Jean McMillan

Nana, you and I have had our differences in the past. I was thinking along the same lines as you, but I couldn't say it any better than you did. You go, girl!

Oh, and one more thing. You do yourself no favors by comparing yourself to others. The person who lost 16 instead of 8 lbs in the first 4 weeks may very well be a lot heavier than you are, or have greater muscle mass, or be a man (men lose faster), or have a dozen other idiosyncrasies to make that person different from you. So, try to look at the successful people here for inspiration, not as a way to make yourself feel bad.

So, let me get this straight. In 4 weeks you've lost 8 lbs. That works out to 2 lbs/week. Since average weight loss with the band is 1-2 lbs a week (and that's an AVERAGE, remember, including people who lost a lot faster and some who lost nothing), you're actually doing very well. And you haven't even had a fill yet. Speaking of fills...I have to remind you that getting a fill won't turn your band's weight loss mechanism on like you turn a faucet on. It will just begin to help you with appetite and hunger, making your job easier in the long run. So, hang in there. You're doing fine.

Well said!

When I saw the title of your post, I immediately flashed back to the horrendous mess we had when my husband blew up our Waring blender while making gazpacho soup. And that reminded me of the time when my ex-husband blew up a pressure cooker full of chili (have you ever tried to clean beans out of acoustical tile?). And then I came back to reality, and was glad to hear that you like your new Ninja. At the rate we go through kitchen appliances at our house, we'll be needing a new blender any minute now, and I'd rather follow a real person's advice than try to evaluate the manufacturer's sales pitch.

I've heard of ports located under the left breast, but not above it. Even when I was obese, I didn't have a lot of extra flesh in the neighborhood of my chest, and 114 lbs later, even a low-profile port in that location would make me look like a circus freak. My part time job is doing bra fits at JCPenney and I've encountered quite a few women with chemo ports in that general vicinity. They were very obvious (and of course, life-saving) and uncomfortable for those women. But...avoiding port flips, and (perhaps) easier access for fills is a good thing. I look forward to hearing what else your surgeon has to say about it.

Well, that's actually good news. Treating a band that's too tight or a stomach or esophagus that are dilated can be lengthy & expensive. Most of us here know just how wonderful slider foods taste, and being a new mom makes meal planning a challenge, but I suspect that you know what you need to do once you do the 5-day thing. And if you don't, look back to the eating plan you were given as a new post-op. One wonderful thing about the band is that you can start over at any time!

