PorkChopExpress

Good old-fashioned willpower? Aside from surgery, it's about the only weapon we have against the holidays. I was told not to even touch alcohol for a year post-surgery, so I won't be. I'll be staying away from sugary stuff because I don't want to get sick, and otherwise I think my stomach will enforce my portion control, so it'll just be about making good choices of what to eat, with a focus on protein.If you're not sure you can make good choices at these functions, my suggestion would be to eat just before you go.

The big difference is that the sleeve is newer and has less research associated with it, and the RNY has been around for 30+ years and has a ton of research. So they keep marketing the RNY as the "gold standard" but the fact is, no matter what surgery you opt for, the vast majority of change has to happen in your head and in your behavior, to be successful. I initially went in for RNY but due to scar tissue from prior surgery, they couldn't do it...so they gave me the sleeve. A week after I had surgery, I spoke to a friend of my mom's who'd had RNY 10 years ago and she said she wishes she'd have been able to have the sleeve...because she said she developed celiac disease as a result of the RNY and also came to realize that the malabsorbtion aspect of the surgery was only really useful for the first couple of years, and after that it became a pain in the butt. So I actually came away feeling like maybe I'd dodged a bit of a bullet. My wife wants to get surgery and is planning on it next summer, and she's still in the "gold standard" mindset, but I'm hopeful that my results with the sleeve will convince her to change her mind. I'm now of the opinion that the sleeve might be a better long-term choice. But it will be what I make of it, that's for sure.

I got lucky, apparently my surgeon thought I was progressing and healing well enough to start soft/mushy after only two weeks. After four weeks of nothing but liquids, holy cow was it great to be able to chew and get some flavor again, even if the portions are tiny. You sure enjoy eating more, this way

It's more mental than physical...so just be prepared for that fact. The surgery is the easy part. The process of giving up who you used to be, in a very large part, is the challenge. You simply will not succeed if your behaviors and opinions about food stay the same, after this surgery...or if you expect to go back to how you used to behave, once you get some weight off. It's very possible to fail even with surgery, and the web is littered with cautionary tales of people who didn't succeed, because they didn't make the mental changes they needed to. The surgery will enforce behavior, but it won't change your MIND...and that's what has to change, more than anything else. So be sure you're dedicated to going through that process, because it isn't easy. I'm still going through some of it, three weeks post-surgery...and I'm sure I'll continue to face challenges in the months to come, as I heal up and can eat more. The surgery makes it easier than trying to do it while you're starving to death and still have the stomach to eat anything you want to, but if you don't change your mindset, you'll find ways to get excessive calories in and gain weight back. Just start getting in touch with your feelings about things and where they are coming from. Get at the core of why you overeat and why you gained your weight. Those are the things you'll have to solve.

Sugar free is probably okay, but after surgery they want you to stay away from it because it ends up putting a bunch of air in your stomach.

A good trainer will help you immeasurably and push you just enough, a bad one will just discourage you and make you want to quit. Not all of them know where the line is with each client, it's a skill they have to develop. In terms of nutrition, the good ones know that it isn't "one size fits all." Particularly for bariatric patients! To insinuate that all we needed to do was control our portions and we didn't need surgery for that...this is usually coming from guys who have never been more than 20 pounds overweight in their lives, and don't understand the metabolic adaptations that obese people have developed that fight against weight loss, screw up our hunger and fullness signals, etc...etc... Nor do they, a lot of times, have any awareness that certain things we are simply too heavy to even DO, without risking injury. It sounds like ultimately, you found a good one. So that's awesome, because it'll help keep you on the right track. The nutrition part, your nutritionist has handled and you aren't going to need to do a lot to it until you start to creep up on your goal. That's when you'll have to start tweaking macros and see what works to get that last stubborn fat off. Bodybuilders are actually pretty good at that, they're very familiar with the bulking/cutting cycle and how to tweak your intake so you are cutting as much fat as possible, while sacrificing as little muscle as possible. I'm also a big advocate of weight training, because the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you'll burn all day, whether exercising or at rest. But nobody should be recommending weight training at six weeks post-surgery, it's too early. Three months maybe, and not aggressively. Just to try to maintain the muscle mass you do have, to keep that burn going every day. Because with extreme calorie deficits, you will lose muscle as well as fat, and that hurts your calorie burning over time. So there's some truth in what the meatheads were saying, but they just don't have the whole picture. If someone's never been obese, I don't want to hear them tell me "All you need to do is..." Because they've never been there.

