NtvTxn

Do you get use to being called "skinny" or "thin"??? It is soooo strange to me!! I have NEVER in my life been called either!! I'm not complaining, but it really made me uncomfortable the first few times!

Hi Shirley - I have a friend who was 'banded' on Oct. 18th in Texas. She's had problems and had to have her port removed. She is hoping Medicare will pay for the sleeve. Did you find out if they will for sure? I told her about this post....hopefully I can follow up with some good news "for sure".

We HAVE to have some where to go where our craziness is understood!! I am always asking my husband "Is this a lot of food?" LOL Sounds nutty, I know....but we are eating on smaller plates, and compared to what i was eating three months ago (I am five months out) it seems like a LOT of food!! I just need reasurrance that it isn't....although I can look at HIS plate and see that it is not. So much psychological stuff that goes along with WLS!! He told me the other night that maybe we should start using larger plates again!!

My best friend(s) after surgery were a little travel pillow for the car and airplane, a soft, flat pillow to lay under my tummy so i could lay on my side when sleeping and a heating pad, it felt so good on my incisions when I was awake during the day. The heating pad was better than pain meds, which after leaving the hospital, I only took before bedtime...and only took the first week! Good luck!!!

I'm with you Tiff....I haven't experienced TRUE hunger since my surgery five months ago. My "new" hunger as I call it, is an empty feeling I get once in a while. I can eat or not eat, but I will feel empty and know that it's time for some nourishment. It doesn't happen every day, and I don't know what triggers it, but it isn't an uncomfortable feeling....just empty. Strange. I hope it stays like this forever!

It probably wasn't SMART, but I felt great and we were just careful....eight days after....we rented a beach house for week two of my recovery and it was just wonderful there on the Texas Gulf Coast!!!

You know, I've thought about it....and nobody has "said" to me anything about taking the "easy way out" - I am certain there are some who think that, but nobody has dared say it....what I would like to SAY to anyone who thinks that....really, the EASY way out is to push our fat selves away from the table if you think about it. The EASY way is NOT going under the knife and having approx. 85% of our stomaches removed!!! Some of us jump through hoops for an insurance company and then others of us dish out thousands of dollars....however it was done....in the end, it is NOT the "easy way out"!!!!!

For some reason, I am much LESS gassy since I had surgery, but I'm no more "smelly" than before.

You'll do great!! I lost 81.5 lbs in just under 5 months. My surgeon's goal was a loss of 78 lbs! Yes, I am below goal!! Yay!! From the beginning when I attended the seminar a couple of months before surgery, they stressed "this is not a diet, it is a way of life". I loved that, diets had done nothing but failed for the past thirty years. I would lose and regain. For the first time EVER, I am confident I will keep the weight off. I AM in control. I am not hungry, I eat because I need to and because it tastes good. It's wonderful. My doctor does not worry about carbs, although I cut down on them myself before surgery to help with the pre-op diet and have just continued. Protein is the key to success in my opinion, I make sure I get in between 60 and 75 per day....one reason is because I did NOT want to have any hair issues and I have not! Knock on wood!! This has been disgustingly easy.....I love my sleeve! Now I am in maintenence, adding IN some calories, they said "live a little" - I allow myself a few bites of pumpkin bread, and that is plenty. I do NOT want more. I am trying to FIND things, healthy things to snack on to add calories to my diet because I cannot eat more at my meals. I have made up snack bags of almonds, half oz bags! Who'd have thought I'd ever NEED to make myself eat!!??? Good luck....you'll love your sleeve!!!!!

I had surgery five months ago TODAY and hit my surgeon's goal last week!!! I'm below HIS goal now and only a couple of lbs away from my goal...I want a five lb cushion. I've lost ALL my excess weight, I weight what I did in the ninth grade - LESS than I did when I got married. I'm wearing a size eight! I couldn't be happier. Not one second of buyers remorse or regret - it's been disgustingly easy. Like Tiffany or someone said, I've followed the doctor's rules and eat Protein first. I get in at a minimum, 57 mg a day, and sometimes all the way up to 80. Good luck....I'm certain you will lose 100% of what you want to lose! I can't believe someone on the medical team would be discouraging at all. Where are the "cheerleaders"??? I know there are statistics, but they should be followed up with.....BUT!!!!

