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I am 1 year post-op today, and I have (pretty much) hit my goal! I can't believe it has been a year already, it has gone so fast. To think that this time last year I was having surgery (BIG shout out to Simon Monkhouse), and I was starting a new chapter of my life. I have learnt that I can adapt to change quite quickly, something I didn't think I was that good at previously. I think we shock ourselves at how quickly we can adapt to our new way of living post-surgery. The NSVs have been life-saving for me. Every time I am walking about, up hills and at a fast pace, I still catch myself thinking "I can't believe I can do this". Before this I would have to stop 3-4 times just on a short 8 minute walk as the pain in my hips and back was awful. Now I can jog and I can ride a bike uphill!! I feel happier in myself and in my day-to-day life, and while I may still have a long way to go in terms of being kinder to myself, I am learning to love my body. It is so nice to be able to just think less about what I am wearing, how I will look. I am grateful to feel smaller and to have people not notice me in public (as weird as that sounds). Next part of my journey is just to see where my weight loss goes, then to look into some plastics in the next year or so, but overall, my goal is just to keep living feeling this free ❤️

Thank you again — this was packed with great insight and exactly what I needed to hear. I feel better knowing that my current protein intake (100–115g) is actually within the clinical guidelines. I’ll definitely bring up that 1.2g/kg recommendation with my nutritionist on the 20th and get their take as well — I want to be sure I’m not compromising my health by lowering it too much. And yes — I completely agree about focusing on fat loss over just scale weight. I love how I’m looking now, and my goal is to tighten, tone, and keep my muscle rather than just see a lower number. I’m not aiming to bulk or build new muscle right now — just to hold on to what I have and keep my body strong through strength training. Also, your point about essential fats and nutrient-rich carbs like fruits/veggies really helped. I do eat clean and home-cooked, so I’ll make sure I’m not over-restricting in the wrong areas. This has honestly helped me refocus — I’m grateful 🙏

Hello, I had my surgery back on 2/20, so I'm a little less than 3 months post op, so far I have lost a little over 50lbs(yay), I was just wondering, how soon do people start hitting a stall? I weigh myself weekly and for the last 3 weeks I have been at 266, I wasn't sure if this was too soon I've had friends and coworkers who's also done the surgery and they said they didn't start hitting a plateau until almost a year in My diet consist of a protein drink for breakfast, a snack around 10:30, usually a babybel or a sugar free jerky stick, lunch would either be chicken or fish with cactus, another snack around 3pm and when I get home (6pm) I do another protein drink, on days I have to work my 2nd job and get home after 10pm, I add a 3rd protein drink Work out, I still do my hour walk, unless I work my 2nd job, then it's only a 30 min walk during my lunch hour at my 1st job That has been my schedule for the last month in a half, so I wasn't sure if I need to modify anything or maybe increase my walking, any suggestions would be appreciated

I applaud you for working hard to make ends meet. You can only do so much in your situation, so you may not have a ton of choices, but I too am somewhat concerned about the quality of your diet. Protein shakes are not a bad choice sometimes, but you do seem to be relying on them more than you ideally should. Leaning on shakes so much, I'm specifically concerned about whether or not you're getting enough essential fats in your diet and if you are meeting your basic vitamin and mineral needs. I do hope you're taking a vitamin supplement? I know when things are tight, things like vitamins can be one of the first things to go. If you're not taking a vitamin, I'd encourage you to try to find a way to fit them into the budget since your current diet is so lacking. While a bariatric vitamin would be best, if that's just not in the budget, even a regular drug store vitamin would be better than nothing. An alternative might be to see if you can find meal replacement shakes that fit your budget instead of so many plain protein shakes. My experience is that protein shakes can be more expensive than regular food. I know time is also an issue for you, but If you could find the time on the weekends to meal prep two meals a day instead of one, that might help a lot. Alternately, are there some real food options you could consider for breakfast?

