203 lbs - 27 lbs lost, 53 to go.

Today I weighed in at 203 lbs.  Everyday I have been loosing 1 pound.  (Although the 3rd and 4th day after surgery I lost 7 pounds traveling home from Texas.)

Last night I was reading from http://www.gastricsleeve.com/ and the manual my doctor gave me.  I am so glad I did.  Between the two there were some huge insights that I would have missed had I not spent the time reading.

The science behind the weight loss is almost exactly what you will read about in Atkins diet.

The idea behind the weight loss is ketosis. In the past this was just associated with diabetics.  It was thus considered bad.  The truth is it is a mechanism used to sustain life when carbohydrates are not available.  It is a God given system which ancient man used most of the winter.

You see the brain must have sugars to operate.  By sugars I mean all carbs.  When we run out of sugars we use glycogen.  Glycogen are these stores of sugar.  That we can use as a backup when carbs stop coming into the body.  However after about three days these are also gone.  As you can imagine early man may have gone all winter without grain or corn, so durring these times the body uses fats to create artificial sugar.  This process is call ketosis.

Ketosis is a process that breaks oils into artificial sugar leaving behind and acid that must be urinated out of the body.  Diabetics try and avoid this because there body is not working correctly.  However we are trying to keep our body in ketosis.

By avoiding carbs we will remain in ketosis, and by avoiding fats will will be reliant oils from my belly rather than the cream in my coffee ;-)  This forced the body to loose weight.  In the mean time we try and eat as much protein as possible to keep the metabolism up.

This story is not different from what you will hear from Dr. Atkin.  However, how the sleeve does differ in two fold.

1) Ghrelin

Ghrelin is often called the hunger hormon.  And it seems to be missing in people who have had much of the stomach removed (i.e. gastric sleeve).  Many (but not all) people who have had the "sleeve" say they have lost the sensation of hunger.  The idea is that without this "desire agent" we can make intelligent food choices rather than emotional ones.  Hopefully following the diet to the letter.

2) Stomach size

Now that the stomach has been resized the volume of intake is greatly reduced.  Before I could eat two junior cheese burgers at McDonalds along with a coke and fries.  Someday after my stomach has recovered, and grown, I will be limited to half of one junior cheese burger no drink or fry.  So as you can see this will be useful both before and after the dieting.  I am limited of portion size.  I can't eat as much as a 3 year old child.

Currently My stomach is the size of a Bic Pen, and it is fragile.  Today I can only eat about two table spoons of yoghurt before I am full.  After that I must wait 30 mins before eating more yoghurt.

I think the secret for me to reach my goal is to go back on the atkins diet while following the eating restrictions from my doctor.

In the mean time I am enjoying the pound per day weight loss.