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@Hello_Pumpkin I agree with catwoman7 and mswillis5 have said, so I won't re-state their points. BUT, as I have the unique advantage of having been banded first then later converted to the sleeve, I feel that I have some valuable experience. I can't say that my sleeve "failed me." I had a slip that went unnoticed for several years. I couldn't tolerate fills and I had TERRIBLE reflux, but I still lost a significant amount of weight and managed to keep it off. When the reflux became intolerable, my surgeon said the only option was to take it out. He offered to sleeve me then, but I chose not to. Fast forward a few years and a lot of grief later, I was sleeved and don't regret it one single bit. Regarding drinking while eating. While banded, I rarely attempted drinking with meals. On those occasions where I attempted, there were really no consequences. No pain. No PBs. Nothing. After having trained myself with the band, I still rarely attempt to drink while eating. BUT, I find that every time I try, it's very uncomfortable. Even today, facing 3 years out from surgery, I do not like how drinking with eating feels. It's not painful per se, but sort of an uncomfortable pressure or fullness that I'd like to avoid. I will reiterate what catwoman7 said about eating around the sleeve. Her example about the pizza is spot on. You can also get a lot of calories by eating slider foods. This is similar to lapband. There are some foods that you can simply eat a lot more of and negate the restrictive benefits of the sleeve. Liquids, ice creams, etc are obvious, but for me, popcorn is a huge slider food. I seem to be able to eat entirely too much of that. So, I choose SkinnyPop and portion out my popcorn so I'm not eating mindless handfuls from the bag. It's all about developing good habits and strategies.

Hello my doctor submitted my paperwork on December 23rd and I was approved by January 5th my surgery date is March 17th. Everything went pretty fast. Good luck and I’m sure you’ll be hearing from them in no time!

I’m also hoping for March - I still have my final weigh in on March 1st but approvals seem to go fast through my insurance and my surgeon seems to be booking rather quickly, covid permitting. I am a teacher so I am hoping to get it done right before spring break so I can recover during that week.

If I eat fast (which is a problem for me), I feel it immediately!! I have to sit at the table no distractions and literally time myself and wait at least 30 sec. to 1 min. Between bites... it’s a pain, but otherwise I inhale food. I was struggling so much with the recommended diet, constipation, nausea and sick from too much animal protein. I got permission on Friday to switch to a Whole Foods plant based diet. I am so much happier, and able to meet the protein requirements easier. I’ve never been a big meat eater and I had dairy intolerance pre-surgery. It didn’t improve. So for me, this is a life saver. I’m sharing so that you can do what you need to make this lifestyle your own. If you are having a hard time meeting it in anyway, over time it will wear you out, at least it would me. I’ve tried to remove as many obstacles and complications so I can have the best chance at success. I’ve read a lot of people feeling like they don’t get the full and they can easily eat whatever, they aren’t hungry. what I’ve seen the response is, it will change over time and stick to the plan so you don’t accidentally stretch your stomach, or become malnutritioned. There are days I don’t feel hungry, but if I wait too long I feel nauseous. Best of luck!!

Hi All Just wanted to check in on the November Surgery People! Well really all of us that have had the surgery! I hope you are all doing well ! I have recently been have issues with eating to fast and the results are similar to dumping! Has anyone else experienced this ? I also do not feel hungry ever and I eat based on the recommendations from my Barbaric Clinic. I also do not get the full feeling ! Any others experience this , any tips or advice ?

Has anyone suffered with being cold only at night. It’s gotten to the point where I have to sleep with a blow dryer to keep warm. I lost my job and insurance due to covid so I have not had the opportunity to do lab work. And sometimes I feel faint if I do something like move too fast or bend or lift something heavy. Any recommendations or suggestions?

