sideeye

The most regular form of deliberate added sugar I ingest is in coffee, about a teaspoon, and I probably have 5 cups a week. But I've noticed that I have a very noticeable reaction to foods with too much sugar in them, especially combined with carbs; I feel bubbly and gassy extremely quickly, unpleasantly so. So that means I may have one bite of a granola bar or pad thai, then within moments of bite two realize that this is just going to make me feel terrible. It's screened out a lot of foods for me. I definitely had a sweet tooth but wasn't a huge sugar binger before surgery, with the exception of Ben & Jerry's (which I swear was largely psychological, but whatever). I've found that the Halo Top/Enlightened ice creams do absolutely nothing for me and in fact make me feel bloated and gassy. But I did find Breyer's 100 cal ice cream cups (like the old Hoodsie cups) and that seems to be just the right amount to work as a sweetness fix and stay under my bloating threshold. I know a lot of people are religious about never touching sugar and that works for them, I'm just trying to stay at the low end of the sugar scale and stick there.

Around three weeks. Don't pull them off, trim anything that's really pulling away and then just let them come off naturally in the shower or through normal clothing friction.

Asked about food again on the return flight. Do I just look like I'm trafficking in explosive botanicals or something? Also, new horrible TSA scanner revelation: apparently shapewear can ALSO set off the sensor. Not even wires or any sort of corseting, just a lightweight spanx-type-thing. The (very nice) TSA lady who patted me down in ways you really shouldn't have to cope with in public told me that compression garments can read as some sort of density aberration and the software flags it. The hell?! So now in the past few months I've managed to get pulled by the TSA for: the swelling/density of my recent-surgery stomach; lentils and string cheese; SPANX. I look forward to them rediscovering the metal pins in my ankle next trip.

Brunch with a coworker this morning, ate one egg Benedict sans muffin and then a few bites of fruit. Colleague noticed I wasn’t eating much but all I said was “had a big coffee at the airport” and that was the end of that. Its really less of a thing than you might think. They only start digging if they think you’re hiding something.

TSA update: made it through the scanner today without a pat-down (maybe the original mass was scar tissue or swelling that’s since been reabsorbed?) but they DID ask me to remove all drinks AND FOOD from my bag. The “and food” bit was new to me and resulted in me putting a bag of cooked lentils and a few sticks of string cheese through the x-ray machine. The extremely surly TSA staffer said it’s been a rule for two months. My coworker did not get the same question, so I call bullshit. Anyhow, be aware and maybe pack all of your food in one bag that can be easily yanked out and scanned. Bizarre.

Not just slower, less overall. There are people here looking to lose YOU at your highest weight!

Overall I’m sticking with a combo of “I’m not very hungry” and “stomach is a little unsettled”. There’s the added bonus that I really am NOT that hungry, so my response and body language is 100% honest: I’m not hungry. Sometimes I’ll say I need to run to another meeting uptown, which is usually true, so I’m eating light. Seems to work. Ha, though, I have done this: when asked why I’m just ordering an appetizer or soup and I think it’s going to be a thing, I’ll say I’m not that hungry... “but if yours looks good I’m stealing some”. And then I do, just one forkful, but it seems to do the trick. I have no idea what psychological hoodoo is at play there, I’m just taking advantage of the result.

I should have done it sooner, no regrets. Two months out now and it’s great. Given your proximity to surgery, you will most certainly have the best information about what the pros and cons are. You have talked to surgeons, PCPs and nutritionists. Your coworkers, however well-meaning, are fueled off of fear of the concept of “elective” surgery and scary stuff they found on the Internet. Don’t give their opinion much weight. My family was pretty hung up on the idea of “elective” surgery for a bit. I pointed out that while this is a fast-recovery, low-risk surgery that is technically elective, the many joint replacement surgeries I’d need in a decade or two would NOT be elective. My mother, the reluctant owner of two replacement knees that each required extensive recovery and rehab, quickly saw the sense in getting gastric sleeve. They are also completely thrilled at how well it’s all gone since surgery. good luck!

