Speech about WLS help!

Hello everyone- I have a speak in my health class either tomorrow or thursday about my WLS. I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO SAY OR WHERE TO START! PLEASE HELP W/ANY IDEAS! Its strictly my choice to do it. No grade. So if you help it won't be cheating. I am doing this to let ppl know its not wrong to have the surgery if your morbidly obese its ok! I wanna tell about the eating plans and the changes that have happened. Like being more active and all. The size of the pouch and how it was done, well not in great detail, but can't put it into words! HELP! Thanks everyone! If you have always wanted to let ppl know a certain thing about the surgery I can in the speech I will be giving lol well its more like a lecture. This took a lot for me to wanna do bc I was always feared of being judged. Now I am not. Thanks all! ~April~ Lap Rny May 13, 2005 22 yrs old, 5'1 231 / 137 / 120 P.S. Want to get an accurate definition of plateau and stall

When people ask me in detail about why I had WLS, I always start off by asking them to imagine lugging around a 100 pound sack of books on their back, or carrying their pre-teen aged child around on their shoulders or something like that. Think of the last time you gave someone a piggy back ride. Now, consider having to do it for the rest of your life: getting in and out of cars, taking a shower, using the toilet, having sex... okay, maybe don't use that example.... But you know what I mean... I also like to throw out statistics about what kind of health problems an MO person can have, the likelihood of PCOS, cancer, heart problems, etc. as well as the chances for taking off a significant amount of weight w/o WLS and keeping it off for at least 5 years (1% per the Association of Morbid Obesity)... Try Tooter's website - there's TONS of great WLS info on there, and she loves facts! www.bariatricbytes.com Here's the standard definitions I've heard for plateau and stall: A plateau is a minimum of 3 months where you've lost NO weight nor any inches. If you're losing inches, it's not a plateau. Plateaus are dealt with by evalutating your intake and exercise and making adjustments as necessary. Stalls are less than three months, sometimes accompanied by inches lost, and are purely your body trying to catch up, sort of a breather... typically, if it's a stall, you don't need to make any adjustments, just wait it out as patiently as you can and remember that your body needs time to get used to what's going on. Good luck!

April, How cool is it that you get to educate your class! I think there are a few important points you might want to hit with your class. 1. WLS is not the easy way out. Most people that I have spoken with think that they just make your stomach smaller and then you go on eating just like you did before, only in smaller amounts. They don't realize what kind of work it takes for us to lose the weight, learn how to eat correctly to nourish our bodies, then to try and maintain that loss. 2. People always tell me horror stories about someone's-sister's-next door neighbor's- brother's-exgirlfriend who.......... Fill in that blank with the worst horror story you can imagine, lol. The fact of the matter is, that although WLS is a major surgery, it's no more dangerous than any other surgery and is certainly no more dangerous than being MO for the rest of your short, disease complicated life. 3. I have a lot of people at work mostly, who know that I have had the surgery tell me, "you just don't look like you've had that surgery". What does that mean? Should we all look the same? And how exactly should we look? I guess maybe those things aren't really important, less number 1. But they're just things that I hear often from people who have known about my surgery from the start, or sometimes I hear them when I see someone and they ask me how I have lost so much weight. Hope that helps! Sonja

April, The first really cool thing that I noticed after surgery and that I appreciate the most to this day is that I feel as though I've been freed from food prison. I no longer have that unrelenting hunger. I eat a small amount of food when I'm hungry and thats it! I don't obsess about food all day long anymore because I'm no longer hungry all the time. Andrea

The most important thing you can tell them is that this is not the easy way out. That is probably the biggest misconception out there. Good luck with the speech. Take care, J www.the3day.org/TwinCities06/jennya1964