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Now that I'm in maintenance mode, I'm getting a into a routine for my meals. Every day, I start out with 8-16 ounces of water, and then a proffee, which I have come to look forward to even the night before. My proffees are simply a black coffee with a protein powder added. There are three products that I cycle through: Premier Vanilla, Orgain Vanilla, and Dymatize Vanilla. For second breakfast on workdays, I will have a low-fat yogurt with two tablespoons of PBFit and two teaspoons of no sugar added dried cherries. I will have ingested 35-45 grams of protein at this point between the two breakfasts, with 250-285 calories, and about 20 carbs. For second breakfast on non-workdays, I will prepare two servings of plain, instant oatmeal with a tablespoon of an olive oil-based spread. This means I will have had 34 grams of protein, 365 calories, and 38 carbs. Non-workdays are when I am being very active with training sessions, so I allow myself more carbohydrate fuel. Snacks on any day are always mixed nuts, even when I am travelling. I will have 0.2 cups of a blend that I make myself. It consists of dry roasted peanuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pistachios, and Brazil nuts. This is 5 grams of protein, 163 calories, and 7 carbs. Breakfast and snacks have been the easiest to nail down. Lunch and dinner have more variables, and I prepare enough for leftovers. I concentrate on protein first, and then add vegetables. Typically tempeh, tofu, or Field Roast products with roasted or sautéed vegetables. Today, I will be eating leftovers from last night. Two ounces of tempeh with four ounces of roasted vegetables that consist of red and yellow sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, small purple potatoes, zucchini, and carrots. I will add a tablespoon of olive oil-based spread, break up 3 walnuts to sprinkle of top, and garnish with two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. This particular meal will be 19 grams of protein, 377 calories, and 28 grams of carbs. Bear in mind that I do eat more carbs when I am not working, and I focus on ingesting healthy carbs instead of breads/crackers/chips/crisps. It's a helluva journey and I'm thankful to be on it!

Thank you everyone for your well wishes! I totally forgot I wrote an update here... I'm one week post op today. I gained 15 lbs in water weight overnight because they had to give me tons of fluids to bring my BP up after surgery! I stayed one night in the hospital. Everything has been fine except I seem to have picked up a bug while I was there and I've been running a low grade fever, coughing, and a sore throat. So I've been hydrating well and sleeping a ton. So far the Covid tests are negative. I haven't been able to advance my diet past purees. Everything I eat other than tofu makes me choke and feels like trying to swallow rocks. They warned me it would get worse before it gets better, so lets hope this is all normal. I have my follow up on Monday so we'll see. Living on shakes and soup again is not fun. I had enough of them the first time!! LOL

A snapshot of the past 30 days' weight loss. February 7 was the first day of my pre-op diet and surgery was Feb 21. I didn't weigh myself from the 21st thru 24th but you can see the bounce on the 25th due to continued retention of fluids from the hospital. I lost 5.6 lbs last week, but so far only 1.2 lbs this week. While the weight has been coming off slowly, I did have feedback from my massage therapist on Monday that my inflammation seems much improved. She immediately noticed the difference in my calves, which were always very tight and hard, to the point she would often comment on it as being unusual. This time she was able to get right into the muscle without a struggle, and it was a similar story in my arms, neck and back. Whether it's from the surgery itself or from the complete lack of grains, sugar, and processed foods in my diet for a month, something is working.

Good evening my fellow Bariatric friends.

I ordered the Barbecue Protein Crisps here from BariatricPal, and find them quite tasty. The Ranch flavour, not so much. They are very filing and have a satisfying crunch. I continue to shrink, and am amazed at the changes all over my body. Visually, it is striking to me. In the mirror, I look thin to my eyes, but I don't feel thin, although I can see more bones and veins and tendons and floppy skin. Cardio-wise, It takes a lot more effort to get my heart rate up and I'm now monitoring which heart zone I can get into and for how long. My resting heart rate is the lowest it's ever been. If I think about it, and I left myself feel it for a time, I weep (like, boohoo cry) with joy. I am so grateful to myself, and proud of myself for having the courage to have taken the leap to better health.

