Champ715

Hi there! I am ten months post op and can honestly say I haven't felt hungry one time. I do feel what I call "empty" rather than "hungry. The best way I can explain it to people is that before surgery whenever I felt hungry, I always craved a specific food. If I was hungry and wanted cheese dip then only cheese dip would satisfy me. Now, post op, I don't have those cravings or feelings. Occasionally I do feel like my stomach is empty. When i get this feeling, I can fill up on anything, whether it's Water, meat, veggies, etc. and the empty feeling goes away. I hope that makes sense and can help you make sense of what you're feeling. Since you're still so early post op, the feelings you're having might be gas pain or heartburn from stomach acid.

Diet drinks, and sodas in general, are just really bad for you. Why waste success on it?

I am ten months post op and I feel like this has been my "new normal" for a while now. Once I finally got to the solid food stage, it was all downhill from there. I'd say around the 3-4 month mark it all became normal and I wasn't having to spend so much time measuring, calculating, etc. Don't get me wrong, it's something we will always have to be mindful of but it all comes naturally to me now. Hopefully that makes sense.

Hey friends! I'm almost 10 months post op so I thought I'd share an updated before & after photo. I started at my highest weight of 205 last year. According to the BMI chart, "normal" weight for my height is 98-127 so I initially had a goal weight of 125 in mind. My surgeon actually told me that he is considered "overweight" on the BMI scale but he's pretty much all muscle. I have been working out regularly since 3 months post op so he told me that I may never see 125 on the scale if I continue to build muscle. He told me to have a goal body fat percentage rather than a goal weight. At the beginning of my journey, my body fat percentage was 53% (yikes!). My goal percentage is between 20-24%. I'm happy to report that today I am down 65 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 20%. I may never lose those 13 extra pounds and be at 127 but I'm now in the "healthy range" for body fat percentage. I just want to let you all know that you don't necessarily have to weigh a certain number to be healthy. I am still overweight according to the BMI chart but I'm in the "athlete" category on the body fat chart. Keep in mind the BMI chart only factors in your height and weight, not where the weight actually comes from. Weight from fat is bad but weight from muscle is good.

My plan says no caffeine ever again :( Occasionally I have a decaf coffee with milk and stevia but that's it.

Congratulations! I also spent one night in the hospital and I brought a bunch of stuff I really didn't need. When I wasn't up walking, I was knocked out asleep. The things I actually used were: comfy pajamas slippers (or those socks with little pads on the bottom. They gave these to me in the hospital but I wore my own slippers instead) hair brush toothbrush & toothpaste chapstick Things I wish I knew before: It will be hard to drink even a little bit of Water but give it 100%. Plenty of water will make it much easier to go #2 when the time comes. Trust me, you don't want to make this any harder than it has to be. Miralax was my best friend for 3 weeks post op. Good luck! I'm almost 9 months post op so feel free to message me if you have any other questions about what the early months are like

I had surgery on September 30, 2015 and was cleared for roller coasters by November 12th. The surgeon told me I was healed up inside but he did warn me that I might get nauseated. I didn't try a rollercoaster until March 12 and I got major motion sickness. I think it was a combination of not eating a lot, heat, and motion. Needless to say, I think I'm finally too old for rollercoasters haha

Hi all, I had gastric sleeve surgery last September 2015. In August 2015, I had the pre-op blood work done at Quest Diagnostics. Shortly after that visit, I got a $1113 lab bill from Quest and they told me that BCBS wouldn't cover the costs because the surgeon's office had coded it to "obesity". I don't understand why BCBS will cover weight loss surgery but not the associated lab/blood work. I called my surgeon's office to explain this to them and the nurse told me she would change the billing code and resubmit to Quest. Well, apparently she never did that. I thought she did because months went by and I never heard another word about it. This past Monday I got the same $1113 bill from Quest again for the August 2015 lab work. I had post op lab work done in March and Quest says BCBS won't cover that blood work either because it was also coded to "obesity". Quest refuses to negotiate with me on the cost but says I can pay $25 each month until the end of time if I want to. What baffles me is that I know I'm not the first person to have BCBS insurance and my surgeon's office sends everyone to Quest diagnostics for lab work. This cannot be the first time this has come up. The insurance coordinator at my surgeon's office said to be verbatim "it will be covered" and the nurse already told me once she would fix it but never has. Has this ever happened to anyone else? BCBS said I had 180 days to appeal the first bill from August 2015 so I'm screwed on that one. I'm just trying to figure out what to do to get the March 2016 bill covered or negotiated. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. (Cross posted in the insurance forum)

