BlackBerryJuice

I'd suggest an exercise program and rather than just walking, I'd run - burns a ton of calories. You are not heavy anymore, so running shouldn't be a problem. Sign up for a 5K or a 10K to motivate yourself. I'd also add strength training to rev up your metabolism. If you really want a jump-start on weightloss, bootcamps are great.

I got lost in there somewhere, so I added myself back in. I was stalled for a good 2 weeks, so I picked 155 as a conservative goal for Dec. 19, but now I really got moving in the last few days and am down to 156! I guess I'll still leave my goal at 155 - I don't think 150 is realistic - but I might surpass it by a pound or two.

http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/overweight-couples-on-television It's actually titled "Should Fatties Get a Room?" (yes, you read that right!) It was linked on a medical obesity blog I follow regularly. The physician referred to it as "the most vile article about the obese I have ever read." Please peruse the comments, too, there's quite a few. I've already sent an e-mail to the editor (JoannaColes at hearst com), so if you are as riled up as I was, do that - and post a comment, as well, as the author's been offering half-assed apologies after the backlash.

I've tried it, it's really not as fun as it looks. I'd suggest a skipping rope if you have enough room at your place, but I'd hold off on the jumping until you are about 3 months out so you don't accidentally damage a stitch or something.

Well, it's not like I had a choice in that matter, we are forced to do all that stuff, haha. I'm just glad I didn't go to the one school in the region which requires students to intubate each other (that's just plain dangerous, IMO). I've never heard of that numbing stuff....is it just topical lidocaine or something? It was never even offered to me.

My IV was in the hand. I'm not a fan of those, I had many lines put in by classmates while studying to be a paramedic and find that the hand IVs are more painful than the elbow ones. He got it on the first try, though, even though I have some scarring in those veins courtesy of said classmates. But it only hurts for like 2 seconds. The heparin shot is subcutaneous, so it barely hurts, just a pinch. I never had any bruising from it.

My last month pre-op basically consisted of constant consumption of these: and these:

Yeah, why not? I got a hand-me-down juicer from a friend. I used it during the first month post-op, but I haven't really touched it since. I just find juicing to be too expensive. I'd rather pay like $5 for a huge bottle of Bolthouse Green Goodness juice that will last me a week - the same amount of juice at home would run me about $25.

No, you are definitely not 1 in 500, I also experience hunger if I don't eat for 3-4 hours. Granted, 2 grapes will easily hold me over for an hour, but still. Yesterday I had a Protein bar for Breakfast at 10 or so and then about 3/4 cup of burrito mix (rice, Beans, beef, corn, etc) for lunch at around 1 and we walked around all day shopping....then around 6 pm I started feeling really hungry, cranky, and eventually shaky. I just had to eat right there and then. Of course, once I finally got my hands on some food, I was STUFFED after 3/4 cup....

I definitely battle with boredom eating. When I'm at school all day, it's not an issue, but I spend most of my days at home on the computer listening to lectures online, and for my breaks, I check in here and play computer games. Being on the computer is the worst when it comes to mindless/boredom eating! Three things I find to help: 1) Remove the crap from your house. If you don't have candy or chips in the house, you'd have to actually go out and get them, and if it's boredom eating (rather than a major craving), you are not going to bother, 100%. 2) Keep healthy stuff to snack on. I like baby carrots, tiny cucumbers, sliced apples, or even just a banana. 3) Sip on tea or coffee. I like Arizona green tea, I add milk and Splenda to it and it satisfies the sweet tooth AND the oral fixation while I'm in front of the computer.

I wish, 5'5" and still a size 10 in shoes. I guess it's good that my old shoes still fit, but I'd love to be a size 9, makes shoe shopping that much easier.

Got nothing to say on the topic of appetite suppressants, but as far as losing those last 15 lbs, how about running? Before the surgery, I'd always run if I was desperate to lose weight fast.

Went for an hour of cross-country skiing today, first one this year. I hate winter!

I'm about 4 months out. I can have maybe 4 rolls at once? I strongly suggest sashimi, though - healthier, more protein, and you can eat much more. Rice can be tough to eat after the VSG, especially when it's dry, as in sushi. With sashimi, I can eat 8 pieces or so. Oysters - only had them once, but I had half a dozen and then had a bit of another dish, too. I'd say you will probably be able to eat a whole dozen if it's the only thing you're eating.

That's a lot of wine. The recommended amount of alcohol for women is 2 drinks or less per day (a 6 oz glass of wine would be an example of a drink). Lots of empty calories, too. A 6-oz glass is about 120 calories, so 3 glasses add up, plus there's zero nutritional value to those calories. I say, post-sleeve would be a great time to cut down on alcohol. You can't drink for a while after the surgery - this is surgeon-dependent, but I've seen guidelines that range from 1 month to 6 months of abstinence from alcohol - so it'd be a good time to kick the habit. You can have alcohol once you're all healed up. I've never been much of a drinker, so I can only speak to being able to have 1 drink without consequences. I usually have mixed drinks - I never liked wine much before, but now it makes me very nauseous after just 2-3 sips.

I believe I was cleared for full liquids at 10 days and mushies at 20 days post-op. Re: ticker, check out the pinned threads at the top of the forum, I think either this or the pre-op forum has a thread with instructions on how to get your ticker.

Exact opposite problem here, only one of my friends ever comments on how much weight I've lost....considering I'm down from size 16-18 to 8-10, I find it a bit strange. But I noticed people who know about my surgery stealthily checking out my plate at dinners out. It's awkward. I suspect no one will ever say anything unless I get down to a size 0, which I highly doubt would happen.

