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33lbs is great! Nothing to be discouraged about. Would you have lost the 33lbs without the band in this time frame? What is a day of food like for you? How much Water are you drinking? Are you exercising? These things are important I would take a look at what you are eating in a day, write it down and track it on fitday.com. It could be too many calories or not enough calories. I find that if I do not drink my daily water or exercise 3x's a week I only lose a lb a week but if I exercise and drink my water it is 2-3 lbs a week. Hang in there~

I saw the surgeon in a group setting prior to being a candidate, I think twice. Once I was a candidate, I saw him one-on-one, and got further info about what I needed to do, what to expect, and a chance to ask questions. He made a simple physical examination and asked me a few questions about my health, then I sat with the admin and signed a medical records release so I could obtain short term medical leave at my work, and yes, got a surgical date, in my case a little more than 3 weeks out from that visit. This is a very personal decision as it will be a big change, But for me it's a change I know I need to make - I am mainly looking to head off the serious health consequences of obesity, but also want to look and feel better, be able to enjoy more activities like biking and kayaking. I can almost feel the wind in my hair now! Thank you for your response! I'm so ready to have control over my life for the first time l. I've always been overweight, and it sucks. There are so many things that I've wanted to do, but always told myself no because of my weight. Plus, I know now that I don't have any other medical issues along with the weight, but they are bound to come, so why not try to prevent them. Especially since I've almost met my insurance deductible already this year. Sent from my SM-N920P using the BariatricPal App

We have similar stats I started 275 and now I am 186.....it's weird isn't it??? Some days I am sooooo happy and am happy with my band life salads fish etc and 6 days a week at the gym.....but sometimes it all feels like a lot of work like Groundhog Day over and over! This wont be forever - I am 25 pounds from goal and wearing size 10/12 already so I am hoping not too far to go. I keep my short term goals in mind and keep moving forward. I think once your back on normal food you will feel better....it's hard to live on liquids. I bet once you go onto normal you will feel better. I try and eat low cab but have what I want just a smaller serve than normal. Maybe you need some foodspiration cook something yummy and healthy? I have stuffed peppers and baked eggplant cooking right now I will not eat tons but its yummy food that is healthy too. ..... Good luck

Talked with my GP this week and we both agreed this is the way to go. I'm with Kaiser in Santa Clara and will attend the first orientation/class this Tues (June 12). I'm excited, nervous, will I be accepted in to the program, will this finally be the answer to my weight problems? I would appreciate hearing from anyone else who has gone through the process at Kaiser Santa Clara. I'm 64 years old, retired and presently 255 pounds, 5 feet five. My husband is very supportive of the decision. I guess I just need a little input from those who have already gone through the procedure. Kate

Awww, the first week is the worst! I can't remember exactly when drinking got easier, but it was sometime after the first week. Just do the best you can and push those liquids! Don't worry too much about the Protein in the first week if you really can't face it. Isopure has a clear Liquid Protein that you can try. I didn't really like it, but it is a good clear option. It is most important that you listen to your body - if you are clear for mushies and you have a hard time swallowing them stay in liquids and try again a couple of days later. The swelling goes down differently for eveyone. Keep in touch with the board - that is how most of us got through the tough first weeks after surgery. Hang in there! Lara

Everybody is somewhat different in what they can tolerate when. My doc''s program is pretty liberal (mushy/puree from the hospital, no big liquid only phase) with the admonition to experiment with small amounts of new foods, one at a time. If something doesn't settle well, try again in a couple of weeks.

At 7 weeks out, my dietary restrictions were gone so it was "whatever you can tolerate". That said, I am the WORST about remembering ANYTHING, but I will list a few of my fav's below. I will say that I was still really sticking to Protein at this point. String cheese sticks, pepperoni stix, salmon, shrimp, lunch meat/cheese roll ups, Fage greek yogurt (w/ fruit mixed in....couldn't stand the plain any way I tried it), chicken salad, tuna salad, eggs, eggs, eggs! I ate boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, deviled eggs....(picture Forest Gump talking about shrimp...tee hee). Eggs were my friend during this stage and thankfully they agreed with me b/c I loved them. Now that said, I did eat anything else I wanted in moderation and just tried little bits and pieces of what hubby and kids had (after I had eaten my protein) mainly to see what I could tolerate. Slowly came to realize that there wasn't a lot that I couldn't have. Just came down to getting in protein and Water and then making sure I was stopping when satisfied and not getting stuffed.