Hi all, I had gastric sleeve surgery last September 2015. In August 2015, I had the pre-op blood work done at Quest Diagnostics. Shortly after that visit, I got a $1113 lab bill from Quest and they told me that BCBS wouldn't cover the costs because the surgeon's office had coded it to "obesity". I don't understand why BCBS will cover weight loss surgery but not the associated lab/blood work. I called my surgeon's office to explain this to them and the nurse told me she would change the billing code and resubmit to Quest. Well, apparently she never did that. I thought she did because months went by and I never heard another word about it. This past Monday I got the same $1113 bill from Quest again for the August 2015 lab work. I had post op lab work done in March and Quest says BCBS won't cover that blood work either because it was also coded to "obesity". Quest refuses to negotiate with me on the cost but says I can pay $25 each month until the end of time if I want to. What baffles me is that I know I'm not the first person to have BCBS insurance and my surgeon's office sends everyone to Quest diagnostics for lab work. This cannot be the first time this has come up. The insurance coordinator at my surgeon's office said to be verbatim "it will be covered" and the nurse already told me once she would fix it but never has. Has this ever happened to anyone else? BCBS said I had 180 days to appeal the first bill from August 2015 so I'm screwed on that one. I'm just trying to figure out what to do to get the March 2016 bill covered or negotiated. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. (Cross posted in the post op forum)

Not everyone looks at both forums, hence why I posted it in two different places.

Exactly what @@theladyslipper said. My surgeon told me that hair loss after surgery is not due to poor diet, lack of nutrition, etc. Surgery (I think the anesthesia specifically) makes the hair go from the growing phase to the resting phase. The hair that is put into resting phase on the day of surgery then falls out around 3 months after surgery. It will eventually go back to growing phase but there's just nothing you can do about it in the meantime. No amount of Biotin or Protein will STOP the hair falling out. It will stop on it's own once your body has time to get back to normal. The biotin and protein will help with new growth however.

The puree stage was the hardest for me because I couldn't mentally bring myself to eat pureed chicken, steak, whatever. I tried pureeing some meat one night and it was just so weird looking and smelly. My head was telling me "Chicken is not supposed to look like this!". My puree stage lasted three weeks and I ate pretty much the same thing for those entire three weeks (yogurt, hummus, cottage cheese, refried Beans, and some poppyseed chicken casserole). I thought those three weeks would never end lol. If you can just get through it with the knowledge that it doesn't last forever, you'll be just fine. Now that I'm almost 7 months out and can eat pretty much anything I want, that puree stage seems like a distant memory.

HMO

I am a 28 year old female and started very similar to you. I'm 5'0 and my highest weight was 206 and "normal" weight for my height is 98-127 so I had almost 80 pounds to lose. I was sleeved on 9/30/15 and have lost 56 lbs so far. Some people lose that much in just a few months but that's because they have a lot more to lose. I still have 23 lbs to go to meet my goal weight of 125 but I'm confident I'll reach this goal by my one year surgery anniversary this year. I watch what I eat and work out on average 4 times per week. If you stick to the plan and commit to a lifestyle change, I'm confident you could have great results with the sleeve. I hope this helps!

You do realize it blocked out whatever you're trying to type, don't you? We don't know what you're talking about.

How were you able to eat this at 12 days post op? It took 2 months before I even tried a french fry and all the grease made me nauseous immediately. I can't imagine eating that poorly after just 12 days. If your excuse is that it's hard to resist temptation when you have kids to cook for then maybe don't cook such unhealthy stuff for your kids either. If you feed them french fries and pizza often enough that it tempts you then they are probably going to end up overweight as well. I don't mean to sound harsh but this is your reality now. You have already invested so much into this by having surgery. Don't mess it up by cheating.

I was told six weeks as well but I was still sore at that point. I didn't have any pain from just moving around but when I tried to do a situp at 6 weeks, my abs were like "NO MA'AM SLOW DOWN!".

The first week was exactly the same for me. I was in pain and couldn't get down hardly anything. Both my surgeon and my NUT told me they don't expect you to get down a full 64 oz of Water right here in the beginning. Just hang in there and do the best you can. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself right now. You're healing and it gets better and better every day!

I should add my hair did fall out in clumps and it's just now starting to slow down (I'm 6.5 months post op). Thankfully I had very long thick hair to begin with so nobody has noticed except me. I don't have bald spots.