clairec

Hi Erin, Me too I am always very cold, but we haven't hit the Summer over here yet.I have not been hungry at all since surgery, not at all. Sometimes its a real ordeal having to try to force myself. Others it is fine, but again no hunger at all. Look after yourself Claire

Hi ReaRae I am glad that you are swallowing a little better and I hope that your blood sugar levels improve, they should do so fingers crossed. Erin, thanks as always for your tremendous honesty. I think highlighted the way that you feel about everything, as well as how things affect you physically is so important. I know what you mean about not wanting to eat, sleep and breathe your bypass, we are all more than that. We do not want to be defined by an operation, but we do need to live with it and it does rather take over. I am hoping that improves in time but at the moment I feel the same way. It is more important in my life than I want it to be. I want it to be effective and make a difference, but I don't want to worry about what I eat and drink, and how it might make me feel, all the time. As you say focusing on protein is what we all need to do and not all protein goes down well. I am finding that carpacchio and other raw meat and fish go down better than cooked fish or meat. That might not work for you though, or you might not like that sort of thing. Also focusing on what you find most enjoyable in life is also important and if having a drink in the evening makes a difference to you, and you can cope with it, then as you say prioritising this but also doing other things the rest of the time is important. I have had some sips of diet cola at times because iced water is not always an option when I go out. I also had gelato when I was in Italy and that was a real treat. I won't have it except when I am there but it was a real treat... an we do need those. I am sorry that you are throwing up most days. I am really lucky that I have not been sick at all, because I absolutely HATE being sick. I would do anything to avoid this. I am not sure that I have dumped as such either although I have had times when I can feel my heart beating faster, feel a bit mucousy and feel a bit nauseaous. It is not related to particular foods, but it is much more common in the mornings, and I am not good in the mornings at all. So I think it is a time of day issue. I have iffy days a couple of times a week when I feel really tired and have diarrhoea which is very difficult to cope with when I am nowhere near a loo. My consultant suggested Immodium on days like this and that would make life more manageable. I also had constant epigastric pain all day last Friday and restarted by Omeprazole for a while, because this had been happening at times over the past few weeks. I have stopped this again no and am hoping it has resolved itself. I feel that I have done something to myself that will always leave me at risk of things that I would rather not have. However, dealing with how the emotional side of it all is really important to me. Keeping up the treats that I can have, and the social things that I enjoy, and keeping my protein high have been definite strategies for me too. Keep up your posts Erin because they help us all. Take care Claire

Hi, Great news ReaRae I am so glad that you are home again and that all is going well.I can't manage much in the way of food or fluids and it has nothing to do with gas pain for me. I think you did well really with driving at the same time. I am so glad that you made it home ok. Zom, fantastic news, your weight loss is amazing. Mine has slowed down but it still edging downwars and my shape has changed so I am trying to be patient. What's this about you Erin, I couldn't see your post. Take care all of you Claire

That sounds great Rea Rae, you sound like you are doing really well. Thanks so much for letting us all know that you are ok. Thinking of you Claire x

Hi, It is good to see Erin on here, can't wait to hear your news. ReaRae such good news, you have had to wait so long. It is scary at this stage but we are all waiting for you on the post op side of things. It is shame your husband can't be there wit you and it is so far for you to go but we will all be with you n spiit and support is everything! Post on here as soon as you can and let us know how you are. Thinking of you lots and lots Claire

Hi Kim and Zom, I am not losing as much as I was, but I am going downwards and I think the weight loss is showing so I am just hanging on in there and hoping it will improve. I have lost 4.5 pounds in 3 weeks which is less than the 3.5 pounds per week which I was losing before. Fingers crossed it increases again. I must admit I have tried small sips of soda for the same reason as Zom, nothing else was available and I started on sparkling water which was only mildly fizzy first. I put in a lot of ice and mix it round a bit and leave it for a while. I also swill it round my mouth a bit, all to remove as much of the gas as possible. I really can't have more than a sip or three and when I asked my consultant he said that he was fine with that. I think that it is seen as an evil fluid by many but realy how bad can it be in such tiny amounts. I still largely drink iced water but I will have it occasionally if the need arises and it quenches thirst much better for me. Kim, I hope your leg is ok and I hope that your weight loss is truly amazing when your cast comes off Claire

