Sajijoma

Thank you all! It really has been an amazing week for me, discovering I am no longer "plus sized". For all of you still waiting for that day, it will come and I look forward to reading your posts as well. I feel energized and jazzed to keep up the fight knowing I have conquered one of my biggest demons now. My next one will be getting to onederland!

For me it's getting used to all the people who want to know how much I weighed before, how much I've lost, what size I wear which half the time I don't even know, or wanting to see before pictures and making comments like "wow look how huge you were" or "you are so tiny now" and I don't feel tiny. I still feel huge and it feels like they are still ridiculing me for my weight even though that's not my weight anymore. I have to take lots of pictures to be sure that I am progressing because it's hard to see when I look in the mirror. When I hold the pic in my hand, it's obvious that changes have happened, but my mind still plays tricks in the mirror.

@@gowalking thank you! ❤️your signature really does say it all. Nothing tastes as good as normal feels for sure! It's an amazing feeling and I never thought I'd get here. I can't wait to see what my end result will be! [emoji4]

It is cut temporarily but not forever. From my experience though at 10 months out from RNY, hunger is a very different animal. I no longer get that gnawing at my bones hunger. It's more like "I should eat" and so I do.

I was lucky I guess in that my gall bladder had gone bad during my first pregnancy so I went in without one, but my surgeon says he has seen so many people need to come back for gall bladder surgery that he opts to take it out as part of the procedure for sleeve and RNY patients.

I love all the options. I just have to watch myself because I want to keep shopping and looking beautiful in new clothes, but realistically I know I won't get much use of them because I'm still losing and go through a size every 2 months or so. It can be daunting. I also have had to learn that just because one pair of pants fit doesn't mean I have to buy every color or wash because there are so many more options now! [emoji4]

I didn't use a binder of any kind after my RNY. What I did use and I feel made the best decision for me was bike shorts. It gave just the right amount of compression to hold everything in place and I didn't have to spend $35 on something with no further use. The shorts I used for exercise until they fell off so I got my money's worth out of them.

I did things ass backwards because that's my style. LOL first I sought out the surgeon Google search, word of mouth, location to home, and everything I could find on this surgeon to see if he was a safe bet and then I looked to see if my insurance covered it. I have Aetna so I was able to look up my benefits online and see what all was covered and thankfully it was. They also fast tracked me to a 90 day prep for surgery program because I was well over 40 BMI even though I had no known co morbidities and because I went to a Center of Excellence, I only paid 10% of the cost instead of the standard 20% I would normally have paid. I made the reservation for the seminar and went in and got all my questions answered and really by the end of that night I had scheduled my first nutritionist visit and first surgeon visit because I knew it was the right thing for me. After that, I had 4 visits total with the nutritionist, 1 psych eval with the in house psych, and 2 visits with the surgeon over the 90 days and then it went to insurance and was approved within 3 days and I had surgery a week later. It all happened so fast I didn't have time to panic or obsess about anything, which worked out just great.

My children were a big factor. I couldn't be the mom I wanted to be for them and I felt like I was really just ruining their childhood because they were having to help take care of me and take on jobs I couldn't do anymore because of my weight. I also nearly lost the last 2 and myself in childbirth because of my weight and the strain the weight and pregnancy put on my heart. I wanted better for them. I wanted them to have a full time mom and one that could play with them and inspire them so that they didn't end up on the same path I had been on. Almost 10 months later, my kids are definitely reaping the benefits of better health and a mom who is more involved in their lives.

