MacMadame

Well, no complications are fun. But this one is much better than a leak. It's probably worse than my kidney stone though because it generally goes on for a while before you realize what the problem is. Though having a kidney stone feels like you are trying to pass a baby through your urethra so it wasn't particular fun at the time. Just relatively short.

I would love a surprise party too. Never had one.

Yes, that's the main purpose long term. Short term, you also want to make sure you are getting enough food so that's another reason to not drink right with the meals. But waiting is to make sure the food doesn't flush through. We have a pylorus valve, so it's not like having a band or RnY and being able to literally flush it through easily. But the pylorus valve opens when liquid/mush hits it. So drinking with meals makes our food mushier faster and when the mush or liquid hits the valve, it opens because that's a sign the food is ready to move on. This means if you eat something like dry meat, taking a few sips of Water to help it get down is not going to totally derail you. Adding a few sips of water to dry chicken doesn't turn it into mush. It turns it into moister chicken. But when you add a lot of water to a meal that is already turning nicely into mush on schedule, you get a much thinner mush that leaves the tummy sooner. This is true pre-op too. My son always give his dh a hard time about drinking with meals because he says "the only reason to drink water with your meals is to fit more in."

It's scar tissue. When it's somewhere that interferes with food going down, it's called a stricture. Usually, they expand the tissue and you are fine. Sometime you have to go back and have it expanded a few times before it goes away.

My surgeon says we can drink right up until eating. I looked up how the stomach empties and I think he's right. I found nothing to suggest that drinking up to 0-5 min. before eating would hurt us. But 45 min. after is a minimum time, from what I've read. The stomach hardly empties at all for the first 20-30 min. after you eat and then it start emptying rapidly so that 90 min after you eat, it's emptied half it's contents. Which means programs that say to wait only 30 min are really pushing it IMO.

Yes! I have some links here to threads on another board from people one, two and three years out. People talk about their metabolism like it's a thing, another organ. That makes my anal, engineering-oriented head hurt. :001_tongue: Your metabolism is a measure of how many calories you burn over a period of time; it's just a rate. Your rate can be average, below average, above average, excellent, poor, etc. But it can't be broken, messed up or dead. Yeah, I know... no one cares. :lol0: I do think that a lifetime of yo-yo dieting can slow down your metabolism. But it's not fixed in stone. We can influence our metabolisms for the better or the worse. I have definitely seen that I can't eat as many calories as the formulas say I can. But that's always been true. It just seems more true now that I'm older. Is my metabolism that much worse? Well, in my 30s, I lost weight eating 1200 calories a day and doing aerobics 2x a week. I lost about a pound a week until the last 10-20 lb. Now, in my 50s, I was eating 800 calories a day and training for a triathlon. And losing 2-3 lb. a week until my calories went up. I'd have to do math to figure out if I'm losing slower or faster or the same as when I was in my 30s. It feels slower, but I suspect it's about the same.

My sleep started getting disrupted pre-op. Probably from nerves and excitement. I'm still not sleeping well at night, but it's rather late out to be blaming it on anesthesia in my case. :001_tongue: I did start dreaming about binge eating on food. I started eating an entire chocolate cake in my dreams! And it was one we have at work sometimes that I do not like so it was even more bizarre. I decided this was a sign I needed more carbs and had two bites of potato for dinner. It seemed to work.

The way I look at it is that all calorie are fuel. However, all fuel isn't equal. A good campfire uses embers -- low heat but steady fuel that keeps the fire going -- these are kind of like the fats. Fats aren't readily available as a quick fuel source and a little goes a long way. You also use tinder to get a campfire started. These are the carbs. Carbs provide quick energy, but they burn out pretty fast. You can down a gel during a run and get a burst of energy, but then it's gone. A fire made from all tinder needs constant replenishment and an enormous quantity of fuel. In between, we have the logs on the fire and these are the heart of the fire. These are the most like Protein. They are there, providing heat and energy all throughout the day. They can be used when other sources are not available, such as carbs. Plus, they last a lot longer. It's not a perfect analogy because, once you get a fire going, you don't keep adding tinder, but you should be eating carbs to fuel your workouts. But you need to eat the protein the rest of the day to give yourself a base of energy to pull from. This is especially true if your job is sedentary -- carbs aren't the kind of energy you need to do a desk job!

Did an Open Water Swim today. For some reason I kept getting Creature from the Black Lagoon vibes, which I didn't the last time I swam in that lake. Followed by a 4 mile run. So I got in my 3 planned runs this week plus one extra. Yeah!

Oh, my goodness. I am so behind! I've been getting the emails when people post and didn't realize I wasn't coming up to read the posts in between the emails! Anyway, life is pretty good for me. Still hate my job. Still training for the next tri. MacBoy is trying to get his license and looking for a job. Mini-Mac may have whooping cough, but it's unlikely. I think she has allergies.

