This time last year I was under the knife!

WOW!  A year since my self-pay surgery in Mexicali.   135 lbs gone, gone, gone.  Assuming that I hit my target weight of 145 (about 40 more pounds), that means I have lost the equivalent of myself!  It's funny, before the surgery I couldn't lose weight no matter what.  During the pre-surgery diet I lost ONE pound.  But now I look at the fact that I still have 40 to go without blinking.  That's nothing!!  What a difference a year makes.

Yesterday I tried on my wedding dress!  I was married in 1991!  It fits much better now.  I looked great in it too. 

It was a hard year, but it is a different kind of hard than I'm used to.  In some ways, last year has been a passive thing.  I didn't have to do anything and the relentless loss of weight continued.  There were many times I wish I could take a break from it all, but day after day my choices boiled down to compliance or non-compliance and unless I went bat-****crazy, a little non-compliance didn't mess things up.   Actually I've found, a little non-compliance can help break up constipation and/or stalls.   Right now I'm losing a quarter pound a day.  That's been my average since about March, I think.  My husband has a billion charts that I could post if you guys are interested. 

I'm at 180 now, well 179.0.  That was always a goal number I had in my head said was a reasonable diet target.  Not crazy skinny, 10 lbs. into the overweight BMI category, but aren't most Americans 10 lbs. into the overweight category by now?  I thought all my problems would be over if I could get to this weight from my high of 314.  And I WAS RIGHT!  Yes, I do have new problems to work on, but they are more normal and more fun than my old "What if I'm late and only temp seating is available and I sit on the folding chair and it fails???"   Now, I am more alive and doing more and pushing for a much higher quality of life with all the juicy complexity and problems and challenges that fully living entails.  I am happy and damn it, I know it is shallow, but life is so much better and easier at a normal weight. 

My advice to those considering surgery?  I would do it again in a second, exactly the same way.   The cold, dark, bleak feeling that overcomes me if I try to imagine my life if I hadn't done this is the worst feeling in the world. 

My advice to those already on the journey:

Pre-surgery:  To keep yourself from freaking out try to plan out a life for skinny you.  What extra things will you do with your energy?  Are you going to pick up a sport?  If so, which one?  How are you going to dress?  How are you going to become more social again?  How are you going to keep your old friends?  How are you going to bring your current friends and family along with you on the journey?   The work I did here seemed rather fantastical when I was pre-surgery, but it has helped me to cope all year long.

First three months:  Realize this stage sucks the worst and there is not much you can do to make it better.   Do keep trying, though.  Try many different foods and ask a thousand questions on line.  But mostly, just hold on, things will get much better soon enough.

Three to six months:  The beginning of the end of the Fat stage in your life.  By the end of this period you will have figured out how not to be a fat person, although for comfort I still hung on to the label for a while.  I even ordered myself a shirt "I lost 100 LBS!" because even though the 100 lbs could not be seen on my body, I still wanted it as part of my identity.  This was an awesome stage in my life because the world opened up to me anew and I realized that I could chart my own destiny again.  Empowerment and confidence is a heady mixture.   Daily reading of the best of the DS boards along with relentless experimentation seeking foods that worked for me was the key to the phase.

Six months to a year:  My life and identity has sort of morphed from being MO to being a DS Post-Surgery Person to just becoming whoever it is that I am going to become.  I'm a little sick of not knowing -- is my DS going to leave me skinny or just pleasantly plump?  Am I going to be one of those rare cases that keep losing weight past a good point and have to fight it?  And for the first nine months or so, I could just tell myself that I wasn't going to eat "bad" food this year and that would be that.  Now though, I've learned just to eat the &(**@! brownie.  I will probably only eat about half of it and then it will be done and my food choices will return to being wise, and if I don't I will find a thousand ways to have a less satisfying substitute and not come out ahead anyway. 

People in further along this process than I am, I would love your advice on what this next phase or two are going to be like!

Oh, and poop and farts, can't submit this if I don't talk about that.   I have no real problems.   Occasionally I've found a food that put in to gastric hell of bloating, gas and much groaning.  Don't even mention the words "Mango Lassi" around me.  But in general, no problems.  My favorite thing to do now is to make a HUGE meaty, meat sandwich on rye or pumpernickel and then cut it into thirds and have it for lunch for three days.  This will cause me no digestive upset, well, maybe a fart or two.  My theory is that my digestive system was so efficient before that I could digest the hell out of anything, so it isn't that my post DS body farts more than it should, it just farts more than I'm used to.  It certainly isn't out of the bounds of normalcy.   The only weird thing is that I often have to fly out of bed in the morning and run to the bathroom, where I used to have a hour or so before I needed to go.   Nothing here I wouldn't trade off against 135 pounds without a thought.

Good luck to all my brothers and sisters of the DS knife.  May the honeymoon period last only one day longer than you need it to!

Congrats to you on your success!!!!  You have done such an incredible job!  Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on your journey.  There are so few DS specific ones and yet so important.  Best wishes!

Happy surgiversary Brandy. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Great, great journey.   Thanks for the post.

I'm 2.5 years out. Two parts are off again / on again struggles for me.  The first is what you describe (and maybe both are intertwined): 
"My life and identity has sort of morphed from being MO to being a DS Post-Surgery Person to just becoming whoever it is that I am going to become. "
I can switch between all those in a relatively short period of time. The longer I'm out the easier to be just me but those old thoughts still resurface at unexpected times.

I'm still working on getting the last 20 pounds off that I want to get off. I definitely slacked off and went back to some bad habits after I hit my Doc's goal of 220. It left me still a little big with a load of excess skin but healthier and happier than I've been in forever. So my second long term worry is maintaining and not falling back into the bad habits I had before. While the DS is pretty forgiving, for me, I know I can mess it up if I don't pay attention. It's still about defining the new me, just based on what to eat, when to eat, and how much. The difference is now that I can actually see that I can do it  and pre-op I just didn't believe it was possible..