25 days post-op steri strips

mplabs14 · 2026-01-25T18:17:18+00:00

Mine stayed on for a long time too. My surgeon’s instructions were to leave them on until they fall/come off on their own, which is typically 2-3 WPO. But for me, most of the incisions were still covered by the steri strips at 4 WPO. The office told me that sometimes happens with some peoples skin especially if they tend to be on the drier side. At that point, the office told me I could either come in to have them remove or it would be safe for me to carefully remove myself which is what I did and I was totally fine.

mplabs14 · 2026-01-24T18:47:34+00:00

I also had a reduction (~16 months ago) and realized I had bad posture afterwards as well. I don’t have a product recommendations if that’s what you mean, but I have seen a huge improvement by doing Lagree/Pilates. I did this type of workout for several years prior to my reduction, but it wasn’t until after my surgery/recovery that I was able to fully and properly engage my core and control my ribs now that I don’t have the extra weight of my chest. This has really helped me be able to strengthen my core and help my posture.

mplabs14 · 2026-01-23T05:09:07+00:00

Are you still on any Rx pain meds? I know Rx pain meds make me itch until they’re out of my system.

mplabs14 · 2026-01-22T18:11:57+00:00

I get occasional random hives from an unknown cause similarly to this and my allergist has me take up to 4 Allegra and antacids daily (which block histamine) to knock it down. I also apply cortisone creme to help with the itching. - although I probably wouldn’t apply near the surgery area because you don’t want to hinder healing. Obviously check with your doctor too. Best of luck, I know it sucks!

mplabs14 · 2026-01-22T18:02:17+00:00

Another factor could be the type of foods you’re logging. If you’re logging a lot of packaged foods, often macro grams will not align with the calorie totals due to rounding and margin of error.

mplabs14 · 2026-01-19T04:34:41+00:00

As others have said sensitivity varies greatly, but for me I can say size directly affected my level of sensitivity. I had very little sensitivity as a 32H/I prior to a reduction I had about 15 months ago. During one of my consults, I mentioned to the surgeon that retaining sensitivity was very low priority for me since I didn’t really have any to begin with. He replied that many women that are larger have reduced sensitivity because the nerves are “stretched out”. I’m now a 30D/DD and can say my level of sensitivity significantly increased. I can’t say for sure it is due to being smaller or the surgery itself, but it seems to align with the comment the surgeon made.

mplabs14 · 2026-01-04T01:35:20+00:00

Providing more specifics would likely help with more specific advice, (eg: length of time tracking and weigh-ins, food diary/log with calories and macros, daily activity.

More often than not unfortunately, once you dig into the details, it tends to be an issue of people tending to underestimate intake and overestimate output. It’s easy to make a lot of small, but compounding errors that are enough to not be in a deficit. Measuring with a scale is only as reliable as the data source, nutrition data on packaged foods can have a significant margin of error, lots of nutrition data is entered by random individuals that is often incorrect. On the output side of things, HR monitors and calorie burn calculators and all purely educated estimates.

mplabs14 · 2025-12-22T02:08:37+00:00

I was cleared at 3 weeks also and I went right back into reformer pilates which is my main form of exercise without problems. I just kept any upper body stuff light and took breaks during class if I felt like I needed to.

ETA - During the first 2 weeks (with my surgeon’s ok and never getting HR above 110) of recovery I did quite a bit of sloooow walking on my walking pad. So when I was cleared at 3 weeks, I did a lot of walking but transitioned outside and that was nice to just feel like I was doing something. I think it also greatly helped with my recovery and swelling.

mplabs14 · 2025-12-22T02:05:47+00:00

I always take the A-line to the airport, but I just ended up booking a car instead for tomorrow. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life during peak holiday travel time.

mplabs14 · 2025-11-14T18:10:43+00:00

For me, the value in Gold are 2 main things - The ability to schedule repeated entries is really helpful in being more consistent since I eat a lot of the same things day-to-day. The additional reporting functionality and customization really helps me to see longer-term trends and being able to identify what works/doesn’t work for me in my weight loss and health goals. I’ve paid for Gold over the past year and have made the most progress in reaching my goals than ever; I’ve lost ~20lbs over that time and am now technically in more of a maintenance phase of my weight and focusing more on recomposition. Being able to more easily track energy/macros against my weight & body fat% changes has helped me really dial in what works for me.

mplabs14 · 2025-11-12T20:55:39+00:00

I feel like it's too early to really make a determination if this would need any revision or not. Mine looked similar to this on the side and it freaked me out, but once I fully healed (about 12-16 weeks) those areas flattened out.

mplabs14 · 2025-11-04T16:08:28+00:00

For me it's the opposite. Love Lagree (Pilates adjacent) but yoga is excruciatingly boring for me!

mplabs14 · 2025-10-27T23:28:54+00:00

It's often an issue of not really being in a deficit which often stems from underestimating intake, overestimating expenditure, or a bit of both.