My calves spasm when I swim. It's probably from not properly fueling -- since I don't tend to do anything but drink water when I swim -- but it can also mean you need more potassium. I do have problems keeping my potassium levels up sometimes.

And, if you must take carbonate for some reason, take with something acidic like Vitamin C. But you really shouldn't...

I have chronicled my journey on my blog and encourage anyone who is thinking about either getting a sleeve or training for a triathlon to try it out. But here is a summary of my story: A little over a year ago, I was in big trouble. I was at my highest weight yet. I had stopped exercising. My blood pressure required medicine to control. I had plantar fasciitis and my allergies (I thought) were out of control. Toward the end, I started to get very bad heartburn that would not respond to medicine. I was getting to the point where I had to sit down to tie my shoes and I was moving less and less. I looked into the future and it was not pretty. But I didn't know what to do. I had been dieting for 35 years and it obviously hadn't worked. I didn't think I had another diet in me. Then I ran into my next-door neighbor, who had had WLS about 6 months before. And contrary to the media portrayal of WLS, he had lost weight and looked good -- healthy. This somehow made WLS seem acceptable and I started looking into it. Like most people I only knew about the band and RnY and I didn't want RnY. So I started researching the band and found LapBandTalk.com. It's a good thing I did because watching what people with bands went through -- normal people who followed the rules and still had problems -- made me more open to other possibilities. Then the long-term studies on the band showing what a high re-surgery rate it had started coming out. In the meantime, I had learned about ghrelin and how it makes people think they are hungry. That was an "aha" moment for me and I realized that the reason I was hungry all the time was because I had too much ghrelin in me. I wanted a surgery that directly addressed that and the band did not. So I changed my mind and started the process of getting a sleeve. I was sleeved September 24th and had a hiatal hernia repaired at the same time. As a result, my GERD went away completely. It turned out a lot of my "allergy" symptoms and some weird back pain I was having also went away. They were all caused by the hiatal hernia! At first my weight loss was slow. I was eating to plan but I was only exercising two days a week. When I went to see my surgeon for my three week check-up, he was not happy with me and told me to exercise more. So I did. I worked my way up to four days a week, but now I had a new problem. Riding the stationary bike four days a week was boring. I wanted to do something else. But I didn't know how to use the machines at the free gym at work. I tried a few of the free classes, but they didn't float my boat. This is when I felt the treadmills calling to me. I resisted at first. I had never had much luck running before even at lower weights than I was at that point. But I heard about the Couch-to-5K program and people swore by it so I gave it a whirl. And, suddenly, I was running. I was a runner! This is when another strange thought popped into my head. I had watched the Ironman World Championships (aka as Kona) on tv and thought it looked like a blast. At least when they all jumped in the Water at once and started swimming. And when they staggered out and hopped on their bike and pedaled away. But then the announcer would say "and now they are going to run a marathon" and I'd think "are you freaking kidding me?" That part did not seem like fun at all. But now I was running. And it wasn't fun exactly, but it was rewarding and, if I could run, I could do a triathlon. Maybe. Some day. So I started looking into it and found out about the Sprint distance. The swim is only 1/2 a mile, the bike only 13 miles and the run was a 5k. Hey, that sounded completely doable! I signed myself up for one and started training. At this point, I was still heavy enough to qualify for the Athena division! But the weight was coming off and much faster than at first. Every time my weight loss slowed down, I added in another workout or increased the time of an existing workout. In Feb. I joined a triathlon club and started doing their coached workouts on top of my gym workouts and I started improving much faster than expected. This is when I did something a bit crazy. It was a week before my first triathlon, so I was completely unproven. But I found out that a friend was flying into town to do a famous -- and tough -- Half-ironman race three weeks later called Wildflower. It was part of a whole weekend of triathlons and I told him I'd come down and cheer him on. Then I started thinking -- I'm going to be there anyway, why not sign up to race myself? I could do a Mountain Bike version at the Sprint distance I'd been training for, but I had no mountain bike. Or I could do the Olympic Course, which was twice as long. The voice inside my head that coaxed into getting on the treadmill, started whispering "do it, do it" So I did. I did my first Sprint tri as planned in April and came in 10 min. faster than my "in my wildest dreams" time. Then two weeks later, I finished Wildflower right in the middle of my expected time window. I had done it -- moved up to the Olympic distance, took on one of the hardest Olympic courses around, and did better than surviving. Now I felt like a real triathlete. I had challenged myself to do something I wasn't quite sure I could do and I had delivered. I knew at this point that I could do anything I set my mind to do. In the meantime, I've lost over 100 pounds, my body fat percentage is under 20 and my resting heart rate is under 60. I am also off my blood pressure meds, my plantar fasciitis is in remission -- even with all the running I do -- and I recently stopped taking my allergy meds as well. (I find with the GERD gone I can keep my symptoms in check just with Simply Saline.) I don't think any of this would have been possible without the sleeve. The band would have made me eat less, sure, but getting rid of my ghrelin did more for me than restrict my food intake. Now instead of having a voice in my head that screams at me to eat and sit down more, I have a voice that whispers to me to get up and move (and do triathlons). It's like a switch flipped in my brain and now I have the brain of an athlete. I like it and I look forward to where it's going to take me next. Dare I start dreaming about Kona for myself? The voice in my head seems to think so.

