Chrissy got a Gastric Bypass

I still get really excited about food and cafe lunches. I usually order whatever sounds yummy. I don’t restrict my choices. The bypass does the restricting for me.
Sometimes I bring along a friend to finish my food for me, or I ask for a container to take it home for later, or I simply leave the remaining food on my plate and thank the cafe staff for the deliciousness.

Ok, so I took a fair bit of time off Facebook. When I tried to incorporate instagram with this page it was all far too much for my hyperactive and disordered brain to transition to, so I put it into the too hard basket and ignored it.
I kept losing weight though and I thought I better pop on and track that, even if it’s been ages…
I fit into this little dress I bought from the op shop now.
It’s something I can do now; shop at the op shop and easily find cute clothes. I also love overalls from marketplace.

I've hit some milestones this week. Cracking 90kg has been a huuuge mindf #*k for me.

I expected to get there a few weeks ago but there's a little brain game called "self sabotage" I've been playing first. It's fun in the moment but it doesn't get long term wins.

So! I'm officially an 80's girl now.
Also, I realised I've officially lost more weight than I have to lose. I'm half way! 🖤🥳🖤

One of my favourite snacks lately is apple and cheese together. Has anyone else tried it? 😋

I got these freaking AWESOME crackers at Coles yesterday! Made of all natural ingredients, and SOOO GOOD with Vegemite as a tastier alternative to cruskits, corn or rice thins.
The green ones are my favourites.

I clocked the 20kg loss on Monday! I forgot to post it because I've been busy with work but it's a win.
I've noticed I'm starting to get back into old habits of stopping off on the way home from work to eat my dinner-breaky, which isn't always healthy and not measured.
I need to keep my eyes on the prize of long term health and try to minimise those habits. Might start leaving my bankcard at home so I can't use it.
Anyway, here's a post night shift photo I took this morning that surprised me. I was feeling tired and squashed up from the PPE, but I only had to take one photo to recognise I've lost a lot of weight in my face recently and it was a bit of a confidence booster.
Happy spring time everyone!! 🌻💖

One small issue I have is all the food I'm having to leave behind. This was half a small chicken leg (my cat ate the rest), one egg and a tablespoon of chopped onion.
I could only get less than half in before feeling well satisfied.
When just one ingredient out of a recipe is enough to make up a gastric bypass meal it gets difficult to cook for one.
Like a lot of people who grew up in the 80's I was always expected to clean my plate.
Luckily today my son graciously ate the rest of my lunch for me but most of the time the dog gets really well fed.

Officially under 100kg!!
First time in years. I actually don't know how long.
🥳🥳🥳
Once we're out of lockdown I'm going to reward myself with a remedial massage 😊

I went out and forgot to take a jumper, so I bought one at kmart. I used to be size 20-22, so I tried on size 18 thinking I'd lost some weight so I should try a size down. It didn't fit, so tried 16, nope! Had to buy a size 14 jumper!
In my brain I keep explaining it away.
For example, maybe jumpers are just made to be super baggy now. Or maybe it's because kmart makes bigger than normal sizes...
Either way, I haven't been size 14 anything from kmart since before I had kids 😁

I put my pants on today and they started to fall down straight away. I had to wear a belt! Not just that, the belt actually FITS, with HOLES TO SPARE!!! 😱

Dr Karl says ingesting collagen doesn't work.
It's not going to make my Turkey neck disappear?
Time for me to age gracefully and face the consequences of growing huge babies being obese most of my adult life 😁 🙈👍🏼

I did it! My first night back at work and I wasn't even thinking about snacks! I had a shake at about 1am and I drank 1.6l around that!
Preop what I used to do when I finished work was go directly to maccas and grab a medium quarter pounder meal and a hot chocolate with marshmallows. Mainly because night shift is exhausting and the prospect of going home to cook for myself was unbearable.
Today all I could think about on my way home to eat was this salad from Feast just up the road from home.
Obviously I won't be able to eat all of this today, it will probably last me until tomorrow's post nightcshift munchies. 😁

It's 11am and I'm finally sitting down for my breaky shake.
Some people just aren't morning people. I'm one of those people.
I dont enjoy food for breakfast. I find it makes me tired and want to go directly back to bed.
Shakes are great for people like me. It's replaced my morning coffee and I just sip on it slowly and comfortably.

