Sajijoma

I'm a rare person who can't stand Quest bars! They make me gag! The taste is just absolutely disgusting! I really like the Pure Protein bars especially the chocolate chip one. I have one for breakfast almost every morning now.

Thank you so much! I feel really great! I went to Kohl's yesterday and bought the softest, warm robe for winter...in a small! You can do this! I'm rooting for each and every one here! ???????????????? gosh, at 5'9 I don'tThink I'll ever make it to a small, but I'd be ok with an L or XL even! sometimes I can't imagine what it would even feel like! I've been over the 200lb mark since 5th grade at least!

I am pre op and currently have been using either whole foods 365 whey protein powder or bio chem's whey protein powder. While I was enjoying my chocolate smoothie today I realize it has 6g of actual sugar in it. Is that going to be too high to use post RNY? What is the range I should stay below? I also use the pure protein already made shakes, but I REALLY am a Huge fan of biochem's chocolate and am going to be so sad if that's too high in sugar for post op life.

@@Sherry G you are an inspiration to me! I started out at 410 at my consult and am still in pre op. People like you let me know it actually can be done! You look amazing!

I have 7 kiddos and I have included them in the whole process along the way. The oldest is 13 and my youngest is 14months so obviously he doesn't understand much, but I talk to him anyway. especially how he's going to miss pulling up my shirt and hugging my fat belly! I've told all my kids that mommy wants to get healthy so we can do fun stuff like the zoo again(haven't been able to walk the zoo since after kid 4 was born). I tell them that it's going to be a little scary and mom will be in the hospital like when I had the other babies, but instead of bringing home another baby, I'll be in a lot of pain and it'll hurt. I might even cry, but It's ok. Mommy is getting her tummy fixed and it's going to take awhile to heal and sometimes it's going to hurt. I talk to them about why I am eating slow, and eating the meat first instead of the veggies like I've always told them they have to do, why I am not drinking anything with my meal, why I get made when they rub cookies on me while I'm exercising, why we go on "death marches" as my oldest daughter refers to our walks LOL...just everything! My older kids have watched the surgery on episodes of Fat Doctor etc and my oldest actually went and watched a non-edited or sanitized version on YouTube with me. She can actually draw a diagram of what will happen even, so for her, that's how she understands. She feels like she knows this operation in and out now. For the younger ones, the 3yr old and the 5yr old, they just understand that mommy wants to get healthy and my tummy has to be "fixed" and that when I'm done, I won't be able to eat food for a long time just liquids or smush like baby food and even afterwards I can't eat the stuff they eat like their cookies because it'll make me sick. They also get a big kick out of me saying that my exercise ball is my belly and it'll shrink like this and then pull the stopper out of the ball and watch it deflate. At first it goes kinda fast, then it slows down, then when it's all deflated it has to be cut off and there's the whole pantomime thing and it's funny and they laugh.

I was told that I needed to wean my baby prior to surgery, because it's too much strain on the body to nurse and lose that amount of weight at the same time. Also, your body is fighting for vitamins to keep itself going and can't afford to give them up in milk. So I weaned my 13 month old in Aug. in anticipation of surgery coming up in Oct/Nov.

Scales are lying sacks of shyte. I'm just going to say it. I've been working my @ss off(still pre op) exercising daily and my clothes are falling off especially my pants. Stepped on the scale and that piece of crap tells me I gained weight...again! Don't listen to scales, they lie! Jeans with no stretch NEVER lie! Listen to them!(sorry, I think I just put my own rant in here!)

The fact the Psych called your husband without asking you first is a break of HIPPA and you definitely should file a complaint. Also, anyone who is pushing one procedure over another because of convenience to them is certainly not concerned about you, your well being, or your weightloss. You need to leave there and have your records transferred to the new clinic. It is possible that all you've done to this point can be saved and used-although the psych evaluation, I'm sure I wouldn't trust anything in that and have it redone with a new one.

I understand your thinking, and after my huge non surgical weightloss last time I did the same thing, but my therapist actually said that keeping them around is at least on some level saying to yourself that you plan to fail. You've failed before and you are planning to fail again. By getting rid of them, you are telling yourself and the world that you really have made the change for life. So, I'm definitely getting rid of mine. There's no way I'm going to go back to this. I just can't.

I'd probably either list them on Craigslist or go to Goodwill. I always wish I could find my size in goodwill, so after my friends get their picks of my clothes as I shrink out of them, the rest will go to one of those places. Free of course. I know it sounds weird, but giving my clothes away for free is like therapy to me.