Feeling a little sad today because a few weeks ago I had a call from the surgeon's office and they had a last minute opening on November 20 because of a cancellation. I am not scheduled until December 27, which is way later than I had expected when I started all this. My "ideal" date in my head had been November 13. I was so ready to jump at the chance, but I just couldn't make it work. As soon as I mentioned it to my mom, instead of being supportive, she had all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't move the date. Some were valid, like my teen daughter has a special (but not super special) thing going on later in the week that I would probably have to miss, and others were less valid, like she didn't feel ready and it might ruin everyone's holidays. Um, excuse me? It's not about her! And how would I single handedly ruin both Thanksgiving AND Christmas for my entire family by having a surgery? But she had informed me when I first got the December date that she planned on getting a hotel near the hospital and staying that night to be nearby, despite the hospital only being about 40 miles away from home. I didn't ask her to do that, but that's her plan, so there you go. She didn't ask me if I felt ready now, or what the wait through the holidays felt like for me with the surgery looming. So that was the part that hurt. I felt like I was having to make sure everyone else was okay with my choices instead of me, which is a theme in my life for sure. Don't get me wrong, my parents have been there for me so many times, and I don't want to sound ungrateful. But this really made me sad that what I wanted simply didn't factor in. Basically, I passed on what felt like a dream come true to get that call, and I've had to reconcile myself to it as best I can. I've found some silver linings, like more time to clean my house and test some recipes. But if I hadn't, I would be on my pre-op diet now (my surgeon only does a short liquid diet beforehand, so a Monday surgery starts the pre-op diet on Saturday morning). Instead, I'm getting ready to make dinner for myself and the kids, and I still have 39 days to go...

Tomorrow will be 7 weeks since surgery. Yesterday i found that I was able to finally drink more than a sip at a time. I am SO grateful! I have always loved drinking water and it has been my primary beverage for most of my life; losing the ability to drink a lot of it was my first post-surgical regret. Being able to drink more than a tiny sip at a time makes me feel so much more normal. I'm eating around 500-700 calories a day, and have hit my second stall. I have begun to only weigh myself once a week. I've made to the gym twice since surgery, but I've been walking my pup and walking at work up to 3 miles a day on average. I've also been using resistance bands and stretching. I'm not quite ready for twisty yoga stuff yet. Or jogging. I did do a 10+ mile bicycle ride last weekend with a friend to a coffee shop where I had a cold decaf coffee with half and half. That was another activity that made me feel kinda normal. I'm still drinking one protein drink a day, trying to hit my goal of at least 60 grams a day. Today I got 72 in thanks to a cold G Zero with 10 grams. My abdomen is still a bit sore in general. The way I understand it, the inside is not fully healed until 3 months after surgery. That means sometime around November 1st. This is when I will go on the forever way of eating according to my provider's plan. I look forward to that day. Oh! And I should mention that I learned about a chain restaurant that is in about 30 or so states. It is called Clean Eatz, and they have a menu that is friendly to we bariatric patients. My support group last night talked about getting pizza and flatbreads from there. I checked it out and it looks like it's both eat-in and takeaway. This is the first place I'm going when I feel ready to eat out again

Hello! I am a student at Eastern Kentucky University and a member of the Occupational Therapy program. I am reaching out to find an individual who is interested in answering a few questions for a project that I am conducting. I am in need of someone who is willing to share a typical day in their life as well as someone who is open to helping me create an occupational profile surrounding the topic of obesity. If you are interested, you can direct message me on this platform or email me at kaitlynrowlett20@gmail.com. Through email, I will send the questions I will need answered and you can take your time to send back a response to each! Thank you!

24 days post op. The sipping never stops. I can usually get ~80 grams of protein and around 500 calories in, and ~64 ounces of water. I do get some additional water from sugar free popsicles- I can eat 3 of those in a day. Have been tolerating all of the new foods okay; eggs, ricotta cheese, powdered peanut butter, cottage cheese, refried beans, soft tofu. I have not have any canned chicken or tuna yet. Trying those at this point makes me a bit nervous. I would like to avoid throwing up for as long as possible. Pain is better, but is still a constant companion. My left abdomen hurts and I have been treating it with acetaminophen and ice packs. The ice packs seem to have helped a whole lot! Still learning about surgery and how my life must change in order to make this work. I find that I have cravings for certain things like tacos and salty/crunchy things. The lack of chewing solid foods is mentally tough. And waiting for 30 minutes after I eat to drink any water means every small meal takes an hour or more. I'm thirsty right now. I can drink some water in about 10 minutes, and I can't wait.

Hello, any insight , help or advise needed.. it has been 1 month and half since i had my GS and its been a severe struggle.. multi trips to the ER, I was put back in the hospital for over a week recently, and now they are waiting for a bed to open up again to up me back in hospital and then transfer me to a long term care facility.. I have not been able to eat or drink since my surgery May 8th.. anything that i do put in my mouth and swallow returns violently. I have had a PICC line in for 2 weeks, this is the only this keeping me alive right now, I don't want this to be my life.. has anyone out experienced anything similar to this? if so pls give me some advise