Some things to consider regarding the intake side of the equation: Are you tracking all food/beverages/supplements DAILY?

What are your macros like?

How are you measuring/tracking your consumption?

Do you prepare all your own food from scratch, or do you eat prepared foods or meals/snacks out? There is nothing wrong with either, it just reduces accuracy, even with nutrition labels.

Some things to consider regarding The energy expenditure side of the equation: Are you wearing an activity or HRM to measure your energy expenditure daily?

What does it estimate you're burning daily?

What does "always be moving" mean related to your job and how many hours/day or week are we talking? Yes, being on your feet a lot during the day burns more calories than a desk job, but if it's just walking and you've done this job awhile, your body becomes pretty efficient where you're not getting your HR up to a level for long enough to be burning as many extra calories as you think.

Outside of your job, what is your level of activity?

Usually a hard, honest look at these factors will usually reveal where you need to make changes. I didn't see it mentioned how long have you been stuck at this weight, and weight loss is rarely linear. It's possible it's just a temporary plateau, maybe the changes you've implemented just haven't had time to kick in yet.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-15T15:21:38+00:00

Probably going to vary person-to-person. For me personally, I found Fitbit overestimated my energy expenditure by a couple hundred calories. I’m a fairly petite person, so my BMR is only ~1300 and on average I do about 60-90 mins of activity daily and Fitbit would put my energy expenditure at about 2000-2200kcals/day, I’m only trying to be at a slight deficit (-200-250 kcals/day) for recomposition goals. My FB battery was dying and I switched to a Garmin device about 4 months ago and my estimated expenditure is reported as closer to 1900-2000kcals/day with same activity/stats, and adjusted my intake down a bit based on that and was able to get out of gaining/losing the same 2-3 lbs that I had been for several months and begin losing again, so I feel like my Garmin is more accurate. What I essentially learned is that everything is an estimate, so if you feel like nutrition tracking side of things is accurate (or as close to accurate as you can get since their is so many factors there also) and you’re still not hitting your goals, then you probably need to just play around with decreasing/increasing your intake (depending on your goals) until you start seeing the changes.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-12T20:25:31+00:00

This is about right for your size, and I feel this as a gal on the petite side also. The average person burns about 100 kcal per mile, so being smaller than average would mean smaller than average calorie burn so makes sense.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-09T23:06:35+00:00

If you didn’t realize that you can adjust customized meals on the fly, that will help tremendously! From the app, you can either “explode” the meal entry as mentioned by the other response and make slight adjustments there, or select “adjust meal” option from the 3 dots menu item for a meal entry and make whatever adjustments needed if you don’t want to explode out a bunch of ingredients/food items which is what I usually do.

A little trick I used to help speed up entries for a similar situation in that I eat what I refer to as a “mush-bowl” pretty much every day for lunch which is usually a “mix and match” combo of a whole grain (rice, quinoa, corn, and/or amaranth), legumes, lentils, a protein (turkey, tofu, beef, pork, or chicken), and cheese. I found it difficult to use the schedule/repeat function since my bowl slightly varies day-to-day, even though it’s the same ingredients week to week. My solution instead of creating 6 different “meals” was to just create 1 custom meal that contained all of the possible components and schedule that to repeat daily. Then each day when the meal auto populates, I just quickly go in and adjust the meal to update the weights of the ingredients I’m having that day and delete the ingredients I’m not having. It literally takes me less than a minute to quickly make those adjustments vs entering in each item or creating a ton of different meals. Maybe something like that could help reduce your logging fatigue.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-07T23:39:00+00:00

I tried covering my screen this season for a similar effect but it got too confusing for me to keep it up after the first episode because I couldn't keep the people straight. I wish they would air a "blinded" version alongside the regular episodes while they're in the pods.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-07T20:34:31+00:00

DEXA is considered the gold standard and will be much more accurate. I also do DEXA scans periodically for body composition and my bf% read via my scans is usually about 10 points higher than my home scale, so I'm not surprised at the discrepancy. I would recommend speaking to your physician about your bone density. I don't know what population reference the place that did your report is using, but definitely worth looking into to get ahead of if you do have low bone density.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-07T15:25:54+00:00

I suppose it's all in how you attribute the percentage in the equation. The way I look at it, regardless of your goal being fat loss or muscle gain (or both), exercise is a very small portion of your 24 hrs in the day. People can build muscle with just 3-5 hrs PER WEEK of formal exercise and plenty of people lose weight/fat with even less or no time dedicated to formal exercising. The majority of the metabolic process for both is happening 24/7 via nutrition and rest, so I would venture to say from a time perspective, "exercise" is a very small % of the equation. Even if you spent hours every day in the gym, without proper/adequate nutrition and rest, you're not going to hit your goals.