How great is this?! I got the three products on the left online from style salon to help reduce my hair loss.
They gave me cheap express shipping, 2 mentos, 5 "free gift" products and 2 free samples of body and hair treatments!
PLUS, they gave me a discount code to give me $10 off my next order!
So impressed with the customer service!
Something I was really concerned about when considering weight loss surgery was that my hair would fall out.
It's common at about 4 months post surgery. A lot of people say increasing protein following surgery and taking a hair supplement prior to surgery and following the healing stage is helpful in reducing this, as well as using good quality hair products.
I've been using the two blue bottles for a couple of months now and they've treated my hair really well.

I made lamb stew for dinner.
It's packed full of protein with lentils and soup mix beans and barley.
This is what the freezer is going to be stacked full of fir the next couple of weeks.
This is helping me make better choices because heating one of these up takes no time. It's healthy fast food as opposed to searching the cupboard for chips, cookies or cake if I feel hungry.
Everything in moderation obviously, but I don't want to make unhealthy choices because I'm too tired to prepare a healthy meal.
That's what I used to do.
🖤👌🏼🖤

Shepherds Pie for lunch. About a week and half ago I cooked up some shepherds pie. I portioned up the remaining food my family didn't eat (what would have been one portion for me prior to surgery) and got 7 portions that have lasted me over a week!

Something that becomes hard following surgery is drinking enough liquid. My stomach is now a little pouch that can't fit more than about 1/4 cup at a time in it.

Straight off the bat I woke up to a nurse telling me I need to sip water frequently. I looked over to the whiteboard in my room that said "Hi Chrissy, your job is to drink 15ml/15 minutes of fluid, and recover. Enjoy your stay!"

I am happy to say, I'm 3 weeks post op and I have been drinking roughly 2.2 -2.7L of liquid for the past 5 days.
Here's what I do. In the morning I have a 300ml feel good shake that I sip until it's done. At the same time I fill my 800ml bottle with benefibre and 45g of feel good protein. I drink it with diet cordial to get those supplements down.
I aim to have my first bottle down by 12 lunch time.
Then with lunch I refill my bottle with tap water and drink that until I start cooking dinner at 5.
At 5pm I refill my bottle with another 45g protein and benefibre. I drink that until I got to bed.
I never have nausea, and all the ins and outs work regularly.
I practice mindful eating because the last thing I want to do is vomit after I eat because I ate too quick or too much.

This is me right now, trying to work out how to use instagram.

It is however, the best way to share my journey with other people who are considering or have had bariatric surgery.

Even though I haven't previously been active on my instagram, I have been following a huge amount of people who've had weight loss surgery on here.

It helped me to see other people's experiences before making my own decision about the type of WLS I wanted, if I even wanted it at all.

Here is a link to my page if that is the way you prefer to follow people though.

Now to figure out hash tagging
🤦‍♀️

https://www.facebook.com/Chrissy-got-a-Gastric-Bypass-110400447965482/?ref=pages_you_manage

🖤💥🖤

I got busy today and missed lunch, so I'm eating it now at 4:30 pm.
I've never been good at eating breakfast, and I find it difficult to get my breakfast in before 10am most days.
I have pantoprazole after I wake up, then I always get busy either with the housework or the kids, so I don't usually get my breakfast shake or food eaten until about 11am. I don't feel rushed to eat lunch and then I get busy again. So now it's 4:30 and I'm eating this omelette.
It has a slice of a small onion, a cherry tomato, some chopped spinach leaves, about 5 cheese gratings, 1/3 a piece of bacon and an egg...
Unfortunately it's over my 1/3 cup of food so I'll be leaving some of it behind. Jeffrey the dog loves all the leftovers he's been getting.
🖤🍴🖤

I lost 800g this week, so I'm happy with that. I'm noticing my face is changing, my b***s are flattening (lol) and my trackies that I couldn't tie prior to surgery, now have about 10cm on each side of the drawstring. So things are changing.
I used to be bloated all the time, which I'm not anymore.
🖤😁🖤

Before I look at the scales today for my weekly check, I want to look at this graph.
Even though I'm feeling great and getting around just as easily as I did before, I need to remember my body is still in the healing phase, so I shouldn't expect too much loss.
Last week I had lost 500g and was a bit underwhelmed.
This graph has made me feel better about needing to check the scales today.
Have a great day everyone!
🖤💋🖤

One thing I can't get over the change of within myself, is how dramatically my portion sizes have changed!