I’m not a big fan of using “amount of weight lost” as a metric to track success, since we all have vastly different starting points. BMI is a good marker for a health baseline, but I’d probably be wary of that one as a direct comparative statistic too. Percentage of starting weight lost feels like a more reliable, comparative baseline for us to use. If I’m reading your stats right, you’ve lost 17% of your starting weight - that’s VERY successful. Calculating the percentage of weight you need to lose to hit goal seems like a good one too. But comparing directly to another individual on these boards is anecdotal (posters self-selecting for success) and confirmation bias will get you. Avoid it.

Same as sillykitty - I can't predict where I'll end up or what's going to be on the menu, so I end up just ordering something that's not fried or coated in General Tsao sauce and then working through protein/veg/starch in order. Ended up at a Thai place and ordered pad thai and basically just picked all the chicken out of it. Another Thai place, got the chicken skewers. At a burger bar, ordered sliders and pawned some off on my nephew while eating the meat. I con people into going to tapas bars or charcuterie places as much as humanly possible. It's a weird needle to thread, trying to order something that's not obviously too small while also not ending up with food left on the plate. I've had a third coworker note that I didn't eat much at lunch, but 1) I don't care and 2) I have most of my coworker lunches one on one so no one compares notes. I do tend to pack a lot of snacks, which is incredibly annoying when I'm flying and someone decides that hummus is a liquid, but otherwise it's fine. My glovebox contains a couple 2oz squeeze packs of applesauce and mixed nuts. Strangely I realized that driving is a total trigger for me. I never, ever ate fast food unless I was in a car, which at some point flipped to "I am in a car, thus I must eat fast food" and then "I'm in a car, I get to eat fast food!". So recognizing that and getting ahead of it with packed snacks is a must. And if I absolutely MUST get something while I'm driving, I'll get an iced coffee and that seems to tackle the car-related craving.

Discuss your concerns with your doctor. They'll be able to talk you through it better than online resources, you'll see a lot of people talking about "bougie size" but honestly just ask the surgeon - not about ordering a specific stomach size, but about what your actual concerns are. From your question it sounds like you either don't want much restriction or you're concerned about losing too much? If you're concerned about your ability to stick to an eating plan even when overdoing it will make you sick, then that's something you also might want to talk to a mental health professional about. As many have said, this isn't magic. If you're concerned about losing the ability to eat a lot of food, then best to address that head-on now, rather than post-op with a lump of chicken stuck in your throat.

The stabbing feeling sound like it's the deep incision where they removed the stomach. It does hurt for a good 10 days or so, at least it did for me. I wore an abdominal binder which helped; people mentioned holding a pillow across your torso but that did less than nothing for me. Sneezing was the WORST. I'm a stomach sleeper and ended up buying two firm king pillows to put on either side of me at night to keep me on my back. It does improve, but yeah, it does hurt. I never feel it at all now.

I hate trick clothing. I put an outfit on in the morning after spending 30 minutes finding a combo that fits, and 30 mins into wearing it (when it’s no longer dryer-tight) I realize it does NOT fit. Who knew clothing with 5% lycra would be so unforgiving?

My nephew announced at a restaurant over the weekend that he wants to go to lunch with me all the time, because I share grown-up food with him and he doesn't have to order off the kids menu. He's 3 and I'd just given him two (out of three) of my hamburger sliders, and now he's making me read the menus to him so we can order something to share. It turns out an appetizer is exactly the right size for an adult bariatric patient and a voracious three year old, who knew? I do this too. Some foods are more dry than others, and I also like to take a sip to clear my palate. I find that bites 1-3 of any meal are delicious and bite 4 is a chore; if I take a small sip after bite 3 and wait for a bit, I taste everything better on bite 4. My water glass is still practically full by the end of the meal, and my doc and nutritionist really aren't sticklers for this rule. As long as I'm drinking less than an eighth of a cup I really don't notice anything.

