sideeye

It all depends on the pattern. Is he someone who consistently undermines you? Is he the type to look at you in a new dress that fits in all the right places and he says "yeah, but you should wear a cardigan because your arms don't look great"? Does he taste the food you cook and say that there's just something missing that would've made it great? Does he make you the butt of jokes and then tell you you're too sensitive if you object? Does he slight you in private or public? If so, and this is just the latest event in a series where he's looking for a chance to bring you down, he doesn't sound worth it. But if this is an unusual thing and out of character for him, then it's worth taking a little time to consider why he might be reacting this way. Is he overweight, and worried about being "the fat boyfriend" or being pressured to have the surgery himself? Is he terrified of surgery and the risks involved? Did he read about the divorce rate involved in this surgery and thinks you'll lose weight and leave him? None of these are particularly good reasons, mind you, but they help explain why he might have had such a shitty reaction and said something dumb. It also would give you better topic to discuss than "why are you such a jerk" (which is kind of merited but unlikely to be helpful). Leaving someone based on a single comment is probably overreacting. Leaving someone based on a pattern of behavior is not - if he's making it his mission to diminish you, then this is just the latest sign that he's not worth keeping around.

Try Orgain chocolate shakes. They're the only shake that didn't taste sickeningly sweet to me, and now I have one every day for breakfast just to get 20g of protein out of the way early on.

Around 10 days for me - I bought some king-sized pillows and wedged them on either side of me to keep me on my back that first week and a half, otherwise I'd wake in the middle of the night as I tried to roll to my side or stomach in my sleep. OUCH.

The reason why bariatric surgery is the most successful procedure for severely overweight people is because it resets your metabolic floor, to an extent. Normal dieting doesn't do that. Basically, if you're an identical twin and you gain to 350 while your sister stays at 150, if you diet your metabolism generally doesn't recover to match your sister's - you CAN diet down to 150, but to stay at that weight you'll have to ingest far, far fewer calories than your sister does to maintain and that means you feel like you're starving the whole time. It's a weird spooky piece of science that hasn't quite been cracked yet, but bariatric surgery seems to avoid that trap. That's why many of us get it; not just because we can lose weight and feel restriction, but because it means when we get to 150 we can ingest a reasonable amount of daily calories without gaining again. Your metabolism isn't at that stage yet, in fact your metabolism sounds like it's pretty manageable. And the issues you're describing sound psychological, like food addiction, or might be metabolic like PCOS. Both of those are manageable without surgery, especially if you're tackling it now when you're still young and close to a healthy weight. When people say they're having weight loss surgery to prevent getting ill or grinding down their knees, they're talking about something that is the logical trajectory of inaction from their current weight. You're not there yet, you're talking about the surgery to prevent getting obese and in turn prevent other complications. But you're not obese, so tackle that part first. It's called "weight loss surgery" for a reason, and is not "prevention of weight gain surgery" for that same reason. Don't get sliced up without exhausting all available options for managing your weight while you're still in a healthy range. This is not a quick fix and it definitely won't prevent you from eating enough calories to gain if you're still working through a food fixation. That's why YouTube is full of regain videos.

I had a non-WLS surgery a couple years ago and a fair amount of my hair fell out. No protein or vitamin issues, just getting knocked out and sliced up, and I'd say the surgeries were on par for duration and trauma. When I went to a hairdresser I hadn't seen in a while, she asked if I'd had a baby in the last year because my hair was showing the thinning patterns that post-partum moms get a lot (I was noticing it too). I've also had a segment of hair grow back coarse, which is odd. Right now when I put my hair in a ponytail there's one hell of a wisp over my left ear that shows about two years of regrowth all at the same length. My dad had surgery a year before that and his hair thinned for a while as well. So aside from all the medical professionals drawing the link, I'd anecdotally say surgery and hair loss have a connection.

Mine've been peeling at the edges for about a week, one of them's come off. I'm in no hurry to take them off though, the glue is adhering to the crusted blood on top of the incision site and I'm pretty sure if I peel it off now it'll make the scar worse. When the skin underneath is healed, the scab will loosen and the whole thing will just come off naturally.

Work is an early pitfall for me. I'm usually in two or three different locations during the day, always by foot or public transport, and I try to pack as light as possible. That's making meal planning either really tough or really simple - I'm in the puree phase and I'm both exhausted and running mostly off of protein shakes on busy days. I've managed to duck work outings so far, but towards the end of this month's going to be a slew of them, one of them at a steakhouse. And work stress usually means grazing for me, which I caught myself doing a couple of days ago; grazing on pureed stuff, but still taking in way too much over the day for no good reason. April's going to be a more manageable month, but jeez. This will all be a lot easier to manage generally once I can eat normal foods and just duck into a restaurant and eat an appetizer to recharge, but at the moment it's pretty rough.

I really can’t eat more than 2oz comfortably, and I’m keeping track of that with a food scale and 4oz jars. I’m eating soft scrambled eggs, yogurt, pudding, very wet tuna salad, refried beans, cream of wheat, blended bean and lentil soups, protein shakes and milk. I’m using a lot of herbs and extracts to keep things interesting. I’m also eating with chopsticks, which I do frequently anyway but has certainly stopped me from absently putting too much food in my mouth. One thing I haven’t been doing as reliably as I should is sticking to fixed mealtimes - turns out it’s hard to wedge them around work. But I’m also aware that’s how you end up eating too much by grazing, so next week I’m going to get more structured. It’s been really weird figuring out the difference between head and real hunger. Head hunger can be very persuasive and try to convince you that your stomach’s at-capacity feeling is actually a hunger cue. Weird.

