Biddy zz 🏳️🌈

I had a rebellion - Christmas cake. Three weeks post surgery. Now get this BS rationalisation - I said to myself “the cake will have a lot of sugar, all that dried fruit. So I will (wait for it) pretty much just eat the icing.” Can ya Tell I have a PhD in Psychology? Sure enough, bad dumping. Luckily we are learning critters. Now even the sight of fruit cake makes me nauseous...

I am 56. Had a gastric band done at about 46 I guess. It worked a treat, held myself at 175lbs effortlessly. Then a health need to empty it and it broke on the refill. Port replaced - but I just never again hit the sweet spot, as the weight gradually accumulated. RNY late last year when I was up to 230lbs, and it has been a charm. In 3 months, down to 184 and losing 1-2 a week. Little ‘hunger’ and not a lot of interest in eating either. Am loving salads for the first time in my life. Lettuce seems to me a gift from the gods. Anonymous pics - the top one is as at 230lbs. The bottom one - this morning.

Ok @FluffyChix, here’s the pix. Not easy FINDING a before, having obsessively deleted ‘fat’ (ie all) photos of me all my life! So the first pic, me this morning. The one below - a couple of years back...

Ok, piccys coming. Note, will put a smiley face over mine - I haven’t told many people about the RNY, just that I got my broken band sorted. Truth but not the whole truth. Regret that now, but no undoing it! So, posted on my three month update thread...

Oh your recipes! I can’t wait til you are giving us all chewy-food recipes! I have loves some of the fluffychix blogsite recipes. Thank you google. I have lost just a pound this week. “Oh no. Is it stopping? Maybe it is stopping. I am gonna fail at this. I eat way too fast. I can eat too much. I can’t diet more cos I am rarely managing 1000 calories already. I am useless again..... oh look, I dropped size in my pants and fit into two lovely old pairs of work trou that were hard to do up 2 weeks ago. Panic stations averted... for now”

I have heard the patches are of dubious merit - not enough research yet on what you do actually absorb, or don’t. My surgeon won’t allow them for that reason. There are great chewable vitamins out there. Flinstones chewables. Or Celebrate. Look in the Bariatric Pal Store on this site - they have a great range!

So excited for you. This is a life-changer, great having you on the bus!

My partner doesn’t well to being called that. 😂😂😂 Things tightened a bit at 6-7 weeks. I reckon I started to get ‘hunger’ or ‘I can eat a bit more now’ about 8-9 weeks. Daily variation - yesterday, ‘hungry’ feeling by 10.30am after breakfast, right? Today I had usual breakfast as above, then at 4.30pm I though ‘hell, I didn’t have lunch’. So thinking my tummy can now “communicate” might still be an overstatement!! Agree with @Sosewsue61 - I weigh and measure wherever I can, still.

Yep, we all vary. And maybe even vary by the day! My breakfast - pod of Nespresso coffee, made and chilled the night before, plus 50ml milk, ice cubes and vanilla protein - great slushy. Keeps me full til lunch. Except this week when, by 10.30 I am ‘hungry’ or some damn thing. Lunch - low fat chilli beer stick with 1oz cheese, at 11am. Am still full from that, and am cooking chickpea curry with baby Spinach and broccoli for dinner at 6.45pm. 3/4 cup of that will see me til bed. Last week, I was not at all hungry during the day - could have skipped lunch if I forgot to note it. So - take good notes my fluffy friend, these all add value to us all, but chill. Don’t stuff yourself, get 60g protein and good veggies, and tolerate being a bit hungry if 3/4 cup leaves you with that - I still reckon your ‘tightening up’ moment is likely on your horizon! xxx

Can I just say how much I LOVE salad, from a position last year where I hated it and considered it rather a sinful waste of a good eating opportunity. Now clearly while I was unconscious and under the knife, one of you successfully petitioned God to change the recipe of lettuce and tomatoes to include sweetener, and red bell pepper to get rid of that disgusting bitter backtaste it used to have, and mayonnaise so that a teaspoon goes a hugely long way and it no longer requires 1/4 cup to ale a serving palatable. I thank you for your successful partitions to the almighty. I am interested in other changes we are experiencing in our food tastes - so that I can try them out!

Oh that is some transformation! You must be SO stoked, seeing those pics!! Tummy, arms, face, chin - you are a new man!

Hi @Brttnyj89 I had my band for 10 years or so. First 5 - great. But the port broke and after it was replaced, I never again hit that sweet spot. Got from 260 down to 180, then back up to 230 when I had the bypass. Ditched it 12 weeks ago - and this journey is really exciting. I am, at current rate, 3-4 weeks off my bypass lowest weight. And think I will easily go lower - my goal is set at 165 - lower than the band, but a weight I would be thrilled with. For me, this has been all smooth sailing. The odd short weight-loss slowdown, but it picks up again. No regurgitation (‘productive burps’ we called them in band-Land). Just steady changing of habits. Word of advice - ditch caffeine a couple of weeks before surgery - good on you for quitting pop, but coffee, tea etc too. You don’t want to be recovering from that with a caffeine withdrawal headache on top!

I was living in the north, Auckland, the biggest city, but now I live right down south. Slower, gentler pace of life! The Fobi Pouch was invented by a US surgeon - my guy trained with him. As well as the open surgery, it is also very expensive - equivalent to a year’s salary at job that pays at the lower end of the wage scale. Or 1/10th of an average house in my city. Lucky insurance paid for 1/4 but still... No regerts, as they say.

