concerned about a website

That is good to know about the cholesterol. Thanks for that info ladies. Pity Doc didn't know/tell me!!!

that is correct... my surgeon told me the same when I went for my 6 month review... he said they are not worried if someone's cholesterol goes up the first 18 months as it spikes while we are losing weight..... he will only do something if the cholesterol stays up after that time..

I saw the topic of cholesterol being discussed the other day on another board few people had high lvl cholesterol after even a year of surgery, one person said her family doctor said while your losing weight that is going to happen because of all the hormones and fat in your blood being released from your fat cells.

You might be eating less fibre?

Sounds like the liver cleansing diet I'm sposed to be on Caz. Blyak! Actually it's not too bad, I just cant fit in everything I'm sposed to.
What I'd really like to know is how come I have a fatty liver now? Also my cholersterol is above normal now but was fine in May????

There are people who practice that too - I saw a program on TV about them. Only eating unprocessed food and a VLCD. They say it will make them live longer and healthier.

There are multiple studies showing that caloric restriction makes mice live longer.. maybe us sleevers will be super oldies!

Hi Cirianz,

great posts! I love them!! You have a great way of explaining things.

I also bought my son up the same way (he is 19) and have never put any emotion around food, if he was hungry, he ate, if he wasn't he didn't, consequently, he has grown to have this fantastic appetite, and will leave biscuits, chips etc in the pantry for weeks/months becuase 'I'm not hungry' there is no mystery around food for him. He enjoys his food but it is a fuel for him.

My father (he was born in 1928) grew up in the depression when food was a very special resource not to be wasted or unappreciated. My mother got this from her parents, so we were bought up with the mentatily of not wasting the resource, and finishing everything on the plate, food was also a luxury that it isn't today- eg:

-soft drinks were a Christmas special
-Ice-cream (neopolitan!!) was a rare treat as well
-Biscuits were onlyfor special occasions
-we NEVER had chocolate in the house, except for after dinner mints at christmas or the odd chocolate monte!!

So....for me, becoming a teenager was like a kid in a candy shop - it was so exciting to have all that food available to me at the school canteen, it took me years to break that novelty factor, and I can see with my son, he just doesn't have it with food.

The other thing is: about your daughter Cirianz, she sounds well balanced and healthy, I want to know who decided that a women needs 2000 calories a day?? Maybe thats just wrong?? I mean really who made the decison that we need that much?? I have been told all my life that you aim for 1800-2000 for maintenacne- BS!!! i am living on probably 600- 800 cals a day and you know what i actually feel pretty good, there is so much about eating/weight gain/loss that we DON"T know about, my guess over the next 50 years conventional thinking will be turned on its head!

It's an interesting topic!!

Janelou x

Very thought provoking and you explained it so well. I have to agree with you!

I like your "soap box" Cirianz. Get back on as often as you can, you always give me something to think about :-)

- Carrie xxx

Thanks.
The thing that really clinched it for me was observing my daughter. Having grown up with the earlier parental notions of, only eat when 'allowed' to and then eat everything on your plate I decided to raise my children on an 'open fridge' policy. My children could eat what they liked when they liked provided they check with me to make sure it is not food intended for dinner, and at mealtimes, if they don't want to eat what I have prepared that is fine, but if they want something different then they have to prepare it themselves. Consequently my children only eat what they need & when they need it.

When my daughter was 17 she became worried that she must be anorexic because she eats so little. She is very athletic, is a swimming coach, captain of the underwater hockey team, dances and is a dance instructor. She also has a job and day to day life activities. She is has an excellent musculature and a healthy amount of subcutaeneous fat. She's about an inch taller than me & weighs just under 60 Kg. She is not underweight. Has an active lifestyle. And yet lives on almost nothing. Most days she only eats once, with occasionally a small snack for brunch as well. And then she only has small amounts. When we go out she only orders entree size portions and never finishes them.

In other words, without all the conditioning that we recieved about what is a normal sized meal, she naturally eats less even than the same sort of portions as we do after surgery. Her metabolism is just simply that efficient that that is all she needs. I suspect that most of us would also be slim & fit if, after all of that childhood parental & social conditioning leading to overeating, we had not entered into the 'feast & famine' pattern of eating called dieting and trained our bodied to live in a 'seasonal' nutritional environment. And unfortunately once you get into that pattern it is very hard to get out of it. Even if you ignore all of the psychological reasons that people overeat, our bodies are still doing what they are biologically programed to do to keep us in a state of maximum probability of survival in an environment that, for most of us, just no longer exists.

