Neostarwcc

So I have one more thing to pass before my surgery and that's being cleared by the nutritionist. My surgery was going to be scheduled for November but it's being postponed for a few weeks because the nutritionist failed me this morning because I haven't been practicing mindful eating and that apparently can completely reverse the effects of my surgery. I've been trying to practice mindful eating now for months but I honestly just don't get it and I've never gotten mindfulness in general. Being schizophrenic myself they've tried to teach me about mindfulness several times and I've never gotten it and it's never worked for me. So is this it and the end of my journey and I'll have to try to lose 150 pounds on my own (I weigh 440) or is it not as hopeless as I think? I've got two weeks to learn mindful eating before my next appointment with her so is there any tips from people who've struggled to learn mindful eating in the past?

Right now I'm taking normal sized bites and just trying to make my meals last 20-30 minutes that's a vast improvement. Even if I come into the nutritionist with taking smaller bites and taking 30 minutes she might pass me after all she only gave me 2 weeks to work on this and I'll likely have 3-4 weeks to work on it before my surgery because it will take time for my insurance to approve the surgery and for them to get everything setup and everything. I can work on taking pea sized bites then. I'm sure the nutritionist will bring that up to me when I see her in 2 weeks right now she has just said I have to take small bites and hasn't elaborated as much as you have.

Ok on Ok on the pamphlet she gave me it says chew for 22. It doesn't mention anything else like whether it means chew for 22 seconds or 22 bites it just says chew for 22. Your 1 minute seems a little excessive so I might just go for 22 bites which should last for longer than 22 seconds anyway. 22 bites should take 35-40 seconds which should completely puree the food. One thing that I found helpful last night because my wife works and isn't always around to have a conversation with is turning on the TV and watching it while I'm eating. I know the doctors tell you not to do that but I find it REALLY helpful in eating slower because it's a distraction and it helps me eat slower and make my meals last longer. I tend to not eat more like most people do when watching TV so it really, really helps. My question is though when my meals are a lot smaller how am I possibly supposed to make them last for 20-30 minutes? I barely can make large meals last for 15-20 minutes. I did manage to eat a salad in 20 minutes yesterday while watching TV but it was a big snack sized salad. When my food is basically the size of a golf ball how the heck is that supposed to last for 20-30 minutes? Even with being distracted by talking or watching tv?

Sure. She was concerned that I was eating too fast when I told her that I was eating my meals within like 5-10 minutes. She said that I can't do that with the surgery because not only will I be miserable with vomiting and diarrhea and nausea and the like but I likely would undo the gastric sleeve surgery. She said I should aim for eating my meals in 20-30 minutes preferably 30-40. This seems like an impossible goal for me especially when I see her again in just 2 weeks. She also wants me to savor each bite and focus on the food or something like that. I don't really understand it to be completely honest with you. Mostly I just wanted to work on eating slower over the next two weeks so that when I do get the surgery I don't get sick and undo the surgery and "pass" with her so I can get the surgery. I can fake my way out of the mindfulness part of it or just tell her that it won't work for me and if it's a crucial part of the surgery than maybe bariatric surgery isn't the right option for me.

Hello so my surgery is being planned in November assuming I pass the psych evaluation on Wednesday. I'm extremely worried about passing the evaluation and what the evaluation is going to entail can somebody give me a basic idea thats been through it before? Im getting the gastric sleeve operation. I've already filled out their questionnaire and they gave me about 150 questions to answer but the questions give me no clue about what questions the psychologist is going to be asking me aside from trap questions like "I can eat whatever I want after the surgery." Obviously clearly a trap and you're supposed to clearly answer strongly disagree to that question but other questions were not so straight forward. I also have a history of mental illness (I'm schizoaffective) does that mean that I automatically fail my evaluation?

I just got home from the bariatric clinic/nutritionist. The nutritionist didn't clear me for surgery and is going to follow up with me again in a month. Turns out she found out that I haven't been practicing mindful eating and since that can apparently completely reverse the effects of the surgery she's given me homework to practice that. I don't even understand mindfulness and it's NEVER worked for me so I guess I can't get the surgery and I have to try to lose 150 pounds on my own...