I used to be the person who would pile my plate high if it was going to be a good meal (which let's be honest, I'm a good cook, so it's always a good meal 😆). I could always eat the whole plate and sometimes have seconds.
The other day, I had 2/3 of a small piece of salmon (very soft and well chewed).
It was SO amazingly yummy that I ate about two bites past my full stomach.
I felt extremely uncomfortable until it digested.
That was the worst I've felt since I was in hospital and I've definitely learned my lesson: the last bite just isn't worth it if you're already full.

So today I thought I'd show you how little my stomach wants me to eat.

I have frozen portion sizes of 1/3 cup of food, and tiny bowls to eat from with teaspoons.

Today was shepherds pie. I always eat the protein first. I couldn't eat the potato.
It was soo yummy and I'm very satisfied.
🖤💋🖤

About a 1/4 of a cup of protein yoghurt, 2 raspberries and 1/3 of a banana sliced.
Not sure if I'll be able to eat it all but I feel like it goes down better than smoothies do. I just need to make sure I chew the fruit to nothing.
It's a really good oportunity for mindful eating!
🖤🍌🖤

I used to have eggs on toast every morning for breakfast and I've been looking forward to eating an egg.
There are mixed reviews how eggs feel going down, a lot of people say it sits heavily in the tummy.
I'm not waiting, it's a soft food. I'll see how I go.
🖤🍴🖤
Chrissy

Hey everybody! First time in years I've been able to get my wedding ring off 😁
And now I'm putting it back on.

A couple if catch up posts I put on my profile before I made this page. They're little VLogs from day 1 and 3.
I'll post one from today soon with an update 😁

Just to make it complete, I'm going to post my previous stories here. Here is day 0, pre and post surgery.

"Here we go!! 😃
I took care of myself for once and spent the night last night at Park Hyatt before admitting this morning.
Best. Idea. Ever.
I got a massage, had two spa baths, ordered veggies with room service, watched Netflix and slept on a bed made of feathers. Ha!
If there are people with upcoming surgeries, this is the way to go.
I'll update when I'm on the flip side. ✌🏼🤞🏼👋🏼"

On the flip side: I woke up in recovery extremely distressed. I remember the elderly woman in the bed next to me reaching out to me and telling me I'm okay, while calling out frantically for the nurse to help me before I fell back unconscious again.
I got back to the ward, and for hours couldn't keep my eyes open for more than a 10 seconds. I kept waking and thinking "I need to get up nd move asap." But my O2 sats kept dropping into the 80s.
I tried getting up at about 1pm and fell asleep sitting up hahaha. So I gave up and lay back down until I was properly ready at about 4:30pm to get up, shower and move around unassisted.
After that I've been on the up and up.
🖤💋🖤 Chrissy

I've made a page to share my path to better health so I don't keep bombing my friends feeds with stuff they don't care about.

Roux En Y Gastric bypass is a bariatric surgery tool to reduce food intake dramatically. There is a lot of preparation involved and there are risks associated with the procedure.

It is usually a last resort... after you have tried "healthy dieting" methods, exercise regimes, "lifestyle changes", fasting methods, soup diets, low cal, low carb, supplement and shake diets and have continued to yo-yo diet your weight into morbid obesity anyway, despite tears, pain and suffering.

I'd thought about getting bariatric surgery for at least 5 years before committing to it.
I have family history of obesity, high cholesterol, insulin dependent type 2 diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, cataracts, and cancer.
I myself am prediabetic and verging on hypertension requiring medication. It is all due to unhealthy lifestyle and obesity.

My starting weight was 116.5kg.
My first goal weight is 70kg.
My "normal" BMI range is around 62-65kg.
But my main goal; I want to be able to play with my kids without getting exhausted, puffed or hurt.

On this page you will find information on RYGB, and updates on my condition.
Any negative comments telling me I'm taking the easy option can kindly f×€k off, and will be deleted without hesitation.
🖤💋🖤💋🖤