My NUT has me practicing this whole thing and honestly it's harder than people realize. Especially for me because I have kids to feed and kids who need stuff and I'm hopping up and down and all around and I never get to just sit and consciously eat. It's hurry up and shove it down before the next thing comes along I have to go do. It's frustrating, but I've started making rules to help like if they didn't ask for it before we sat down, they have to wait type things and only refills will be gotten is after daddy finishes. I've started singing silly songs between bites to help time me. If you don't want to sing them out loud, do it I your head and when you finish the song it's time for the next bite. Like one of the songs I use is "hickory dickory dock, I don't want to wait for the clock! The food is getting cold the bread becoming a rock, hickory dickory dock!"then I repeat it 3 times. By then I'm ready for the next bite. Or I'll walk my fork around the entire circumference of the plate like I'm being a clock. It's childish, I'll admit, but it works for keeping me timed without a timer. I just set the egg timer for the 30 min mark and I've really gotten the hang of it! The only part I am having trouble with is that I over spicy my food and then I'm crying for a drink of water to kill the heat while I wait!

Congratulations! I'm 2wks and 4 days away from being submitted, not that I'm counting or anything! Gosh! We've almost made it to THE DAY! So excited!

I have a couple of herniated discs as well. Just start with your physical therapy exercises on the ball and do what you can and work from there. As your body gets used to the exercises, it does get easier as long as you are mindful NOT to do too much too fast. Your back will let you know if you do! I started out just sitting on the ball and rocking back and forth, doing the pelvic tilts, leg rotations and the modified leg lifts and doing laps around the island in my kitchen while pushing my desk chair for when it got too hard and I needed to rest. Then I got to where I could walk down to the corner and then each day I went a little further til I got around the block. Over the past few months I've progressed and added more things. I time my home routine to 2 xfiles episodes on Netflix now so that's probably about 40 mins of exercise where on day 1 it was probably closer to 3 mins. I have some resistance bands and they have a door anchor I use to vary exercises. The lightest band is like the resistance of a rubber band really and they progress up and can be stacked to about 150lbs of resistance I think(nowhere near there myself). I started off on that smallest band and have moved up as my body tolerated. I'm up to 25lbs of resistance and feeling kinda proud of that! what you have to understand is that exercise is relative. If you are used to doing nothing, then merely doing something is exercise enough to produce a good weightloss. If you are used to doing more, you just have to go a bit beyond what you were doing and maybe add 5 more and that will be enough. I think we all have a habit of thinking we have to become gym rats by the time this thing is over and honestly, I don't think that will be me. I'm more of a compete against myself kind of person so I'm capable of doing that in the comfort of my home or on top of a mountain as opposed to a brick building where you look at others and feel you don't add up or aren't working equally as hard or harder than the dude on the treadmill who runs 3hrs a day on incline. Our bodies are our built in weight resistance until we lose the weight.

Mine was done at the bariatric center of excellence and I didn't have much choice in the matter. He definitely isn't someone I wanted to chat with or would seek help from on purpose. Just didn't mesh well, but it's just a routine thing and not that bad just to make sure you aren't a psychopath who is addicted to drugs or whatever so if you are worried, maybe just ask for a referral to see someone or if your office has an in-house psych, see them even if you never plan to see them ever again.

I wanted to, but the reality is, I have no clue where I might be next year size wise, so I bought clothes I want to hopefully wear next year for my daughter instead. She's 5'8 and wears a size 10/12 so my thought is, if I get to her size, I'll reclaim them all, and if I don't, then she's still a well dressed kiddo! Haha I did buy a dress and leggings a few sizes down from Old Navy with my oldNavy cash in anticipation of needing something to wear in the months post op. Felt weird buying clothes I know don't fit, but I'm sure it'll pay off when I wake up needing clothes one day and my current clothes and my "used to fits" don't fit enough to leave the house.

My NUT visits aren't covered at all under my plan. If I wanted to go to my PCP and get a referral to a covered one, I could have, but they would not be a bariatric surgery qualified NUT and would not know anything about preparing a person for bariatric surgery. They'd probably be more like the tyrant I had for my gestational diabetes "counseling"(more like saying your fat and stupid and that's why you are here so let's play plastic food and talk about how you are fat because you deserve it by being a fat pig who eats too much than actual help) so I chose to pay for my NUT out of pocket. The grief saved alone was worth the $150 per visit hour rate. It doesn't count toward my deductible either sadly. I've only accrued $45 towards my personal deductible, but my kids have been to doctors and specialists even a trip to the ER so I'm hoping we are near the family max deductible. Which is $2500. I wondered if we had to pay our part up front before the surgery too or if it would be a wave of bills for the next month afterwards.