I didn't have a lot of questions for my surgeon at my first appt because I had gotten them all answered at the seminar. There were 3 of us there that night so we had a chance to ask all sorts of questions that perhaps would be lost to a bigger group. I asked him about how many patients he had lost either during the procedure or the following 6 months. I asked why they leave the stomach that was detached from the pouch in. I asked what the long term prognosis for keeping the weight off was, the highest weight he would operate on(I was 429lbs at that point and afraid I was too big to get the operation locally). I asked about the straw thing and just anything that came to mind. You need to walk into this knowing all the risks and benefits and intricate details you wonder about because this will be a huge adjustment to your life and you need to make your decision based on facts and not fantasy-not that I think you are, but wow there were people in our pre op surgery class eating doughnuts and drinking soda and thinking they would be able to return to that "and just eat less total" after surgery and arguing with the nutritionist and she told them they absolutely could not drink soda or expect to eat doughnuts without consequences. I chose the RNY. I did ask my surgeon for his opinion and he told me either would be a good choice for me, but with my starting weight as high as it was, that I would get the maximum benefit from RNY as the fact I had a history of reflux meant that I wouldn't be needing a second op later to convert to RNY should it become worse-as it often does with the sleeve. I knew I only wanted to do it once and do it to the best of my ability. Something interesting he said in chatting had me knowing RNY was better for me was that cancer runs in my family. If you get esophageal cancer-as is common with reflux patients like I was, they can use the lining of the old stomach to repair and rebuild your esophagus down the road. If you have the sleeve, the extra stomach is removed and with it your best chance for a solid repair that wouldn't be easily rejected since it's part of your own body. To me that is important. Good luck at your appointment. It really for me was the best decision of my life.

It's common. I started out at 429lb and a sw of 386lbs and I shivered and shook my way through to where I am. I notice even now as I lose, I get chills still. Invest in pretty sweaters and jackets especially if you are in the upper half of the world because winter is coming and you are gonna shake and shiver those pounds right off!

Thank you all so much. It was such an emotional day and one I want all the newbies and those thinking about surgery to definitely see. I NEVER thought I'd be in regular sizes but especially not a size 12. I was just hoping to hit 24 and be able to shop in the plus section of stores instead of online only when I first started my journey. I knew the surgery did great for others, but I was used to being disappointed in my own progress on every diet I'd been on that I tried not to hope for much. Please know and understand, you CAN hope for it, because as long as you stick with your program and exercise and do what you are suppose to do, it will happen. You will have your crying in the dressing room day too!(or if you are a guy that cough in the dressing room and maybe even a runny eye probably caused by being allergic to clothes shopping LOL).

you describe it so well! my motto is if the button can be buttoned and the zipper zipped and no eyes pop out of socket, I'd buy them because in a week or two they will be falling off. Haha

Your turn will come! I never really thought I'd be there. I mean, I was 429lbs to start and it seemed so unattainable. I had kind of convinced myself that either I was wearing brands that ran big to be in an 18, or someone had switched out labels or something. LOL it was quit the revelation to know that the store I went to try on tends to run smaller than some of the others and I STILL got them babies on.

For me, when I look in the mirror, I still see my former self or rather the dillusion of my former self. I had no clue how exactly heavy I was, but I knew I was heavy. So now when I look in the mirror, I still see that much heavier person, but if I take a pic and look at it, I can clearly see the difference. I've lost nearly 180lbs at this point. You would think I'd be able to physically see the difference with my own eyes, but I can't. My advice is to just keep taking pics and lots of them. Not only is it a great testament to how far you've come, but it helps with the whole body dismorphia thing.

My NUT told me fruit doesn't cause dumping as a rule because fruit sugar is fructose and fructose is absorbed further down the intestinal tract than refined sugars or sugar alcohols even. That being said, I am 8 months out and have eaten grapes, watermelon, apples, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, peaches, clementines, nectarines, pineapple, kiwi, cantaloupe, and honey dew melon all without any problems. [emoji4]

I've been using the patches to supplement my Bariatric advantage multi and calcium chews because my iron and calcium/D3 were both low. Also have been using the glucosamine/chondroitin patch and the anti aging patch because I got a better deal buying a set so I thought, eh what the heck. I got my labs back and have seen a remarked improvement in my deficiencies so far after a month of use.