I am a few days shy of being five months out. I reached my surgeon's goal last week....and am 1.5 lb below his goal as of this morning. I'm wearing a size 8 jeans and when I take them out of the dryer, I think NO WAY can I slip into these! I see myself as smaller....but I have been called skinny and small and thin. It is hard to believe somebody is talking about ME!! I am just now getting use to buying smaller clothes! It takes a while for your brain to catch up, that's for sure!

I reached my surgeon's goal TODAY! 150 lbs - and a healthy BMI in less than five months!! I would like to lose another 3 - 5 lbs just to have that cushion, just so I won't freak out if I gain a couple of lbs on vacation. Just so I can eat a few bites of cake if I choose to and not feel that nagging guilt if the scale goes up a lb. I will use my doctor's number as my "rock". My real goal in my head was to wear a size 8, I've been doing that for about a month now...my other goal was to reach my doctor's goal by New Year's Eve! Wow, I am ahead of schedule. I told someone recently, it has been disgustingly easy, but I have made life changes, and I did that several months before surgery. I had to prove to myself that I could make changes, this is not a diet. I hope it always stays this simple. I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I'd recommend sleeve surgery to anyone who was ready to stop the sanity of yo yo dieting. I love this forum, and all the information and knowledge I gained during the six months before I took the leap! I was self pay, but I didn't rush in, I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions. (Thank you Tiffikins!) Having 85% of your stomach removed is not something to be taken lightly, but it is LIFE changing! I love my tiny tummy!

Dr. James Davidson is in Dallas, TX at Presbyterian Hospital. My surgery was at Forest Park Medical Center.

Let me stress, I have NOT lost weight from exercising!! I did not want to be one of those people who was gung ho the first year, got bored after I lost weight, stopped exercising and then gained some back because I stopped what my body was use to. So, no, I really don't exercise, not like a lot of people do. We have a stationary bike that my husband rides religiously; I ride it maybe one time every two weeks. I have a band that I have knotted. I have it thrown over a door and I do arm exercises with it almost daily. I enjoy it, it isn't anything vigorous, it's easy and I do it standing in my hall. I want to focus on my arms. I also have a 5 lb Danskin weighted ball that I like. I used one in an exercise class one time and I like it....it's for my arms, but also get a good over all workout I think. I bend my legs and toss it up in the air and bend again as I catch it. I do it 20 times, and believe it or not, it IS a good workout at the end of doing it 20 times!! So, that's it. Easy, right here at the house....I park out as far as I can when I go to the store, weather permitting, so that's my walking! We have stairs, so I'm up and down those. I am not a couch potato, but I'm not a member of a gym!

I did not have one, but I could NOT go to the bathroom so the nurse had to do what they called an in an out. I was a wreck the first time, my palms were sweating, I was sure it would hurt....it was not even uncomfortable. The insert it, drain you and take it out, it's fast and they don't leave it in. Ofcourse this is no time for modesty, but neither is child birth, right? Anyway, it was simple, over with in no time and after giving me a couple of pills and doing it a second time, I was able to go on my own. I wasn't even nervous the second time. I told them I didn't want one, but this was not a big deal, really.

I'm 3.5 lbs from my surgeon's goal and my BMI is 24.8!!!! Finally a healthy BMI!!! Even more exciting, I'm wearing a size 8 jeans for the first time since my teens. Not too bad for fifty-one! I love my sleeve! I just wanted to share accomplishment this with all my fellow sleevers!

That is so funny - I do the same thing. Walking up to a store that has a windowed door is crazy....seeing my reflection still blows my mind. It doesn't look like "ME" to me!! I recognize me in the mirror now, but when I catch a reflection of myself out like that, it catches me off guard and I have to do a double take!

You are soooo welcome! Bread and chips, they're a weakness for a lot of us, but if you can get them out of your system, it gets easier. You can do like I do and not feel cheated, when you go eat Mexican food, get an order of corn tortillas, usually they come three, maybe four to an order. I would usually pick at one maybe two, and since surgery, i tear a small piece of one off, maybe an eighth of one, but I dip that in the salsa....that is what chips start out as, right? Before they DEEP FRY them!!! I think a lot of what we do is habit, so we just have to break those habits and start new ones. I feel like that is what I've done! Now I tear off a small piece of bread or slice off a sliver and pick at it at a restaurant and that is what I do. Like cats, we are creatures of habit!! LOL