Myrori, you rock! Especially in such a shitty situation. 106 lbs lost… that is amazing! And it's mostly you, just a little bit the sleeve. That's what we know that the "not going under the knife" people don't know. Ha. The easy way, right? RIGHT! How many weeks of liquid and mushies and endless different types of bland Protein and acid and diarrhea and constipation and... well, you know. Not to mention the crap that we have to go thru BEFORE surgery. Seriously, you rule. Pat yourself on the back. 106lbs is a whole person you lost. As for your husband... I'm so sorry. Sometimes people really don't love us for who we are (and especially who we are becoming), but how we reflect on them

hey, i recently found out i was pregnant about a month ago. yesterday the doctor did a vaginal ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. she is estimating that i have been pregnant for about 2.5 months but the baby died at 6 weeks. now i have to decide if i want to wait and let the baby pass or have a d & c. ( i know it is not really a baby, but it was a very real baby to me). any advise from anyone that has gone through this would really help. i'm having a particularly hard time with it, i can't stop crying, and i don't want to get out of bed. it just doesn't seem real, and the fact that i'm walking around still pregnant i believe is causing me more mental torment. my doctor says natural is best, but i don't know if i can wait for that, it has already been several weeks and there has been no sign of starting to miscarry.

I'm not a Dec. Bandster, but I thought I could help! First of all...do some spring cleaning. Throw it all out. If you have kids or family that still wants them, tell them to put them somewhere you can't find them. If you have to go out and purposefully buy them, you are more likely to have a moment of sanity and put it back. I am going to copy and paste a post that I wrote for someone else. Maybe there is something in there that will help you. Are you ready for some tough love? If you are not ready at this time, that if fine. Put it away in your mind that someone has given you some and come back here when you are ready. By the time I get to post this you will probably have 100 other replies, but I want to take my time and post what I really want to say. Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post! Nope the Cookies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have a "cookie" (will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of cookie shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "cookies". Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have. 1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit. a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life. b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there. c. Write down why you are more powerful than a cookie (this one is tough!) d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your cookies) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym. e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons. f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you cookies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that cookie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it. 2. Another possible tactic. I know that you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish. 3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. (And believe me, I REFUSED to diet in my entire journey, so I use that word loosely) Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person. 4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. Iknow this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my BF, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie! If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy.

Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes. I didn't have to do the 2 week Optifast but I managed to lose 13 pounds on Atkins. I'm supposed to do the clear liquid diet (plus 2 protein shakes a day) Saturday and Sunday for Monday's surgery. I bet I'll be pretty hungry after a while but it will be worth it.

I plan on doing this today. I finally went to the store a couple of weeks ago to buy clothes that fit and am down from a 26 to a 16. I have been walking around in clothes too big for me since surgery and it did affect what I thought of my weight loss. Now I see that it is very real! I will bag up my clothes today and take them away! It will be a bit frightening to have so much room in the closet but, hey, here is to new beginings! :clap2: Update: I just got back from Goodwill and the woman taking the clothes was so sweet. She will end up with some of them I'm sure. When I told her about my weight loss, she called to her co workers and I was there for 30 minutes boasting about my band. Life is good!

Hello again all. I have been extremely frustrated with my weight loss. I had my surgery on Feb 5 2014 so I am a little over 2 months po. The first month from the time the Dr recorded my weight until he seen me 1 month po I dropped 34 lbs. I was ecstatic. When I went in for my 2 month check I only lost 7 lbs taking me down to 226. That was on April 7. Since then I have dropped 8 lbs in the last 2 weeks. I work out at least 5 days a week doing 45 mins on my elliptical and then lifting 10 lb weights on top of it to get my arms in shape hoping some of the skin will stretch back. I eat healthy getting 60 grams of protein daily and plenty of water though sometimes I may be a few grams short on my protein and a little short on fluids. Why am I not losing more weight then I am? It just doesn't make sense to me. My Dr was upset with my at my last visit for not dropping enough weight. I see so many people hitting the 100lb mark before a year and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I plan to start tomorrow walking 4 miles a day like I was before I got the elliptical a couple weeks ago on top of everything else I'm doing. Can someone please help me or guide me so I can increase my weight loss?

