desert rat

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At nearly 4 years post-op, the weight takes constant watching, otherwise it starts to creep back up.  My best advice to everyone is weigh yourself everyday.  That way you know what's going on.  If it goes up a little, you can catch it, and make the changes needed to get the weight back off before you've gained 20 or more pounds.  I'm not saying it's easy.  Those who think this is a magic bullet have no clue.  It really is a permanent life change.  You are on "maintenance" for the rest of your life.  But think of the alternative.  Can you imagine being 300+ pounds and still trying to figure out how to get it off in the first place.  At least with this, you have the opportunity to get the weight off and now all you have to do is MAINTAIN it!  I'm here to tell you that after maintaining this weight for about two and a half years, it's a whole heck of a lot easier than trying to lose it in the first place.  I'm thankful everyday for the gift of the surgery and grateful that I have not had any of the problems that so many people do suffer from.  However, I am VERY compliant.  I follow the rules.  I do not drink when I eat.  I have two or three protein supplements EVERY day, I take ALL of my vitamins EVERY day and I'm not talking about Flintstone's and Viactive!  I drink alcohol very rarely, and I exercise.  It doesn't take a lot!  I not only go to support groups, I lead a support group!  The original leader quit after about six months of non-compliance and then announced the surgery didn't work. I kept it going however, and here we are, almost four years later, still going strong.  Support is important.  It keeps you honest, it keeps things in the front of your mind.  You can't put things to the side, thinking you'll get back to them when you get a chance.  Is your health of so little importance to you?  Not me.  I worked hard to get here.  It's much easier to stay here than it will ever be to try to get BACK here.  Be strong, be happy, don't think of this as a prison sentence, just think of it as the cost of being healthy.  It's a pretty small price.

I don't get into this site very much because I am so darn busy these days but the importance of OH is still there.  I go to my support group every other week and have just started attending the monthly meeting at my doctor's office.  In my opinion, support is the main reason for my success.  I get atta-boys when I'm successful and encouragement when I'm not.  I get lots of information and ideas for different way to skin that darn cat!  We are all different and not one of us will walk exactly the same path but if we try to walk it alone, who will help us when we fall down?

As I approach my 3rd anniversary, my weight has been as low as 132 and it goes as high as 136.  Most days though, I'm right at 134, at 5'6"  I don't complain.  Lately, I'm not getting my 10,000 steps in because of my 12 hour work days but that can't last forever, can it?  I still wear my pedometer everyday and push it on all of the new members of the group.  It is a great tool for knowing what you're doing...and knowledge is power.  How can you fix things when you don't know what needs fixing?  I continue to weigh myself everyday.  I don't care who disagrees with me.  If I weigh everyday, I know that I've gained before I've gained 20 or 30 pounds and I can tweak my eating plan for a day or two.  I don't have to "go on a diet!"  I don't ever want to go on a diet again!!  Also, there are studies that show that the most successful "losers" are those who do weigh everyday, so when someone tells you not to weigh, they just are not aware of the most current information or they choose to ignore it.

I continue to take all vitamins, minerals, protein supplements.  I worry about malnutrition so I read newsletters and websites on nutrition all the time.  I have added and deleted things over the past three years and I'm sure that will continue.  Research continues to find out more & more and if we don't change, we will only hurt ourselves.  I plan on being around for a very long time.  My goal since I was 14 was to live to be 114.  I want to see the Tri-Centenial 'cause I had so much fun on the Bicentenial!  Because I was fortunate to have wls, I have the opportunity to live a healthy life and reach my goal of 114 but it won't happen if I am not proactive with my nutrition and exercise.  

So, I may not post everyday, week or month, but I will try to post at least once per year and maybe in sixty years, we'll have enough for a whole book!

God bless you all and keep on fighting the weight gain monster!
Dj

Here I am, 2 years post-op.  My life still doesn’t feel “normal.”  I feel as though I am celebrating every minute of every day.  Everything I do is a celebration of life.  A life I didn’t have before surgery.  I liken myself to Tigger.  I have a spring in my tail and I bounce around all day long! :o)

 

I couldn’t walk upstairs without becoming winded.  My knees, feet and hips hurt all the time.  I sat on the end of my couch with my feet up, yelling for everyone else to do things for me.  Not now.  I am able and willing to do things myself.  When I get home from work, I get the mail at the end of the street.  I wear my pedometer because “every step counts.”  Just last week, I tried something different.  Instead of just walking on my treadmill, I chose one of the “programs.”  It made me jog for six minutes in the middle of a 20 minute work-out.  I am not a jogger…ever!  But I jogged for six minutes and felt none the worse for it.  I am excited that I am capable of doing things I could never have done before. 

 

I won’t say that it was EASY but it wasn’t hard either.  I have had other surgeries before and since.  WLS hurt less than having part of my lung removed.  It hurt less than the plastic surgery I had on my arms.  I have dumped on occasion and learned from it.  I am not perfect but I do pretty well and the weight loss bears evidence to that. 

 

I started at 316 pounds and I now weigh between 135 and 140, depending on the day of the week.  I weigh myself every day.  I continue to read every article I can put my hands on and one article said that research shows that the people who keep their weight off the best are those who step on the scale every day.  You simply put it in you mind that your weight will always fluctuate a couple of pounds and you accept it.  You don’t panic if the weight is up a pound or two.  When it’s up four or five pounds, you are aware of it right away and you can make the adjustment necessary to get it back down.  NEVER ignore bad news.  Knowledge is POWER!!