I also believe that this is why, in most cultures where food is scarce and modern advertising minimal, women who are fat are the ones seen as beautiful. These are the ones most likely to survive the metabolic load of seasonal starvation combined with pregnancy. I also believe it is the biological reason why in many genetic heritages women put on weight once they reach the primary childbearing years, often begining with the first pregnancy and simply refusing to budge afterwards. Feeding your own energy needs and those of a developing or feeding child at the same time required a highly efficient storage system. And, in the days when our metabolisms were evolving, once childbearing had started it generally didn't stop until menopause. In fact, until a century ago, it was not even concieved (outside of the aristocracy anyway) that a mother should look the same as a 'maiden'. hence the cultural term, "Mutton dressed up as lamb".

I've been thinking on this rather a lot haven't I.
I should get off my soapbox I think

Cirianz that is the best discription that I have heard of why we can survive on such tiny amount and thank you for your insight :)

Ruth :)

My opinion, we have nice normal healthy metabolisms designed to store fat so that we could survive the brutal European winters, or elsewhere, the long, drought filled summers, without starving to death.

People who can eat all they like & not gain weight have a heriditary mutation giving them abnormal & unhealthy metabolism which would've greatly reduced the chances of survival of people who had it, evidenced by the fact that even now, in times of plenty when most people with that mutation survive to breed, this is still a minority metabolic system.

Unfortunately, now that we exist in a time where, in the western world at least, food is in abundance, the size of our stomachs (designed to be able too hold large amounts of food when there is a sudden abundance, eg a sucessful hunt) and the efficiency of our bodies in storing excess energy for later use, has become a disadvantage, rather than an essential survival mechanism. Therefore, if we wish to remain fashionably attractive and healthy, then we must reduce our intake.
Dieting does not achieve this, our systems are designed for periods of starvation and combat them with not just psychological, but also biological urges to eat whenever food is available, and an increase in efficiency at laying down the stores in preparation for the next 'famine'.
To achieve our goal we must reduce our intake permanently and trick our body into believing that we have eaten to maximum.
By reducing the size of our stomachs our brain is informed that we are full, plus the reduction of the production of the hormone Grehlin (sp) counters the biological imperative to eat.

In other words our metabolisms are so efficient we can live and work on less than it takes a 12 month old to build a body, play, learn and grow.
That's my opinion anyway.

i think its good for people to re-search and read the good the bad and the ugly side of all operations there are people that have had wls in the past, and present that find out things later they did not know at the time. like alot of rny patients seem to be finding out they get hyperglycemia a few years out.
i have read some terrible complications that people have got after having a rny but what complications would those same people have had if they had done nothing about their obesity.

before having surgery i looked up partial gasterectomy and all bad side affects from it, because it has been done for many many years and i wanted to know what i could be looking at.
From my own research found that some people have had iron deficiencies, calcium deficiencies and b12.
when it comes to the sleeve, we have what i think is a better advantage over even the partial gasterectomy because they do not alter the way in which our stomach handles food other than reducing the amount of tissue we have. where as in some cases of partial gasterectomy they do.
in America we have to take vitamins and have regular blood lab tests for the rest of our lives so i'm not worried about that the vitamin deficiencies

as to the cancer concern there is two ladies on obesity help vsg forum that are fighting cancer, one of them said if it had not been for her sleeve she would never have found it so to her, her sleeve saved her life.. because she found the lumps after she had lost her weight in her stomach which turned out to be tumours, she had no other symptoms.. she is on drugs that is causing weight gain.
another is fighting breast cancer and although she is finding it hard to gain alot of weight, but she has managed to eat enough right now to stop losing.
neither of them has stated the regret having the sleeve.
.

me personally I look at my health now, compared to where i was just over a year ago and if it meant having to have this surgery every year to gain my life back as i have, i would do it.

for those of you that are scared by that website, ask your self if you do nothing what complications will you be facing, as sad as it is to see people with complications from wls, there are just as many cases of people that die waiting to get surgery. or who don't do anything.
for most of us surgery is a last resort we don't do it as a fad diet, we do it because we need help and i for one love my sleeve. and am pleased with my results.

So, next time she tries to sabotage the sleeve option for some newbie then do pull out some variation on apple's reply and give them the oportunity to make their own choice free of manipulative bullying.

She isn't being a bully it is just her thought process and something she cant get her "head around" as she told us and my results speak for themselves anyway so it isn't concerning me :)

It will be something I will discuss with the doc tomorrow but my understanding is regardless of stomach size the amount we eventually eat is enough to sustain us at the healthy weight. If we werent fat and was always skinny. Isnt that amount we would be eating anyway.

I always wondered as did others because they asked, how would I stop loosing weight and I guess it is relative to what you eat, exercise that you are doing, lifestyle and I dont know that it will be equal to the amount that we were/would be eating because I have plateued (thats not spelt right, do we have spell check on here) and I eat as much (or as small amount) as my friends 12 month old yet I also walk 5 days a week. So I am to assume it has something to do with our metabalism :)

Ruth :)

i dont understand the cancer comment cause i have been told the sleeve is sometimes used in cancer patient so what they are saying is with people that have sleeve due to cancer are going to starve to death anyway ?

