If she wrote a book, I'd buy a 100 copies.


The evolution of the DSer.

The first month: I am going to die. I can’t eat or drink enough to sustain the life of a house plant. My skin looks like a crocodile handbag, I can’t stop crying and my arse is squirting out rainbow acid. Just let me die for God’s sake.

The Third month: I love everyone…..what the fuck are you looking at? I can’t deal with this shit any more. I used to have friends but now I know they were secretly plotting my downfall one cake at a time. Hubby is worried I’m having mood swings. If he says that again I’m gonna gouge out his fucking eyes. I hate food. Today I ate 1 gram of protein and drank a thimble of water. I am feeling much better. If I get my period in the next week I’m going to take out everyone in a three mile radius.

The Sixth month: I am so fucking hot. Seriously I weigh as much as a damp squirrel and have spent the foreign deficit on new clothes that will fit me for three weeks. I may break up with hubby because he’s just holding me back. I can eat 100grams of protein and I take all of my meds because I’m so fucking compliant. I eat 2 grams of carbs a day and this shit is effortless.

The First year: (cue Rocky theme) I have lost nearly all of my excess weight and have taken up fell running, weight lifting, fencing, soccer, basketball and the luuge. I get hit on alllll the time by everyone with a pulse because … and let’s face it I’m awesome. I sometimes forget my meds but my labs are excellent. I have bowel motions twice a day mostly. I can eat what ever I want and still lose weight. I plan on running for President and winning. You’d vote for me right?

Year Two: I’ve had a few episodes of bacterial overgrowth and almost folded inside out but now I’m ok. My lab work is fine except for my iron. I may need infusions but for now I’ll stick with the tablets that taste like recycled plastic bags. I still go to the gym and this has helped my bone density. My GP is fucking useless and I pray nothing ever goes wrong cause none of these fucktards have any idea what the fuck I’m about. Hubby is supportive and loving and relieved I’m no longer packing oestrogen heat. No one knows I was ever obese. I need plastics. I look like shit naked.


Year three: I’ve put on 15lbs fuck it! What the fuck I have to work at this shit? I am no longer a head on a stick. I have to eat under 50grams of carbs a day or I get fat (well a size 10 which is huuuuge). I eat 200grams of protein a day and everything the isn’t nailed down. I made goal easily enough but I’m scare witless of going back to being fat again. What if all of this was for nothing?

Year three point five: I stopped taking my meds. I am typing from hospital. My sight is coming back and I am getting sensation in my legs again. The infusions and TPN have been a God send. For the love of God take your fucking vitamins. My hair has stopped falling out and my gums have stopped bleeding.

Year Four: So you want a DS? No you’re not on a plateau one week out, no you shouldn’t take Flintstones vitamins, no you’re getting in plenty of protein four days out, yes you should go to the A&E department, no you’re not insane you’re oestrogen dumping, yes your weight loss will stop eventually, yes you’ll have to watch your carbs…….oh fuck it just have it and go away and die quietly.

Year Six: I’m all over this shit.


Read more: http://weightlosssurgery.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=talk&action=display&thread=1702&page=1#ixzz1leHBKo9e

My total weight loss including my pre-op diet is 65.5 lbs!! Not bad considering all the shit I did to my body the last 30 years of dieting and my previous WLS.

I could not be happier! I love losing weight, not eating so much, being less interested in food, and not suffering through it all. I think I am finally on the right track with my vitamins finally.  I am taking 25 per day now plus a B12 shot weekly  I am still struggling with the protein shakes.

I am 212 lbs today.  I really looking forward to getting under 200. Its sort of a weird place right now - not as fat but still fat.  I'm ready to not be fat anymore! 

No shame in joining the January life changing band wagon.  Congratulations newbies for finding your way to the DS forum.  You've just taken your first tentative step towards total life change and if you're like me liberation from a life of fear and shame. 

Here's the disclaimer.  My advice is my own non-compliant meanderings through this process.  I'm not a the greatest DSer by any stretch of the imagination, I sometimes eat loads of shit food, I have only just started keeping an eye on my carbs but despite my own self I'm still losing my excess weight and am almost at goal.  Beyond my wildest imagination...this has worked!

Here are some things that I was taught by the sexy vets here that made a big difference to the quality of my life.

1) Never give up.  If you want this then you will have to struggle for it, with your insurer, with your bank, with your fears, with your families misconceptions, your work mates prejudices etc etc.  This will be a thrilling ride and a difficult one.  That is why it has such meaning to us all.  We are passionate people because we fought hard to be here.

2) It hurts.  The surgery is enormous, understand?  It is complicated and technically challenging for any surgeon.  You must only trust a recognised and experienced surgeon in the DS.  You must NEVER go to some dodgey cheap surgeon you found on the Internet.  Ask the forum and learn learn learn.  We've lost people here from surgical complications.  I know you don't love yourself very much at the moment and I'm betting being at your lowest ebb has bought you here but WE care if your choices kill you.  WE want you to be made of win....like us!

3) There is no excuse that we'll accept for you NOT taking the vitamin regime you need to live.  I take 22 tablets a day just because of my DS.  How does that make you feel? It's a lot isn't it?  Without ingesting the micro-nutrients and minerals from these pills I'll develop life threatening illnesses...imagine getting Beriberi in 2011??? What about scurvy? Protein malnutrition ??  Read up on them.

4) You have to eat 100grams of protein a day.  The doesn't mean 100grams in weight it means the accumulated total in the meat when you take out all the other elements i.e. a chicken breast is usually 24-30grams depending on the size so you have to eat LOADS of meat....mmmmmm meat.

