judanna77

Good luck tomorrow Elle09! Soon we'll both be on the loser's bench! I'm savoring my last protein shake with a full-size stomach right now.

We all have such different tastes when it comes to protein shakes. The shakes one person loves, another will find disgusting. Personally, I love Healthsmart ChocoRite shakes. They have a bit less protein than other shakes, but still acceptable (24g for 150 calories and 3 net carbs), and I think they taste amazing. They are the only shake that I've found that doesn't have a gross "protein-y" smell and aftertaste, and they aren't as sickly sweet as some of the others I've tried. They have a bunch of flavors (the yellow cake batter flavor totally tastes just like cake batter, I love the caramel mocha flavor in the mornings, and one scoop banana cream mixed with one scoop peanut butter is divine!) They also aren't too expensive (they are $12.99 for an 11-serving container at netrition.com, so less than $1.20 per serving.)

That's crazy that we're back-to-back like that! I guess I'll get him warmed up for you It will totally be awesome to have a surgery buddy. I'm sure we'll run into each other walking the halls after surgery...

Elle09- I'm also scheduled for sleeve surgery on April 28 at Inova Fair Oaks! What time is your surgery? I have to be there at 10:15am for surgery around 1pm with Dr. Nain. Who is your surgeon? I've also found that it has been a good experience overall and that everyone I've dealt with has been really nice. I'm so excited (and a little nervous) for surgery. I can't wait to have it done with and to start the next phase of my journey. I'm on day 5 of the liquid diet- the first few days were rough, but yesterday and today have been much better. I never thought I would look forward to hot chicken broth so much

Whenever I start a low-carb diet, I get horrible leg cramps for a few weeks. If you google low-carb and leg cramps, you'll see that it is pretty common. Some reasons for the cramps are low potassium, low magnesium, or just plain dehydration (since you shed a lot of water at the start of a low-carb diet.) I find that I can't eliminate the cramps, but they are lessened when I make sure that I am well-hydrated and I take a potassium supplement.

Thanks for the CeraVe recommendation- I will definitely check it out! I'm always looking for a good moisturizer. My whole body tends to get dry and itchy during the winter. Yuck. I use "Vivite Replenish Hydrating Cream" on my face. It is amazing! I used to have super-dry, flaky skin on my face nothing seemed to touch. My dermatologist recommended the Vivite, and my face is now completely different- so smooth and healthy-looking. I can almost feel my skin cells sucking in the moisture when I put it on. The directions say to use it along with your regular moisturizer, but it is all I use on my face. It is a bit pricy (I get mine on Amazon for about 1/2 the price my dermatologist sells it for), but one little tub of it lasts me about 6 months.

I went to the seminar in Woodbridge a few weeks ago, and had my first appointment with the surgeon (Dr. Nain) and nutritionist (Elaine) a few days after the seminar. So far, I am very happy with the practice. I really liked Dr. Nain. He treated me like I had a brain of my own, and spent a lot of time answering my questions. (I wrote a longer thread about my first meeting with him in the 200+ pound forum if you want to check it out.) I especially liked his honesty about the arbitrariness of the pre- and post-op diet plans. I’ve read some horror stories about nutritionists on here, but Elaine was awesome! No playing with plastic portions with her. We went over my typical diet, and she had me tell her everything I had eaten the day before. We talked a lot about the psychological aspects of eating and of exercising. She was really easy to talk to. We set up all the remaining nutrition classes (they offer several classes per month, and you need to pick one of the dates for each month), and set up an appointment with the behaviorist/exercise consultant, which I have in a few weeks. All the appointments are in Woodbridge, but the surgery itself will be at Inova Fair Oaks in Fairfax. They gave me a print-out of all the expected fees. They explained the two-week pre-op diet, and that I would have to buy the Bariatric Advantage shakes from them. They recommend, but do not require, that you buy the Bariatric Advantage Vitamins from them as well. Since my insurance covers all the meetings with them, my out-of-pocket (once I meet my insurance deductible) will be about $300 for the Protein shakes and a $250 co-pay for the surgery.

I’m just at the start of my 6-month diet for insurance. I’m impatient to have the sleeve, but I’m trying to make the best of the wait and lose as much as I can before the surgery. I’m doing well on my low-carb diet, but exercise is a tough one for me. I’ve been trying to make myself do at least 15 minutes of activity daily (I know it isn’t much, but I’ve been sedentary for so long that 15 minutes is all I can do.) I have some chair exercises that my NUT gave to me, but I’d like to start getting out of the chair and using more of my body. I’ve found that I am ok following along with exercise videos on YouTube for 10-15 minutes, but I often have to modify the exercises into ones that I can do. Does anyone have any favorite exercise videos that they like to use, especially ones that might be better for someone at a higher weight?

