formerfatguy

Glad to hear the surgery went well.

Dub, best of luck with your surgery. I think you will be happy with your choice to go with sleeve rather than bypass. I had almost no problems at all in recovery from the surgery, and no problems with dumping or any of the other wonderful benefits from bypass. To me, the thought of bypass was just too much. I had enough problems wrapping my mind around the sleeve procedure. I almost backed out of the surgery at the last minute. In hindsight, that would have been the biggest mistake I ever made, and I've made some doozeys. On the topic of incision scarring that came up, to the best of my memory I had five incisions, with the largest being about an inch and a half long. None of them left any visible scars. Then, about six months after my sleeve surgery, I developed a giant abscess on my abdomen (not related to the bariatric surgery in any way) that had to be surgically removed. That left a giant, ugly scar. That's just the way my luck goes.

I was also lucky, my time from first consultation with my surgeon to surgery date was 93 days. I was also a little concerned that things were going to fast, but in hindsight it was just less time for me to talk myself out of it. You'll do great!

You won't regret your decision to revise to the sleeve. My wife initially had Lap-Band. She lost a lot of weight, but was totally miserable the entire time. When I decided to have surgery, I definitely didn't want the band, I went with sleeve. I had a very positive experience, almost no problems. When my wife's band eventually failed, she went with the sleeve and has had very few problems since. She also lost a lot more weight.

I don't have any issues with beer, I'd just recommend you drink it slowly. I also really like hard ciders, many of them aren't as heavily carbonated as beer. Be ready to be a cheap date. One drink makes me very mellow these days, and I'm still 240. Doesn't make logical sense, but there it is.

My wife and I definitely spend less. We buy a lot of packaged meals meant for two and make three meals for both of us out of them. Same for restaurants, we can usually order an entree split it, and take enough leftover home for another meal for both of us.