Thats not the first time I have read someone mention but what if you get cancer and cant eat enough to get better?? It will be something I will discuss with the doc tomorrow but my understanding is regardless of stomach size the amount we eventually eat is enough to sustain us at the healthy weight. If we werent fat and was always skinny. Isnt that amount we would be eating anyway.

That was quick and not sure if I explained myself properly but ahve a baby screaming wanting to get out of the highchair LOL

Yes! Thank you Apple I also will be memorising that one for future use!
I think you are right to be upset Kilrust, I remember, when I was first considering the surgery when I was tossing up between the Band and the Sleeve the fact that the sleeve was a 'no second chances' option scared me a little.
I kept thinking, "What if it doesn't work and it can't be fixed". And I think it is a natural fear to have, even though on closer examination I realised it was quite irrational. I had to ask myself "what am I actually afraid of here?" If it works then I wouldn't want it reversed. The fact that most people lose 60% - 80% of their excess weight, not even of their total body weight, when living on such tiny amounts tells me straight up that this is a healthy amount to be eating for our metabolism. And if it doesn't work (ie my stomach stretches) then how is that really any different from a partial reversal anyway.
I relieved my fears through heaps of research and through finding this place, which I tracked for several months, hearing what real people had to say, before I joined.
But the fear is a purely emotive response and if this woman is pumping it up when people are at that vulnerable stage then they may never do the research to make an informed decision, especially if you add in the social pressure of being surrounded by a group of banders giving their personal experiences, and only one sleever to give hers.
So, next time she tries to sabotage the sleeve option for some newbie then do pull out some variation on apple's reply and give them the oportunity to make their own choice free of manipulative bullying.

Just visited the website and was shocked by the amount of incorrect information on there! Of course it was a different surgery 30 years ago! Technology and education has changed dramatically since the 80's.
What really gets me is that she admits she didn't do her research or ask her surgeon questions, she just went along with it. I couldn't even get a consultation with my surgeon without first attending a compulsory information night to find out all the pro's and con's of each of the procedures.
I feel for her, and i must say that, being 2 weeks out from surgery, some of her information scared the #$@! out of me, but then i read all the replies and realised she's not got her facts straight.

I guess that's why forums like this are such a good idea. x

Well I don't think the bandit's answer even makes sense. In the case of cancer-related loss of appetite, they generally need hormonal and/or feeding supplements because they have no appetite anyhow, regardless of gastric size.

I agree too, good reply applesauce. I am looking forward to that side of the sleeve v's the band...being able to eat a bit healthier, becasue meat etc won't get stuck. Oh to have the variety...it is the spice of life afterall!!!!! Good answer though I'll memorise that one too!

Yup, I second Diamonds. That's a brilliant reply Apple, thank you. I'm going to memorise it.

-Carrie xx

applesauce wrote:

the next time the nice bandit explains that to newbies you nod and say yes dear I know with a band and their horrid unhealthy diet in the case of cancer the need to open the band is a must but with a sleeve we eat fresh fruit fresh vegtables and meat cooked any way we like in a skinny persons HEALTHY portion so would never need to.

I have done that little speach a few times and watched the dear choke on her nice cup of tea all with a sweet smile in place.


applesauce

the next time the nice bandit explains that to newbies you nod and say yes dear I know with a band and their horrid unhealthy diet in the case of cancer the need to open the band is a must but with a sleeve we eat fresh fruit fresh vegtables and meat cooked any way we like in a skinny persons HEALTHY portion so would never need to.

I have done that little speach a few times and watched the dear choke on her nice cup of tea all with a sweet smile in place.


applesauce

EmilyG wrote:

I love this part of her page about sleeves (I get the picture it's permanent hah!). Looks like she was struggling to find something negative to write!


IT IS NOT REVERSIBLE.

Although the other major
surgeries for obesity are difficult to reverse, they are not impossible.


Because the stomach is partly removed, it cannot be replaced.


This operation is for life.

I go to a support group where I live though I am the only one sleeved but they changed the name to Lapbandeders and Gastric Sleeving to make me feel welcome and we have one lady who tells others if they are new that I had the sleeving but its not reversable and I keep telling her that regardless of which op we had we shouldn't be thinking any other way.

Her thoughts are if she got cancer (example given) that her band could be opened up and she would be able to "eat properly" and get all the goodness she needed.

We have these ops because we dont want to be the weight we are/were and we never want to go back to that weight again so I just dont get it when ppl go on about it "is for life" Well thank goodness it is otherwise we wouldn't be doing it.

I have to admit I wasn't scared by the op but I have had a few so I basically knew what was going to happen in regards to go to theatre ect.

You will be fine and in 6 months (or less) you will be thinking why was I ever worried as you flaunt off your sexy new body :)

Ruth :)