Just came from the orientation. They basicly went over everything I learned from all of you, it was pretty easy. After it was over they gave us a comment sheet to fill out and to sign up if we wish to go on the the 12 week classes. I am looking at Feb/March if all goes well for the WLS.

So I went on vacation to Europe for a month. I know, you don't feel sorry for me! There was a lot of sausage, bread, and beer to be had! I did not have any problems with getting stuck...at first. Two weeks into my trip, I fell off a horse. OW ow ow ow ow! I did a few things wrong after that: 1) I took Aleve because I knew I was going to hurt like hell later, and 2) Later, my hosts forced me to drink the Polish medicine, which is normally vodka but they thought I needed something stronger so it was cognac, and 3) I proceeded to eat a normal sausage-y dinner. It was not long before I was stuck and sliming. I've never been stuck before, only had an uncomfortable feeling when I eat too fast or too big a bite. The sliming eventually led to vomiting, and there were streaks of blood in it. Oh how scared I was! I was in a foreign country, vomiting blood, and I just knew that if I went to the hospital, they wouldn't know what to do with me. So I only told my husband, who was freaked out but agreed to stay quiet and keep an eye on me. I sipped Water for the rest of the evening, then just ate soft stuff for 24 hours. I felt fine the next day...well, my stomach felt fine. My body was extremely sore! I had to be more careful with food after that, I seemed to feel tight/stuck more easily. I visited my bariatric doctor when I got home, who checked my band with the x-ray and everything looked great. I ate basically whatever I wanted for a month and gained a pound. Not bad! We walked a LOT, and I was not the person everyone else had to wait for, as in past trips. 7 months of exercise allowed me to be the person in front for a change! So other than the horse fiasco, I had a really great experience.

I'm located in Northern California. I have Kaiser and Kaiser insurance (mom works there) 3 of my doctors request this I was just told 3 weeks ago. SURGERY WILL BE DONE IN ... SAN FRANCISCO !!!! I have class on the 10th. After Class I have to call my doctor. He will contact San Francisco For my appointment (: We tried do all this 2 weeks. I guess lol. I will have to go to the class first . And sounds like just one class. ANY ONE UP HERE PLEASE TELL ME YOUR STORY (: how fast did you get your call (my doctor said within 10 days they have to call you)

Shel, I'm sorry you have had such an upsetting experience. Hang in there it does get better. I am a bit surprised that you got real food in the hospital. I was on Clear Liquids for ten days and only today got a scrambled egg. Every doctor is different and you have to do what yours tells you to do. Take it easy and get as much rest as you can. Walking helps a lot too. In a couple of weeks most of the pain will be gone and you will be losing weight.

@@AvaFern, I'm glad you contacted your doctor as soon as you suspected something was wrong. And I agree that antibiotics are indeed a boon to humankind. But don't you think it's likely that the two parts of your post are related? The weight gain could be Fluid retention caused by the inflammation. If the weight gain persists for another week, then it will be time to react by cutting back on calories. Make sure you are drinking plenty of plain Water. Try not to panic. I know that's easy to say and hard to do, but it's counterproductive. Edited to add: If you are not currently tracking your food intake, you might want to start now. That information is very helpful for weight loss and for maintenance.

:whoo:Last Tuesday night I went to my first seminar. It was very interesting and exciting. The seminar is a requirement to be accepted into the program here. The next night I filled out the 11 page application. The woman who handles all the inquiries is out of the office for the next two weeks, so their response time is going to be slower unfortunately. But that's okay. I took the first tangible step toward my goal of being banded and it feels great. This will also get things rolling with the insurance company (they require that I go through a six-month program that they sponser before saying yes or no). One thing's for sure, this whole process is going to teach me the benefits of having patience. But I've got the process started and that's the important thing!

yes, we ALL have something to look forward to this week, I know I'M READY. Ready for the new me! (or the OLD me that's been hidden under all this weight!) I am ready to go into the store and see a dress I like and be able to get in it and look good in it. Ready to lay down at night and not wake up with my back hurting and be able to walk up or down the stairs and not have to take one step at a time so my knees won't hurt.

Hi Shayne, One of the really cool things about banding vs. other types of WLS is that it's really easy to keep it to yourself if you want to. The surgery is relatively minor, and it shouldn't take more than a week for you to feel almost 100% recovered. It can easily be accomplished during a short vacation from work, for example. Personally, I took three days off--back at work on Monday after a Wednesday surgery. As for people looking down on me, well, anyone who would hold such an opinion isn't worth my worrying about. My friends and family who know have all been supportive. Those I haven't told have no idea anything was done. Like you, I have been big my whole life. The band presented my best hope for gaining control over what's so long controlled me. Justifying it to other people wasn't something I felt necessary.

