MacMadame

So all this drama got me to come back and say "Hi!" So, Hi! :thumbdown: My 1 year anniversary is tomorrow. Whoot whoot to me. My son is 18 next week. Um, yeah? I promised him my old car, but he still doesn't have his license. I got a triathlon coach! Hopefully this will improve my performances next season and get me through the Half-ironman next month.

Bariatric Resource Center: A4 The Cottage cheese Test, BSCI Articles, A4 It's really easy to do. You can do it anytime you want to know how big your stomach is. I did it around 7 months because a lot of people were doing it and we wanted to compare. I may do it again tomorrow on my one year surgery anniversary.

Which is exactly why they make you do it. Of course, statistics say you'll just gain it back again. When I was going through this, I asked myself "what about this time makes it different from all the other times I lost weight and gained it back?" and my honest answer was: nothing. The way I look at it is: I didn't get WLS to lose weight. I've always been able to lose weight just fine. I got it because I wanted to keep it off. I've never been able to do that before. And now, with my sleeve, I've got a prayer of maintaining because I'm not hungry all the time. That never happened to me when I lost weight via diet & exercise alone. Btw, in CA, you don't *have* to do 6 months of classes or lose 10% of your weight. You can appeal to the DMHC and have those requirements waived. That's because there is no clinical data supporting these practices and showing they lead to better outcomes.

Mine is getting worse. What about eggs and cheese?

Kaiser up here is weird about the VSG. Get your mom to find out which places *really* do it. Some say they will but when you try to get it, they always have some reason why they don't want to. Luckily, this is changing, but it often depends on which surgeon you get referred to. I friend of mine who lives in Santa Rosa had it done at Kaiser as one of their first patients in her program. I'll ask her what program she used. (I'm guessing Richmond.) Anthem Blue Shield and UHC absolutely don't. Cigna and Aetna have been known to but only on appeal.

You should eat no more than what your sleeve holds. :svengo: This is another thing that varies. Some people's stomach don't get as swollen and they are eating 3-4 oz. right away while others are struggling to eat 0.5-1 oz. But eventually the swelling goes down and you can eat more, plus there is some slight relaxing of the tissues. Once you are a year out, a lot of people can eat 4-6 oz. of food and some can eat 6-8 oz. It really depends on what the food is though. Plus how fast you eat and how well you chew.

My Spanx doesn't hurt. Maybe the stuff they have in Australia is more like the old-fashioned girdles?? I rarely notice I have my Spanx on. I also use compression shorts & tops from UnderArmour. They are designed to exercise in so they have a lot of give.

I can eat a piece of fried chicken. I take the skin off but that's because I don't like it. :svengo: How many calories you get post-op once you are done losing is really going to vary. I workout about 10 hours a week and I can eat about 2000 calories a day. My metabolism is slightly slower than average according to a test I took. But other people can only eat 1000-1200. Most that I see are eating around 1500-1700 though. But the thing is, you will be satisfied with that amount. You can be satisfied with very few calories post-op. That's why WLS works 75-90% of the time and diets work 1-5% of the time.

In terms of diet... there are people who eat a lot of carbs, even refined ones, and don't gain weight. I think, on some level, it really is calories in vs. calories out and the type of calories only matter if (a) you have something metabolic going on like insulin resistance or (:svengo: certain types of food make you lose control or lead you down a slippery slope. Now, this is on maintenance. When losing, it's very important to get Protein because otherwise we lose lean muscle tissue instead of fat. But on maintenance, everyone has to work out for themselves what will and won't work and the answer will be different for everyone. The scary part of maintenance, for me, has been figuring this all out. When on a diet, I just followed my program's plan the best I could. But maintenance was wide open. There were times in the beginning, and even a bit now, where I felt out of control with my eating even though I might not be gaining weight or gaining much. I have to learn what causes that and how to prevent it. It's complicated by the fact that I am an endurance athlete and a certain amount of carbs are necessary for peak performance. So figuring out my carb ceiling has been interesting. Another complication is acid reflux. It makes me think I'm hungry when I'm not. So I've had to balance wanting to be off the PPI vs. dealing with this fake hunger. I tried stopping the prilosec and only taking Pepcid AC when I had acid. I didn't want to be taking a pill every day if I didn't have acid every day. But I found the Pepcid didn't control things very well and I was taking it 5-7 days a week anyway. So I'm back on the prilosec and I've decided that I will stay on it, maybe for life, if that's what it takes.

