New Member... Looking for Advice

Hi All - I am looking to pursue WLS - I was close once before but choked at the last appointment, not for fear of surgery but fear of myself.  This is my one chance, I understand that WLS is NOT a magic bullet and I know that I have to do a lot of the work but I had trouble committing to the liquid diet - my head knows this is the right thing to do so why can't I get my body in line?  Of course if I could I wouldn't be in the position I am.  Since then I have worked toward eating more healthy, not dieting but learning to eat healthy.  I feel like I am finally at a point where I am able to avoid fast food, incorporate vegetables, etc but I still haven't conquered my hardest challenge - sweets.  I have tamed it a lot but I haven't conquered it and that still scares me.

Has anyone else been in this spot? How did you help your thought process? How did you adapt after surgery, does the feeling full that comes with the severe limitation of your stomach size really pu**** through and make the difference?

I want to pursue surgery and I have scheduled my first appointment with the local WLS surgeons to get this going but I still have that fear, I wish there wasn't this waiting period, I obviously can't lose the weight on my own or I would have and having the time to get in my head doesn't help.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice.

Welcome!  How long ago was it that you decided not to go thru the surgery?   Alot depends on so many factors.  Not all surgeons require the liquid diet as my didn't but yours may have as so many that I see on here. Your age, what type of surgery do you want, co-morbidities so much to cover.  I see what your BMI is and the DS would be an excellent surgery for you, but this is something you have to discuss with the surgeon and what YOU want and what will work best for success. You are correct when this is just a tool.  I went through 26 weeks of classes and 6 months of Obesity classes and all my work-ups before I was to have surgery and that took a year.  I learned so much and needed this information as all WLS patients need.  You sound as you are aware of what it takes to make this work.  There is no magic cure.  I looked at my walker after my hips were damaged and realized with all my health problems, I would be in a wheel chair in a few years and dead in another ten according to my doctor.  That and not being to walk cause of the damage is what did it.  I now have to have my hips replaced but on the plus side, I had the RNY, down 102 pounds and maybe another 30 to go.  this will help me tremendously in surgery to recover and physical therapy.   

Ok,enough of me.  Tell us something about you, nothing personal if you don't feel comfortable just in general, what you would want for yourself and interests and remember, we all had fears of surgery. We all are here to listen and give support and sometimes we kick butt and we in turn get our butts kicked to get us back on track! 

Take care and hope to hear from you soon on here!  Jane

Thanks much - it has been about a year and a half - I know in my heart it is the right path for me and I am determined to just power through this time and try to set the fear aside and work through it by building an online support system and hopefully a local one as well.  I recently relocated here for work so I have no real system and am not close with my family so it is just me and my daughter - and she is only 10 and I need her to see me take positive steps and not follow me down this path.  I need to be the example but it is a tough road. 

I think the DS is the right way to go, and I don't have a problem with having to do vitamins, etc - I already don't process Iron properly and have often had to have IV Iron and B12 shots as well so it wouldn't be that different to me and given the amount of weight I have to lose I think the DS offers the best option.  I researched the sleeve for quite awhile but the long term results of the DS for someone with as much to lose as I have seems to be better.  Being in my area I have access to Duke for surgery and am comfortable with their results.

Hunger and cravings are the hardest not to mention that I feel so tired from anything - granted I have thyroid issues, and I know that is out of whack and causing a lot of the fatigue and I am getting my TSH tested to adjust my synthroid but walking is painful with my knee so sometimes everything just feels overwhelming, I need to find exercise I can do - right now I am using a stability ball and some hand dumbbells  but it is mainly upper body and ball crunches I need to get in something aerobic.  There is just so far to go...

I take a lot of comfort in seeing the progress you and the others have made after surgery and I think that continuing to read these positive stories and see the pictures before and after help build my confidence.

As for me, I am a geek and I love to crochet and my daughter is the light of my life. My minds eye and goal is bike riding with her, it is a good motivation.

Pre-op, I was, literally, hungry ALL THE TIME. Now, I have what i think of as 'normal' hunger, and I eat several small meals a day. I do still have occasional cravings, but what I crave has changed. (I've been on a real pickle kick lately.) It's truly amazing how much my DS has changed my life for the better.

The sweets thing...I just had to suffer.

Denying myself still isn't easy, especially around some members of my family who are really fixated on baked goods and fancy chocolate bars. (It's harder to ignore the "bad" stuff they keep in their house because it's high-quality; these aren't crappy cakes from the grocery store bakery section with sugared shortening for frosting; these are FINE ARTISANAL SUGAR BOMBS OF PURE TEMPTATION. But I digress.) 

In the beginning I basically I had to resign myself to riding out the worst of the cravings. After a while (a couple weeks, maybe?) it got pretty easy to ignore the cravings for sweets but they still flare up, especially at certain extra-fun times of the month. I have to be proactive and do what I can to minimize opportunities to slip up--avoiding situations where I'll make excuses that X, Y, or Z is okay "just this once," etc. A few times this has meant excusing myself from my parents' house because I just wasn't feeling up to the onslaught of snickerdoodles.

These days, If I'm really going crazy I make a batch of cookies using bananas, oatmeal, and peanut butter. (Delicious and not too sweet, but still carbier than I should be eating on a regular basis. These are for Emergency Cravings Only.) Or every once in a great while I'll eat a Quest protein bar.

One thing that's helped me a lot is not allowing room in my diet for artificial sweeteners. I can't speak for everybody, but if I had a lot of Splenda or aspertame or whatever in my food and drinks it would only keep sweets on my mind. EVERY now and then I'll MAYBE have a stevia-sweetened lemonade but honestly I just try to avoid anything too sweet, even if the source of the sweetness is "acceptable." (Stevia, for example. Although my twice-daily protein shakes are stevia-sweetened...so I guess I get more of that than I realized.)

(Full disclosure: I also eat more fruit than I probably should. For whatever reason it doesn't "trigger" BROWNIE-CUPCAKE-DOUGHNUT cravings the way Diet Coke or sugar free candy would. But I know my nurse practitioner would rather see me eat more vegetables and fewer fruits. I'm not perfect.)

Anyway, hope there's something useful in my screed. Good luck. It's not always easy but it does get easier over time.