Not looking to kick something off and in fact have no idea what prompted the initial rant. Just describing a pattern observed after a few years of monitoring online exchanges 8 hours a day. All the limits I described are self-imposed; I find it makes online life simpler and prevents people from leaving the board. That's all.

Highly unlikely anyone on this site's a Russian troll. Quite likely that someone on this site holds an opinion that was amplified by either Russia or Cambridge Analytica, though. Could be tame, could be vile, that's the tricky thing - it's kind of like "Inception", you internalize the thought as your own without recognizing it as originating elsewhere.

I was prescribed Metformin to counter PCOS years ago, and it did go some ways to reducing my weight (though obviously not enough). It's a pretty common prescription if your doc thinks you have PCOS, so might as well check with him to see if that's why he prescribed it - to be honest, if you don't need surgery because the Metformin worked, that's not a bad outcome to try instead of surgery. The multivitamin I have to take each morning is absolutely the same size as the Metformin pills I used to take, so you'll be taking a big pill either way.

I don't think there's been an upswing, but there have been advances in sophistication. There have always been dark corners of the internet, but they were somewhat cordoned off from the mainstream internet spaces. From what I've observed two things happened: 1. the Chans found a really good vector into mainstream (memes) and then used those same paths to start injecting culture-disrupting content into the rest of the internet, and 2. trolls fine-tuned their toolkit so they're now not just easily-identifiable jerks, they're also using deceptively mild personas to create chaos. When we finally untangle the impact of Russia's troll factories and Cambridge Analytica on the 2016 election it's going to be proven as much more significant than the general population currently believe - this isn't a political statement, it's just acknowledgement of the pure skill of psychographic targeting and the way Russia was deploying its troll network. That didn't happen in a vacuum. While the Russians are a peak, state-organized example of how to effectively troll, they're behaviors that are exhibited by people invested in chaos or pushing a particular worldview all over the web. And one of the knock-on effects of the trolls getting REALLY GOOD is that their influence over non-trolls got a lot more traction, so now their messaging is getting spread in ever-increasing circles by people I'd probably describe as dupes. They heard a thing repeatedly, they didn't think analytically too much about it, they internalized the thing enough to make it something they now believe and will fight for. This is also how the Facebook ads worked. I will say that Trump's style has had a strong impact on these trends. He broke down some of the barriers that governed what is acceptable in civil discourse online. It's a horrible acceleration, again aided by trolls: during the Obama admin, a lot of the toxic racist stuff that traditionally stayed on the fringe crept closer to the mainstream until people were boldly repeating it on Facebook, and then one of the main tweeters of that toxicity became president. Fast-track to legitimizing that sort of speech.

