Tag: weight loss surgery

It is Friday

It is Friday at last. It’s also raining. Son of a…

On May 4th I wrote this big gastric bypass surgery update where I said that I am having far fewer side effects then I did a year ago. The bad experiences are less and less common with each new day.

Then last night I had a piece of toast with my dinner. I took a bite, no problem. I took another bite, no problem. I took another bite… uh oh. I knew instantly that I had taken one bite too many. It took about an hour for all the fun to end. The moral of the story being, don’t be over confident. That thing that passes for your stomach these days can still kick you in the nards, Robert. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s a cat to remind you of your place in the universe.

251/365

Three Year Anniversary Weigh In

Happy anniversary! Three years ago today I went under the knife and had my insides rewired. Gastric Bypass. Weight loss surgery. Most of my stomach was tied off and a big chunk of my intestine was skipped. It was a brutal experience that required all sorts of lifestyle and diet changes and had all sorts of icky side effects but it was oh so worth it. Health care wise it is the single best move I’ve ever made. Overall it doesn’t quite measure up to marrying Jen and being a step father, but it tops just about everything else.

I weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see I was down a little since the last time I stepped on a scale. That’s nice, huh? My first appointment at the weight loss clinic was January 19, 2022 and I weighed 452 pounds. Yup. The day of the surgery I did not weigh myself. The most recent number I had was from April 29, 2022 when I weighed 431.4 pounds. On the one year anniversary, May 4, 2023, I weighed 204.8 pounds. Suck it, morbid obesity! The lowest weight I ever recorded was the magical day of September 22, 2023 when I weighed in at 198.4 pounds. Sub-200! Glorious! We were told to expect our post-surgery weight to bottom out at some crazy number and then start climbing up again to a more reasonable, sustainable value. That’s been the case for the last year and a half or so. At my two year anniversary I was 211.2. The last time I weighed myself was the three year anniversary of the first check in, January 19, 2025, and I was 222.6. This morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the scale. I was expecting something between 220 and 230 and I got 218.6! Down four pounds since January and back in the teens, babie! Currently I am down 212.8 since the surgery and 233.4 since the start of the process.

I still have problems with food getting stuck on the way into my new digestive system but not nearly as often as before. I can have trouble if I don’t chew enough, or eat too fast, or eat too much in one bite, but these days I can go faster and more per bite than I could have two years ago. Eating is easier now than it was before. When it goes bad it still goes bad. If a bite of food can’t get into my stomach (it’s actually technically called a pouch now) then it has to go somewhere. Either it just hangs out and blocks the path so that nothing else can get in (until it breaks down enough to enter) or it comes back up to say hello again. That’s life these days, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to.

In closing, here’s my selfie a day video from the first year. Enjoy watching me melt away.

Is Something Wrong?

I’ve written this 100 times before over the three years (almost) since I had my gastric bypass surgery. There are times when I will be feeling real pain in my stomach and I cannot tell if it’s because something is wrong or because I am just hungry.

The last couple of days have taken that to a pretty obnoxious extreme. It’s always hunger, but it’s just ridiculous now. When things are going according to the normal routine I can have something to eat and then be okay for a few hours. Breakfast at 7:00, a snack at around 11:00, lunch at 1:00, a snack at 4:00, dinner at 7:00, a snack before bed. Perfect. Hunger pains avoided.

Today? Breakfast is over at 8:00, hunger pains at 9:45. Snack at 10:00, hunger pains at 11:15. What the hell? It’s 11:50 right now and I am slowly making my way through a little package of crackers. At this rate I’ll be finished by noon and then hurting a little before lunch at 1:00. I need to wait 60 minutes after eating before I can take a drink (and having a drink usually doesn’t help the hunger pain the way having something to eat does) which means the pain is back before I am clear to drink.

What the hell, bro? Is there something wrong AND I’m hungry? No, I don’t think so. I think I am unable to keep my surgically altered stomach from getting too empty. If I try to have a big lunch I am going to be full and have to stop, and (assuming this continues today) I still won’t get three pain-free hours.

To add the usual caveat, I am not complaining at all. I lost 220 pounds and if dealing with this now and then is the price I have to pay then I pay it with a great big smile on my face. Still… looking at my stomach and asking, what the hell, bro??

Stressed Out

Yesterday I was a bundle of stressed out, frayed nerves because the morning commute was such a disaster it spoiled my brain for the whole day. Today I am a bundle of stressed out, frayed nerves because of all the meetings I have to go to today. I am flat out all day long. I’m kinda scared for my stomach. It took me a full week to recover from our trip to Florida* and further along than that, yesterday was the first day since that I almost went the whole day without any problems (almost) and now today I am in meetings all day and may not be able to stop for lunch. I am at risk of a bad stomach day.**

*Florida will henceforth be known as MoonPieTown due to this post.