First, let's differentiate between a stall (what you're going through right now), and a plateau. A stall is just a temporary fluctuation in overall weight and is not indicative of an issue. Stalls are perfectly normal and to be expected. After all, your bodyweight is made up of lots of other stuff besides fat, so fluctuations are to be expected. More than likely, you actually have continued to lose fat the entire time, it's just being masked by a concomitant rise in some other component of your overall body weight. The most likely candidates would be fluid retention, or stool weight. Most of the time for a stall, I wouldn't recommend any adjustments since it's unlikely that there is really any issue with fat loss. A plateau is like a stall, but longer. I typically wouldn't consider it a plateau until you've hit more like 6 to 8 weeks without any loss. In that instance, it would be hard to argue the fat loss was being masked by something else. There are things we can do to work through a plateau, but IMO it's too soon for you to worry about that yet.

Tuna....for breakfast.

Had weight loss surgery 7 years ago. 2 years into it started drinking heavily. I use to drink maybe 2 or 3 drinks a year. Now I'm a full blown alcoholic in recovery. My ex wife also hade bypass and started to drink alot but was able to control it. Anyone else struggling with the cross addiction?

1kg a month is perfect right now. Instead of thinking in terms of a specific number you should be losing, think in terms of a percentage of your overall weight. This has an advantage in that the actual number to shoot for drops as your weight goes down. The ideal amount for most people would be one to two percent per month (and certainly no more than three percent). This is right where you're at. Believe it or not, slower is actually better here. The faster your weight loss, the more likely you are to be causing your body to decide you're starving to death. When this happens, your body starts doing things that slow down your metabolism to try to keep you from dying. Of course we know intellectually that we're not actually dying, but your body's metabolic regulation system doesn't know that. It's an amazing system, but it was designed before we had almost instant access to unlimited amounts of highly palatable foods. Thanks for clarifying on the new goal. 65kg sounds like a good goal for now and there's nothing wrong with adjusting up or down even more as you get closer to that. Regarding diet, calories and macros, I'd obviously tell you to defer to your dietitian, though I will say I'm very surprised by the recommendation to lower your protein. When dieting, there are literally hundreds of studies that show the advantages of eating more protein. You should know that overall, I personally am not a huge fan of tracking calories. I know that some people here seem to do so effectively, but for me it just does not work. As I mentioned, most of us aren't very good at actually tracking calorie intake accurately. Even more important to me, none of us have any way at all to know how many calories we are actually burning in a day so tracking intake is only showing you one side of the energy balance equation. Plus, energy expenditure can be highly variable day to day, so even if you did somehow know the exact amount you burned today, it's not going to be the same in one month or one year from now. With all that said, if tracking is working for you, don't change it. Do keep in mind that you may have to reduce calories as you continue to lose since the biggest contributor to metabolism day-to-day is body size. Regarding exercise, I'm going to recommend you stop thinking of exercise as part of your weight loss goal. It simply doesn't work. I don't say this lightly, nor to discourage you, simply to state fact. We have a huge amount of evidence now to show that our bodies tend to slow down in other ways in response to exercise. This is something called the constrained energy model. On a practical level, exercise is still critically important for your overall health. In addition, we do have a lot of data that shows people that have lost a lot of weight are better able to maintain the loss if they exercise on average 1 hour or more per day. In short, do it because you'll feel better, because you'll live longer, AND because once you reach goal, you'll have a much easier time keeping the weight off. I think I can speak for most of us here on this board that we have experienced the exact mental anguish you're feeling. It's normal to worry and let doubt creep in, so know that you are not alone, Mental health is not my area of expertise, so my advice will always be please seek help from a mental health professional if you think you need it.

Sometimes we are afraid of success. Sometimes we don’t think we deserve it. Do you have a pattern self sabotage? Hope you find someone with whom to work through these issues. They are important, apart from weight loss.

GERD can be a possible side-effect of sleeve surgery, but not bypass. Medications like omeprazole work for some people, but severe GERD can lead to revision surgery. Typically these patients are converted to gastric bypass to relieve their issues. There are a few people here that have been through this, so hopefully they'll chime in.