Originally Posted by Skibabe

Gidday! I'm in NZ :-)

I found I really struggled on the pre-op diet, and slipped up a few times. Somehow two bottles of wine and a final (admittedly delicious!) pizza snuck in at the last moment... :-) Beware the "food funeral" feeling. You will get to a point (for me, it was three months post op), where you can eat anything, including pizza. It then requires a bit of self-regulation so that you don't fall back into bad habits. The weird thing is, I havent. The surgery affects the brain somehow (I watched a doco on it years ago but I can totally vouch for this), so that I really don't have anything like the cravings I used to. I sometimes have a small bit of mac n cheese, but I can really control cravings now. I also don't feel denied foods, like I used to on a diet. I find I want to eat healthily most of the time, can treat myself occasionally and not feel bad about it. In short, I'm finding this easy! Not a massive struggle as every diet used to be.

Recovery from surgery was pretty easy for me. I had one incision that hurt when I lay down, for about six days, then was ok. Get your doctor to give you anti-nausea pills. There will be times in those first three months when you'll suddenly feel sick. Best not to be sick, particularly as you're healing. Those pills are awesome, they work in a minute. The nausea went away around month three for me - it wasn't all the time, far from it, but those pills were great when it hit! I also recommend a firm pillow in the hospital, to clutch to your stomach when you roll over in bed. Really helped me.

Be prepared for it being quite a trip :-) Takes a while to adjust to eating slowly, chewing lots, and eating such small amounts. It can be hard in the early days if you eat out and can't eat as much as everyone else, or as much as you used to. It may stink, but that's how we gott to the size we did, so it's a good thing we can't any more :-) Rest assured, you will be able to eat any food in time, and have a fairly decent amount, just not tons of it :-) But boy, does the weight fall off! You're about the same weight I was when I started. I hit my goal weight just shy of nine months later :-) Never would've got there without the sleeve! Try to buy things in sales as I was honestly out of sizes after just three weeks. Try not to buy too much (damn hard to do once you start to be able to shop in any clothes store!), and also document your journey! I wrote a diary, recorded weights, and also recorded my weight on myfitnesspal.com as a graph. It's a trip! Takes loads of photos - you won't believe it's the same person later :-) I'm still adjusting to how I look now! I'm now a size 12 (was a 26 when I started), and I don't ever remember when I was last this size. Crazy.

Enjoy the ride :-) And I agree, this is an awesome forum!