"Bullying" as a word has almost lost meaning, so I'm not going to get too hung up on that, but exclusionary/conformist behavior due to power imbalance is usually what's seen as bullying in an online community. Power imbalance online is absolutely a real and quantifiable thing. Sometimes the person exhibiting the behavior doesn't realize they're doing it - as far as they're concerned, they're just giving their opinion. But when that opinion-giving is done in a tone that clearly isn't sitting well with the recipient, and when the opinion-giver has reputational clout on the board (either through lots of posts that get lots of likes or through people who quote them and boost their signal), that can end up being isolating. It doesn't help when the opinion-giver's response to pushback is an unapologetic "I'm just being real", which pretty much carries the silent closer "...you wimp". The opinion-giver walks away thinking the recipient is crying wolf about being attacked and the recipient sees nothing but arrogance and swagger, and typically exits the space because of the unpleasant encounter. The internet's weird in that it forces us to over-rely on ONE form of communication that's a relatively modern invention: text. That removes body language, tone, expression, and it also tends to drag out flare-ups that WOULD be about 3 minutes in person to a 3-day back-and-forth. So it festers. If both sides dig in and other commenters join, it turns into a big stupid thing when in perspective, anyone looking at the situation would be amazed it blew up at all. I was a moderator on a global platform for a few years enforcing community codes, and these are the ground rules I've come away with: If someone tells you they don't like your tone or that you're bullying them, disengage. It's not worth it, no argument about tone EVER ends well, and it will be an exercise in frustration. Dial back on your engagement in that thread and refocus on the subject being discussed rather than the participants. Do not give in to the temptation to go overboard and attempt to isolate the person you don't like by railroading discussion away from them - that's petty as hell. Just focus in a normal way on other elements of the thread. You do not need to fight for your honor in this situation, just walk away. If two people tell you they don't like your tone, it's worth trying to put yourself in their shoes and re-reading your posts. Sometimes sass comes off as rudeness or dismissiveness. Determine for yourself if you want to modify the way you write - some people believe being "true to their personality" is worth pissing a few people off, others ease off the sharp edges a bit so they get into fewer tiffs and more worthwhile discussion. If you find yourself routinely on the receiving end of a bullying accusation, think about your role in the community. Sometimes it's not just your behavior in isolation, it's the knock-on impact of your friends on the site who end up making the other poster feel ganged up on. If you're a member in good standing on the site and you've got a lot of onsite friends and you all tend to agree with each other, realize that this might come across as mob rule. With great power comes great responsibility, etc etc - rather than just seeing yourself as a single commenter, acknowledge your role as part of a clique and do what you can to manage those interactions so they're less overwhelming for outsiders. If you're a spectator on one of these threads (or a clique member), DO NOT PILE ON once things get prickly. Do not join a side. Post about the topic at hand instead to redirect discussion. Targeting and exclusion online are very real things, and there have definitely been instances on this site. There are some people who cry "bullying" just because someone disagrees with them and they have a victim complex, but they're relatively rare. Usually it's a real response to feeling ganged up on, shouted down or interpreting tone as mean-spirited. Does that mean one person has to accept the title of "bully" and the other victimhood? No. It just means that for an online community to be welcoming we all need to be aware of the drawbacks of a text-only mode of communication where each individual interprets tone differently, and where power is accrued through reputation and history.

Almost 8 weeks, down 32lbs. Around 11% of my surgery day weight.

This is good advice, and the second half of it is: whether it's desk or physical, how mentally taxing is your job? Are you doing something that's kind of predictable and on repeat (like working customer service remotely or routine in-office secretarial work), or are you constantly in the midst of chaos, complex organization and problem-solving? I thought I was pretty much in the clear because I could work remotely during recovery, but abruptly discovered that the amount of mental running I was doing completely wiped me out and I'd end each day exhausted, even though I'd spent most of it propped up in bed. I took three days off and if I had to do it again, I'd take the whole week off and then go part-time the next week.

If you paint your nails, look into vegan/non-toxic polish alternatives. After decades of basically not being able to wear drugstore polish because my nails would instantly snap, chip or flake, I've started using Sundays polish and it's amazing, my nails are strong and healthy and I've painted them every week for six weeks now. Apparently my nails didn't like the formaldehyde in most drugstore brands?

Yes, I have this. For me it’s an escalating ache over about 10 mins that then turns into 10 seconds of what feels like a big cramp, then it’s done. Happens about once every other day, isn’t hunger, is definitely happening on an empty stomach. Weird.

The Celebrate calcium citrate soft chews I've got are filling the sweets void for me right now. They're sugar-free and they do taste a little "off" if I were to compare them with normal caramel or chocolate, but I'm not jonesing for candy and I think they're a part of it. (I'd recommend the chocolate over the caramel, the caramel's got a bit of a weird aftertaste).

Beware the baked beans - I had hasn’t fat-free refried beans and had no problem but when I tried exactly what you did, eggs and baked beans, I felt pretty horrible and bloated. Best guess if there’s a lot of lurking sugar in the baked beans? I’m finding that bloating is a reliable indicator that I’ve eaten something with too much sugar or fat in it.