 

I don’t eat perfectly every day but I don’t go nuts every day either.  I stay vigilant.  I never forget where I started.  I do not ever want to get back to that or even a little heavier than I am now.  I’m actually considering losing another 10 pounds.  “The” weight charts say that I can weigh between 118 and 152.  My surgeon wanted me to get to 150.  I made that easily enough and decided I wanted to get down to 135.  Like I said, I bounce in that area but if I’m going to bounce, maybe I should get a bit lower.  Maybe I should bounce between 125 and 130.  I’m 5’6” and I wear a size 6.  I have a few things in size 4.  I started this “journey” in a size 30-32.  I always wore my clothes a bit loose because I couldn’t stand being confined.  Now I wear clothes that fit; nothing baggy.  My pants fit perfectly, my blouses are tailored.  It’s important to me to look fitted and not sloppy.

 

I don’t do formal exercise everyday.  I wear my pedometer everyday and I’m aware of the days when I sit on my butt.  Then I make the effort to step it up.  Weekends are hard because of all of the errands.  Mostly, I’m in the car driving somewhere.  The little bit of walking that I get in the stores doesn’t add up to very much.  By the time I’m done with errands though, the day is gone.  I really need more time for me but it doesn’t look like I’ll get it on weekends.  Usually, I get on the treadmill after work and before dinner.  If I exercise much later than that, I don’t get to sleep very easily.  I really need to do the exercise before work but I’m not a morning person.  So I deal with it.  I do the best I can.  I don’t give up; I keep trying to do better.  

 

Although I don’t eat or exercise perfectly, I do my absolute best to take my supplements perfectly.  I have a cell phone with an alarm option.  I set my alarm to ring at 8 am for my 2^nd protein, 10, 12 & 2 for my calcium.  I take my 1^st protein drink, a multi-vitamin, B-complex, vitamins C, E & D, plus a flax seed oil capsule first thing every morning and at night I take an iron along with another vitamin C.  Every other day or so, I take a sublingual B-12.  I have my labs done every six months and I log the results into a spread sheet.  I keep an eye on what’s going up and what’s going down.  The concern right now is my liver enzymes are elevated.  They have gone up every time.  I stopped taking Tylenol because that was the only thing I was doing.  If it goes up again, I’m going to request an ultrasound of my gall bladder.  That’s the only other thing anyone can think of.  It’s not critical yet but again (and again, and again) we must stay VIGILANT!!!!  Nobody cares about our health as much as we do.  We are our own best advocates.

 

Another thing I do that others have stopped doing; I go to support meetings every two weeks.  I don’t make every meeting because other things do come up, but I’m there as often as I can be.  I doubt that I miss more that a half dozen per year.  I believe it is critical to long term success.  I think of us as recovering alcoholics.  We are never cured, just under control.  Successful alcoholics go to AA meetings.  These support meetings are my AA meetings.   

 

I wish you all success.  I am proof that this procedure can work.  I will never presume to that it WILL work for everyone or that it will work exactly the same for everyone but it has a better than average chance of working.  As long as you don’t have other issues that weight loss can’t fix, you should be able to lose weight and regain control over your life.

 

All of the nameless people struggling to get approved, to recover from and be successful after surgery, you are all in my prayers.  Keep hanging in there.  Every phase passes, few things are forever.  Be wise, be at peace, stay vigilant and NEVER EVER give up!

 

God Bless you all…Dj

I weigh every single day so I know that I bounce around within a 5 pound range.  I have been bouncing around between 136 & 141 for several months.  I write my weight down every Friday because that was the day of my surgery nearly 2 years ago.  Well, on Friday the 27th my official "write-it-down" weight was 134.8!!  The closest I'd gotten before was 135.8.  Then on Saturday morning, although I won't write it down, I "bounced" down to 134.  Of course today I'm back up to 135.4 but that's okay, I expect it.  I'm just happy that the low end of my bounce is getting lower.  Now, if I can keep it in this range I'll be tickled PINK!!!  Oh yeah, I'm wearing a size FOUR!!!  Considering that I started out in a size 30/32, I couldn't be happier.

My husband is doing really well.  He's 12 weeks post op as of tomorrow morning and as of this morning he has lost a total of 82 pounds in ONLY TWELVE WEEKS!!!  I keep saying that it's a good thing I was done losing weight before he had his surgery because I would have been SOOOOOO upset to have him go screaming past me on the weight loss path.  It's good that I'm at goal, this way I can enjoy his trip too!

I haven't been very good about posting & updating my account but since they changed the way it's done, I haven't had or taken the time to find out what I'm suppose to do.  So the next few posts will be me playing around with the new format...forgive me for errors!

Earl's doing very well at the 4 week post op point.  He has lost 38 pounds and tomorrow is his "official" one month.  He still gets very tired in the afternoon & I don't know what he's going to do on Tuesday when he returns to work.  Hopefully his office staff will be nice to him.

I'm still trying to lose a few pounds.  I'm afraid of the "bounce-back" that so many people experience once they stop losing.  If I regain 10 pounds, I'd die!!  What I'd really like to do is lose 10 or 12 pounds below my current weight of 137/138.  That way if I have a little bounce back up, it will keep me in a happy spot!  I read a post the other day where a lady was explaining that if she keeps trying to lose, she will be watching what she's eating.  If she quits watching what she's eating, she may start to regain.  She said she didn't know how to "maintain."  Those are my exact feelings.  Technically, I have been at goal since October but my goal was to get to 135.  I'm hanging out right around 137 or 138.  If I keep trying to lose those last few pounds, I stay vigilant.  Hey, they may come off eventually!  I've been losing 2 to 3 pounds per month since October so who knows?  All I know is that I MUST get my candy addiction under control!!  I've been much better at getting my 10,000 steps in so maybe I can keep moving, I can keep eating some candy.  Maybe, I can keep walking AND stop eating candy!  I'll try...