Officially Not Fatty Matty

Not that I know any of your exact situations/dynamics but it sounds like they’re scared they’ll have to start putting in effort to keep you interested instead of assuming you were the one who had to put in the effort. It’s definitely not unheard of for a partner to find comfort in the thought “no one else will be interested so I’m good to do/say as I please…” (I’m not implying they were ever correct with that assumption (they were not)).

Some people just have bad luck. My wife is unable to lose any weight. I don’t know her starting weight (7 years together and she’s never told me and I’m not dumb enough to guess). She had her sleeve in July and has lost maybe ten pounds. It’s heartbreaking to watch her (and you) go through it. She’s eating on plan, even less usually. She dieted and had a personal trainer prior to surgery and lost nothing then as well. She’s been to multiple doctors to try and figure out what’s wrong. Other than pretty serious anemia (she’s had maybe 10 iron transfusions so far) they can’t find anything. One doctor told her if there were ever a global famine she would just be one of the people to survive (gee thanks). So I guess what I’m saying is it can happen, even if you do everything you should. As far as not being able to walk, there are things you can do while sitting to get your heart rate up. If there is a public pool near you that would be another option. Check for local YWCA locations or other similar places, they’ll often have low or no cost options as well. Church groups are also a possibility. No matter what though don’t give up, keep trying, keep doing whatever you can. You are losing weight so that’s a great thing, even if it’s not the pace you were hoping for. Every pound down is one less pound your feet have to support and one pound closer to your goal.

I’ve lost 137lbs so far and my skin really isn’t that bad. My nips are lower than they should be and I could probably use a couple chip clips on my back to pull things taut to where they belong but overall it’s not bad. And to repeat the point made several times, I’d rather flap in the wind like a pasty white flag than have people think “I’m going to have to order new lawn chairs” when I go to sit at their house. Fun fact: I recently visited my sister in law and she has pvc pipe chairs on her porch. Old me would NEVER have tried to sit in them… “no I prefer to stand” (like come on, I was fat and used that excuse like anyone believed it). I enjoyed the view from the chair, not the floor with shards of pvc splayed around me, so non scale victory!

I know I don’t belong here but I just wanted to pop in quick enough to wish all the Moms in here a Happy Mother’s Day. Ok I’m out, carry on. :)

Thanks! I had plans (don’t we all) to change it more regularly as I lost weight but the app won’t let me do it and I don’t typically log in here from my desktop… but I’m done with the weight loss, officially considered healthy per BMI charts so it was time…. Ok I really feel like I’m intruding, I promise I’m not reading any other threads in this particular forum but I gotta gtfo before I get banned or something :) you’re all loved and you’re all beautiful.

It was the same for me early on. I think a lot of it is pain from the cut stomach as it heals. The stomach will still churn and contract and it’s likely normal to feel that pain and I’m guessing the sensation really isn’t much different from hunger pangs. After a few weeks it went away for me, and 11 months out it still hasn’t returned, at all.

Yup. Done it. Twice so far. After the first time I swore I’d never make that mistake again, but I did. And I probably will again in the future. Sometimes we just forget things we think we could never forget.

How can I put this…… Bob Ross is doing a nice winter scene of an empty snow covered field with a happy little stump poking out of the snow…. Fast forward a few episodes and he’s painting the same field in the spring…. The stump is the same stump as before, but without snow covering most of it he needs a lot more paint…. NSV!!

I have not noticed any change in how well ropinerole works for my rls post op.

Depends on where you go. Mine was two weeks from phone call to surgery, it would have been one week if I called a little earlier in the day and snagged that last appointment one week earlier.

Unless you have serious complications or have some condition that causes your body to heal incredibly slow, you’ll be fine three months out. Many people fly to other countries for surgery and fly back a day or two after (you’ll see many doctors will want you to wait an extra day or two, but you get my point). At two weeks I felt “normal” but still took it easy because of healing.. at one month out I was more active than I was preop. Obviously the safest advice is to consult your doctor, but I can’t imagine a typical scenario where any of those activities would be even a slight problem three months out. One thing I would add is can you do all those things now? If yes then you’ll be fine… just don’t expect such a huge transformation that you’ll be able to do significantly more physically than you could pre-op (you likely will be able to do more but how much I couldn’t say).