I guess you're right. I didn't really think of it that way. I'll probably never run into him again I haven't seen him or his wife in 20 years. We kind of had a big fight 20 years ago and that's why we haven't seen each other but about 10 years ago he ran into my mom and said hi to her and asked how I was doing. He asked if I still lived with her and she said no and said that I was getting married and he said that he was glad that I found someone. Had I said hi yesterday he probably would have said hi to me and we would have had a conversation but I didn't want him to see me 200+ pounds heavier. Especially when he stayed in the 200s himself.

No I haven't started yet. My wife was off of work today and we went grocery shopping and I stayed in the car. I saw my friend and his wife that I haven't seen in over 20 years at the grocery store as my wife was going into the grocery store. They passed my wife but only know my wife by name so they didn't stop to say hi but they have a son that's I'm guessing maybe 10 or 11 years old. I haven't talked to my friend or his wife since they got married I was an usher at their wedding but it was nice to see them I didn't say hi because they were in a rush to get their groceries home and they didn't notice me had they noticed me they would have stopped to say hi. But next time I see them I will definitely stop and say hello. Hopefully after I lose 150 pounds lol. But my friend is kind of a family friend so he's seen my sister and my mother since and said hi to them and asked how I was doing and he knows that I'm married now and he knows my wife by name. He also has a daughter that is probably close to being in her early 20s now but she wasn't with them today it was just their son that I knew nothing about. So in 4 days I'll know when my surgery is. I'm really excited for it and am looking forward to getting the surgery done and over with. I'm looking forward to losing the 150 pounds I want to lose so that I can go into public situations like this morning and actually say hi to my friend instead of being like "he is probably not going to recognize me weighing almost 450 pounds when we last saw each other I weighed like 280." There's always my voice and my face which is how I recognized him, that and he didn't really gain much weight over the last 20 years but... idk... I just didn't think he'd recognize me weighing almost 200 pounds more.

He just had me work an elastic band and said to do that but I ended up not doing it. But I can walk probably for 2 minutes or so everyday and increase it to 3 minutes next week. Especially when I have to go to saranac next week for my last followup before my surgery. I kind of want to tell them I've been exercising. I don't have a smartphone my wife has one and brings it to work with her everyday but I have a computer that I can setup reminders on. I go on it every morning so it would work perfectly. If that doesn't work I do have a tablet that I can use for reminders but I'm not on my tablet very much. I mostly just go on my tablet to check my email once every few days. My team will be taking good care of me after my surgery yeah. Even if I choose not to have the surgery they want to keep me in the program because I'm overweight and eligible. But I want the surgery because it should be a good tool for losing weight. Next Wednesday is just around the corner and hopefully I'll get all of my questions and concerns answered. I think even if I'm hungry though as long as I fill up fast I don't think I will eat as much as I am now. My problem is I am NEVER full even if I eat 3k calories in one sitting. It's ridiculous. The surgery should definitely change that.

I'm going to have physical therapy and a nutritionist that specialize in bariatric surgery after my surgery. I saw the physical therapist once already for a consultation he said that I would be working with him alot after my surgery and that we'd mostly be swimming and stuff. I'm assuming I'd be seeing him once a month but I'm not sure. I'm hoping it's once a month anyway and not more frequent because I have the hospital that has the bariatric program is an hours drive away. We have a hospital in our town but it doesn't have a bariatric program or a maternity ward anymore for that matter. Anyway it will take some motivation to exercise. I often forget to exercise. I'll say I'll do it and then don't do it. I will do the physical therapy exercises at my physical therapy appointments but I often forget and don't do the exercises afterwards at home. The therapist from the bariatric program gave me a rubber band to use to do curls on and my wife hasn't been reminding me to do those nor have i been doing them on my own. The rubber band has been sitting on the coffee table for 8 months. But I'll start doing some walking today I have an appointment after my wife gets off of work. So that will be some walking exercise for today and I can go for a walk tomorrow after she gets home from work. Or I can walk alone when she's at work. I'll just need to remind myself.