When you started your bariatric surgery journey, did you realize how much work would be involved at every stage of the trip down the Bandwagon trail? As much as you might wish otherwise, the work that produces weight loss success and lifetime maintenance is hard, especially when you’re already worn out from health problems and from lugging all that excess weight around and from one diet failure after another. You have bariatric surgery hoping that it will make weight loss easier. What’s the point of surgery if you have to take on this tough job and never retire from it? THE WORK ETHIC I don’t hear the term “Protestant work ethic” used much these days, but I heard it a lot while growing up in the 1950’s & 1960’s in a Protestant home with hard-working parents. The Cliffs Notes version of the phrase is this: you must demonstrate your deservingness for salvation through hard work and frugality. That’s a big job, performed not only for the God who can save you but also fellow humans who play God by judging your performance. Religious beliefs aside, my personal belief is that hard work benefits the individual as well as the society in which she or he functions. The same principle applies to the work ethic of life after weight loss surgery. IS BAND SUCCESS TOO HARD? Every WLS patient is understandably irritated when a clueless acquaintance declares that “weight loss surgery is taking the easy way out”, but an opposite belief floats around in the bariatric community: that weight loss with the adjustable gastric band takes too much work. So which is it? Too easy, or too hard? Does doing something hard automatically earn you ethical or moral brownie points? Does doing something easy automatically brand you as lazy? I agree that success with the adjustable gastric band takes a lot of work, and I’m not convinced that success with other bariatric procedures is much easier, since regardless of what happens in the operating room, we’re all dealing with the same chronic and incurable disease – obesity. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that a team of scientists in Switzerland (historically a neutral country, even when war was being waged everywhere else in Europe) has studied this matter and can somehow prove that success with the band is indeed harder than any other procedure. For the sake of this discussion, let’s say that band success is hard. It’s hard, sure, but is it too hard? THE VALUE OF WORK I don’t ever want to think I’m afraid of hard work. Nor do I want to believe that my attitude makes me morally superior to someone else, but it seems to me that there is something intrinsically good about hard work. How else can I keep myself moving forward, toward a better (and perhaps easier) life? I can’t rely on good luck to make my journey easier. Raffle prizes and lottery tickets aren’t going to pay the bills and keep (healthy) food on the table. The thorough pre- and post-op education I received from my bariatric surgeon and his staff made it clear to me that I was going to have to work hard, and make some hard lifestyle changes, in order to succeed with my band. I knew from the outset that I was taking on a big job. I was going to have to learn a lot, take responsibility for my health, and do some things I’d really rather not (like exercise) in order to make my band surgery a success. I realize that may make me sound like an insufferable paragon of virtue, so let me add an important and seemingly contradictory statement about myself: the reason I chose to have bariatric surgery was that losing weight “on my own” had been so difficult. I most certainly wanted to take the easier path to a healthy weight. I had spent 30 years messing around with weight loss “the hard way”, and not only was it hard, it was spectacularly unsuccessful. I was ready for a different, “easier,” and longer-lasting approach. DIVISION OF LABOR There’s nothing wrong with avoiding some hard work. My personal resources of time, energy, and knowledge are tremendous but not infinite, so in order to stay healthy and sane, I have to prioritize tasks and spend my resources on them wisely. In my family – the small community created by my husband, 10 rescue dogs, and 3 rescue cats – we also prioritize, so that the person assigned to each task has the better chance of doing it properly and finishing it. This is why I do not attempt to change the oil in my car, my husband does not attempt to sew draperies, and our dogs are in charge of the audio portion of our security alert system (for a demonstration of that, get yourself to Memphis, then drive north until you hear barking). But…there’s always a “but”…the purpose of weight loss surgery is to improve your health and your life. Why should someone else – your surgeon, your nutritionist, your personal trainer, your spouse or your hamster – be in charge of something that essentially belongs to you? Of course you need help from all those people (or critters), but if you’re a mentally competent adult, shouldn’t you be the team captain who keeps everyone focused on winning the game? If you don’t want to be the captain, is that because you secretly want an excuse or a scapegoat when and if you lose the game? That kind of thinking – a basic assumption that you’re going to fail no matter what – is such a huge issue that I’ll have to save it for another article. For now, please just nod your head and smile when I tell you that you can win at weight loss. PAIN & SUFFERING A corollary of the “I’ve suffered too much from obesity” view is “therefore I deserve to lose weight without any suffering at all.” I don’t happen to believe that I deserve to have every wish of mine granted, be it weight loss, fame, fortune, or naturally curly hair, without any exertion on my part, just because I’ve suffered, or even just because I’m alive. I find it satisfying to work for something I want or need, to earn it myself and thank myself for it. On the other hand, I don’t mean that I think we must all suffer in the sense of acute or chronic physical pain or inconvenience that entirely disrupts our lives. I mean instead that long-term weight loss success is going to require us to take a few side trips out of our comfort zones. You know the comfort zone, don’t you? At its center is your favorite armchair, a month’s supply of Reese’s peanut butter cups on the table beside you and the TV remote in your hand. So our WLS success may involve an excursion into the Unknown. For example, if we’ve never tried lifting weights, we don’t know how difficult or painful that might be, but if we don’t give it a try, we’ll never know and never benefit from doing it. There’s a 50/50 chance that we might actually like it. And sooner or later, we’re going to have to tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty, confusion, impatience, frustration, inconvenience, and/or disappointment. That kind of discomfort rarely lasts forever, though. I can testify that learning how to parallel park a car was not a fun experience and that I flunked my first driver’s test because of my parking ineptitude, but a year or so later, I had forgotten how hard it was and parked my car in whatever type of (legal) parking spot I wanted with skill that by then I took for granted. Here’s another example: the first time I participate in a step aerobics class, I fell off the step twice and had to wonder if I was ever going to get the hang of it, never mind enjoy it. Since I was too proud to give up and walk out while the rest of the class sneered at my failure, I stuck it out to the end of class, at which point it seemed vaguely possible that I might do better if I tried it at least one more time. So I went back to another class, and another one, and eventually found myself hooked on it. Now it isn’t just exercise (work), it’s fun (play). If you had snatched the Reese’s peanut butter cup out of my pre-op hand and told me to get my fat butt over to the gym for a step aerobics class, I would have laughed out loud. BUT WHAT IF? But what if your journey on the Bandwagon stalls, or your wagon rolls off a cliff, despite all your effort? What-ifs and coulda-shouldas aren’t going to do much to fix that wagon’s broken wheel, so what can you do to get yourself moving again? I highly recommend a LBT article (by me, of course) entitled, “When Your Bandwagon Stalls.” The article won’t solve all your problems, but it may help you look at them in a new and more effective way. After that, the hard work (of course) is up to you. Click here to check it out: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/page/index.html/_/plateaus-and-regain/when-your-bandwagon-stalls-r130 Unfortunately, hard work is not absolutely, positively guaranteed to produce success, but I’m convinced that it does improve your chances of success. It will lead you out of the desert of failure and into a jungle where every exotic flower smells of success. It will increase your knowledge and wisdom so that when the time comes to evaluate, regroup, and choose a new path if necessary, you can make a good decision. Decision making will be the topic of a future article, so stay tuned!