I lost 23 lbs before surgery and it sure wasn't from exercise! I did exercise a little, but it was very little, I rode a stationary bike a couple times a week for a couple of miles. I wanted to make sure I could make 'food' changes and I knew that the carbs and snacking were the biggest changes I could make and they'd have to be life changes. I learned from friends who'd had WLS and from a couple who just lost weight a few years ago that cutting a few things out could make a big difference, so that's what I did. I cut bread totally from of my diet at home. I would only eat bread when we went out to eat. I treated it as a 'treat'. When we'd go to OutBack or some place like that, I'd have a slice, maybe two. So I cut my bread consumption waaaay back. Now, since I've had surgery, I might have a half slice of whole wheat toast occasionally with an egg here at the house, but otherwise, same thing applies, except, I'll only have a sliver of bread at a restaurant because I need to leave room for Protein and a few bites of a veggie or something, NOT bread!! I do not miss bread, once I got USE to it, I don't miss it. I also cut out chips, we ate baked anyway, and I didn't even really like them, so why bother, right??!! LOL The big chip deal was when we went out to eat Mexican food, I switched to what my husband eats, he orders corn tortillas and we don't eat even ONE fried chip. Once you get into the habit, it's no big deal. It's the salsa that is so good!! The only time I have a chip now is if I have a little guacamole and then I'll have the baked "scoops" if we're at home, if I'm at a restaurant, I dip with a corn tortilla. Once you get all those simple carbs out of your system, you don't miss them, I heard it takes a couple of weeks! Another big change I made was cold Cereal. I don't eat it any more. I use to have a bowl in the middle of the afternoon and a bowl at night....cereal was my snack - no more. I cut out snacking. It was a habit, 2 bowls of cereal, not including having a bowl or two in the morning. None in the morning either during the 2 months pre-op. I had a Protein shake or a couple of eggs or oatmeal. That's it, those are THE things, the big changes I made, not really such a big deal, but that is how I lost 23 lbs in 2 months before surgery!! They are life changes that haven't really made an impact on my life, but have made a big difference in my life! I now keep sugar free Jell-O and sugar free cool whip around and I'll have a little almost daily. It's good, it's sweet. I'm not a real sweets eater, but I do enjoy it. I love that I have control over all this. I don't feel that I am sacrificing anything, I have not suffered at all. The changes I made, I should have made YEARS ago before surgery was even considered!! There isn't anything good that can come from bread or chips!! LOL I knew that exercise was NOT going to be a "life change" that I would stick with forever, a little yes. I can and DO park as far out as I can in parking lots. I ride a stationary bike once in a while. There are a few things I do that I enjoy and will do, but as far as being a maniac....that isn't me and that isn't how I lost weight. I'm not going to get up and walk every day or join Curves and really go. I KNEW there would have to be life changes that I needed to do that I could live with. I didn't want to lose by exercising, then a year later, stop exercising and start gaining! I hope this is clear - I hope this helps in some way!!!

Actually just this morning I took a pair out of the dryer and when I look at them right before I put them on, I think that very thing...NO WAY will these little things fit me!!! Seriously.....they look like they'd fit my thirteen year old niece!! It still doesn't feel real....but I am starting to look in the mirror and I do see a thinner person, that is pretty new to me!!

Nate Newton, an all time great "Cowboy" - I'm impressed at his workout ability, I dare say it is more in two days than most of us do in ten days, but he is a former NFL player!! He looks absolutely awesome! A friend of mine was banded by this doctor, she loves him!

Wearing a size 8 is the best part!!! What a trip to actually pick up a size 8 pair of jeans and slip into them. I still can't believe it!! It is fun for the first time in my life to go shopping!! Just wait, it will be YOU before you know it!!! Hang in there!

Hi Lauren!! I weighed 228 and I'm 5'6". I really had an 'easy' time, not much pain. I took pain meds for a week after I left the hospital, but only at night. I was basically pain free. It was uncomfortable to turn over at night and it hurt to cough!! I have a nice flat pillow that I kept under my tummy for about a month. (I slept on my side from day one) It made it possible. Like you, I was so ready, and in good health, I think that made the surgery easy for me. I followed the doctor's orders and it got easier and easier every day. I was up and walking down the hall within about four hours after I got back to my room. My biggest challenge was getting in enough fluids and finding a Protein something or other that I could tolerate before I could get it all in with food!! You'll love the sleeve!!! Good luck!!

Thanks Mini!!! Are you still trying to lose, or are you maintaining? Are you finding it pretty easy to stay about where you're at??!! A few lbs below goal, that sounds wonderful!! Congratulations to YOU too!!