I do feel better being on pureed. Seems like the pain isn't as bad and I am not miserably hungry with the stomach growls. Hopefully soon, you will transition yo pureed and feel more satisfied. Also, you will receive more nutrients that way too. I was also concerned about malnourishment and dehydration. My hiatal hernia repair is doing great...no more heartburn. Also, try walking around as you sip...the gravity may help it to flow downward rather than sitting in one place. When you start the pureed diet, you will not feel as hungry all the time. Just go slow so that you don't over do it like I did with my food yesterday. I didn't eat too much portions, only 2- 3 ounces at a time, but it filled me fast. I ate refried beans and guacamole with some cheese. I guess that was a bit thicker and caused some quicker fullness...I am learning...if it isn't thinner meal...then eat it really really slow. I also bought some baby food items...like the veggies and fruits to have some variety and less work for me to do daily. Just trying to give you some ideas because you will be on pureed foods soon!! Keep me posted.

I am 5 days post vsg and have been freezing or swearing. I’m making my husband nuts moving the thermostat. It’s winter here in NY. My hands feet and nose are freezing too, but I am still on liquids. From what I’ve read it seems common. As long as you don’t have a fever. Before when I’d go on a liquid fast or Atkins the moment I introduced carbs my body would overheat. Just a thought. Right now, I have fuzzy socks and warm throws I’ve been trying to use. I watched hours of you tube videos of others who have gone through this. Hope this is just a phase, keep your goal and end game in mind!!!!

Are you walking around enough? - Could be gas as well. You should surely go to the ER if it's unbarebale but i had constant pain first 2 weeks of my surgery. (29, November 2020) 1 month in - if i eat something now that doesn't settle with me as fast as lets say liquids does, same place ur indicating starts hurting but with a little walk right after eating.- the pain subsides. My doctor said that's normal as my body is adjusting to solids.

Right here with you! - Some foods go down easier than others. I have to constantly remind myself even if I'm extremely busy to CHEW and to SLOW down between bites and to enjoy - we gastric surgery people in the first few months can only eat a few bites during a sitting - might as well chew those bites and enjoy right? ^ ill be reminding myself this each and every time. If I go to fast *like i did today without realizing* it all comes back out as fast as it went in. When that happens I barely reach 400 calories for that day because it just ruins my appetite for the whole day. So eating slowly bite by bite and chewing is certainly the way to go!

Your Body is fighting back - Keep you head up and stay on course, Everybody stalls and pauses. Mix it up a little - Do some Fasting, bounce calories around, exercise a little more YOU WILL WIN THIS LITTLE CHALLENGE STAY FOCUSED AND GET ER DONE!

@rtl1234 Aw thanks! Today was better. Head hunger is a real thing! Woo. And to make you feel better, yes. I am still seeing what satisfied and full feels like. I’m not sure how to describe it, sometimes I’m like “Oh man, I have to eat now because I feel sick with hunger” or I will not feel hungry at all. Or I just feel like “Okay, so that was 1.5 oz” but I don’t feel full. That was until I accidentally drank some water then I felt that lump and kind of bad after I ate fast. I feel like most protein I eat sits kind of heavy. Not sure why. Do you have a hard time falling asleep? I do and my counselor (who is a bariatric counselor) said it’s normal. It even says it in my book from the hospital. I went from being sleepy all the time to not. My counselor said it was because our metabolisms are revving up. Not sure. Going to try to sleep now. :)