Hunger is tricky. There is hunger, there is "hunger" and there is appetite. Hunger is your body's signals to you that you need fuel. You very well may feel these and, IMO, that's a good thing. I have felt them and most times upping my daily allotment of Protein and not going more than four hours without eating takes care of it. Some people don't seem to have strong signals this way though and can go for hours without eating... like eating Breakfast and not eating again until dinner. Personally, I think that's a bad thing, but that's me. "Hunger" is when you think you want food but there is no physiological basis for it. Head hunger is another name for it, but I think it also has other forms that maybe don't play out like the traditional head hunger. Such as experiencing any body pang as "hunger." Appetite is what ghrelin gives you. It's not just regular hunger. It's a DRIVE to eat. In normal people, the drive to eat and the real hunger go hand-in-hand, but for us MO people, that drive to eat is often there 24/7 and it drives us to overeat. You shouldn't really have that after surgery because your ghrelin levels are so low. So even when you have hunger and even "hunger", it should be easier to control than it was pre-op. If it's not, then there is usually some sort of psychological stuff going on and counseling can help. Oh and lots of people experience hunger while on liquids. It can just be head hunger, but I was only consuming 450 calories a day during that time. So I suspect at least some of it was hunger, too. My body needed more fuel than it was getting. But liquids pass through you so they don't trigger the satiety mechanism like solids do. So it was also head hunger.

I get Water too. Then I drink it. :lol0: Having a glass of water to drink gives me something to do while everyone else is having appetizers and bread and all the stuff I can't have if I also want to be able to eat my meal. The admonition to not drink 30 min before or 10-15 before (depending on what your program says) makes no sense when you know how the digestive system works and how your stomach empties. Our program booklet says 10-15 min. but our surgeons tell us we can drink right up until 0-5 min. before we eat. I've also looked it up online to see why you'd want to wait longer and there is no reason. liquids signal the pylorus valve to open. So they don't sit in the stomach. If you drink really fast, you can get a backup, like when you pour liquids too fast into a funnel. So sometimes you do have to wait a bit for the backup to clear. But there is no way it's going to take 30 min. or even 15 except maybe in the beginning when you are still very swollen so you have a much narrower funnel. But that whole "pylorus valve opening when liquids hit it" thing is why we shouldn't drink with our meals. Even with a pylorus valve, the liquids will help flush the food out of our stomachs faster. Most of us have experienced this pre-op as well.

Wow, those prices are crazy. My guy is the #1 sleeve guy in the US (done over 1200 of them, really low complication rates) and he's charging much less. But the interesting thing is that they charge a program fee to people with insurance. The insurance companies just don't reimburse enough for the surgeons and hospitals to really cover their costs. So someone with insurance can be paying them as much as $8000 over and above their deductible/copay. Some people think THAT is outrageous. I used to until I saw how reasonable their self-pay prices are. Obviously, they aren't trying to gouge us or they'd charge the self-pays that much more. Because clearly, they can and people do it pay it. Health care in this country is so messed up!

AM: long run, 7.5 miles PM: Bike ride, 22.5 miles

I love salads too. Plus veggies and fruit are sweet. I hate that people tell you "oh, if you have a sweet tooth, get RnY". I don't think it's that simple. I have a sweet tooth in that I prefer sweet to salty, but I can eat 1-2 bites of a chocolate and be fine and my tastes have definitely changed since surgery as well.

$35,000 for a sleeve is crazy, even in the US. I only paid $17000 and I live in one of the most expensive areas of the country! This is something that has always bugged me about bariatric surgery -- the wide difference in prices and how you don't always get what you pay for.

I did my strength workout with my PT but I didn't get a swim in like I had hoped to.

As I've upped my exercise, I've upped my Protein and I always have plenty of energy to do my workouts. I am up to 120 g of protein a day. I do eat carbs around the time of exercising but I don't go nuts on them.

Runkeeper is an iPhone app that tracks runs. I use a HRM for calories and the Nike+ for distance, time and pace.

Btw, I run 3x a week and this is what I do: 1) Speed work -- intervals at various intensities and distances. 2) Tempo run - this is a shorter run done fast 3) Long run - longer run done slower I'm training for a half-marathon and I think my marathon pace will be 11 min per mile. So my tempo run is done at 10:30 pace and my long run is done at 11:30 pace. The speed work I do with a coach and I just do what she tells us to do. This week we did 1600 T pace, 200 R pace as many times as we could fit in but sometimes we do farklets or ladders or other workouts.