VSG - One Year Later

Today is the one year anniversary of my surgery. It has been a roller coaster ride! The healing, the eating stages, the ups and downs of my weight. Thankfully more downs than ups.

To recap, my surgery was done on November 28, 2014 (Friday) by Dr. Siti Zubaidah Sharif at Queen Elizabeth 2 Hospital, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. The surgery only took two hours and the recovery was speedy. Read more here.

Me before the surgery one year ago (November 28, 2014).

The one thing that I must confess now, especially to Miss Beh is that during the liquid phase I wasn't doing very well with my food. I would drink Maggi soup baser (perencah) mix with some warm water and gulp. And I really missed spicy food during pureed stage that I took my own resolve to add hot sauce into almost every meal. I can finish one bottle in no time (not in one go). Right now I can stand whole lot of heat, far cry than I was before where whenever I have some chilies I would sweat like crazy.

I can eat more now, more normal in terms of portion. I am doing 1,300 calories intake per day even though sometime I might be having more or less than the allocated numbers. So to those who fear that they might not enjoy food any longer after the surgery, just be assured in time you can enjoy them again, in moderation.

Clothes sizes dropped so quickly it was unbelievable. So to people that have had the surgery, just wait until your body weight stabilized or else you will just wasting money buying new cloth every now and then. Thankfully in my case, I still have my old (I meant very, very old) clothes. Some dates maybe 15 years ago that I can fit into again. My hoarding became handy after all hahaha. Now I am wearing size L and sometimes M shirt and size 33 pants.

I have lots of excess skin. Just hanging from my arms, thighs, belly and chest. I am among the unlucky ones with genes that somewhat prevented the tightening back of the skin. Some are just plain lucky to have the surgery and have no hanging skin. So be prepared mentally that you may or may not have excess skin. Hopefully next year, I will embark on new journey, plastic surgery journey!

I can't sit as long as before. Maybe the fat pad on my butts already deflated that the bone down there felt the pain. When I was so big, I can sit whole day long. Just sitting there, watching TV and eating and maybe play mobile games. Ops, I still do that!

Socially I am bit more talkative now whereas when I was much bigger I don't talk much with someone I only met. I am still a shy man, but when you start talking to me, I can reply a whole lot more than before. I would share my journey to anyone that is willing to listen. 

I noticed that I have a lot of energy right now. I can go on for hours. When I was much bigger, I slept a lot, felt no energy. I usually have some inflammation on my joints when I was big. I would get shots to make it better and also some ibuprofen. Now it is very rare for me to have inflammation on my joint. Also now I rarely have headache not as when I was much larger. So the surgery really helped in improving my health and my life.

My weight is 87.4 kg (192.7 lbs) right now which means I have lost a total of 43.1 kg (95 lbs) since surgery and 84.7 kg (186.7 lbs) since the day I started my weight loss journey. I couldn't be more happier. Hopefully I could achieve the normal weight range sometime in the future. 

Me today on November 28, 2015.

A million thanks to Dr. Siti and Miss Beh for their continuous support on my weight loss journey! I hope that I can make both of you proud!