SpartanMaker

I hear you there! If I could provide one piece of advice it would be this: We have to start where we are. Forget about all the guidelines like "you must get x amount of cardio per day". While we all want and need to get to that level, some of us just can't do that right now. As long as this week I do a little more than last week, and next week I do a little more than this week, I'm trending in the right direction. I recently saw a video of a 700 pound man and his weight loss journey. For him, exercise was walking from one side of his very small kitchen to the other side. He literally started off with one "round trip". After a while, he made 50 round trips. Before long he was walking outside, which was a major milestone for him. Up to that point, he'd been house bound for years. Maybe for you, it's an extra trip or two up the stairs everyday, or walking to the end of the block and back. Whatever challenges you today, is where you start. Once you establish this, forget about "routines" and do this every day until it's no longer such a challenge. That's when you progress to the next challenge, either by extending the distance or intensity.

This is good advice. What you're experiencing is something called adaptive thermogenesis in the scientific literature. In effect, your body adapts to your restricted intake by also reducing the amount of calories you burn. As much as we hate it, this is actually a evolutionary advantage. When our bodies detect "lean times", they adapt to make sure you survive long enough to make it to the next time of plenty. This was important over most of human history because we we didn't always know where the next meal would come from. To break out of this adaptation where you body is "helping" you survive, you should try to do something different. Varying your macros as suggested above, varying your exercise routine, or potentially even upping the number of calories you eat for a while can all "reset" the metabolic changes that caused the stall. Now that said, even if you changed nothing, it's unlikely the stall will last forever. At the end of the day, your body can only slow your metabolism so much. If you prefer to wait it out, that should eventually work as well as long as you are sticking to your plan.

So it may be time to take a little break from the ongoing saga of why it’s taken me over two and a half years to get to surgery and instead talk about how I got to the point of wanting to have bariatric surgery in the first place. My lightest weight as an adult was while I was in the Army. Just sheer physical activity and regular PT had me lean down to around 175 from maybe 185 when I graduated high school. Unfortunately I was severely injured in a training accident while in the service and left the military with a bad limp and a knee brace as a constant reminder. Weight wise, things went downhill from there. Being somewhat disabled made it hard to exercise, but meanwhile I was still eating like I did when I was in the service. (Lots of food, very quickly.) This was obviously not a good combination. Several other health scares and life events later, I shot up to around 240. I managed to stabilize things at this point and was even able to get into strength training pretty seriously for a while. Most cardio was still out, though. Life went on for several years, until I got a new job that paid me very well, but also took it’s toll on me physically and mentally. Within 3 years in the new job, I was up to 285 or so and climbing. I knew I needed help, so my wife and I tried just about every possible diet program imaginable. Interestingly, I’ve kept logs of every one of those diets. For at least the past 15 years, the typical pattern was for me to be somewhere between 285 and 300 pounds lose 30-80 pounds, then yo yo right back to my starting weight and then some. In about 2017, I finally asked my Doctor for help. We did all the things you’re supposed to do: talk to dietitians, try medications of various kinds, and even do physician monitored diets. None of that worked any better. The problem was, they just assumed like everyone does that I was weak-willed or to stupid to know how to eat properly. That’s never been my problem. I actually eat pretty well overall, with lots of fresh veggies, and plenty of lean protein. The problem is, in addition to all the good food, I’m also an emotional eater that soothes with sweets. I knew I’d reached rock-bottom when I started hiding food from my wife. As an example, I might buy a box of donuts and plow through it in a matter of minutes. Or buy the boxes of chocolate intended for Valentines day and devour them all in a morning. No box or bag of candy or pastries ever had the dust settle on it around me! About this time, I got up to 330 (my highest weight), and knew I needed to take a different road or I would never live to see my grandchildren. (I may never actually have any grandchildren, but that’s a story for a different day!) This takes us to late 2019 when I discovered, quite by accident, that my new insurance plan starting in Jan 2020 would finally cover bariatric surgery. After about a millisecond of research (okay, maybe a little longer), I decided this might be the thing for me. I think you already know what happened in my saga in 2020, so we’ll stop there for now and start back up next time in the summer of 2021, when I finally got the cardiac clearance I needed to get WLS.

I pretty much have all the feels right now, but mostly I'm just anxious to get the surgery done and move on!

Yep, me too, especially that last one. That's going to be so hard for me!

I'm a fan of the ones that have both footpads and handles that you hold. I don't have any data to suggest that they are any better, but it just seems like having more sensors in more places would be a good thing. The one I have now in an Omron, but I recently saw on Amazon that InBody also makes one for the home market. InBody is the brand my Bariatric Center uses, so I'm tempted to get one of those as well. One thing to keep in mind: none of these home BIA scales are all that accurate. In reality, that's not super important to me. What's more important is that they are consistent; meaning I can actually track from one week to the next if my percentage of body fat is trending in the right direction. When I want a more accurate number, I'll go get a bod pod scan. .

I agree with many others here that have said only you can decide what's right for you. I will share some of my thoughts & experiences in the event they will steer you one way or the other. First of all, I think we all can sympathize with wanting it done NOW. I personally have been waiting 2.5 years to have my surgery and (maybe unrealistically), sincerely believe that my surgery date is when my new life will begin. It's hard to be patient for such a life changing thing. Even though I could easily have written a check for the cost of the surgery, I never really considered self-pay. Remember that ultimately surgery is just a tool. Even though it can be lifechanging, I know I still have to put in the work to be successful. Unfortunately, too many people end up right back on the diet yoyo. The last thing I want is to go through all this and still fail. For me, getting to this place where I really do feel mentally and physically ready took time. Perhaps a minor thing for some, but I also wanted local resources in the event I had complications or needed more help down the line. Something else for you to consider perhaps? A lot of people that lose significant amounts of weight, eventually need plastic surgery to get rid of excess skin (and potentially correct some other issues). While sometimes that can be covered by insurance, most of the time it's not. My point is that you need to make sure you're also financially ready to take on that expense.

