Lessons From Support Group

Back from Support Group and lots to share. The average stomach should be the size of a fist. The average stomach is the size of a football. Studies have shown that if someone eats only a fist sized amount of food 3 times a day, it will take 30 to 60 days to shrink back down to fist sized. Ours should be about fist-sized 4 years out from surgery. Sleeping at night is not to replenish the body, but to replenish the brain. The myelin sheaths in the brain cannot rebuild without sleep and the brain's myelin is about 20% protein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin Not getting enough sleep leads to a lowered metabolism and weight gain. Caffeine disrupts the adrenal glands that are at the top of the kidneys. Unhappy adrenal glands can wreck havoc on your blood pressure. http://www.answers.com/topic/adrenal-gland?cat=health Your body needs UV light to process vitamin D and absorbs it best in the early morning. Good vitamin D equals happy bones. http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/346.asp Eating breakfast before 8:00 am revs the metabolism by 10%. So here's what we were told to do. Start the day between 5:00 and 6:00 am with a protein shake if you need to supplement protein. Get in at least a 1/2 hour workout outside or at least in a room with windows. Have a breakfast of protein and complex carbs before 8:00. Don't eat again until lunchtime and make sure you get a complex carb in with your protein. Have dinner 4 or 5 hours later and don't eat again until that protein shake in the morning. I'm good with everything except the part about not eating between dinner and the shake in the morning. Probably the most important thing I learned tonight is that the human colon can hold as much as 25 pounds of waste. Being the overachiever that I am, I think mine is holding as much as 30, even as I type. I'm on at least 4 different meds that list constipation as a side effect. Lucky me. Hugs, Connie

guess my kids were right about what i was full off.... you mean if I got myself a suppository I could get to my goal weight? I'm stopping at CVS today! all kidding aside thank you for the information. I'll be trying to impliment the excersize one today.

I personally think I can lose a TON of weight...if only I could poop like a human!!! If I eat at 8, I am so starving by lunch I am ready to pass out. 9 works for me. I can do the not eating before dinner, and after dinner...well...sometimes I'm asleep by 7. It sucks getting old sometimes. Thanks for the info! Joanie

i have to wonder how many years i had sleep apnea before i started treatment???? and how many suppositories i need????? connie-sorry! good info!! i am so confused about what i should and shouldn't be doing- 5-6 mini meals vs not eating except the three...blah blah... and the reactive hypoglycemia thing and the whole mess--and i am startin to think my stomach is football sized again-tho i cannot afford to get a scope or whatever it would take to find out--remember me; one of teh 47 million without health insurance...see my hand up in the air???!!!!! sorry-i'm blabbing-need to get ready for work...i know my pouch works tho cuz i dumped on a coffee creamer thingy saturday morning! one of those lil international delights that you open and pour into your coffee! stupid! i think i should go back to teh very basics of when i was first postop-two weeks of liquids and build back up.....ouch i feel a headache coming already! sorry-thanx!

they want me to get up at 5-6 AM???? and workout??? ugh...LOL I get up that early during the school year but add the work out and I would be a mess, I am not a good "getter upper". the three meals thing would do me in... unless I could space out the shake and call it a snack. thank you for reporting in...my support group colsed and I just haven't the "GUMTION" to go to a new one and of course now it requires a driver@@ nic

Awesome info. I'm gonna give some of that a try. More sleep. Not all sure about the 5-6 am start though. I start at 6:15 usually. I believe it about that 25 lbs of waste in the colon. Big time! I'm sure I have about 35 myself. I remember drinking that liquidy sodium stuff that makes you GO! and lost almost 10 pounds just from "getting it all out!" I know I'm backed up too. this was cool info. I'm needing to shrink my tummy after the vacation I just had. I really over did it. Elizabeth M