Great questions for your surgeon. From a purely technical medical perspective, as soon as you are off pain meds you should be able to drive. That being said, I know from my surgeon's perspective, the bigger issue is access to health care. I travel some for work, and his biggest concern was that I wasn't in a third world country, or some rural town somewhere in the US. As long as I was traveling to major metropolitan areas, he didn't have a lot of concerns about me traveling. You would hate to have some sort of intestinal blockage and be in the middle of Eastern Utah (for example) where you are 100 miles from the nearest gad station, let alone an high quality hospital. In addition, if you had some sort of emergency that prevented you from driving, it would be important that your wife was able to drive the RV as well if necessary.

Again, these are just my perspectives - I would definitely discuss a plan with your surgeon.

I'm pretty sure if you drop below 2% body fat you're likely to die. I wouldn't think many doctors would be ok with someone maintaining at that level. From my undertandidng, "essential body fat" is 3%-5%. I believe for most medical professionals warning bells go off if you get near 5%. I believe anything under 8% is considered "under-fat" and healthy ranges are often considered 8% - 20%.

I realize that isn't the point of this post, but I was surprised to see the 2%, so wanted to chime in! But, I'm no doctor, just my $0.02.

Bill - thanks for the update, and I hope you are doing well. It's very interesting to see how different people respond to "life happening". I know that for me, personally, I do end up eating more than I should in stressful situations. I don't know that it is so much "stress eating" as it is that I get distracted by life, and am much less mindful of what I'm doing which leads to overeating for me. Fortunately, when this happens, I am still very good at sticking to food on my plan. And since my plan consists of a lot of fruits and vegetables, it's pretty darn forgiving if you have a few extra servings a day.

1) Tips - in retrospect, probably the best thing I did for myself was to start following the diet I would follow long term in maintenance. I dropped a ton of weight (almost 50 lbs in the 6 weeks prior to the surgery) which was great to already have a good start on the weight loss, but also started getting me into the habit of how I would eat long term. Personally, this is a gift that keeps on giving for me.

2) Worst thing after surgery - establishing a new routine for food. Planning out my day, eating and drinking at the correct intervals to get all of my protein/liquids in. It was a pain in the but for the first few weeks, but it gets easier and easier.

3) What keeps you from going back to work - not much. I had a pretty easy recovery. I was a little tired the first couple of weeks, but the hardest part about going back to work was that schedule I mentioned above. Took me a couple of weeks to get that done. Other than that - no problem. I do work a desk job though, so YMMV.

4) Why do you not drink water with your meal - I do drink with my meals. My surgeon has no issue with drinking/eating together. The first few weeks/months I didn;t drink much during meals, but that was mostly because I didn't have room for both, and had to focus on getting food in during meals. Since then, I always have.

5) Vitamins - I used chewable bariatric vitamins the first few weeks. After that, I take 2 Centrum a day and 1 Iron pill. At this point, I can take them all at once, no issues.

Welcome to both of you!

So I'm less than a month out of surgery. I had a fairly fast recovery, my main issue is tiredness. I went back after a week and a half but find myself needing naps.

As others have mentioned, water after the meal causes digestion issues.

For me, I just use a pre-natal vitamin chewable (jamesons) and d3 drops so it's not that bad.

--Joe