It’s such an individual thing, the mental side of it, it’s pretty hard to say what you need to do to “be ready.” I went from not even thinking about surgery, to one night the wife asked me if I would consider it.. after a frantic google session I called a doctor in Mexico the next day and had my appointment set for two weeks later. Had my surgery and haven’t had any issues at all, physically or mentally. A big plus in my favor is I don’t think I’m an emotional eater. I can’t think of a time in my life where something went wrong and I thought “oh I need ice cream.” I just had zero portion control. I would tell my doctor “I don’t eat much” and it felt like I didn’t… the real truth was didn’t eat OFTEN but holy hell could I fill up with a lot of food… so for me this has been ridiculously easy… I still don’t eat often but I can only take in maybe 8% of what I used to (I use hotdog counts to make this estimate (one vs a dozen in a sitting (yeah a dozen…. (I like nested parentheticals)))). I had one day of panic where I tried to scare myself with phrases like “change forever” and “body mutilation” but countered it with “busted up knees” and “broken patio furniture” and just sort of closed my eyes and went for it. As many others say, “I wish I did this years ago.” It has been life changing since surgery almost 11 months ago, life changing in every positive way imaginable. Being self aware of why you’re where you’re at is critical, so my advice and experience may actually be harmful to your success. I would say if you feel like you eat emotionally, make sure you keep seeing a therapist post surgery to keep yourself in check and make sure you don’t transfer that behavior from food to something else even worse. But again, it’s self awareness that will tell you if this is needed, not me. Just know that you’re not chiseled from stone, what you were yesterday does not have to be what you will be tomorrow. It may not be easy but it’s doable. Stay on top of your feelings and thoughts and adapt to the situation as best as possible and know that we’re all here to help when we can. Oh and I can eat rice. Love it. Just much much less.

Ok the no straws thing is a pet peeve of mine to the point where I would have walked out if a surgeon said this to me. One, air or gas in your stomach isn’t a problem, it’s there now, will be there tomorrow etc, it isn’t going to leak out like a bag of cheap balloons from the dollar store. Two, and this is the huge logic fail that blows my mind that anyone who went to medical school could not understand…. your stomach isn’t creating the negative pressure that draws liquid into your face hole… your mouth does this… So no matter how you suck liquid in, it’s up to you on how much air you swallow after it’s in there. Here’s a stupid overly complicated test to prove my point. Sit in a chair. Take a big sip from a cup (don’t swallow yet!). Stand up. Walk around your kitchen table two times. Swallow. Now repeat the same process using a straw. That fluid sitting in your mouth when you get up and do the chicken dance around your table is the same. It doesn’t care how it got there. It doesn’t MATTER how it got there. All that matters is how YOU swallow it, and being a grown ass adult you can make that choice yourself.

I’ve had bad rls since I was in my teens. I take ropinerole for it with pretty great success. If I forget to take it a couple hours before bed it’s a miserable experience for me (and my wife). I also get the worst rls after any procedure where they use propofol to knock me out. It’s brutal. Apparently it even happens when I’m out, during one procedure (I’ve had countless spinal injections) the team had to hold my legs down because I was flapping my legs around like a frog :) but anyway, ropinerol works great with mild side effects for me… frequent yawn, runny nose..

Didn’t think I’d ever get this far. My realistic goal was 240 (I’m 6’4” and always justified my fatness as “I’m just a big guy”) but when I hit that I thought 220 would be the bottom. Just hit 199 last week and I think I’m at goal now. Not sure how I can really get into maintenance, calculators are showing my calorie intake needed to maintain are waaaayyy above what I can take in. Short of switching to the m&ms and pop tart diet I think I’ll still keep losing which is now a little concerning. Went from barely squeezing into 44 pants to a loose 36, BMI is considered healthy. I feel great and I’m SOOOO close to being able to do literally the first pull-up of my life. Need to log in via laptop and change my username now :) sorry to gloat I just feel good and can’t get too excited at home because my wife has not been successful with gsv despite strictly adhering to the program and she’s bummed about it pretty hard (quite understandably so)

The towel wrapping around already mentioned just happened to me and it was a huge AHAHAHA YESSSS moment. First time in a hotel in a while, I don’t wrap at home so it never occurred to me. Oh… and I went swimming (hotel also) for the first time since surgery and I sank! It was great. Didn’t wear a shirt either (like the shirt ever fooled anyone else anyway).

