happy I was. The point I'm making is that its gonna take time. Time is what you need to heal, seriously for most that takes a good soild year out. Time for you to see how important this surgery is going to be for you and your life going forward. Important in that its going to be the pathway to a healthier and more happier you in the long run if you allow it to be. The only way this surgery is going to be a mistake for you, is if you allow it to be. If you want this surgery and the outcome from it to be successful then you'll allow it to be so. You jave have to condition your mind. That's the one thing that surgery can't do for you out of this process. Condition your mind to tell you that you don't need those old eating habits, or crappy food all the time to feel and be happy. Sorry for my preachy preach there. Its just that I get what you are going though. And the simple yet complex answer to all of this is focused time. Sent from my SM-N920P using BariatricPal mobile app

I ask the same thing a few months ago.