Yeah true. And then when they schedule it I have to make sure I don't reschedule it I don't want to end up a 800 pound person here. I told myself I would never hit 400 pounds yet after my blood clots I did pass 400 pounds because I wasn't able to move or do anything at all afterwards. I mean after all this operation is so that I'll live 10 years longer than normal. I don't want to die in my 40s or 50s after all I'd like to make it to at least 60s. Now you said exercising will become much much easier but I also need the drive to exercise. When I weighed 300 pounds I could exercise a lot easier but I also didn't exercise much. When I met my wife we did a lot of walking but before that I wouldn't really walk much at all and couldn't walk much at all and I weighed like 280 pounds. Idk. We will see what ends up happening...

I don't care about being the fattest person in the room I've been over 200 pounds since I was a teenager I'm used to it. What bothers me is I need a cane everywhere I go and I can't do literally anything anymore. I can't walk in a store I have to stay in the car, I have to have help with bathing, I can't take showers I have to take baths because I'm too fat even for a shower chair. It's just getting out of hand. I'll be glad when I instantly lose like 10% of my body weight. Can't wait for October 30th so they can set a date already and tell me how the psych eval went in detail. Just saying "I have nothing to worry about" isn't enough for me lol.

Well you started at 250 pounds and lost 50. If you started at 440 like I am I'm sure you would have weighed 300 pounds by now. I really hope within a year I could lose the weight. I don't want to be 400 pounds for forever. Honestly if I started at 250 pounds I probably could do it on my own. I lost 50 pounds when I weighed 350 before I met my wife. Wasn't super difficult for me I just stopped eating like a pig lol. I was eating a lot I actually weighed 290 when I moved out of my parents house and I gained 60 pounds in 4 months from all of the food that I was eating after I moved out so I was like "I'm going to lose weight". Now I'm 100 pounds heavier than that and I can't do virtually anything or I wouldn't get the surgery at all. But if my wife weighed 250 pounds I can see how she couldn't do anything either because she weighed 150 at her heaviest and lost 10 pounds when she got her job. Her job made her get a lot of exercise. If she weighed 100 pounds more than that she probably couldn't do much either.

Yeah. I'm big boned anyway so I'm supposed to be a little overweight. I'd rather set a realistic goal and succeed than try to get down to the weight I'm "supposed" to be and fail and get discouraged. Besides a weight loss of nearly 150 pounds is still a pretty significant weight loss it's losing an entire person worth of body weight.

Yeah I heard that immediately after the surgery you lose a lot of weight. I'm hoping they do a lot to help me keep that weight off. My goals are realistic and manageable so that I don't fail I could try to get to under 200 pounds and live for 10 years longer but it's like I want to set a realistic and achievable goal so 300 pounds is good. Then when I hit that and keep that off maybe I can go down to 250 and keep it there. I haven't been 250 pounds in a very, very long time. I had to have been in my late teens early 20s the last time i was 250 pounds. So either weight would be very good. My doctor said if I got down to 300 pounds a lot of my health issues should go away but I'll still need to be on anti coagulants no matter what my weight. So I can't ever stop taking those unfortunately but a lot of my other health issues should drastically improve or go away. I haven't exercised much in 20 years either. To prove myself worthy of getting the surgery I've exercised a lot more lately than I have in a long, long time but I still don't exercise a lot because it's very difficult to do so. I hope that will drastically change with my surgery.

I actually don't know how to cook my wife takes care of that to be completely honest. I told her if I ever lost sny weight that I'd be interested in learning so that I could make some things to eat while she is at work. Right now I am so heavy and out of shape that I cannot do pretty much anything by myself anymore and I need her help with everything. But if I lost 150 pounds I might give cooking a try and see what I can make. I definitely do not want instant food anymore so she is probably going to have to prepare me something to eat while she is at work for the first few months. I can make my own protein shakes but that's probably going to be it.

I'm hoping my nutritionist can come up with many things to eat that won't get boring and dull then. I guess I'll have a lot of questions on the 30th about my appetite afterwards for the nurse and nutritionist. I'm hoping that the hunger will go away forever or at least will be manageable because I'd like to at least stay around 300 pounds at the very least. I weigh almost 450 now so a loss of 150 pounds would make a huge difference. If I can keep it off that is. I'm hoping I can find a bunch of goof food to eat so that I don't go back to the diet I'm eating now. That or I'll at least be able to burn it all off.