New_Hope, Everyone knows a "friend of a friend" who had some kind of WLS and failed at it. I actually met the "friend of a friend" last week that I was told about. She looks really good, but, when we chatted, I found out that she had GB, so she didn't fail at the sleeve. There is a ton of info right here for you to see the real life stories and experiences of other sleevers. I think having my sleeve was the best decision I've ever made for myself. I feel like a whole new person, and I've lost nearly one whole person already, at 4.5 months out! Don't let the horror stories freak you out. There IS a risk of complications with any surgery, including VSG. Do your research and be sure that you know what to expect afterwards. Good luck!!

I was told by my Dr. to not worry about weight loss during the first month, his main concern was for me to focus on healing. He told me any weight loss during the pre fill stage is a bonus, since the band was designed to work it's best when it was filled. Did your Dr. tell you any of this ? But for therecord I lost 19 lbs in the first 9 weeks

READY TO BE WEDDED TO YOUR BAND? On a humid May morning 37 years ago, after a four year courtship, I married my first husband. We exchanged our wedding vows in front of a Catholic priest, a Presbyterian minister, and 40 guests consisting of family and friends. We walked out of the church and into our married life with “until death do us part” in our young minds. Six years later, we divorced. Eventually each of us married again, this time to the right partner, and we’re all still happily married today. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. It’s practice that will make your “marriage” to your adjustable gastric band perfect, or as perfect as any human endeavor can be. It’s important to know that when you wake up in the recovery room after your surgery, you won’t be magically endowed with all the knowledge, experience, and habits you’ll need to succeed with your band. Even if you did tons of research, faithfully attended every pre-op educational class, and listened closely to and made detailed notes of everything your bariatric team told you, some things – important things – you’ll have to learn through the everyday experience of living and eating with your band. When you leave the hospital or surgery center after your surgery, you probably won’t be headed for your honeymoon quite yet. That will come later, when you’ve had enough fills to achieve optimal restriction and you begin to feel that your band is really working. The excess weight will start coming off and you’ll walk around in a dreamy pink haze, delighted with your new life partner. You might even give your band a silly private pet name, the way my husband calls me “Love Bug” (which always makes me think of my first car, a chubby little Volkswagen Beetle). Then one day, the reality of banded life will wake you up. You’ll think, “Who is this creature I’ve married?” And like Jenny, a former coworker of mine, you’ll realize that while the engagement, wedding and honeymoon were exciting and fun, the day-after-day business of marriage isn’t exciting or fun 24 hours a day. It’s hard work. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s humdrum. Jenny divorced her new husband after only three months of marriage not because she didn’t love him, but because she didn’t love being married to him. For many of us, being a wife isn’t nearly as fun as being a bride. One day you’re a smiling princess dressed up in flowers and lace; the next day you’re a haus frau frowning at the skid marks in your prince’s underwear. I suspect that Jenny just wasn’t old enough or mature enough to be a wife. Neither was I when I married the first time. One of the reasons most bariatric surgeons and insurance companies require a patient to have a pre-op psychological consult is to evaluate the patient’s understanding of what they’ll have to do to succeed after surgery. Are they ready for a lifetime commitment? Do they have reasonable expectations? Can they follow instructions? Are they capable of learning the new behaviors they’ll need for a productive, peaceful partnership with their band? HABIT FORMING New bandsters need dozens of new habits – something like 60-70% of my book Bandwagon is devoted to explaining those habits, so I’m not going to try to cram them all into a single article. I’ll pick one at random. Hmmm…how about EAT SLOWLY? How are you going to turn that behavior into a habit that will serve you well for the rest of your life? So Dr. McMillan tells you, “Eat slowly,” and you nod your assent while thinking, “Get real! I’m too busy to do anything slowly. I have 3 kids and 2 dogs, I work 2 jobs, I take care of my elderly Aunt Bertha, I coach my daughter’s softball team, I have a house to run and a spouse who’s always on the road…” Well, you get the idea. Dr. McMillan has just told you to do something that’s very simple and yet impossibly difficult, you think Dr. McMillan needs to wake up and smell the coffee, and a door in your mind slams shut. Actually, Dr. McMillan is already awake, has had a cup of coffee, has tended to all 10 of her dogs and all 3 