I can feel that my stomach's capacity at mealtime has increased just a touch, since I started on mushy foods. Seems my stomach is recovering, the swelling must be going down now. I was driving to work tonight and was just sitting there thinking, "I feel pretty darn good right now." I'm really not feeling much of any aches now, stomach incisions are healing up well, I'm doing my normal stuff with no ill effects. The only difference is, I eat like my 9 month old! Although I'm more accurate with my spoon

Wow man, you're killing it. I started at 385lbs and by the morning of surgery after two weeks of liquid diet, I was at 351.8 - then about 1 1/2 weeks post-op at the surgeon's office I was 341.5lbs. So 51lbs right now is killer. I haven't weighed in about a week, and I'm planning on holding off until my next doctor checkup. I just don't want to step on the scales too much, it's always been my enemy

Totally normal. Don't worry about it...a lot of people mistake it for "hunger" but it's not. When you think about it, your stomach is like 80% smaller now...but it may not necessarily realize that yet. So it's probably trying to produce the normal stuff as it ordinarily would, but can't. A lot of people get excess acid for a while, because the body takes a while to adjust. Gasses are more pronounced because the sleeve is so much smaller. From everything I've read, it goes away over time. But yeah, I'm having the rumbles too, about three weeks in

Get some gauze from Walgreens and tape over it. The meshy kind of gauze you get at the hospital is going to stick to the wound, it heals into the mesh. You want something more like a pad, with some absorbency but so that it won't stick. Now, if you are seeing halos of yellow/greenish color on the bandages and see anything yellowish if you press on the areas around the wound, or notice that there's a lot of redness around the wounds, you have infections and that is why you're not healing. Surgeons don't like to report infections in incisions because it's technically a complication, and it has to be reported. Nobody wants it on their record. So you may want to see your primary care physician about it, to get satisfaction...but I'd go have them looked at, ASAP. You should be scabbed over by now, as long as your Protein intake has been up to snuff.

If he's a baby about surgery, then what he's doing is what he would want YOU to do, for him. That's basic "love languages" stuff. You aren't the kind of person who needs that stuff, and it probably irritates the crap out of you when he's a giant baby about things that you handle perfectly fine. I'm the same way. My wife is a bad patient, and she doesn't deal with pain well at all. I get irritated when she doesn't do what she's supposed to do, and my perception is that she's struggling with stuff I would not find difficult. And the answer is always, "You don't know how I'm feeling!" And that's the rub. I don't. Just because one person has a high tolerance for something, that isn't going to be equal across the board for everyone. Some people bounce back quickly. Others take a long time, complaining about it the whole way. Some are good patients, some are not. Everyone is different. So I finally realized that when she describes something as excruciating, it really doesn't matter how I would perceive it...to HER, it's excruciating. So I try to be sympathetic. I'd suggest you just consider that, when thinking about your husband - especially if he gets a procedure done and is a "baby" in recovery. Because to us, it's simple...but to them, not so much. But that's why he's doting on you...because that's how he'd want to be treated, and that's how he shows his care and love.

I give this thread 9/10 for entertainment value. Recommended.

Do this. Take a piece of paper, make two columns, make one column, "What is great about eating however I want." Make the other column, "What is terrible about eating however I want." Then put everything you can think of in each column. In my case, the "pro" side was three things. The "con" side filled the entire page, and I could have kept going. There's a tendency sometimes to say, "I'm not that bad." Like...Oh, I only have to take one pill for hypertension, so I'm not that bad. But how long are you going to be able to say that? There was a time I didn't have to take any pills. I didn't need a CPAP. My joints didn't hurt all the time. I could get up and down off the floor without struggling. I could fit into an airplane seat comfortably, or a booth, or a stadium seat at a sports event. I watched each 50 pound mile marker pass by, convincing myself I wouldn't reach the next one...and I did. How long are you going to say it's not that bad? Until it GETS bad? Because it catches up with you in a hurry, and suddenly you have health issues that may not be reversible. You're starting a new journey to a healthier version of yourself, with this decision. Over the coming months, you're going to get an education into everything that makes these surgeries work, and it includes getting your own mind right about making the necessary changes in lifestyle and habits. The key to all of it is rejecting the old behaviors that have gotten you to where you are. They haven't helped you, they've only hindered you...so is it really so worthwhile to hang onto them?

