ItsMe2033

Congratulations on your loss so far. I know it's hard to stick with the plan, but just keep hanging in there and you'll be on soft foods before too long. Once you are there a whole world of flavors and textures opens up to you.

The reason for the steak is that it's very difficult to chew it up well enough. I think that if you wanted to finish your meal with a few small bites of tender steak, cut up well you be fine.

How much protein are you getting everyday? Are you taking bariatric viatmins? Have you considered doing exercises in a swimming pool where there is less strain on your joints?

I think that during the first 3 to 6 months every VSG patient should comply fully with all the guidelines from their NUT. This is for your health and safety, and there's simply no excuse for not complying. The fact that some other surgeons let their patients have pureed foods at two weeks out and your surgeon makes you wait four weeks is not enough reason for you to override your surgeons/NUTs requirements. Once you are further out, then things become more flexible. I think you should still comply with all things they put forth that relate to health and safety, such as drinking enough fluids, consuming enough Protein, and Vitamins, etc. For the other types of things I think you should try to conform to what your NUT asks for the most part. If there are things that are particularly burdensome to you, such as not drinking coffee, and if most other programs allow you to do that then you have to make the decision if you are going to do that or not. If you make that decision, then you should do it after you make yourself fully aware of why the rule was put in place, and what the tradeoffs are for not following that rule. You should not override the NUTs advice simply because you feel it is burdensome and you don't want to follow it. In other word, only go against your NUTs advice if you fully understand what you are doing. And only go against your NUTs advice in a few areas. On the other hand, you can try to find another NUT that is more compatible with you.

I'm not an expert on the paleo diet, but I have been on a low carb diet for the last 13 years, so here's what I can contribute: First, you should check with your NUT and see what they say. Secondly, there are three types of foods that contribute calories, fat, Protein, and carbohydrates. To meet your calorie targets, your calories must come from one of those three groups. In my case, i try to get 800 - 1000 calories per day. If I consume 125 grams of protein in a day, that's 500 calories. The other 500 have to come from the remaining groups. In my case I generally consume 20 - 30 grams of carbs per day, so the rest will come from fat. 30 grams of carbs is 120 calories, which means that I will consume 380 calories of fat, or 42 grams of fat per day. This give a daily intake of: 12% of my calories from carbohydrates 38% of my calories from fat 50% of my calories from protein. I have discussed this with my NUT, and she is fully supportive of my eating low-carb and my nutrient intake being as mentioned above. I think the low-fat advice is geared toward people who are not following a low-carb diet. As I mentioned above, I'm not an expert about paleo, but hopefully this answer will help you.

As far as I know there is no restriction on wheat itself. Most surgeons restrict bread for a period of time after the surgery. I think for many plans there is no bread for 6 - 12 months after the surgery unless it is toasted because it can make a dough ball.

I'm glad that you were finally able to start getting in enough food. Relax and try not to worry about the gain of a pound. During the last month you have severely depleted your body of nutrients, minerals, Protein, etc. It is perfectly normal that you might gain a few pounds when you start getting in the amount of food that you should be getting. It's also to be expected that you might go several days or even a week or more and not lose much weight before you start losing again. And you will start losing again. You have not caused long-term harm to your metabolism, but you have probably lost some muscle during this time. It will be important that you start exercising if you haven't been.

I encourage you to call your NUT. Although the general advice is to not eat and drink at the same time, I'm think the NUT would OK it in order for you to take your meds. Taking it with a shake works fine as well, but I think you should be taking all 4 per day that you have been prescribed.

I think you should spread them out and you should be fine. Do you know if the antibiotics you are taking are supposed to be taken with food or without food? Some are one way and some are the other, and some don't matter. Insofar as the sinus infections, I have two pieces of advice. I used to get a sinus infection every year that would last for Thanksgiving until Easter. My doctor would give me prescription after prescription for antibiotics. The infection would clear up and within a week or two it would recur. There were two things that I did that helped tremendously. The first was allergy testing. After that, and after learning to avoid the worst allergens things improved dramatically. The second thing is that I was checked by a specialist and it was determined that I had a deviated septum. I had surgery to correct that just over 20 years ago, and since then I've only had one sinus infection.

This is the single most important piece of advice that anyone could ever give about a relationship.

I'm 10 weeks out. I aim for: 100 - 120 grams Protein As few carbs as possible Enough fat to get my daily consumption up to 900 - 1000 calories.

Take 1 cup of ice cubes and 2 cups of water (adjust this ratio as needed) and blend them. There will be enough water that the ice should blend easily, and you will end up with ice that is chopped very fine. After it is blended, pour out all (if you're adding another liquid such as almond milk) or most (if you're only blending with water) of the water, then add your protein powder and blend.

Arts stated it correctly. The first few days will be the hardest, then it gets easier. If you do a very low carb diet for the week before you start the shakes it will make it easier, because it will spread some of the effort onto a period where you can still eat food.

The weight gain you experienced was probably just Fluid retention, so you haven't really derailed your weight loss efforts. On the other hand, the discomfort you felt was very real. I think it's clear that you've learned from this. And it's not like you sat down and at 3 slices of pizza in the first place -- it sound like you were very moderate in your consumption. So I wouldn't give this much more thought, except that if you find yourself ordering food lean more toward the healthier choices.