I was told it's because our stomach is smaller and also because it's irritated early out from surgery. A lot of food intolerances go away over time as the stomach heals, so that part makes sense. OTOH, I think my lactose intolerance may be getting worse, beause now I can't eat ice cream either and I could before.

I use Supreme Protein Carb Conscious bars and Rockin'Roll Bars mostly. I also found these ones from Premium Nutrition that are called "Titan" and they are okay, but I don't think I'll be buying them again as they tend to flake when I eat them and then I've got bits of food everywhere.

What are your choices besides Kaiser? They do perform the VSG in some places, but not others, so you should make sure they do it where you are and that they don't just say they do it, but then only do it for a few exceptions and not anyone who wants it (that's happened to some friends of mine)>

Yes, it's normal to be able to eat more as time passes. For most people it seems to stablize at around 6-12 months out. The ghrelin will be produced more too -- I've read and seen all different timeframes from anywhere from 6 months to 18 to never. But it's not supposed to be like it was pre-op and, for me, it hasn't been. In fact, I'm not convinced I am producing more ghrelin yet. Hunger used to scare me, but now I welcome it. I'm experimenting with eating to my hunger to see if my hunger is in tune with my body. I really want to be one of those people who knows when she's full and only eats when my body needs fuel. :knocking wood: So far so good.

You don't have to have a barium swallow. Just do the cottage cheese test. It's faster and cheaper. It's also more to the point... it's about what *you* can put in without feeling bad, not how much barium can fit in there. :001_tongue: Also, there are studies being down on sleeve dilation as patients get farther out. All this stuff gets studied. They also track total loss and regain. Some surgeons do it more informally and some publish their results. But, regardless of studies, the part of the stomach remaining is not the stretchy part. It's extremely hard to stretch out. There is some relaxation of the tissues over time, but it's limited. It's just like the difference between latex and linen. Sure, my linen suit stretches out when I wear it, but I can't make it stretch out 3x its original size like I can with my latex gloves.

I keep my calories below a certain ceiling and my protein above a certain floor. When I do that, my carbs and fats automatically limit themselves. I do track them, but I don't watch them like a hawk, either. I just keep a general eye on them.

My shoes got loose right away. I still take the same size most of the time but my feet aren't as wide so all the wide styles I used to wear are too big.

Leaks happen less than 1 percent of the time on average. (If your surgeon's stats are worse than that, then I'd find another one personally... I also wouldn't go to someone who hadn't done hundreds of these things, both because I want someone whose seen it all, but also because you can't really judge their stats if they haven't done a couple of hundred. But that's just my personal criteria; everyone has to decide for themselves what their own criteria is.) So leaks happen less often than either erosion or slips with a band... to give some perspective. Now, something things are going to up your own risk and make it be above average. For example, having a prior stomach surgery such as a prior WLS will increase your risks. So does smoking, having Type II diabetes and being SMO. You can stop smoking prior to surgery but you can't stop having diabetes or stop being SMO or do anything about prior surgery. So, if you are in those categories, you just have to be that much more careful and prepared.