Have you been eating sliders because eating solid food is too difficult? Or because sliders taste better? If eating solid food is difficult, I think you should start saving up for a visit to your surgeon. The 5-day pouch test was developed for gastric bypass patients, and I doubt that it's going change the size of anyone's pouch. But, it can help divorce you from the poor food choices you've been making. Here's a link to the website of the 5-day pouch test author, who by the way is not a medical professional or dietitian. http://www.5daypouchtest.com/plan/theplan.html The detailed pouch test manual is $22.95. You can buy it here: http://www.livingafterwls.com/General_Store/General_Store/books.html Good luck! Jean

Congrats on the start of your WLS journey, and I'm glad you enjoyed the article. Sounds like you have a great attitude, and that's at least half the battle!

That happened to me after my sleeve surgery. My theory is that my calorie intake was so reduced that my body was in ketosis, and that can cause mouth and body odor and a strange taste in the mouth. So unless you have a fever or your incisions aren't healing or you have a rash somewhere, you're probably OK. My bad smell went away after a week or so.

Could be related to your surgery, which is a kind of trauma to your whole body. It could also be related to weight loss, because as fat cells shrink, they release estrogen into your system, and that can mess with menstruation and moods. If I were you, I'd do a pregnancy test, though...

I hate that too. It helps to wear a bandana around my head, Springsteen-style. Not a great look for me, but fortunately, Shape magazine never comes to my fitness studio searching for cover girls!

Oooohh! Don't get me started on the instant gratification thing! Makes me craz(ier)!