5) Immediately after surgery you're going to have hellish diarrhea.  If you can get some form of sponge on a stick or long handled bum wiping device then bloody well do.  Reaching around is like doing one million sit ups on a bed of nails and seeing you'll be doing it almost hourly for the first few days you'll thank me for that.  Also wet wipes are your friend.  May every car, bathroom and handbag in your possession have a packet.  When you shart Mobil oil from the fat you need to eat to not turn into a lizard  you need a good clean up crew.

6) Your shit is going to smell like a cow that has been dead for seven days in the tropics , siege cannoned into your airconditoning unit smeared in marmite.  You will need to get a good air freshener..fabreeze does an amazing job as too does Nagchampa incense but you need to be able to pass yourself off as a Hari Krishna to burn it in public with impunity.

7) All the above are easily managed if you're not a Muppet.  Yeh you probably would have an easier time with an RNY or a VSG.  Fine go for it.  If you don't struggle with obesity every moment of every day, if you don't constantly gain and lose weight in an ever increasing spiral then you'll be fine! Your RNY pouch will stretch, the malabsorbtion from the RNY will slow right down and unless you watch your calorie intake you will regain weight.  The VSG will stretch (we all have the VSG stomach so we all know this to be true) so unless you need a kick start to lose weight and then have  willpower to keep it off don't bother.  The DS is for people like me who had very poor control around food,  Who gained and lost vast amounts of weight, who dieted almost 11 months out of every year and have been obese since childhood.  I don't want to diet ever again.  Have I had to work at it? Not really to be honest.  Will I have to work at it?

Yeh most likely in another 12 months I'll have to be MUCH more carb conscious and try to adhere to a Atkins style lifestyle if I want to avoid the potential 25% regain.  Still it blows the other surgery out of the water in that department like a game of battleship.  25% of super morbidly obese I can very happily live with.  That will likely make me a size 16-18....I started at a size 30. 

8) You're going to lose a lot of weight and you'll likely have very saggy skin where the fat once was.  This is express weight loss for most of us.  I've lost over 169lbs in weight in 12 months exactly.  That's 169lbs of space gone from my stretched out fat arse skin.  So now.....I'm a wind sock with static cling.  Naked I look like a 90 year old woman, even my vagina looks like a bulldogs jowls.  This surgery won't make you pretty nude.....you'll need other surgery to do that.  Be realistic and realise you're trading one set of issues for another set of body issues.  I actually prefer these body issues to my old ones so I'm happy to have traded up.

9) You're still fat in your head for the rest of your life.  All the shit you put up with, all the compensations you made for crap behavior directed at your crumbling self esteem well you'll have to deal with that.  If your wife/husband is an arsehole you're most likely going to realise this when you're 150lbs lighter and they feel aggrieved that you're not longer pathetic enough to be stepped on.  You might leave them because you don't think being unhappy is what your life is all about anymore.  You might have a loving and wonderful partner and they will delight in your accomplishments and love you through everything.  There is lots to share.

10)  During the first year of weight loss you're going to be a mental bastard as the hormones and e-numbers stored in your melting polar ice cap of fat charge about your body.  If you're a girl your cyst riddled ovaries might just start working again and you'll be cursed with your monthly period again and the psychotic monthly brinkmanship that comes with it.

11)  For fucks sake you haven't stalled 1 month out.  Just ignore your scales until the end of the first month.  You've no idea how stressed out your body is with the huge surgery, the sudden messages of starvation, the huge swelling internally the massive fluid shifts, the hormones shifting about like bats in the belfry.  You're going to yo yo up and down but anywhere up tom 10-15lbs without any rhyme or reason.

12)  The Vets are amazing but don't be shocked if they kick you into touch if you don't research and understand your surgery.  It isn't their responsibility to keep you healthy it is yours!  You need the knowledge to advocate yourself and read the DS board your answers are there already if you look.

13) And finally.  It is all worth it.  Every second of it.  One day you'll look in the mirror and think you look great.  You'll wear a pair of jeans and rather then hide under a big t-shirt you'll want wear something that shows off your shape. The strange and exotic world of self esteem is not only possible its probable.  I love my DS with a passion.  I am happy to share that passion with you.  This is the best thing that ever happened for me and I am thrilled to pay it on. 

From WasABubbleButt on a post in the lapband forum - I love her

Post Date: 11/29/10 7:30 pm
 
And btw, when I say start treating it as a disease I do not mean that you haven't because you got a band.  I'm talking about your head and your perspective.  Treat it as you would a patient with diabetes, do you blame him for being diabetic?  Do you blame a CA patient for having cancer?  Not damned likely.  But you blame yourself for being obese.

Change your thinking, change your attitude towards yourself and your disease, accept that this is not a personality flaw, a weakness, quit putting fault on this issue.  This is a no-fault issue!  Change your head, accept this is a disease and approach it from that angle.  You just might find I am right.


  Previously Midwesterngirl

The band got me to goal, the sleeve will keep me there.

See  my blog for newbies: http://wasabubblebutt.blogspot.com/

So, after much research and investigation, I am going with Dr Srikanth for my DS.  Really like him a lot.  He does want me to lose 27-30 lbs before my surery.  This is because I had previously lost a lot of weight and had a tummy tuck.  When I gained weight back, it made my skin very tight which will make the lap surgery difficult if he cant pump up my stomach.  So losing weight will make room for the gas and tools.  UG!  Don't know how this is going to work out....

I have lost about 5 lbs since my appt last week.  I am restricting myself to 500 - 1000 calories per day and drinking lots of fluids.  He also requires 10 days of clear liquid diet before surgery - I guess I will cross that bridge when I get my surgery date scheduled.

My insurance does cover this procedure, I just have to get an advisory approval to be sure I meet all the requirements, which I do.  My doctor will schedule the surgery once they get back from my insurance.  Hoping for the end of January.