Hey everyone... Doing great @ 5 1/2 months pregnant. I've gained 16lbs to date, and we confirmed we are adding a baby girl to our family. In addition to our 2 1/2yr old son, Ryan. We've decided to name her Savannah Grace. All is well. Bloodwork, health; etc. Can't wait to start buying pink. I'll be getting my tubes tied, so knowing it's a girl eases my mind a bit on the "foreverness" of that very tough decision. Have a great day all!

I am celebrating my two year WLS anniversary (7/22/02). July 2002 - 320lb July 2003 - 204lb July 2004 - 201lb Still the best thing I've ever done. Have learned in year two that much of my weight problem is in my head. Unlike many WLS patients, I can eat almost anything - problem is that I tried. Sometimes I would dump, but it didn't hurt as much as in the first year. After about 18 months out, I had gained back about 15 pounds. It was my fault - not doing the things I learned and reverting back to old habits. I determined that I had went through too much to throw it all away, so I went back to lots of water, consistent exercise, chewing my food throughly and thinking before I ate. In about a month, I was back down to my weight and have held steady since. I found I craved sugary foods - something I had not experienced before WLS. Not sure why (maybe somebody else has had the same sensation?). Bottom line - WLS is not a magic bullet. You need to constantly work at it. What helps is that I saw the results from the work. Support groups are important - I changed jobs and could no longer attend my monthly meeting. I found another one in my area and will start attending. Seeing people at the start of their WLS journey helps to keep me motivated.

Congratulations on your two year anniversary. Good luck on your journey. Mine is in eight days and a wake up.

(I had posted this on the main message board on 6/2. I thought that I'd post it here for my fellow 7/2002 Surgery Date Siblings...) Hi all, I had my bi-annual oncologist visit at Dr. Fox's this morning (I had non-Hodgkins' lymphoma in 1995). All looks well. I did convince him to do a fine-needle biopsy on what he has said for the last year or so is a sebaceous cyst on my neck. I'm not sure whether it's growing or just becoming more prominent with my weight loss, but I wanted the biopsy done for my peace of mind. I'll have the final results back in a couple of days, but the cytology team that was up there for the fine-needle biopsy said that things looked normal. Last week, I had sent an e-mail to my local Yahoogroups support group that read "I'm on the verge of announcing some rather exciting news on my personal WLS front. More details to follow within the next week (hopefully *G*)." Well, the news is here. I got weighed this morning at the oncologist's office (on one of those nice bariatric scales like my WLS surgeon Dr. Raper has) and the scale said........... 213.4 pounds ....which puts me at GOAL!!!! This is my goal as Dr. Raper never set one for me - from the time of my surgery on, my long-term goal was to get to 213 1/2 pounds. This is 1/2 my original body weight as the time of surgery. Now, I didn't express this goal to Dr. Sarwer (the HUP psychologist that did my psych consult) at the time of my psych evaluation as he would have thought it unrealistic (as it was, the figure that I gave him he thought was a little high), but it was the number that I was shooting for all along. And now I have reached it... Now, where do you go from goal?? Below goall, of course *G*... I'm still losing weight - not in great leaps and bounds like the new posties, but in dribs and drabs...but I have lost 12 1/2 pounds since St. Valentine's Day (about 3 1/2 months ago). My BMI's 36.73 which would still qualify me for WLS with co-morbidities (of course, I had a BMI of 73.49 at the time of my surgery) so I am not "thin" by any stretch of the imagination. Looking at possible future landmarks (so as not to reset my goal *G*) this morning, I came up with the following: a) getting to 207 pounds - that would be a 75% loss of my EBW (based on an "ideal" weight of 134 pounds...yeah, right *G*) b) getting to 203 pounds - that would put me at a BMI of 35 (actually 34.94), which would mean that I was just obese and not severely obese and I would no longer qualify for WLS c) getting to 199 pounds - I can't remember the last time my weight started with a "1" Now, you notice that these numbers are not to distant from where I am now. That's because I am almost two years out. As I posted to a guy on the Pennsylvania state message board (he was talking about being on a plateau at 2 years out): "At two years, you have gotten all of the loss due to the surgery that you are going to get (I'm near that point myself at 22 1/2 months). The way that you are going to lose any more weight is the same way a normal people would - diet and exercise. If you eat about 500 calories a day less than what you need, then you will lose about a pound a week. If your intake and outgo are equal, then you will maintain your weight. If you take in more than you need, you'll put on weight. It's as simple as that." But I am going to keep striving forward, trying to lose, rather than trying to maintain. As anyone who has seen recent pictures of Carnie Wilson (or one of her live appearances like on Good Morning America last Friday) can see, she has had some regain (she admits to fighting 10 pounds - it looks to be more like 20-30). I'm not ready for any regain yet (heck, I just got to goal *G*), so the best medicine I can see against regain at this point is to continue trying to lose. JR open RNY 07/17/02, Dr. Raper 440/427/213/213 (AT GOAL!!!) "Your past failures *will* always overtake you if you **stop** chasing after your future success!"