As much as you might wish otherwise, the work that produces weight loss success and lifetime maintenance is hard, especially when you’re already worn out from health problems and from lugging all that excess weight around and from one diet failure after another. You have bariatric surgery hoping that it will make weight loss easier. What’s the point of surgery if you have to take on this tough job and never retire from it? THE WORK ETHIC I don’t hear the term “Protestant work ethic” used much these days, but I heard it a lot while growing up in the 1950’s & 1960’s in a Protestant home with hard-working parents. The Cliffs Notes version of the phrase is this: you must demonstrate your deservingness for salvation through hard work and frugality. That’s a big job, performed not only for the God who can save you but also fellow humans who play God by judging your performance. Religious beliefs aside, my personal belief is that hard work benefits the individual as well as the society in which she or he functions. The same principle applies to the work ethic of life after weight loss surgery. IS BAND SUCCESS TOO HARD? Every WLS patient is understandably irritated when a clueless acquaintance declares that “weight loss surgery is taking the easy way out”, but an opposite belief floats around in the bariatric community: that weight loss with the adjustable gastric band takes too much work. So which is it? Too easy, or too hard? Does doing something hard automatically earn you ethical or moral brownie points? Does doing something easy automatically brand you as lazy? I agree that success with the adjustable gastric band takes a lot of work, and I’m not convinced that success with other bariatric procedures is much easier, since regardless of what happens in the operating room, we’re all dealing with the same chronic and incurable disease – obesity. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that a team of scientists in Switzerland (historically a neutral country, even when war was being waged everywhere else in Europe) has studied this matter and can somehow prove that success with the band is indeed harder than any other procedure. For the sake of this discussion, let’s say that band success is hard. It’s hard, sure, but is it too hard? THE VALUE OF WORK I don’t ever want to think I’m afraid of hard work. Nor do I want to believe that my attitude makes me morally superior to someone else, but it seems to me that there is something intrinsically good about hard work. How else can I keep myself moving forward, toward a better (and perhaps easier) life? I can’t rely on good luck to make my journey easier. Raffle prizes and lottery tickets aren’t going to pay the bills and keep (healthy) food on the table. The thorough pre- and post-op education I received from my bariatric surgeon and his staff made it clear to me that I was going to have to work hard, and make some hard lifestyle changes, in order to succeed with my band. I knew from the outset that I was taking on a big job. I was going to have to learn a lot, take responsibility for my health, and do some things I’d really rather not (like exercise) in order to make my band surgery a success. I realize that may make me sound like an insufferable paragon of virtue, so let me add an important and seemingly contradictory statement about myself: the reason I chose to have bariatric surgery was that losing weight “on my own” had been so difficult. I most certainly wanted to take the easier path to a healthy weight. I had spent 30 years messing around with weight loss “the hard way”, and not only was it hard, it was spectacularly unsuccessful. I was ready for a different, “easier,” and longer-lasting approach. DIVISION OF LABOR There’s nothing wrong with avoiding some hard work. My personal resources of time, energy, and knowledge are tremendous but not infinite, so in order to stay healthy and sane, I have to prioritize tasks and spend my resources on them wisely. In my family – the small community created by my husband, 10 rescue dogs, and 3 rescue cats – we also prioritize, so that the person assigned to each task has the better chance of doing it properly and finishing it. This is why I do not attempt to change the oil in my car, my husband does not attempt to sew draperies, and our dogs are in charge of the audio portion of our security alert system (for a demonstration of that, get yourself to Memphis, then drive north until you hear barking). But…there’s always a “but”…the purpose of weight loss surgery is to improve your health and your life. Why should someone else – your surgeon, your nutritionist, your personal trainer, your spouse or your hamster – be in charge of something that essentially belongs to you? Of course you need help from all those people (or critters), but if you’re a mentally competent adult, shouldn’t you be the team captain who keeps everyone focused on winning the game? If you don’t want to be the captain, is that because you secretly want an excuse or a scapegoat when and if you lose the game? That kind of thinking – a basic assumption that you’re going to fail no matter what – is such a huge issue that I’ll have to save it for another article. For now, please just nod your head and smile when I tell you that you can win at weight loss. PAIN & SUFFERING A corollary of the “I’ve suffered too much from obesity” view is “therefore I deserve to lose weight without any suffering at all.” I don’t happen to believe that I deserve to have every wish of mine granted, be it weight loss, fame, fortune, or naturally curly hair, without any exertion on my part, just because I’ve suffered, or even just because I’m alive. I find it satisfying to work for something I want or need, to earn it myself and thank myself for it. On the other hand, I don’t mean that I think we must all suffer in the sense of acute or chronic physical pain or inconvenience that entirely disrupts our lives. I mean instead that long-term weight loss success is going to require us to take a few side trips out of our comfort zones. You know the comfort zone, don’t you? At its center is your favorite armchair, a month’s supply of Reese’s peanut butter cups on the table beside you and the TV remote in your hand. So our WLS success may involve an excursion into the Unknown. For example, if we’ve never tried lifting weights, we don’t know how difficult or painful that might be, but if we don’t give it a try, we’ll never know and never benefit from doing it. There’s a 50/50 chance that we might actually like it. And sooner or later, we’re going to have to tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty, confusion, impatience, frustration, inconvenience, and/or disappointment. That kind of discomfort rarely lasts forever, though. I can testify that learning how to parallel park a car was not a fun experience and that I flunked my first driver’s test because of my parking ineptitude, but a year or so later, I had forgotten how hard it was and parked my car in whatever type of (legal) parking spot I wanted with skill that by then I took for granted. Here’s another example: the first time I participate in a step aerobics class, I fell off the step twice and had to wonder if I was ever going to get the hang of it, never mind enjoy it. Since I was too proud to give up and walk out while the rest of the class sneered at my failure, I stuck it out to the end of class, at which point it seemed vaguely possible that I might do better if I tried it at least one more time. So I went back to another class, and another one, and eventually found myself hooked on it. Now it isn’t just exercise (work), it’s fun (play). If you had snatched the Reese’s peanut butter cup out of my pre-op hand and told me to get my fat butt over to the gym for a step aerobics class, I would have laughed out loud. BUT WHAT IF? But what if your journey on the Bandwagon stalls, or your wagon rolls off a cliff, despite all your effort? What-ifs and coulda-shouldas aren’t going to do much to fix that wagon’s broken wheel, so what can you do to get yourself moving again? I highly recommend a LBT article (by me, of course) entitled, “When Your Bandwagon Stalls.” The article won’t solve all your problems, but it may help you look at them in a new and more effective way. After that, the hard work (of course) is up to you. Click here to check it out: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/page/index.html/_/plateaus-and-regain/when-your-bandwagon-stalls-r130 Unfortunately, hard work is not absolutely, positively guaranteed to produce success, but I’m convinced that it does improve your chances of success. It will lead you out of the desert of failure and into a jungle where every exotic flower smells of success. It will increase your knowledge and wisdom so that when the time comes to evaluate, regroup, and choose a new path if necessary, you can make a good decision. Decision making will be the topic of a future article, so stay tuned!