Yeah nobody can control the snow except God. I'm not worried about the snow. It usually does snow in early November here in upstate NY but lately over the past 3 years or so it hasn't started snowing until Janurary. Hoping this year is another repeat of that. Time will tell. They gave me a whole booklet that my surgeon gave to me when he explained the various different surgeries to me and a bunch of other people about 7-8 months ago. It has everything that I need to know in it like what I'm supposed to be doing 2 weeks before my surgery 2 weeks afterwards ... everything. I just haven't had much time to give it a good going over its been a busy 7-8 months. They always ask me at the end of my appointments if I have any questions and I think I have some for my surgeon that I'll probably be asking him the day of my surgery so if I have any I can always ask. Most of my questions are medical questions though that I think only my surgeon can answer because I'm curious how my mental illness is going to affect my surgery and my weight loss journey after my surgery. It's definitely going to be more of a struggle than usual. Do all of your hunger pains and cravings usually go away with the surgery? Or do you still have to worry about the urge to eat?

So I called this afternoon and they got the results back apparently she didn't find anything too concerning and they're not delaying the surgery. I will know more on my followup on the 30th when the nurse goes over it with me but for now I'm being told that everything she found was totally normal and not concerning. I'm guessing that she just addressed concerns that I didn't know enough about the surgery and that they should go over everything again. I'm assuming. I'll know more in 3 weeks. But I feel so much better now because I was worried that they'd delay my surgery. Now let's hope it doesn't snow in upstate ny in November this year lol

No my followup is on the 30th. Wednesday is just a week after I had my psych eval. I called the bariatric clinic Monday they said it takes at least a week for the results and to call back Wednesday and they should have the results then. So tomorrow hopefully I should know how the appointment went.

Ok ill call tomorrow and ask. Worst case scenario is they tell me I have to wait until Wednesday for the results right?

I do have another appointment on the 30th with bariatrics. Im seeing the nurse and nurse practitioner and Im seeing the nutritionist right afterwards. It's supposed to be the last appointment before my surgery and then I have to see my surgeon once a year after that and the nutritionist/physical therapist once every few months I believe? I hope I don't have to wait until the 30th for my results. I had my appointment last Wednesday so I'll try calling them Wednesday afternoon and see if they have an update for me or an approximation of when the results will be in.

How long did it usually take you guys to get your results? It's only been 3 days and I'm already nervous as heck. I was going to wait at least a week before calling the bariatric clinic to see if they have my results yet but... yeah... nervous.

. Yeah she wanted to make sure I was aware of the side effects and what the procedures of the surgery that I wanted were because I told her at the beginning of the interview I wanted the gastric sleeve so she asked me to describe what the gastric sleeve consisted of. Aside from telling her that my surgeon was going to take out 70-80% of my stomach I couldn't tell her much because I was told about the surgeries, their side effects and everything else six months ago so i couldnt really remember. I didn't tell her that but I did tell her I wasn't sure on the side effects. Hopefully she doesn't give me too much to work on because I'm looking forward to getting my surgery in November.

I completed the evaluation. She didn't tell me if I passed or failed but she did mention a few things. 1. I didn't know a lot about the surgery and couldn't remember the side effects so I should talk to my doctor before the surgery and get a refresher. I looked them up on chatgpt after the interview and was reminded that my doctor did talk about them but it was over six months ago and I forgot. 2. She did mention that my wife and I should be working on "her giving me everything I wanted" before I have my surgery and not afterwards like I mentioned. She also mentioned that I cannot have diet soda at all or anything carbonated although my nutritionist said it would be ok after my stomach heals. Umm what else. It was an almost hour long interview but we got a lot done. She had a lot of questions. I'll call my bariatric team on Friday and ask them if they got the results in yet. If not I'll ask Monday. Because I'm really curious on what she's going to say I need to work on. I know she's probably going to recommend I sew my nutritionist again before my surgery which they're already doing. I might have to see my surgeon too to get my questions answered and for him to personally go over the surgery with me and what he's going to do. But, all in all I think it mostly went well.