Thank you! My exact thoughts. I think she's in very fine shape, especially considering she's in her what, 40s, and has had 2 kids. I'd be very pleased with myself if I look like that at her age and with children. On another note, I think the government definitely needs to do more to prevent and treat obesity. I think a good place to start would be getting out of bed with the food industry. Government intervention has worked quite well for smoking, the same needs to be done for junk food. As far as the idea that people can take care of themselves, I don't think it's working. If we were all really that apt at taking care of ourselves, people wouldn't be getting up to 400 lbs. There needs to be a major overhaul of basically every aspect of our society to beat obesity: In school - 1) education - start talking about healthy food in elementary school, tell older students about the chemicals in processed food, teach them how to read labels 2) school lunches - make them healthy 3) exercise - make it a more significant component of the school day, encourage children to play active games At work - 1) provide incentives for people to exercise (reimbursement for gym membership, offer workout facilities on site if the office is big enough, etc) 2) choose healthy catering - one thing I see at the hospital ALL THE TIME is people bringing in donuts and Desserts to everything, yet 2/3 of the nurses are so obese, I don't even know how they walk around, much less do an oftentimes physically demanding job 3) provide vending machines with healthy food - the emergency room at the hospital by my medical school has vending machines with fresh fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese Everywhere - 1) improve public transportation so people use it more and charge more for parking so people have a financial incentive to take public transit 2) Mandate nutrition information for restaurant meals - and make it obvious. I can't tell you how many times I've attempted to obtain nutrition info from a restaurant only to find that nobody has any ideas where it is - often, it's locked in the manager's desk drawer and the manager is not even there 3) Tax crap food and subsidize vegetables and fruits instead of wheat that ends up being dumped on African countries and destroying whatever semblance of self-sufficiency they might have 4) Get some sort of grip on how large restaurant portions should be. Most places serve 3-4x more than one should eat in today's society, considering how few calories we expend if we don't purposely make an effort to exercise. I went to this Italian place the other day and the portion on my plate was the size of a SOCCER BALL. A SOCCER BALL OF Pasta. What the hell is wrong with this world? Also, there's definitely a component of people having their head up their #@$. Watched "Food Inc" a few months ago and this family kept going on about how they are so poor and they have to eat fast food for every meal (they also talked about how expensive insulin was - ironic, because if they ate better and exercised more, they probably would spend a lot less on it). Yes, they can't afford scallops and fresh peaches, but there are lots of affordable healthy things. Grains, milk, eggs, potatoes, Beans, canned/frozen fruit and vegetables are not more expensive than fast food. And if you are crafty, like my friends and I were in college, nothing beats the Whole Foods dumpster for fruit and vegetables that are barely damaged (a bruised peach or a bunch of lettuce where the ends of the leaves are just starting to turn brown - just rip off the tips and you are good to go!). Bottom line: I think we've proven that our ability to look out for ourselves is limited and the government needs to intervene to change this fat-promoting environment that our society has turned into. We are ok with psychiatric hospitals detaining patients who are trying to kill themselves, but we are not ok with the government imposing junk food taxes so we'd stop killing ourselves with garbage food?

Holy crap, what a dick. Totally unexcusable!

There's lots of different causes for knee problems, so without knowing the reason, it's tough to tell whether the surgery will help you. But I think that even if your condition is not entirely due to obesity, losing weight would still improve how your joints are. I have plica syndrome from an old soccer injury, it tends to flare up on occasion, and there are certain things that really exacerbate it, like walking up a steep hill or running either downhill or uphill. Bending the knee excessively and repeatedly is generally a trigger (hence why I could run on a flat surface without too much of a problem, but not up or down a hill). At 208 and living in a hilly area for the summer, it was really bothering me. But now that I'm 50 lbs down, I realized it hasn't bothered me for months, even though I'm doing an exercise program that involves a lot of stress on the knees - lots of jump squats, scissor lunges, and other things that would've caused a lot of grief for my knee before. It still pops on occasion, but it no longer hurts.

I'd say my experience so far has been different from the one suggested by the article. I'm still about 15 lbs from my pretty modest goal (technically, I'd have a healthy BMI all the way down til 110 lbs, which to me is unthinkable!), but I'm actually quite pleased with how I look now. The only part of my body where I'd definitely say I need to lose more fat would be my inner thighs, but there definitely isn't 15 lbs on there - maybe 5. I think my body image changed a lot when I began lifting weights back in the days. I used to waste a lot of time hating the way I looked, even at a lower weight than I am now, but now it doesn't bother me as much. Plus I've made peace with my genetics - everybody in my family is big-boned and the women have big heavy thighs and butt with cellulite, so the odds of me ever having a perfectly smooth butt are extremely low. I'd never look like a prima ballerina with these genes, that's for sure! I definitely wasn't happy with myself at 208, don't get me wrong - but at my current size, I'm content with how I look and have to actually remind myself to skip desserts, etc, because the urge to lose more weight just isn't there.

I think it's different for every person because our stomachs are all stretched to different extents. So leaving behind 25% of a 5-liter stomach wouldn't do too much for weightloss, for example, while leaving behind 25% of a 1-liter stomach would. I would ask how they calibrate it instead, because most surgeons will use a bougie to calibrate the end size of the stomach. A taller person's stomach will end up bigger because of its greater length, so this still takes into consideration your body's individual energy requirements. If the surgeon is not calibrating the stomach with a bougie or some other tool, it's hard to predict results, as that's what they often use for research studies.

Haha, yeah, I say, don't worry about it. If it doesn't bother you, why worry. If you think you are eating too much in terms of calories, just add up your food for the day. When I first moved onto the mushy stage, I was constantly thinking I was overeating, but once I added things up, it would be just 700-800 calories.

I'm often gone at school all day, and my favorite approach is to go get a burrito bowl or a pita with lots of vegs and lean protein and pick at it every 3 hours or so. A 9" pita will generally feed me from breakfast til bedtime.