It's misleading, and irresponsible, and makes me wonder what other garbage they're feeding their patients.

What if you could eat anything you want and still lose weight? That sounds wonderful, doesn't it, but is it even possible? My brother is a highly intelligent man. This was proven decades ago, when IQ tests (performed while his teachers and parents tried to figure out why he was a miserable little bugger) showed a genius level IQ. I know that sentence sounds unsympathetic to my brother, but we were all miserable - our parents, his teachers, me, and my brother. The decades that have passed since then haven't given him any more common sense or made him any less miserable. A good example of that is his reaction when I first talked with him about my weight loss surgery. This highly intelligent and (by then) well-read man said, "Wow! So, you have the surgery, and then you eat anything you want and you still lose weight!" Well, no, I told him. Not really. In fact, nothing like that. During the 6 years of my weight loss surgery journey, I have (over and over and over again) witnessed bariatric patients who came out of the operating room after surgically successful procedures still wondering why they couldn't eat anything want and still lose weight. Their disappointing weight loss was and is a perpetual puzzle to them because somehow they had not grasped that behavioral change is required for weight loss success. It's easy to label those patients as stupid or ignorant or deluded, or to blame their bariatric team for failure to properly educate those patients about what would be required of them both pre- and post-op. All of those things could be a factor. In March 2012 I attended 2 sessions of a required pre-op nutrition and education class. My BMI then made me obese, but not morbidly so. I had gained weight after a complete unfill and was preparing to say goodbye to my beloved band due to medical problems aggravated by my band, planning to revise to vertical sleeve gastrectomy in the same procedure. The dietitian leading the class was a perky, pretty 20-something girl, adorably pregnant, who had clearly never struggled with her weight before. Her slightly condescending attitude was hard to take, but about halfway through the class I thought I could understand her attitude. She had just named a long list of foods we should not eat after surgery (including fried foods, candy, baked goodies, soda, alcohol, salty snacks, etc.) when I heard a woman nearby say bitterly, "I don't know. That seems like an awful lot to give up." Since I had known the before and after of WLS, I was strongly tempted to respond to her, but I held my tongue (wisely, for once). I don't know just why so many people think that WLS is magic, that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight; that you don't have to give up a single food or behavior or attitude in order to succeed. Maybe we can blame that kind of thinking on the media, or maybe we can blame it on the deeply-entrenched denial that tends to go along with obesity. But the fact is, you can't eat anything and still lose weight unless you're dying of cancer or AIDs or some other fatal disease, and probably don't want to eat a single bite of anything anyway. And I'd trade dying of cancer for WLS sacrifices and success any old day, wouldn't you?