A tie between face (slimmer) and knees (hurt less).

Took me 8 days before I could sleep on my stomach, and that’s with some pain getting from back to stomach. For some reason none of the “hug a pillow” worked for me at all, including sneezing and side-sleeping, both hurt a whole lot. I’m 11 days out now and pretty healed overall. Some ache/twinge stuff but not the sharp stabs mostly.

There’s a difference between overeating in a single sitting and not feeling restriction, and grazing all day in such small amounts that your sleeve never feels it but you end up ingesting 2500 calories per day. Are you tracking your intake? Is it possible you’re eating very small meals, but grazing so much you’re gaining weight?

I’ve been using Water Minder. I can set the three quick-access amounts so I’ve got an 11oz Shake, a 14oz mason jar of water and 1oz bites of jello. I’ll change it up as I move through typical liquid amounts.

UGh, and now the can’t-burp feeling. Avoid straws. Ugh. This is the first time my stomach’s made noises since surgery.

Liquid isn’t at the top of the straw and you have to suction it up, bringing those four inches of air in too. They tend to mix into something kind of bubbly at the top of your mouth which is hard to isolate and breathe out before swallowing, so you end up swallowing a lot of air. Then your stomach gets all bubbly. I’m writing this as I drink through a straw, which I absent-mindedly stuck in the iced tea I just bought. First time since surgery and I probably won’t make it a habit, I can feel the difference in my stomach. Feel a little seasick.

Don't freak out. And I think your instinct to stop looking at the numbers is probably a good one - if you can, get a smart scale and deprioritize the whole thing. Just step on it on the mornings you remember to, and don't care about the number. Then you can check the data once a week at a time when you're mentally ready for it. I'm a day before you, March 5th, and have lost 10lbs. I started at just shy of 300. So proportionally, I'd say you're tracking right along with me. And I'm not freaking out, so neither should you. It's way more important to pay attention to food and how you feel when you're eating it - both how you physically feel (restriction) and how you emotionally feel (head hunger). Don't burn time or energy on scale-watching.

A week, nutritionist cleared me yesterday. My taste buds appear to be exactly the same, and now that the incisions have finally stopped twanging, it's pretty much like nothing changed except that I can only eat a couple bites of soft food before stopping. Had refried beans this morning, same thing: 2oz and then done. Same with egg. Head hunger exists but is pretty irrelevant, it takes more than enough attention to just track the protein I have to fit in.

I've had lasik and when I get tired or dehydrated my vision can swim. I got it after surgery and figured it was the same root.

I'm losing slowly too, and I'm secretly hoping it means I won't lose my hair. (I have no proof that this is how it works.)

I ate a quarter of a can of tuna out of a teacup today, and then I absolutely could not eat any more. Man this is going to be weird.

Pretty sure my investment for the next 6 months is going to be in wrap dresses and spanx, then a couple of outlet mall cardigans. Hopefully I'll be near-ish goal by next October when I have to start looking at layers and outerwear. And I have no problem haunting the local tailor to get those dresses downsized every month or two. It's an investment but probably worth it in the long run.

Yes. I just sneezed in my kitchen and then doubled over keening. Ouch.

Doing well nutritionally but my right-side incisions are still twanging when I use my muscles - I'm a stomach sleeper and haven't been able to lie on my stomach without it hurting for a week now. Driving me a little insane.

Good lord. There is no debate. The earth is warming and has been since the Industrial Revolution. 99% of scientists agree climate change is real and measurable and in many cases predictable. It's mindblowing that this thread is a decade old and still alive, and a horrible testament to our modern inability to differentiate between hard science and snake oil televangelism. There are such things as experts, and those experts say CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL. You do not have to be from a coastal area to understand this in real time, but it sure as heck helps. I'm beginning to think the internet broke the Baby Boomer generation and took some of X with it. Something about blowing the doors off information access without any quality control or standards resulted in an entire generation and a half losing the ability to tell the difference between credible sourced evidence and hogwash. Maybe exposure since birth will mean the millennials will develop some sort of antibodies against conspiracies and manipulated information, otherwise we're screwed.

I kind of don't care either way, to be honest. I've told my immediate family, because they're healthcare proxies and because I need someone to vent to. I've told two or three close friends. Due to a really unfortunate confluence of events I had to make it perfectly clear to people at work that I would seriously not be reachable even for a quick meeting and this PTO was not moveable because I would literally be unconscious in surgery, and they are not stupid people, so they will be connecting some dots over the next few months. But at the same time, I never actually intended NOT to tell people... Just didn't think of making an announcement. But overall? Whatever. Between PCOS, a weird neurological issue and hypermobility in all of my joints, this single surgery at a relatively young age was the best and least invasive solve for a plethora of problems down the road. There is no way anyone judging me can make me feel guilty or weird about it. I'm completely comfortable about how I chose to do this, I am crystal-clear that it was the best logical option, and if anyone tries to ding me for making a choice based on vanity they're going to get an earful of health stats in return.

Most of the shakes made my tongue curl from the sweetness in them and I can't drink them without feeling ill, but the chocolate Orgain shakes are exactly my groove: less sweet and I can easily drink three of them a day. They basically taste like slightly odd chocolate milk to me. I'm supplementing that with jello, crystal light, milk, and a can of Progresso Chickarina that I blended the hell out of and mix 50/50 with chicken broth. That single can of Chickarina is going to last me about a week, it's kind of insane. When blended it's not quite chewable, but the chicken and meatball fibers will stick your teeth together a bit if you chew the soup in your mouth. Reverse chewing? Anyhow, it took the edge off the need to chew for me.