All the successful really long term WLSers I know have one thing in common. They came up with an eating plan that they could maintain for life. Do you think that you can continue to get a large portion of your nutrition from protein drinks, for life? You can, of course, but will you?

There are two reasons to weigh or measure. The first uses volume, and is important for newbies still healing. You don't want to stuff too much volume in on freshly healing innards, especially when your nerves are cut and you can't feel it.

The other reason to weigh food is to control calories. Measuring by volume is pretty useless for calorie counts. A good kitchen scale is necessary. I weigh everything I eat. It keeps me on track.

I use carbonyl. The brand is Sundown Perfect Iron. I get mine at the supermarket, at $4.95 for 200 25mg tablets. They're about the size of a baby aspirin.

There are many brands of carbonyl and heme iron. CVS carries them, and I'm sure other pharmacies do as well. I know Amazon does as well.

Nice job!

Eating a whole apple is bad, very bad. Even if the seeds don't start groiwig in your belly, you're still going to have a difficult time pooping out the core.

Your ferritin is so high because you chew nails.

Ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, or anything with ferrous in the name, are the WORST kinds of iron to take. In a 325 mg tablet, only 65 mg of those is elemental iron. They'll constipate you horribly. You might as well pound a cork in there.

Carbonyl iron or heme iron are 100 percent elemental iron, and are not constipating.

Once you are completely recovered from surgery, the limiting factor is iron. A lot of WLSers end up low on iron, so you have to be careful.

The Red Cross only checks your hematocrit right before donation. That's the iron in your blood right now. Another significant iron number to watch is ferritin. That's stored iron your body can draw upon. Think of it in monetary terms. Your hematocrit number will show the money in your pocket, the ferritin is money in the bank. You can have money in your pocket, but no savings. So they might take your blood, but that might leave you iron bankrupt. If you are going to donate, it's best to know what all your lab numbers are.

I donate platelets every two weeks. It's a long process, about three hours, as opposed to ten minutes for a pint of blood. What they do is filter the platelets out with an apheresis machine, and return the red cells and plasma to me. That's less of a strain on my iron needs than donating red cells or whole blood.

I'm O negative, which is the universal donor for whole blood and red cells. AB is actually the universal donor for platelets and plasma. Ideally, they'd rather have my red cells, being O negative. But you can only donate whole blood 6 times a year, red cells 3 times a year, and platelets 24 times a year. So while my platelets aren't in as much demand, I give a lot more of them. If I only donated a couple times a year, they'd take the red cells.

My O negative whole blood could go to anyone, even your AB+. But depending on what your issue was, they might prefer to give you "real" AB+. And since only about 4 percent have your blood type, it can be pretty hard to find. Sometimes, they even dig a little deeper, and select a specific AB+ profile that matches yours. The Red Cross posts a little sign where you check in, letting donors know when their blood or platelets were used for a specific recipient. It's a nice feeling to know you were the best match for someone. This summer some person in Vermont was getting mine pretty regularly. I like to imagine they're a vegan. Or used to be.

The only way I like eggs is if they are baked into cookies, or a cake.

Buying eggs boiled and peeled might cost a little more. But it was still less than what we used to spend at the drive-thru before surgery.

Keep doing what you've been doing. The more work you do now, the easier it will be after surgery to reach your goal.

I've never known a secret that stayed secret. Sooner or later, people find out. I'd rather control the information, and decide when to tell them.

I was 52 at surgery, 3 years ago. No complications, no problems, no issues. It couldn't have gone better.

Barring medical complications, which are rare, you'll take from surgery as much as you put into it.