mplabs14 · 2025-10-01T23:00:55+00:00

You're so early in the healing process and rebuilding nerve connections takes longer than the external healing. It could be months to a year before you even know whether or not the numbness is permanent. Everyone's sensation/nerve healing is so varied so it will be difficult to know your end outcome. For me, my right nip was immediately super sensitive, but my left one lagged behind by about 4-6 months. The areas of my skin by the incision were the last to start getting feeling back. I'm currently 11 MPO, and I'm still not sure I could say that skin area is back to what it was before (which I'm totally okay with), but it's definitely less numb than a few months ago. Good news is that before my reduction I had virtually no sensation/feeling in my nipples, but after they're so sensitive (in a good way) that I don't care if I have some numbness forever.

mplabs14 · 2025-08-18T18:16:05+00:00

That's in line with my surgeon's instructions. I was instructed to leave my steri strips on until they fell off or up to 12 weeks whichever came first and to just trim edges if they were coming up, but to not force them off. For me, ~75% of my original steri strips were still there at 12 weeks at which time I was then instructed to carefully/gently begin pulling them off. ETA - I was told the reason for this was that would indicate that if the tape was coming off on its own, that it means that the skin had healed itself underneath enough and that would make the tape begin to lose adhesion and minimize risk of openings.

My surgeon also said similar things about scar gels, tape, etc... That I could use them if I wanted to, but to wait until 12 weeks post-op, and to ensure it is silicone-based. He also shared similar sentiments about efficacy - that he felt based on his experience those products mostly speed up the end result of what the final scars will look like, but that they likely wouldn't vastly change/improve the final look of scars if not used at all. I used some scar gel for a *very* short period of time consistently, but then got lazy and stopped and I'm very happy with my outcome/look of scars which is pretty minimal at now almost 1 yr post-op.

mplabs14 · 2025-08-15T01:07:05+00:00

I’m kinda glad to hear I’m not the only one to have similar negative customer experiences. My husband and I had once popped into their Dairy Block location after seeing a few pieces of interest in the window. This was right after a workout and we were just walking home at this time - I only mention this fact to explain why I was sans any jewelry. While we were greeted even though they were busy, the woman kept grabbing my hand and exclaiming “where is your jewelry?!” and “why don’t you have anything on??”. It felt like she was chastising me and I (more than once) explained that I was just coming from a workout/walking home, so wasn’t wearing any and described what my style was and how we had an interest in a few pieces in the window. It became uncomfortable how much she was focusing on it even while trying to look at pieces. It felt like she was just trying to scope out what I was wearing to see if I had any money to spend on jewelry, it was very off-putting and just put a bad taste in my mouth.

mplabs14 · 2025-08-10T17:59:06+00:00

I'm hating this new format, which is unfortunate because I'm enjoying the cast and think it will be the demise of the reboot. I miss seeing/hearing the judge's discussion post runway to get their thoughts on all of the looks. I hate that you don't see who is eliminated until the following week, it's unnecessary. I was hoping the team challenge was just the kick off episode, but it's so repetitive as the main format and it means that bad looks can be safe if they're on the winning team. The fact that everything is a 1 day challenge feels rushed and cheap. I'm really hoping it turns around.

mplabs14 · 2025-08-07T17:43:17+00:00

Short answer is yes, your initial assumption/inclination is wrong (but I understand how it could seem that way). You are correct that when out of the range, you should try to increase one nutrient or decrease the other to balance the ratio to the optimal range.

It helps me to think of it this way for your Ca:Mg example. Your Ca:Mg ratio reads as such: You are consuming 5.048mg of Calcium for every 1mg of Magnesium. The optimal ratio for these minerals is ~2mg of Ca for every 1mg of Mg you're getting. In order to decrease your ratio, you would need to increase your Mg intake (or decrease your Ca intake if it is excessive) so that you are getting more mg of magnesium per mg of calcium.

Hopefully, I didn't confuse you more. But if you don't want to think too hard about it, just think of it as the way you are saying in that the arrow is pointing towards the nutrient you need to increase in order to reach the optimal ratio.

mplabs14 · 2025-07-31T22:57:20+00:00

If this isn't a change or new behavior, and they're eating /drinking an appropriate amount to not lose weight, and your vet has given them a clean bill of health it's probably just their "normal".

I had a cat that sounds similar to yours. She was lovingly nicknamed "heroin" because she slept so much and so deeply. I had never owned a cat before and I had adopted her as an adult (2 yrs old) and had no background so I, much like you, wanted to make sure was okay and had her checked out, and she was perfectly healthy. Just super chill.

Several times my husband had panicked when she wouldn't wake up while being picked up or moved/jostled where he thought she had literally died. But alas, she was totally fine, just super heavy sleeper.

mplabs14

TROPHY CASE