Hi I haven't been on one of these forums in a looong time. I had a sleeve done in 11/2010. It has gone well and MOST of the time I hovered between 185-210 (which was fine with me as I was nowhere near my high of 300). about 1.5 yrs ago I started having trouble keeping some foods down...I figured I was just eating too fast or too much. I was losing weight but not too fast. I had post-menopausal bleeding in 12/2019 so we did the whole cancer check thing (esp with the vomiting becoming more of an issue). Everything came out fine so I was referred to a GI who found a hernia. Had this repaired in 6/2020. Since then I have done well to keep anything but liquids down. I had an upper GI done and my stomach is the shape of a barbell. (1/3 normal sleeve, middle 1/3 severely narrowed, last 1/3 normal sleeve). Referred to another GI who did another EGD and colonoscopy and found I had almost a complete blockage in my stomach (11/2020) (he also got a good view of how I look like skin and bones without clothes which I think REALLY concerned him). He sent me straight to the ER to be admitted and I had surgery 2 days later which ended up being them taking the scar tissue that was wrapped around my stomach out. Still no improvement. My new GI had his nurse call me because he wanted to have an appointment (12/28) and see how I was doing post surgery (5 weeks out). He immediately ordered ANOTHER upper GI (12/30) which looked exactly like the one from October. We discussed going to a different surgeon and I picked a new bariatric surgeon (I tried a few but they wouldn't take me since they didn't do my original surgery in 2010 and the one who did is no longer in network). Once the surgeon saw my upper gi results he had his nurse move my appointment up a week. (1/5). My GI sent a message to the surgeon prior to my appointment so he had a heads up about me. First he wasn't happy I hadn't been referred earlier to him by my first GI. He said there is no fixing the middle part of my stomach and the only thing to do is revise to an RNY. He wants to do it as soon as ins approves. (Today I spoke with them and it is marked high priority and I should have an answer by tomorrow). I made sure they knew I could only keep liquids down and it had been thing way since June. I also mentioned I have gone from a size 14/16 in Dec 2019 to 4/6 now. (I just bought a size 4 straight skirt and it fits perfectly). I have a TON of loose skin but clothes hide it. In July I just bought a new bra 36 B now I am a 32A. The guy on the phone at Aetna took these notes to add to my file in addition to the ones my surgeon sent (the upper gi series, etc). Originally my file wasn't marked high priority until someone on the clinical team looked at it. SO, now you have my LOOONG backstory. I am kind of scared about the RNY. How is the recovery? This will be my 3rd surgery in 7 months. My body has not been getting the calories it needs for quite a while now (even protein shakes take a long time to get through). It's actually probably a miracle that I am still able to function as well as I have been at work. All of the covid changes have been kicking my rear but it has been a very productive year for me despite this whole mess. Thankfully I have an amazing admin assistant and colleagues who have been pitching in here and there to help when I absolutely needed it...but I am a workaholic so I have taken very little time off for recoveries. What can I expect of an RNY rather than the sleeve? Has anyone had any complications like this so far out from the original surgery? Obviously I am not doing this to lose weight...I am actually doing it to gain weight. This has really been crazy mentally after all those years worried about losing weight. sorry for the book. I would love input from anyone :)

Oh my goodness!!! You are not kidding! I feel like I have been on slo-mo since July... now it is so close I feel like someone hit the fast forward button! Good luck tomorrow, I am sure everything will go well!

Yeah - I am going to keep trying different protein sources...I can do chicken for now...that that is a plus...but I am burning through foods fast that are falling into - I don't even want to see it list hoping time helps resolve at least the repulsiveness ... And def will check in with dietician but already know the canned responses...very robotic...but I will give due diligence...

Today was a rough day mentally. I now see how much I turned to food when I was upset. Not having it today was new. First time I struggled mentally with cravings. I have an appointment with my counselor tomorrow. I’m trying to identify when I feel this way and writing it down. Otherwise, I ate too fast today and I felt like a lump at the bottom of my throat. Definitely felt uncomfortable but not sick. Won’t be doing that again. Every day is better. Though I’ve been at a stall for the past 4 days. Sigh. Still so glad I did this surgery. I am looking forward to soft foods next week. I want to agree with the poster above. The first week for me was super rough. Day 7, I turned a corner and every day gets better.

Your body is wondering what the hell you just did to it. It went through a major trauma of surgery and is healing. Now you're feeding it way less than it's used to getting. It happens. It really is okay, I promise you. You're doing everything right. I can't explain the science to you, I just know it's real. For instance, I have been eating 650-800 calories for the past 12 days. For the first 5 days I lost weight. For the next 3 days, I GAINED weight. How the hell do you gain weight on 800 calories/day? But I did and I figured it was my body adjusting, plus I was eating green olives, which are high in sodium. So now fast forward two more days and it's slowly coming down again. Weight fluctuations are normal. Take it easy on yourself and take care and trust the process. 😀

I am allergic to steri-strips. They do me the same way. If you don't have them off , you need to inform you dt right away and take them off. It could make it harder for your incisions to heal as fast, I mean if you get more blisters. I just thought Id share this. I informed my Dr up front, but he told me to remind him when I come to his office after surgery? Hope this helps. I'm sorry to hear this for you, but really I did fine without them