Well, I never stalled... there are more of us, but mostly we don't say anything when people who do stall talk about stalls as if they are inevitable. It feels too much like rubbing it in. I see a number of causes: 1) People declare they are stalled anytime they weigh and scale isn't less than the last time. But not losing every day or every couple of days is not a stall. A stall is not losing for at least 2 weeks, maybe 3-4. So, stalling happens less often than people talking about stalling happens. :001_tongue: 2) scales give your absolute weight and not just how may pounds of fat you've lost. So they will also include any BMs you haven't got rid of, Water weight you are retaining for a number of reasons, undigested food, etc. From what I've seen, a primary cause of stalls for people who really are in a calorie deficit is retaining water. This is particularly true in the early days when people have trouble getting in all their water. The less you drink, the more you retain water. If you eat a lot of prepared foods, you get a lot of sodium and retain water. If it's that time of the month, you retain water. If you start exercising, your muscles break down and release water, but then your body puts the glycogen back into them and that requires water. So starting an exercise program can cause you to retain water too. (But, over time, you usually get to steady state and this becomes less of an issue.) The best way to deal with this is to drink a LOT of Fluid and watch your salt intake. It will help even out what you see on the scale. So you won't see 0 one week and 7 the next, but 2-4 both weeks. For some people, that's less frustrating. 3) Some people don't track what they are eating (or don't track accurately) and/or how much they are exercising and so they are eating way more than they think they are and/or moving their bodies way less. This tends to be the cause of stalls later out when people can eat a lot more and are mentally out of the honeymoon period. If this is you, then you aren't stalled so much as you've really stopped losing weight because your calorie deficit has disappeared and you need to make some changes to get your weight loss started again. Adding in more exercise and tracking your food help a lot. 4) Not having enough energy can cause your body to conserve energy and often times this is subconscious so you don't even realize it. Maybe you are sleeping a little more, sitting down more, walking less. Your body will also slow down your heart rate and other bodily functions in a bid to conserve energy. You can combat this by eating a lot of Protein and by exercising, but not everyone does that, especially in the early days when we're still recovering from surgery and may have exercise restrictions and/or are using all our energy for healing. Sometimes adding in more protein helps with this as it provides a steady stream of energy rather than the quick spike that carbs provide. So can adding in more exercise as it helps the metabolism and it helps increase the calorie deficit. I think a large part of why I didn't have a stall is that I did track everything religiously. Then, when my weight loss slowed down, I could look for causes. Inevitably, I'd notice I was slacking off on my exercise and I'd pick it back up and the weight loss would pick back up too. But sometimes the problem was my water or protein consumption. Or too much sodium. Whatever it was, I'd fix it before I got to the stall stage. I still lost in a stair step pattern -- large losses one week, small the next -- Now that I'm maintaining, I can see that I definitely retain water when I ovulate and when I get my period. If I hadn't been so strict with my calories and my protein & water consumption, I bet I would have had a lot more weeks with zero loss. And that would have driven me crazy!! :thumbdown: Tracking everything and being pro-active worked better for my personality.:thumbup1:

I like Spanx because they are comfortable and also you can keep wearing them even when technically they are a size or two too large and they still do a reasonable job of keeping everything in and not jiggling.

I had trouble knowing when I was full early out too. But as my stomach healed, it got easier. Now I mostly just know and the only issue is whether I'm going to listen or not. I'm thinking this started to get a lot better around the 12 week mark. Weeks 7 through 12 were what I refer to as my "pissy period" and constantly taking "one bite too many" and not being able to eat what I considered "reasonable" quantities were a large part of it.

I didn't have drainage tubes either. I did have glue put over my staple line. I also had something called "buttress" used. It's this gauze-like material that is put into the stapler and then the staples go through it.

My problem with Nair is that it doesn't get all the hair off unless I leave it on forever and then it burns. Though maybe it's better now.

The Food and Feelings Book by Karen Koenig.

Don't worry... if you lose your weight, you get your life back. It may not be perfect -- being thin doesn't solve every problem we have -- but it's still so much better than before. I became an athlete and I eat plenty of food and don't have any trouble getting everything I need and there are plenty more like me out there...

I thought about it but decided it wasn't something I wanted to do. I do get my eyebrows waxed and sometimes my lips and chin. I have been thinking about laser hair removal but I'm a big chicken. Anyone have any experience with it?