Sorry for how long this is- I know that I always appreciate reading detailed posts about the process, so I’m hoping other will find it helpful. I’m just starting the process of getting a VSG. I’ve thought about WLS for a long time, but have always been scared off because of the possible complications. I’m not sure what exactly changed, but, about three weeks ago, I was driving to work and the thought of getting the surgery popped into my head and suddenly I knew it was what I needed to do. Looking at the hard road ahead, I wish I had started this journey earlier in life (I’m 37), but I know I wasn’t ready for it until now. I’m in the DC area, and there are lots of hospitals and surgeons to choose from. I finally settled on Inova Fair Oaks, which is a Bariatric Center of Excellence, has great stats, and has an up-to-date website which let me register for the seminar online. (GWU never contacted me after I filled out their form. Other hospitals had outdated calendars on their websites, or no way to register online, or the websites themselves were unfinished, which I felt didn’t bode well for their programs.) I went to a seminar about two weeks ago, which was mostly basic stuff that I already knew. I had my first visit with the surgeon a few days after the seminar. The surgeon, Rajev Nain, was the same surgeon who did the seminar. He seemed a bit stiff at first, but after a while he seemed to get more comfortable and I felt like we had a good connection. He definitely didn’t come across as the a**hole surgeon stereotype you hear so much about. We first talked about my basic health history, medications, that sort of thing. I don’t have many co-morbidities yet- just hypertension and edema in my left leg. We talked about the various surgeries, and he was fine with me getting the VSG, he didn’t push for the RNY. I’m 5’1” and 355lbs. He said that he could get me to around 205 lbs with the sleeve. He was clearly just basing that on the average amount of excess weight lost with the sleeve, not anything specific to me. I would be overjoyed with 205, even though that would still leave me 100 lbs over my ideal weight. However, I also know that each individual is different, and I feel like I have it in me to go lower. I may not make it to 105, but I think I am determined enough to get myself in the mid-100s. I asked him about his experience- he’s done several hundred VSGs, and even more RNYs. He also has lots of experience with other GI surgeries. While I would have liked him to have done thousands instead of hundreds of VSGs, it is still enough that I feel safe with him. I asked about major complications, and he said that <1% of his VSG patients had had major complications. He has had no mortalities with the VSG, and one mortality with the RNY (the patient died of a pulmonary embolism the day after surgery, even though she was on blood thinners and had had her legs compressed during surgery.) Having lurked on this board for a while, the variance in different surgeons’ pre-op and post-op diet instructions has been a bit puzzling to me, and the materials from the presentation I attended were very authoritative. I will happily follow rules if I understand the reasoning behind them, but I tend to do my own research and come up with my own rules for myself if I feel like the rules I am given aren’t well supported. I was nervous to do it (because of that whole surgeon stereotype), but I told this to my surgeon, noted that his post-op diet (2 weeks Clear liquids, 2 weeks full liquids, 2 weeks purees, 2 weeks mushed-up real food, then finally real food 8 weeks after surgery) was one of the more conservative ones that I had seen, and I asked him what research had gone into making it. He laughed at that, and said that the priority for him and the other surgeons in the group was to have consistent instructions that everyone involved in the practice could refer to, so they just flipped a coin when making them. He said that the part he cared about was that he didn’t want patients going to full liquids until after he examined them at the first post-op appointment. Other than that, I could work with the NUT to come up with a post-op diet plan that worked for me. I then asked him about the 2-week pre-op liquid diet. The pre-op diet that he requires is 900 calories of Protein shakes a day. I told him that I totally understood the reason for the diet (to shrink the liver to make surgery safer), but that I didn’t understand why it had to be all liquid. Why not just 900 calories of low-carb food per day? Again, he laughed and said that there was nothing magical about the liquid part of it, it was just easier for people to stick to the diet when they didn’t have a choice about what to eat. He said that he was fine with me subbing low-carb, high-protein food into the pre-op diet, as long as the NUT approved my substitutions. He seemed to get a kick out of me and my questions. He said he could tell that I took this very seriously and had done my research. I thanked him for not treating me like an idiot, and not having a “do what I say because I am the surgeon” attitude. I have to do 6 months of “nutrition classes” to satisfy my insurance requirements, so surgery won’t be until next spring some time. I’m disappointed to have to wait so long, but I am trying to make the best of the time by really making sure I am ready for this change, and by trying to lose as much weight as I can before the surgery. I started myself on a low-carb diet of my own design, and am doing great on it so far. I’ve done low-carb diets before, and it has always been a struggle with craving carbs while on them, but I haven’t had a carb-craving yet on this one. I’ve cut out all grazing and it has helped immensely. I’m eating 1300-1500 calories a day and not feeling hungry. I know it will get harder, but right now, I’m feeling pretty good about myself.