I'd rethink the lapband. A lot of people have had those removed, and most surgeons won't do them anymore. They've largely been replaced by the sleeve. you may or may not have a lot of loose skin. A lot depends on how much you have to lose and how long you've been overweight. If you're talking 100+ lbs, then yes - you'll probably have loose skin no matter how fast or slow you take the weight off. I want to add that most of us are worried about loose skin when we're pre-ops or early post-ops, but for those of us a ways out from surgery, most wonder why we worried about it. It's such a minor thing in the grand scheme of things. It's really easy to hide for most of us, and I would say most if not all of us would take the loose skin any day over being morbidly obese again. ANY DAY! also wanted to add that I did eventually have my loose skin removed, but this is a picture of me BEFORE I had it removed. I lost over 200 lbs, so I had a TON of it. See it? Nope. The right clothes will hide it well!

Hi, I'm located in NYC. I'm 25 years old and considering lap band surgery at NYU. I am 5'4 and 260 pounds. While about 75% of me is for the surgery i still do have concerns that hopefully some of you can inform me on. I was wondering how many of you have had the surgery and had loose skin afterwards? I've read that the younger you are the less likely you are to have loose skin . I've also read that because the lap band doesn't make you loose weight as fast as the sleeve or bypass, another reason why i many not have loose skin. But i wanted to know how common it is with the lapband. Secondly, how many people have had this surgery within the last 2-3 years and have complications? I've been told that the newer lapbands are causing less complications in comparison to the older ones.

They last approximately on average two weeks. Sometimes you can break a longer one by mixing it up with higher calories/lower calories/fasting to shock your body but at this stage you should just wait yours out. They're inevitable.

On a similar subject, I used to be low in Vitamin D and post WLS they had me taking a Vit D supplement plus a multivitamin and a couple of other supplements. Fast forward two years later and I an super high in Vitamin D and my primary wants me to stop taking all vitamins and supplements for six months to see if it's them or me.

Stalls typically last 1-3 weeks, but they can be longer. It varies from one person to the next, so there's no telling how long it will be for you. There's a lot of superstition around how to break a stall, but really, the only thing you can do is be patient. It's just your body catching up with all of the changes. Keep following the program and your weight loss will resume. Have you lost 56 pounds since your surgery, or was some of that before surgery? If that was all since surgery, 56 pounds in less than 2 months is fantastic! But on the flip side, losing so much so fast means that your body has a lot of catching up to do.

They will break for me I did intermediate fasting and bounced my calories around - Broke them every time

Hi my name is Alexandra, I had Gastric Bypass Surgery on 11/18/2018 due to GIRDS which caused Barrett's Esophagus. I started this road back in 2017 after many years of having food becoming stuck in my damaged swollen esophagus. It would just stop moving down and with each bite would back up further and further up my throat until I was in so much pain and had to stop eating and wait for 20 - 30 minutes until the food at the bottom would finally slide into my stomach. The pain as that food sat there stretching my already swollen damaged and inflamed esophagus was intense. The GIRDS that had gone on undetected for years had caused my esophagus lining to wallpaper itself with intestinal cells as to protect itself from the stomach acid, this is called Barrett's Esophagus. They told me that if it continued to do so I would end up with cancer. So I went ahead and had the surgery, and at that time I weighed 222 and at 5'7" which was right on the borderline of being able to qualify for surgery under my health insurance guidelines. Today I struggle to keep my weight at 127 and belch constantly after eating, for 15 to 20 minutes, and I mean constantly like every 4 to 5 seconds. Food still gets stuck in my esophagus on occasion but it is usually due to eating too fast and not chewing my bites enough. Sugar is another thing that causes me a great deal of pain with the dreaded "dumping syndrome" and I constantly have diarrhea everyday but I have had that for over 10 years. That started with a bad case of giardia that sent me to the ER and even though I have been tested for giardia many times since then the diarrhea is a constant in my life and makes it very difficult to go to work. But I'm happy to be able to tell you that my esophagus has returned to normal cells that make up the lining so no more threat of cancer at this point. Three weeks after my Roux-en-Y surgery my gallbladder was functioning at 10% so back to surgery I went and with one surgery after another so close together the road to recovery was long. But that is my long story to answer your question about GIRDS