I think i may depend on the part of the country you are in. I've been on low carb for 13 years, and I've been ordering hamburgers without the bun from Wendy's, Hardees, Burger King, McDonalds, Jack in the Box, etc, all this time and never had a problem with it.

I recommend that you start getting you protein in first. Once you are getting enough protein then start adding daily walking. Once that becomes a habit then find your way to a gym and get in some program. After doing that for a while then you can reduce the flab and sag that you mentioned.

One thing people may be looking at is your face. A lot of time after rapid weight loss, your face can have sort of a gaunt look. I'm not there yet, but in 2008 when I lost 100 pounds my face looked really gaunt. I know that very well because it was when I had my last drivers license photo made. So far I've lost 65 pounds (pre and post op) so it's not as bad this time. I wish I could keep my face as it was when I had lost about 40 pounds. So my theory is that at least some people suggest to stop losing because of the way our faces look, not our bodies.

If you haven't tried Premier Protein, then you really should.

There are two types of lifts. Isolation lifts involve only one joint, and are designed to mostly work one muscle group. The classic example of this would be a bicep curl, which not surprisingly works primarily the biceps. When you do a bicep curl, you are only moving at the elbow, so this is considered an isolation lift. The other type of lift is a compound lift. In that case you are working multiple muscles and more than one joint is moving. For example, bench presses are a compound lift because they stress the chest (pectorals), shoulders (front deltoids) and upper arms (triceps). Some people do mostly compound lifts, some people do mostly isolation lifts, and some people do a combination of both. Generally speaking, if you are going to do compound lifts, you should have at least a few sessions with a trainer to make sure that you learn the proper form for these exercises.

There are many different viewpoints on an optimal workout. Here's mine: When you are first starting out you want to do less weight and more reps. This minimizes the risk of injury. After you have been working out for a couple of months you want to transition to more weight and fewer reps and be working any exercise to failure. Let's take a bicep curl as an example. Let's suppose that you might start out with a 5 or 10 pound dumbbell and do maybe 20 or 25 reps. And you do that for a week, then you maybe go up to the next larger size dumbbell. Let's say 15 pounds, and let's say that you can do 15 reps on it. Do that weight for a week or two and once you can get up to 20 reps, then go to the next weight, say 20 pounds. Let's say that you can only do 12 reps with it. Work out with that weight for a week or two, and let's say that you can now do 18 reps with it. Now you've been working out for 6 weeks. Take the next weight up, which would be 25 pounds and see how many reps you can do with it. For simplicity, let's say you can do 10 reps with it. Continue to work out with that weight until you can do 12 reps with it. At that point you go up to the next weight, and repeat this over and over. If you can't do at least 8 reps then go to the next lower weight. If you ever miss working out for more than about 10 days you need to drop down to the previous weight for a few sessions before going back up and using the 8 to 12 rep rule. After the first 6 weeks of so, you want to be working every exercise to "failure." That means that you do as many reps as you can until you can't do even one more. A partial rep is OK for the last rep, but just don't count it. In these exercises, most of the benefit comes from the last one or two reps. In other words, if you can do 12 reps, the 1st 10 reps don't really do much to help you build muscle. All they do is properly fatigue the muscle. Most of the benefits come from the last 2 reps. That's why it's important to get every rep that you can. But you can't do that when you first start out because the risk of injury is too high. You have to work your way up. So the way that I describe this is to do 8 to 12 reps to failure. If you can't do 8 reps then you are using too much weight, and if you can do more than 12 reps you need to use more weight. Aroundhky advises between 4 and 8 reps. This is a perfectly valid strategy and is used by many bodybuilders to maximize muscle gain, but I think for people who are going to be more casually working out (3 - 5 hours of resistance training per week) the best benefit will come from 8 to 12 reps, plus I think it has a lower risk of injury. If you do decide to go with 4 - 8 reps then I recommend that you take 3 or 4 months to work up to that. There's all sorts of things to consider about varying your workouts, using freeweights vs. machines, how often you work out each muscle group, etc.

It sound like you have a couple of good alternatives there. I think the most important thing is choosing something that will keep you motivated, and working out on a regular basis. You need a program that will both accommodate your unique needs due to the surgery, and at the same time push you to do your very best. The most important thing is to avoid injury. Since you haven't been working out, this means that at first you will do more reps at a lower weight than you will do later on. If you work with a trainer and they aren't willing to recognize that you've had the surgery and that your caloric intake is severely limited, you need to find another trainer. The next most important thing is to be in a program that you can stick with. You need something that motivates you to keep with it month after month and year after year. For me personally, I enjoy going to a gym and working out the way I want to, when I want to, at the pace I want to, etc. I've been doing this for over 20 years. Other people need the motivation of classes or the guidance of a trainer. Whichever of those works for you is fine, as long as it keeps you going to the gym.

I highly recommend the Premier Protein shakes which are sold at Sam's Club and Costco. 30 grams of protein.

So it would be interesting to see if you weight goes down by more the day after Zumba than it does the other days. If that's the case then it Water loss from the exercise.

Of course you should check with your NUT, but in general I would recommend 70 - 80 grams per day if you are not working out, and 80 - 100 grams per day if you are working out 5 hours or more per week. These numbers might be slightly higher than what your NUT recommends.

Do you sweat when you do the Zumba?