**I am referring to post-gastric bypass side effects and various related issues. Food/diet/digestion-wise I need to be a creature of habit and routine to succeed without weird problems and I am going to get bounced out of my routine today. I’m not happy about it, but what can you do?

Tough Day

My stomach and I have not been seeing eye to eye today. I had some problems yesterday that seem to have cleared up by this morning, but there has been a backlash that is trying my patience.

All day today I have been dealing with literal hunger pains. My stomach is empty enough that it hurts. When I try to eat though, it gets rid of the pain but makes me queasy and bloated and uncomfortable. So much so that I have to stop eating. That means that about an hour and a half to two hours after I eat the hunger pain comes back.

I made a small chicken patty and a handful of french fries for lunch. I finished the chicken but could only manage a couple of fries before I had to stop. For dinner I made a hamburger and some tater tots (my wife loves tater tots so I made them for her because she’s amazing and I like making things for her) and I only managed about half of the burger. I just had to stop. Almost exactly an hour after dinner I started feeling the empty stomach blues starting up again so I managed a small snack. Maybe that will hold me over for another hour.

I know that this is going to clear itself up in a day or two (it always does) so I will be fine either tomorrow or the next day. It’s just going to be a long night tonight. I think my stomach is going to make sleeping difficult.

Also, I just want to note this for my own mental health… not that it affects anything or anything… I didn’t write about it yesterday but I thought about it a lot. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my mother’s passing. Maybe my stomach is just manifesting feeling sad about missing my mom. Maybe my stomach knows, you know? I really can’t believe it’s been two years already.

Is This a Thing Now?

I wonder… did I learn something new about me and my post-gastric bypass digestive system? I went on vacation for a week and my daily routine and diet both went straight down the crapper. I turned everything upside down for seven days. Then I came home and turned it all upside down again in an attempt to get back to normal.

The result? Cramping, discomfort, being unable to eat much, being unable to… ya know… do that thing that normal humans do after they eat… wink wink nudge nudge, you know what I mean? More than that, when my stomach is empty it hurts. Not eating as much as I usually do (what little I can usually eat thanks to my rewired innards) means my stomach is empty sooner and more often and I can’t tell if the pain I am feeling is because there is something wrong or I am just hungry again. I seriously can’t tell.

I think I went through something similar the last time we went away for a full week’s vacation, and I think it’s happened once since then when I was for some reason living off protein supplements instead of actual meals for a few days (why was that? I don’t remember). So I ask myself, is this a thing now? Am I learning something new about my newly rewired body? Maybe. If so I will just need to be ready for it when it happens. Consistency is kind of the key to my mental health these days and if I see this coming when I mess up my diet for an extended period then I will be better able to deal with it. Knowledge is power and stuff.

Today has been tough. It’s about 3:30pm right now and my guts have been quietly pissed off at me all day. They are rebelling, but only a little and pretty subtly. Mild pain, more like discomfort. Stuff like that. I am going to hit my daily protein goal (80 grams) with ease (I’m at 69 right now, wink wink nudge nudge say no more!). My water goal is probably also going to be hit easily (64 ounces per day) though I am way behind my usual pace at the moment. I’m at 40 right now while usually by this time of day I am somewhere in the mid-50’s. I’ll catch up. I’ve also had some persistent back pain the last few days. I suspect it is a kidney stone in the making, thought it might just be the result of the massive amount of exercise I got in Florida followed immediately by a couple of rounds of shoveling once we got home. Who knows. I have been taking Tylenol for it, which helps, but I wonder if that is affecting my stomach as well? Again, who knows.

I had 50 something years to figure out how my body worked and then three years ago I went under the knife and nuked the entire thing. Now I just have to relearn everything. I figured I would be a pro at this new life by now, but every so often post-surgical reality throws me a curve ball. It can be a pain in the ass, but I also have to admit that it’s all still a little exciting. I think I might just be a serious weirdo. Who knows.

PS: In case anyone thinks that this is me complaining about my new reality, it is not. It’s just me talking to the void and writing it down so that some hypothetical future me might accidently stumble across it someday in some hypothetical future and say, “oh yeah, I remember feeling like that.” I would go through the Gastric Bypass Surgery again in a heartbeat with absolutely zero hesitation. It was totally worth it. Totally.

Third Anniversary

On January 19th, 2022, three years ago today, I went to my first in person appointment at a weight loss clinic in Chelmsford, MA. The point of the visit was just to establish my vitals and book the next appointments. They measured my height at six feet four inches tall and my weight (the whole point of the visit) at 452 pounds.

Three years and one gastric bypass surgery later (that was May 4, 2022) I honored this special day by stepping on the scale for the first time in six months. 222.6 pounds. A difference of 229.4 pounds. Oh, is that all?

I’m actually WAY up since my last weigh in, on June 5, 2024. I was 203.4 on that day. I guess it’s time to start dieting again, eh? Naw, they always told me my weight would bottom out and then start going up again. At some point it will find its happy equilibrium. I am guessing that would be around 240 or so, but who knows. I would just like to keep the total loss above the 200 pound mark. That’s my only goal, really.