Seems unlikely to me that it's related to RNY after 9 years, but could be I suppose? More likely there's something else going on. There are a lot of things that can cause those symptoms, so it would be best to see a doctor and let them figure out the cause. Best of luck.

You really need to talk to the prescriber. At the very least, they should help you learn how to properly give a shot, and may also be able to do them for you if you really just can't get over the phobia. Please don't skip the shots. Blood clots can be fatal.

Most likely just temporary water weight from working out. This is why the scale is actually not a great way to track progress. A scale that can track your % body fat, or even just simple measurements are probably better.

You've actually made the first step! Emotional eating is a huge problem for a lot of people and it's not just lack of willpower like people think. There are actual appetite-related hormones (cortosol is the big one), that are triggered by stress. Cortosol tells your brain that there is a danger and that it needs to fuel up to fight the danger. The trick to overcoming this is first to recognize that stress is a trigger for you (YAY, you already did this part!). The second part is harder: you need to train yourself to recognize the difference between real hunger and stress hunger. If your stomach is not telling you you're hungry and it's just your head, that's probably the cortisol at work. If you're still not sure, one thing you can try is to wait 20 minutes or so. If the hunger is real, you should be hungry still. if not, it was just the cortosol. This will take time, but you can learn to tell the difference and overcome the stress induced eating.

Thank you!!! I know everyone get's really anxious before WLS, but after so long waiting, I'm just about beside myself! As a guy, I'm not good with the whole emotions thing, but I do know there are lots of different feels going on!

Welcome! Have you started making any lifestyle changes yet?

Thanks all for posting this topic and for the encouraging replies! I've been seeing all the bad issues people are having and was just assuming mine would be terrible too. (Normally if there's a way to have a bad reaction to surgery or issues due to a medical problem, my body likes to take that road.)

Awesome Job! You're killing it! Just be kind to yourself when the weight loss slows, as it inevitably will. It's all part of the process. Think about it this way. You're already 70% of the way to the 200's! You'll hit that before you know it!

Did I mention that having surgery in peak COVID sucks? It does. Now open heart surgery is hard enough, but I was in the hospital a 7 days and was not allowed any visitors the entire time. I think that was actually harder on my wife through. Especially the first few days. I had some complications, was in a lot of pain and was highly medicated, so I was unable to talk to her. My nurse was supposed to give her regular updates, but like most nurses, she was overworked and wasn't able to call regularly. Imagine a loved one in the hospital after major surgery, but you can’t see them, can’t talk to them, and have no idea what’s going on other than they are having “complications”. Now maybe I should explain these “complications” a bit. Basically I was having trouble breathing on my own and they thought they would have to reintubate me. For those not familiar with the term, it means they would have had to put me back on a breathing machine. They didn’t want that and though I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t want that either. Some studies suggest the mortality rate of cardiac patients that are reintubated is over 40%. Not good odds. Thankfully they didn’t have to go there and I was finally able to make the staff understand that one of the drains in my chest was causing the breathing issues. They removed that drain and I was immediately able to take a nice big breath. Crisis averted. Once I went home, the story honestly gets pretty boring. The surgical recovery period was hard, but being a big fat dude made it harder. The important takeaway here is that my cardiologist said I’d need at least a year to recover from the heart surgery before he would even consider signing off on the weight loss surgery. So my hopes for WLS in 2020 were dashed, but at least there was hope for 2021! Those of you that realize it’s now 2022 (I know, with COVID, I lose track too), will also realize I’m still waiting for my weight loss surgery. Why I’m still waiting well over a year later is a tale for next time!

I now use part of a protein shake as "creamer". I used to use real cream, but knew that would potentially be problematic post-surgery, so found the protein shake works pretty well.

For sure. I have not tried these in a while, but I have made my own protein bars in the past. At least for those, I can pronounce all the ingredients! I may have to try those again?

I don't think I could eat those. A decade or so ago, I lost about 80 pounds eating a low carb diet. Highly processed items like those you're showing were a mainstay of my diet then. I eventually gained every one of those pounds back and then some when I reached my goal. I think the problem was that at the time, I never learned how to eat real food. For me, items like that are like a gateway drug. If I eat them, I soon want to have the "real thing" even more. I plan to just stay away and focus on clean eating.

Interesting. My surgeon did a complete metabolic workup pre-surgery. I assumed to have a baseline.

There are also low acid varieties for those that need to cut down on acid as well.

Have you tried decaf? It can take a while to find the right one (it did for me anyway), but once I found one I like, I drink it exclusively. I actually feel better now than I did drinking the "high octane" stuff.

Green tea still has caffeine, so might not be a good choice either. I drink herbal teas (both hot and iced), for this reason.

Here's a list of the ASMBS approved surgeries. https://asmbs.org/patients/bariatric-surgery-procedures If you're planning to have something done that's not on this list, I'd recommend asking your surgeon why they want to do this different surgery. Keep in mind too that insurance companies likely won't pay for it. They want proven techniques. FYI, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list of forums, there is one for "Mini Gastric Bypass".

I work from home, so at first I was thinking a week at max. I asked the United Healthcare Bariatric Program nurse this question (she works exclusively with bariatric surgery patients), and she recommended 2 week. She said it wasn't due to pain, but just because I'd be extra tired and likely would be suffering from brain fog if I tried to start back any sooner. Hopefully that works, but I won't know until next month!