Hi, you can call me Uncle Buck, and I'm a fat guy. The scales really don't support that statement these days, thus my screen name. However, once a fat guy, always a fat guy. I'm a bit more than two year out from surgery. I came within 15 pounds of my goal weight, which is good news-bad news. I'm content where I am, but I'd really like to get that last 15 pounds off to say I made it. To do that, I need to get my head back in the right place, which is why I'm here. I was born a dirt poor fat guy. Men in my family fall into one of two categories: skinny as a rail or ginormous. I was one of the genetic lottery winners who fell into the ginormous category. I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't fat. There have a been few times when I was able to lower the tonnage a bit, but it never lasted. Sound familiar to anyone? I'm probably also not telling anyone any secrets by saying that fat kids aren't generally treated very well by the little monsters known as children. I was not the exception to that rule. My childhood could not be called enjoyable. The best I can say about it is that it ended. I did learn a couple of fairly valuable lessons. The first was that if one gives a damn about what others think of them, it makes for a long childhood. I got over that. I also came to the realization that there was a lot bigger world than the podunk town where I grew up, I just needed to get there. Finally,I learned that I don't like kids and certainly didn't want any of my own. Little quasi-clones of me running around? The horror, the horror! I mentioned earlier that I didn't exactly hit the genetic lottery in the gravity category. I did do fairly well in the brains category. Life got better for while when I hit college. I coasted through four years to my first bachelor's degree. I graduated out of the largest college at a pretty big school. Order of walking was by ranking, and I was the fifth out of about 500 people of walked that day. Not too shabby. However, I also found that I still didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. At that point I made the biggest mistake of my life: I decided to go to law school. Not to say that I didn't do well there. The genetic brains came in handy again, at least on paper. I graduated in the top 10 percent of a somewhat prestigious state school. However, I didn't really consider the reality that intelligence and ability usually don't mean squat, particularly in a highly competitive field. I didn't have any of the big three going for me: lots of money and high level contacts, a father/grandfather/uncle with a legal practice that I could move into, and I wasn't a hot female. About that time I started going through a process which became a recurring theme: everything looks good until the interviewer sees me, and at that point I may as well just leave. So I found myself with student loan debt that rivaled the trade deficit and no career prospects (remember the dirt poor bit from earlier?) I chased a legal career for about 8 years with no success whatsoever. I don't want to sound as though I'm whining, but I think the primary reason for that was my weight. Okay maybe I'm whining, this is my spiel, I'm allowed. I had to come to grips with the fact that my window of opportunity had closed, and I had to come up with plan B. I remembered good advice I read once: if you want to get rich, do something that has to be done and no one else wants to do. I cast about for that job, and came across the occupational health and safety racket. Job that is needed: check. Job no one wants to do: check. Once can make pretty good money at it: check. Sign me up. A couple of years pursuing college degree number three in safety, and I actually found a job where they wanted me and didn't seem to care about my weight. Score! Another unexpected consequence of changing my career was meeting my wife. I had given up on the concept of female congress, as a rule they don't care for ginormous guys. My wife didn't mind, and she actually got my sense of humor. Life was definitely looking up. As most do, I wanted to advance my career. I did all the usual stuff, completed professional certifications, got college degree number four, a masters, yada yada yada. All I need now to bat the academic cycle is a PhD. Then that problematic interview game started again. Straight back to having outstanding phone interviews, and just watching the consternation on their faces when they actually saw me. You'd think I had a booger on my face or something. This is where weight loss surgery comes in. I knew about it of course, but my basic idea was not just no, but hell no. I had been a bit of a curiosity in that I hadn't had any serious health problems associated with the ginormousness. However, my wife couldn't say that. She had weight loss surgery, and did fantastic. About the time she was at the peak of her fantasticness, I poured my copious arse into a plane seat and flew to yet another interview, to know within five minutes that I didn't have a hot dog's chance at a fat guys' convention of getting that job. I decided enough was enough and scheduled my initial consultation with my bariatric doc. There's really not much to say about the process. The insurance company approved immediately, my surgery happened 90 days after my initial visit. The surgery went great, no complications. I was back to work in a week. The weight came off exactly as it was supposed to. I dropped about 140 in a year. One thing I did find interesting was that fact that my doc told me my stomach was 50 percent longer than an average, non-ginormous person. I don't want to use that as an excuse, but it did make feel a little bit less like an unmotivated slug. I decided to try the job market again. If nothing else, it's a great way to see the inside of airports and meet new and boring people. Three job interviews. Three job offers. I talked my wife into letting me take number three. The good news: I was finally making the money I should have been making 15 years ago. The bad news: people don't pay you a lot of money for taking over programs with no problems and in which everything is running smoothly. My stress level over the last year and a half has been quite high. Stress is not good for trying to get the last 15 pounds off. I don't think my diet could have been a lot worse. Every day I get on the scales expecting the weight to be coming back. Every day it stays right around 240. Having only 15 percent of a stomach can be a very good thing. I've had to remind myself that my life is not going to get less stressful, and the surgery isn't going to let me get away with being a sluggard for long. It's time to get back to business. Thus, this process of getting my head in the right place. As an aside, you remember when I said my family produces either stick men or ginormousness? One of the reasons I never wanted children was an assumption that they would be ginormous like dad. Thus, me taking a dip in the gene pool was not a good idea. My brother was one of the stick figures. One of my nephews hit the ginormous gene lottery. People assume that he's my get. Remember my comment about the horror? He's 14 and already approaching 300. I really wish I could spare him the years that my weight cost me. At the same time, I guess he needs to find his own path. I suppose the cycle continues. I really didn't plan on posting this, I just wanted to spew it out and then delete it. On second thought, I think I will post it. Anyone who has made it through to the end of this diatribe, my hat is tipped to you.

I was fortunate, I hadn't had any serious health problems. I hated not being able to buy clothes anywhere, but I could live with that. I pretty much didn't give a flip about what other people thought about me in general. The final straw was getting absolutely fed up with being a failure in every career endeavor and knowing that it was 90 percent my weight that caused it. I was fed up with seeing people who weren't as capable or accomplished as I move ahead of me time after time. I have to say it worked, I've had more career success in the two years since I had surgery than I ever had before.