Maybe I will weigh myself again after we come home from Disney World in a couple of weeks. I bet it will be down pretty significantly on that day. We’ll see.

Happy Weight Loss Anniversary to all who celebrate.

French Toast

Oh, the bliss! I feel alive again!

Pre-gastric bypass surgery (2.5 years ago) I was a big fan of French Toast with Maple Syrup.

Post-surgery, where sugar can make me super sick, I avoided French Toast. My wife would make it for the kids and I’d have something else.

We were discussing it last week. There is nothing in French Toast itself that would make me sick. It was just the maple syrup that was a risk. I realized that was the only reason I hadn’t partaken in the delicacy.

Knowing that Jen was going to make it for breakfast today I went looking for sugar free maple syrup and I found some. Fast forward to today’s breakfast and I’m in!

It was delicious. Soooo good!

Body Image Thoughts

This is going to be a gastric bypass surgery post. If you don’t want to read about how fat I was, then now is the time to bail out. I promise I won’t be mad. Hell, I’m tired of thinking about how fat I was.

Okay. Still here?

It’s been 2.5 years since I had the surgery. I’m still down something like 210-220 pounds over that time. I still think the whole experience has been nothing short of miraculous.

But…

Over the last couple of weeks I have been having moments of confusion. I walk past a glass door and see my reflection and I feel totally weirded out. That’s not me that I see reflected in the glass. I am a 450 pound behemoth, not this miniaturized freak I see in the glass.

I look down at the floor in front of me and I see my shoes looking back up at me. That’s not me. If it were me I would see my gut protruding out so far that it completely blocks my view of my feet. Shoes? What shoes?

I look at myself in the mirror and see this weird, alien face with loose skin hanging off his neck staring back at him. I don’t see me. I don’t see the fat face with the skin stretched smooth over the cheeks that are so puffed up I look like Dizzy Gillespie wailing over some Bb dominant 7 chord.

What the hell, Robert? It’s been 2.5 years. You have looked like this for a long time now. Surgery was 2.5 years ago, but you hit the 200 pound lost point over 1.5 years ago. Why aren’t you used to being this new you yet? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you accept the new reality?

I don’t know. I had over 30 years of being a grossly overweight adult. I had just a few years of being 400+ pounds, but that seems to have been long enough to make it permanent in my tiny little brain. I think the real question here is, why now? It’s been a long time since I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me when I saw my reflection. It’s been a long time since I held up the clothes that I am wearing now to those that I wore before the surgery. Why am I weirded out now when I wasn’t a month or two ago?

Is it a holidays thing? Does the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner feast and the knowledge that I won’t be able to participate like I used to somehow trigger some weird body image thing? Is that going to happen every year? Am I somehow, perversely nostalgic for the time when I was so heavy that I couldn’t go for a 100 yard walk without feeling like my heart and my lungs were going to literally explode in my chest? That better not be the case because that sort of thing was so soul crushing that part of me just wanted to die to get it over with. No way am I thinking back fondly to that. At least not consciously. But sub-consciously? Maybe? Damn, I hope not.

What is it about November 2024 that has me in such a weird body image frame of mind? I don’t get it. Maybe I should walk past glass doors and see myself reflected back more often so that I just get over it and get used to the new normal. The new normal is better in every single way. 99.999% of the time I feel that and I literally rejoice in it (seriously), but those other weird surprise moments… that 0.001% of the time… it’s like dude, what the hell is wrong with you?

Hiccups

I used to get the hiccups all the time. I mean all the time. Not only that, but they were never ending. I tried all the things you’re supposed to try to get your hiccups to stop and nothing ever worked. Nothing. Ever.

Eventually the problem was solved by the great Bill Nye the Science Guy. He had a video… somewhere… that I watched that said to get your hiccups to stop you have to get your brain to stop waffling between the am-I-breathing and am-I-swallowing states and force it to do one or the other. He said to take a drink, but instead of drinking normally, take five small gulps in quick succession. Gulp-gulp-gulp-gulp-gulp.

I tried it. Lo and Behold, it worked.

Oh the gloriousness, it worked.

Then I had the Gastric Bypass Surgery. Fast forward a little over two years and I was talking about something with my wife and it occurred to me that I had not had the hiccups once since the surgery. Not once. That was lucky, as Bill Nye the Science Guy’s cure would have been tough for me because I couldn’t drink fast anymore. I had to pause between sips, and the sips had to be small. As time continues to pass, that is less and less of an issue. I can’t gulp drinks like I used to, but it is not as difficult as it was in the early post-surgery days.

Which is lucky, because tonight after dinner… for the first time in two years and almost six months…

I had the hiccups.

Bill Nye’s trick still works, thank goodness.