It just seems really shady, like car dealers who try to tell you you need to get your oil changed with them to keep your vehicle warranty… some questions I’d have for them.. Why is this particular protein product medically necessary. Are they forcing you to buy from them, you can get the same product on your own. If it is mandatory you buy from them are they profiting off of the sale? If they are is it due to financial struggles or greed? If so are there any other cost cutting measures not typical in the industry that could negatively impact your care before during or after the procedure? I’m sure it’s fine, if they’re using it to make money it’s probably just to pitch in to help pay for the holiday party or whatever, but I’d be really curious as to their real motivation, and “we like it” isn’t a valid answer if they make you buy it direct from them.

Red flags popping off in my head…

Wow that’s great! Being self aware of what you’re feeling is probably the best weapon you can have in getting through any difficulties… that coupled with the guidance and support of this forum is pretty unstoppable.

I know I just said this in the other thread but for those just perusing this one, I’m at ten months and still have zero hunger. As in absolute zero. I eat because I know I have to to live, but if I’m busy I can get home at dinner time and realize I haven’t had a bite of anything all day (I know, mom… I know).

I’m ten months out and am still enjoying the zero hunger phase, riding this train as far as it’ll take me I guess. I had one brief spell where I thought hunger came back with a vengeance but it was short lived and I’m thinking it was a stomach bug or something. Im in the same situation as you, I had basically no pain, no problems. I know a lot of people say this isn’t the “easy way out” but for me it really was, but you know what? I don’t care how I got here… I’m just glad I did and wish I did it years ago.

Major Dickason’s coffee, half and half (regular, the fat free stuff has more carbs), and a fat ol’ squirt of liquid Splenda.

Follow your guidelines of course but for me I was cleared to try anything I wanted at four weeks. I found cucumber to REALLY fill me up and it felt like it sat in my stomach for hours. Bought bags of baby cucumbers and would have one with either a dab of cottage cheese or French onion dip.. would be my dinner or lunch for quite some time. But like anything I eat too often I burned out on them. Still have one now and then… my main dinners are usually cold cuts and some cheese, or I’ll have a bite of whatever I make for my kids, so I’ll never have anything pretty to post in the before and after meals thread. I’m fortunate that I still have good restriction and zero hunger (10 months so far) and I’m riding that train as far as it’ll take me. But until I got to that true solid food phase I was in a similar situation and if it wasn’t for the photo of my removed stomach I would have been worried they didn’t really do anything because the mushy stuff just didn’t make me feel full at all.

I only had the one know-it-all who couldn’t let a post go by without bragging about his success and flat out fat shamed people here. I didn’t ignore him because I wanted to be vocal against his bs. Reported every time he crossed the line and he’s gone now or lurking under yet another new name. I personally find it hard to pick the right balance of positive support vs “you need to get your shit together” type advice to give. Some people need one vs the other and its not really possible to always know who needs what to get through the issues they (sometimes) create for themselves. This is a wonderful forum and overall it’s got a great balance of people willing to offer real help, real advice. I don’t use Facebook but my wife shows me the crap-show on some of those gastric groups and it’s simply absurd compared to this place…. for the most part….

I rarely go out to eat, my wife and I both had sleeve last summer so between the two of us we wouldn’t finish an appetizer but when I take my kids and they get to me I just say “I’m having surgery tomorrow and can’t eat” and just pick off my kids plates. They know the deal, daddy gets his Fry Tax. If there is something I really want I’ll just order it and take 90% of it home. Like TGF said, take care of your wait staff and they dgaf.