What really gets me as I sit here thinking is why the hell was I not proud of the fact I walked an entire freaking orchard without getting tired or needing to sit down while pushing a stroller through ruts and crags and tall grass and carrying my huge basket of apples(don't trust kids to carry something so heavy and hubby had the other basket)?!? Why is my 1 fixation the fact that I went to crapville on my diet? Why is that my ender? Why am I so cruel to myself. Would I attack a friend like me who did the same or would I tell them how proud I am of how hard they worked? *sigh*. I guess I need to think about that awhile. Why do I mentally verbally abuse myself to the point I don't know how to go on after what a I perceive is this huge failure and how can I prevent from doing that in the future.

Hey everyone. I was just wondering how everyone bounces back after a day where their whole diet gets totally derailed. I am pre op and I am trying TRYING so hard to lose weight, but yesterday just obliterated me and now I'm feeling like it's hopeless. It was a great day, don't get me wrong. We went to the apple orchard and walked row after row picking beautiful apples in the country and then we went to have lunch and ended up eating chinese food. My achilles heel. It was that or Burger King or go hungry-missed breakfast too because it was a 2hr journey from where we live to get to the orchard to begin with and 7 kids and a husband who are all like herding cats and needed to be packed up and all the things we needed for the trip(diapers, wipes, vomit bags, hand sanitizer, paper towels, spare clothes, books to read on the way, the baby's toys and bottles, snacks for the kids, stroller, emergency allergy meds etc),and a time we had to be there by, so that's what I did! I totally set myself up to fail and did it. We got the lunch meals which as a little smaller and better than the dinner portions, and I fed as much as my toddler wanted to him before hand, but I still ate A LOT of sugar filled, deep fried, sesame chicken with fried rice and carbs stacked with sugar coated carbs and then as an extra stupid sign that I am in fact stupid, I had the leftovers from my kids' meals as dinner instead of the semi healthy meal I made the rest of the family. Even last night before bed the leftovers were still calling like a siren from the kitchen so I made sure to put in a full workout at 11pm last night before bed thinking that my face couldn't eat it if it was busy sucking air. I woke up today, stepped on the scale and found myself 4lbs up from yesterday! I know part of this is water retention from the high sodium content, because my feet are swollen and hurt, but I'm pretty sure some of those pounds are mine to keep. It's been all I can do to stay focused today and instead of saying "I EFFED UP AND IT'S ALL RUINED" to just stay the course and get back on track with what I was doing before. So what do people do when they Eff it all up in one day. How do you get the strength to say that today is a better day and I'm going back to my diet and I'm sticking to it and I won't be derailed again? I'm in total panic mode because my NUT appt is the 29th and I've got to lose those 4 pounds and at least a couple others to show I'm making progress to get approved for surgery and it took me a full 45 days to lose the weight I lost last time.