of her cats, is about to leave for the fitness studio, and when she returns she will deal with a home renovation project while running her home-based publishing business off the kitchen table; tomorrow the fun will start all over again, including a 5-1/2 hour shift at her retail job and a trip to the supermarket. She’ll get someone to come look at the leaking French doors, do the laundry, pick another batch off ticks off the new dog, and cook several meals. Dr. McMillan’s friend Nina calls her the “Tennessee Tsunami”, and despite all that, Dr. M. still manages to eat slowly every time she sits down to a meal. As a pre-op, it took her maybe 5 minutes to hoover her way through a meal that would feed a farmhand, and now it takes her 5 minutes to chew her way through the first bite. But that EAT SLOWLY habit (or any other habit) didn’t become a habit for me overnight. It takes many, many repetitions to turn a new behavior into a habit (a British study found that it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of daily repetition to make a new behavior “automatic”). I know it’s a big challenge, especially when you’re also trying to learn a few dozen other new behaviors and turn all of them into habits while somehow conquering the dozens of bad habits you already had, but I assure you, it’s worth the effort. MIND OVER MATTER? Sometimes the biggest stumbling block in changing my behavior isn’t the behavior itself – it’s me and my stubborn, willful mind. I rarely have a valid reason to refuse a new, healthier behavior, whether it’s a small thing like putting my fork down while I chew each bite, or a bigger thing like always wearing seat belts in the car. My brain stomps its feet and cries, “I don’t WANT to do it!” I have to ease into the new behavior gradually, so that I don’t become overwhelmed and end up crying, “See, I TOLD you it wouldn’t work!” So although part of me knows that this is a huge, lifetime deal, I dole out the changes in small pieces, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. If I live as long as my mom did, I have another 32 years of eating ahead of me. I eat 6 times a day, 7 days a week, so if my arithmetic is correct (no guarantees there), I have another 69,888 meals to chew my way through. That is a truly mind-boggling number, so I’m tackling this task one meal at a time, and I suggest you do the same. I also suggest that you tackle one behavior at a time. Even simple things can become too complicated when you try to do them all at once. Last year, I bought a new cell phone. I hate the telephone and always have; as far as I’m concerned, cell phones are the work of the devil. I chose a phone with far more capabilities than my old one. It seemed like a dandy little gadget when the sales associate was demonstrating it, but when I’d had it a week, I had to return it because (as I told the puzzled 20 year-old who processed the return), I simply could not deal with a device that required me to hop on one foot while patting my head, rubbing my tummy, and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” in order to send an e-mail. So sitting down to each post-op meal trying to remember whether you’re supposed to hop, pat, rub, or sing is a set-up for failure. Better to pick out one new behavior as this week’s challenge. Next week, add another new behavior to your repertoire. The week after that, another one. During that time you’ll be repeating all the new behaviors as you slowly add new ones, and gradually the behaviors that were new become old…in other words, they become habit, and you won’t have to think about them much if at all. When I was a little girl, my mom had to remind me to brush my teeth every day, but eventually the tooth-brushing became an automatic part of my routine. If I were in a car accident (God forbid) and suffered a spine or brain injury that erased all my old habits (good and bad), I’d have to start it all over again. I’d probably festoon my house with reminder notes: BRUSH TEETH on the bathroom mirror; EAT SLOWLY on my placemat; FEED DOGS (well, maybe not – the dogs come complete with their own extremely reliable and audible meal reminder system). That’s a lot of work, I know, but the pay-off is enormous!

I started the day after surgery. My coordinator Laurie was surprised to hear of me walking stairs and all the floors the next morn after surgery so after my leak test and a few hours of rest at the hotel, we hit the streets LITERALLY. We walked up and down the streets of Tijuana for a good 8 hours enjoying all the festivities and culture. Then a few days later at home I used my treadmill at home until that got boring and I went back to my gym where I have been since I was 2 weeks post-op. I mainly used the treadmill and bikes for a few weeks then went on to light weights and the dreadful stairmaster to finally back into my fav...boxing. I was told to basically do a little at a time to work your way back to where you once were and in a few weeks I was. It really all depends on you and your body. Pushing yourself before time will not get you to your goal any quicker so just remember to do what your doctor says. Good Luck!