[quote name=APPROVED Candace83' timestamp='1377181129' post='2041683] Well..My brain was playing jokes on me. I am fine...Band is perfect..no slip and no leak. I lost 12.5 lbs since my last appt July 17th and yesterday I weighed 352.3. I told the dr she would think I was crazy because I came in thinking the band wasnt working and I lost over 12 lbs in 5 weeks and she gave me a hug and told me it was fine to have those moments but everything is fine. She gave me a little bit more fluid and told me to not stress out because I am doing great. So thank you for the advice and the uplifting..but I feel better now. I needed good news yesterday because my dog passed away on Tuesday so the good news was very much needed. Your surgeon sounds like a sweetheart!

I take metformin for type 2 diabetes that I managed just fine with diet and exercise until my sleeve revision wreaked havoc with my blood glucose. I don't think the metformin is affecting my weight up or down. I'd love to stop taking it, preferably sooner rather than later. One of my weight loss goals was to reduce the amount of meds I have to take each day, and it's very frustrating to now be on more meds than I was with my long-lost band.

I love people who ask interesting questions!

You really need to ask your surgeon about that, and it might depend on whether you'd want to keep your band at the time of a revision. I've heard of band with plication as a first-time, combo procedure, but haven't heard of adding plication to an already-banded patient. To add plication now, I think your surgeon would have to remove your band, do the plication, and put your band back in place.

I hate those 4 pound weight jumps too, but they come and they go, and as long as your body weight's trending downward, you're doing fine. As for feeling less restriction, keep in mind is that as we lose weight, the visceral (internal) fat that clings to the stomach shrinks, so the band fits more loosely, and we need more fill to readjust the fit.

It's hard to give advice when we don't know what exactly about protein shakes is a problem for you. I just want to say that you should not stray from your post-op eating plan without permission from your surgeon and/or dietitian. Failure to follow the post-op eating progression is a common cause of band slips. Most of us don't think about what's actually happening inside when we eat any kind of food, but your stomach has to expand and contract to break even soft food down and transport it south, to your intestines. That movement can disturb your sutures, interfere with healing, and prevent your band from seating itself into proper position against your stomach. Hang in there!

I wonder if you've got some lactose intolerance going on. A lot of protein powders are made with whey protein (a dairy product). You could try a soy or other veggy-based protein product (ask at a GNC or similar store). And/or call your surgeon's office, tell them the protein drinks are making you nauseated, and ask them for suggestions.