Sort of running up the stairs (they say ‘tripping’ up the stairs - but this time in a good way!) instead of plodding while pulling myself with my hand on the handrail. Unearthing beautiful and old favourite clothes out of storage. And not really minding that those flared pant legs went out of fashion 4 years ago. Scuba diving - 13 sleeps to dive the pacific Athol of Niue!!! Fitting back into my motorcycle gear - and loving riding it. Being able to see what I am doing as I shave the backs of my calves! Nice haircut with no fatroll on the back of my neck. And the biggie - not imaging the rude things people are saying about me, such as when I cross the crossing in front of a car full of people...

Aaah yes indeed!! And the joy of being on THIS forum where I have to convert my kg weight each week or so to update - I got to do both!!!

No, none at all. It is more to retain pouch shape than to cause restriction. It is very loose - held in by a loose suture either side. In almost 2000 ops, the surgeon has twice (I think he said twice) had to do laparoscopic surgery to remove it in people whose swelling didn’t go down the way he expected and so it was restrictive. It is near the bottom of the pouch, too, so no ‘tissue up through the band’ issues if you vomit either. Thankfully.

Yep, I have the fobi. I loved the gastric band when it worked, so am very comfortable with having that wee ring in there (a little boy’s urinirary catheter, with a suture throug the middle tying it into a 6.5cm circle). My Pouch is long and narrow (most are more like small round balloons - mine is the long thin party balloon). And when he rejoins it to the intestine, he takes several inches of intestine up and uses it to surround the newly cut edge of the pouch - so most of my new pouch is stomach wall plus intestine wall double-thick. This almost eliminates post surgery leaks. Also - in a few people, the cut away stomach migrates back to the new Pouch and rejoins which makes the cut away stomach get food again (isn’t THAT amazing!) but having that intestine over the incision line stops that.. The downside - surgery is expensive because it takes 5 hours (including band removal and scar tidying - maybe 3 usually). Also, my guy hand sews rather than staples, hence 100% open surgery.

Well, @FluffyChix I am in New Zealand, and it seems more common here to have practically no food plan. They are much more relaxed here - but I suspect a quirk of NZ law might be a GREAT reason for this. Here it is, my US buddies. We have full, universal tax-paid no-fault accident insurance - so if something goes wrong (with anything - surgery, a ladder, a car crash) every single NZer gets full medical care free on the state and (more importantly) in return no-one can sue anyone. We have no courts full of people suing each other. None. So maybe our Doctors ar a little less nervous? Anyway- my food plan was this. 1. Start with mush until you can eat harder foods, then progress as you are able. Don’t drink when you eat, for now. I was on puréed chicken and beans before I left hospital. 2. Start with bites, then 1/4 cup, then 1/2 cup. Your max will be 1 cup but you might not get there. 3. Strictly 3 meals a day, no snacking. Protein first helps some people so feel free to give that a go, but don’t panic about 60g every single day because your liver will make you protein. That is it. My meal plan. My surgeon has a longitudinal study of 1700 patients going back, some nearly 20 years. The average calorie intake after 5 years is 900-1000. And he has a huge no-regain success rate too (but he does the no-stretch, double walled stomach with the silicone ring embedded - Fobi Pouch).

Yeah - looking back over my diet in my food plan, you are eating pretty much like I was - softer, but similar volume. So all is good, flower! I am amazed by how many of us go through the “I can eat more than predicted” thoughts. I wonder if our surgeons know?! Maybe it isn’t us that have this wrong!! And maybe the prep talks are a little askew, so (combined with the anxieties that one or two of us but oh-no-never-me have) we all get a worrying surprise when we can eat 1/2 cup of mush three weeks out!

Hey - welcome! It is all a bit variable. I had open surgery, but even still the pain was really fine (way easier than a hysterectomy, if that helps!) If you are having laparoscopic surgery, most seem to find the gas pain (from gas they pump into your abdomen to separate your organs for surgery) the worst. It passes but is not fun. They really do work to manage the pain, because then you get up and walk about (4 hours after you wake). That moves the gas. As for the water - sip, sip, sip, every few minutes. The mantra here - walk, walk, walk, sip, sip, sip! We all got through it, it goes by really fast. Stay in touch - there are half a dozen folk here who can answer any question!

Some people here call moving into the 1-hundred-and-something pounds, the One-derland. I haven’t been anxious, but hope it breaks so you can embrace the achievement.

I put this in the same category as vacuuming, dusting, doing the laundry, and the dishes. As I patiently explained to my other half, my incision is so fragile I can not do any of these things for at least 2 years and possibly never. 😉 Seriously, though - I am heading off scuba diving in 10 days. My surgeon said that was fine after 12 weeks, incision totally healed, and lifting tanks, hauling yourself back in the boat etc. is pretty stomach muscle-intensive.

Me too - I just put it down to a better diet. That and my bum being half it’s former size, so my back isn’t so sore!

This is fantastic - sometimes I wonder with whether the difference between me and friends who have never struggled with weight on/weight off is that the NOTICE the impact of food, whereas I just tended to eat almost as a habit. I would eat until stuffed and feeling a bit uncomfortable, but then do it again 5e next day. Now, I learn. It is oyster season here - a real favourite and a delicacy. I used to eat a dozen - battered and deep fried. I thought that through, ordered half a dozen, ate four and thought “I am not having these again, I am not really enjoying them”. I will try raw ones next week, but this morning even the thought of that is a bit off-putting. Seems like I am developing a different (normal?) sort of feedback mechanism, like your “the croutons were not even satisfying” one, maybe. Good work - make a note of these proud moments - like sharing them here - to help with the ‘oh god I can’t believe I did that dumb thing’ moments that come later!! 😁

So what nothing! I LOVE your daily posts, my life and brain are not nearly as interesting or capable! My intention is to do one of those posts roughly every three months!!