i thought the same thing in regards to my husband and kids. Originally I wanted to plan it after Christmas so I could have down time without effecting my husband's work schedule(he's off from mid Dec-Jan 2nd) and the kids would be on Christmas break and I wouldn't have to work school lessons around my ability to teach while recovering, but to my surprise, they have been really good about the whole process thus far. My husband actually came to me and told me he'd rather I go when I was finished with my 90 days and not try to wait it out til Dec. he's happy to take that time off. I also have been walking my kids through my steps and telling them what life will be like for me so they kind of understand and aren't scared. As for the actual appt, I know they can vary greatly, but mine was pretty much what I expected. Started off with a visit with the in house NUT and we talked about my eating habits and she wrote that all down and she figured up about how many calories I was eating in a given day for the insurance. After that, I was weighed and the doctor came in. He looked at my 2pages of diet history and we talked about the various procedures and he asked me what I thought I wanted. He doesn't push a procedure on patients, but will tell his opinion on your choice type thing. I told him I was thinking rny because I know I have a lot to lose and I'm a sugar fiend and I heard that is the best option for people like me. He agreed. If you don't know what would be best, then you get a run down of all the procedures and a recommendation based on what he thinks, but I kind of already knew what I needed before I even hit the seminar. They took a brief medical history of me and my parents/siblings/grandparents/blood aunts/ uncles and cousins and used that to piece together what looks like strong evidence of a gene that is most commonly found in people of my lineage and who settled in the parts of the U.S. Where my people all came from which also supports that theory. Talked about what the surgery would and would not do. Chose a starting goal for when we will consider the surgery having been successful. We talked about recovery time. We talked about the scars I already have from gall bladder surgery being a good roadmap and he'll try to use those scars and maybe just add one or two more. He let me ask questions. I ask weird stuff when I'm nervous so I tried not to ask anything. I already made myself known at the seminar with my oddball questions and he remembered me on sight so, yeah, good impression there! LOL but overall, it was nothing new or unexpected except at the end he said I'd be doing a 90 day program instead of the 6 months I had planned in my head so that made me kind of swoon a bit. I'm glad now that it was only 90 days. I'm so ready to get this over with. Then at the end they gave me forms to get my medical records from my doctor and that was that. It's not painful, at least for me it wasn't.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments. I realize I would never let my kids treat themselves as badly as I do myself and did over this one bad choice. The #%^@!! Scale is still up but I'm going to try hard to stay off it a few days and keep chugging my water and trying to stick to my plan. I think what upset me the most is that I KNOW that Chinese food is a trigger food for me and it's like I deliberately went in there knowing it was a bad idea. I just don't know why I do that to myself.

I think you might have a touch of body dysmorphia going on. It's obvious, looking at your pics, that you look AMAZING. I think sometimes, especially if you've been overweight your whole life like I have, that when people comment and say "you look small" you feel like they are just taunting or teasing because we've heard it so much. People just love to say things to hurt and it's to the point you don't really feel like you trust what they say, but yet, you can't trust what your head says either, because it's been beating you up longer than that. I honestly don't feel fat, for the most part, when I'm walking around. I know that sounds shocking to people that at nearly 400lbs I don't KNOW that I am, but I don't until I look in the mirror, or bump into something, or someone makes a rude comment. In that moment, all the weight is crashing down on top of me, but when I'm just me alone, I don't feel it, so when I do lose weight, I STILL don't feel it. People will say "oh you've lost weight" or "oh you look so great" but I don't feel any different. I still see and feel me from the same way I did before and it feels almost ingenuine I guess that they say that, because I don't see the difference. I'm sure this is going to be a long struggle, but I hope you can look at your pictures and see how well you have done and how amazing you are. Sometimes, I think it helps to see the person by maybe covering up your head with a post it note and just look at the body of that person in the pics. You'll clearly see how well she's done and then when you take the post it note off and see your face maybe you'll see that it is you! <3

I have Aetna as well, and am nearing the end of my 90 day multidisciplinary program. I really freaked out about the 90 day thing, because I kind of wanted the 6 months to fully wrap my head around the whole thing and find some support-so far it's just me, a semi supportive husband, my kids, 2 friends who live across the country and the wonderful people here at bariatric pal. The program itself has been pretty easy. The first step was meeting with the NUT for our appts. We have them at 45 day intervals. I've done 2 already and my 3rd is just around the corner on the 29th. Usually we talk a lot about what's going on and what to do to train myself for life after surgery like dedicated exercise, eating balanced and Protein first, not drinking with meals, etc. I've also completed and shocking passed my psych eval which for me, was the single worst part about the whole process. I was so stressed, but it worked out just fine. So don't stress it. We should have all our papers and stuff together for submittable on Oct. 5th and praying and hoping I can get approved fairly quickly. My doctor runs a small private practice in addition to working for kaiser permanente, so he doesn't have a long waiting list after approval, so it could be as soon as 10days after approval for me. I'm definitely ready although, I just wish now it would hurry up and get here. I can't imagine electively choosing to wait the 6 months over the 90 day program. I don't think it would really net you anything at all. If you have the choice, just go the 90 days.

i feel kind of lucky in that I've only had to go through a 90 day program because it's a center of excellence. My 90 days will be up at the end of this month and I'm getting solo excited and nervous and scared and happy and already been buying a few cute clothes for the trip down the size charts!

is the fruity one a water flavor enhancer? If it is, I'd totally try it!

Congratulations on your decision to pursue wls. That first step is definitely the hardest. It's like admitting you have a problem is the worst of it and you've already done that! Just try to make small positive changes along the way. For some, the wait between consult to surgery can be 6 months or more, so keep that in mind and take that time or whatever you have to just prepare yourself for success. Good luck!