Coworkers occupy a unique position in our lives. They’re closer than acquaintances, but not as close as families and friends even though we generally spend more time with them than just about anyone else in our lives. Keeping your own private business private at your workplace can be a challenge under the best of circumstances, and it can be dangerous territory for someone having weight loss surgery. Any kind of medical procedure, from a root canal to open heart surgery, is so fascinating that it’s almost instantly transmitted via the office grapevine no matter how solemnly your good friend and coworker swears to keep it a secret. On Monday morning, I tell Amy about my upcoming band surgery in the hushed tones of utmost confidence, and she promises to tell no one. On Monday afternoon, Bud waves at me while passing through the hallway and says, “Good luck with your surgery!” How did that happen? Did Amy betray my confidence? No, not exactly. She called her husband Tim at lunchtime and told him because his mother is considering bariatric surgery, and Tim’s office mate overheard the conversation and called his cousin Dale to ask if it’s true that Jean’s having weight loss surgery…and so on and so forth. Pre-op, who (if anyone) are you going to tell you’re having bariatric surgery? You’ll have to explain your absence (not necessarily in gory detail) to your immediate supervisor and/or a human resources person, and (depending on your employer’s policies) provide a letter from your doctor excusing your absence. You are not obliged to divulge the details of your surgery to anyone; a letter from your surgeon (preferably not on stationery imprinted with “The Hometown Center for Surgical Weight Loss”), stating that you are under his/her care and will need XX days off work to undergo surgery and recovery, should be enough. Be aware, though, that the employer who provides your health insurance probably has access to more of your confidential medical information than you might like. In these days of the Information Age, it’s quite possible that Michelle Obama and the Prime Minister of Japan could discover the details of your weight loss surgery (assuming they even cared). I have no idea how to control that and suggest that you focus your privacy efforts at the local level. If you tell your employer’s human resources manager that you’re having bariatric surgery and later discover (or surmise) that she told the payroll clerk, the receptionist, and her sister Maybelline about it, it would be appropriate to let her know (in private) that she violated the confidentiality of your medical information, but it might not be worthwhile to start a war over it, especially because workplace wars tend to draw curious crowds and foster the growth of the office grapevine. As my wise friend Miss Pat says, “You gotta pick your battles.” Let’s look at a few possible pre- and post-op workplace scenarios. 1. You don’t tell your coworkers about the nature of your surgery, and/or the one coworker you tell keeps her lips zipped. Your cover story is that you’re having your gall bladder removed. Remember please that you have only one gall bladder, and if eventually the real one has to go, you’re going to have to come up with another story. Every other person in your workplace bends your ear with their own gall bladder stories and finally they all get bored with it and move on to the next burning issue, like the fact that Jack got written up for putting a photo of Beyoncé’s backside on his cubicle wall. You come back to work, life goes on, and everything’s fine until you decline an invitation to go out for pizza, or you sit down in the lunch room with a lunch so tiny compared to your pre-op meals that five observers jump to the conclusion that you’re on a diet again, and want to know all the details. Deal with the situation in a way that suits your style and doesn’t back you into an awkward corner. My response to the diet inquisitors would be something like, “I’m just trying to eat less and exercise more,” and then change the subject by saying, “Did you hear that (fill in the blank with the latest office gossip thread)?” or “Hey, when are they supposed to finish painting the lines in the parking lot?” or (as I recently told a coworker who exclaimed, “I don’t know why you even bother!” when she saw my tiny lunch), “Things must be mighty slow if my lunch is the most interesting thing you’ve seen all day.” 2. You’re like I was, so delighted to be having weight loss surgery that you tell everybody and their brother and their dentist and their mail carrier. Instant experts crawl out of the woodwork. Walking into the lunchroom gets to be like turning on the light in that ratty first apartment you had, where the bright light revealed an army of cockroaches swarming over the room. Before your surgery, the cockroaches (excuse me, coworkers) tell you every fractured and horrifying bariatric fairy tale they ever heard, tell you that they know you can lose the weight without doing something drastic like surgery, or proclaim that they would never do such a thing to themselves. If you are extremely patient (not my strong point), you can conduct your own personal bariatric surgery ministry by correcting the cockroaches’ misconceptions (I’m not sure that cockroaches even have ears, however). Or you can perform another version of the strategy outlined above and repeat the same phrase every single time they try to “educate” you. Say, “Thanks for your concern,” and change the subject. 3. After your surgery, you are no longer the center of attention. Life goes on, with occasional excitement when Jack once again gets written up, this time for repeating an off-color joke within the hearing of Mary Smith, the Senior Vice President of S.E.I. (Something Extremely Important). You gradually lose weight, pound after pound. You begin to buy new clothes, you change your hairstyle, you become more outgoing, and eventually several things happen: a) You wonder why no one has noticed your weight loss. Can’t they see the difference now that you’re 40 pounds lighter? What kind of friends are they, anyway? Remember, they’re work friends. Very likely they’re jealous friends, or self-centered friends (and so am I – I care a lot more about my weight than yours), or distracted friends (they’re thinking about their daughter’s need for expensive orthodonture, for example). You wish people would stop saying, “So how much weight have you lost so far?” You can answer honestly and deal with the feedback, or you can follow my example and say something lighthearted like, “20 tons!” or “Not enough!” or “My doctor’s thrilled with my weight loss.” c) The next time someone says, “I hope you’re done losing weight. You’re beginning to look sickly,” you want to smack them upside the head. Instead you can say cheerfully, “I’m sorry to hear you say that, because I’ve never felt better in my entire life.” d) Someone says, “You’ve lost 40 pounds? Really? I just don’t see it.” You run into the restroom and cry for 20 minutes. When you’re done mopping up mascara trails, march right back out there and give that jerk his or her comeuppance with a belated comeback like, “You have an IQ of 40? Really? I just don’t see it.” e) A former eating pal says, “You’re so stuck up now. You never some with us for lunch at Pizza-Rama.” You can respond by saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m trying to avoid pizza right now. How about we have lunch at Veggy Heaven today?” If that “pal” frowns at the very idea of eating veggies and the only way they enjoy being with you involves food, you may have to write her/him off. Don’t worry, you’ll find another friend sooner or later, one who can appreciate you for who you are, not what you eat!