By day five I was getting in excess of 1.5 miles per day, close to 2 miles...but it was spread out over three sessions of walking per day.

Could be a kidney stone, I imagine.

I will say that for me, it never got any easier until the day of surgery...after which, I didn't feel any hunger and really didn't care to put anything inside me. So the only thing to focus on is, there's a time limit to the pre-op diet. Just follow it to the letter, and give yourself the best chances for a good outcome you can. This is the start of disciplining yourself for the rest of your life, so start off on the right foot

That's entirely up to your surgeon, I would think. But if you're really ONLY eating the things you've said, and you're eating them in the amounts you should, then there's pretty much no way you should be gaining weight. What you need to do is be honest, get an app like MyFitnessPal, track how much you're eating in the app and see what the calories are amounting to. You may be eating healthy things, but in unhealthy amounts. If you're eating full-fat yogurt with fruit filling and all that, it's really high in sugar. Chasing that with a lot of fruit as well, your carbs are possibly very high every day. My pre-op diet was virtually no carbs, everything was sugar-free and non-fat, the focus was 90% on protein intake. I followed it to the letter (and consequently lost about 35 pounds before surgery).

I have told a couple of co-workers because I had to take the time off for surgery, so of course they were curious...and would have figured it out when they saw me eating these tiny portions at mealtime. But other than that, nobody knows. I haven't shared it with anyone outside of family. I'd prefer not to make a big thing of it, they'll see me how they see me, when they see me.

The thing is, no medication for "gas" relief is going to help, because this gas is in the abdominal cavity...it isn't inside the organs. It has to pass into the intestinal tract before it can leave the body, and the only solution to that is lots of movement. Whether it's rolling from side to side while laying in bed, getting up and walking frequently (not just for long stretches, it's better to do it less duration but more frequency), etc... Sometimes the stuff is just stubborn, it always takes me about 3-4 days to get rid of it (I've had three abdominal surgeries). After 2-3 days, that's generally when I start passing meaningful amounts out the "other" end and the pains start to subside a lot. But the only answer is movement, that's the only thing that gets the gas out.

I was preoccupied with food the first week or so, that "head hunger" or mourning process everyone seems to go through. But I really thought about it a lot the first couple of weeks and how dominated I was by food, and it started to ease up. I'm now getting used to the new eating behavior and I really don't think about it that much anymore...which is a good feeling. I finally feel like I'm going to be able to shake the influence of food that has controlled me for so long. Very nice.

I originally went in for RNY but because of scar tissue from prior surgeries, they had to convert to a sleeve. The more I learn about long-term effects of RNY, the more I think I'm better off with the sleeve. A woman my mom knows had RNY and said the malabsorbtion is really only good for the first couple of years, and after that it's just a hinderance...and she also said she developed celiac disease as a result of the surgery. Malabsorbtion isn't the issue in sleeve surgeries that it is with RNY. My wife also wants surgery and she's still feeling like she wants to do that "gold standard" surgery, but I am starting to think a sleeve is the better way to go.

Part of the process of how fat cells shrink is water retention. They take in water, and then expel the waste with the water. The body is constantly refreshing itself and water is one of the main tools it uses for that (which is why it's so important - we are primarily made up of the stuff, after all). Pre-op, you were on a liquid diet most likely...so everything you put in yourself was liquid, in some form. You were putting in a LOT more than you currently are, too. If you're only a week in, you're probably lucky to get 64oz of water in a day, total. Just give it time, your body will get back into a more normal rhythm again. It's always kind of wonky post-surgery. Bowel movements won't be normal for a couple weeks too, probably.

Next year. I've always wished I could dress up for Halloween with my wife and kids, but I always felt like I'd just look stupid. Next year, I am not gonna look stupid...but this year, I go as a guy who just had bariatric surgery