Hi Dug, Yes, food is a social thing and it can be comforting too. I do understand that. I have found that I am never hungry, although I know that some people can still be hungry but fill up fast. So that irritability might not be an issue as long as you can keep doing things that you enjoy. I personally think it was good that I felt so worried before the surgery, because it has seemed so much ore positive since then, and much better than I feared. What do you enjoy doing, or what do you hope to be able to do after the operation? I am cold a lot of the time, I have to admit, but I try to not let myself get too cold by anticipating it and wearing enough things. I often forget though and once I get cold it so difficult to warm up quickly, it seems to take a long time. Eating comfort type foods can still happen, but hopefully you will find that you can't eat very much, and won't want to. We are all different though. Claire

Hi BigDug, I am in the UK so not local at all! However, I do know how it feels to be scared about having it done. I had my surgery on 11th Feb so I am 10.5 weeks now post bypass. I was reading the forums and scaring myself to death. I knew that I wouldn't develop all of the problems but it was hard to prepare myself for the ones might have. I was in Key West reading forums in the middle of the night in January thinking that this was my last holiday that I would enjoy, because my pre op diet was due to start a week after I got home. It was a real grieving process. However..... if I had known then what I know now I would have been so relieved and reassured. I am now managing a really wide range of foods, just very small amounts. But I have my social life back which was really important to me. We put off a holiday to the States until May thinking that I wouldn't be ok until then. I would have been ok though and we just snuck in a quick mini break to Italy which went really well. I have lost 45pounds so far and much more from my highest weight. When is your surgery planned for? Wat are you most concerned about? Can I help at all? I know how daunting it can feel and I am here if need support. Claire

Hi Tammy, I am having a little more than that but it depends on what it is. Sometimes I can have very little but others I might have a few mouthful of one thing, like meat, and then a little more of fruit or some yogurt. I largely don't manage snacks though, just three meals with perhaps a low calorie chocolate drink as one snack. My weight is inching down too, soo slow. However I think that I am looking better tha the scales say so I think I am fine with that for the time being at least. Tak care Claire

Hi, Yes I was so worried about Ken some time ago because we hadn't heard anything. He had asked to be my friend on facebook so I checked and he hardly puts anything there but he is still on there with a post since his surgery date. I think his wife must have had her op by now too. I am now in a stall too, but have taken heart from all your posts. It is just a phase, I'm sure! Glad everyone is doing ok Claire x

Great news Tammy. I am slower at the moment too, it could have been my Italian jaunt but my calorie levels were low to normal for me, and lowish for what I have been told that I can have. So I am just hanging in there at the moment. So pleased for you though Tammy. Claire

Hiya, Dreaming big how are you feeling now, I do hope that you are ok. Interesting info about weight plateaux. I have just got back from Italy which was great. The range of foods now is amazing but I do have some bad "bathroom call" days. Today is one of them and I really worry that one day I won't make it, it was a near miss today and I was saved only by the fact that there was one nearby, there is honestly not much warning! I seem to just have some days, a couple of times a week, when I feel below par and then when I eat anything at all IT happens. However I haven't found any foods which I can't cope with yet, though dryish fish can be a problem, but the consistency is the problem, not the fish itself. My post op appointment is tomorrow and despite the gelato and being in Italy and post flight feet swelling I have now lost 45lbs. Take care everyone Claire x

Hi, RaeRae what wonderful news, after all that you have been through! I am on holiday in Italy now and everything feels much more normal so I am ecstatic. If you had told me that at 8 weeks post op I would be having such a broad range of foods and eating out in restaurants I would have been so relieved. I even tried a couple of forkfuls of steak last night! I am also not dumping on Italian gelato which is wonderful. I have to say that if I have had dumping it is fairly mild and focused around my bowels! When I have a difficult day, which I do a couple of times a week, I struggle to eat at all and have diarrhoea a lot and feel unwell and tired, but it isn't related to any particular foods, or food at all really. It is more the fact that I can't do anything with certainty on those days and I don't know when I am going to have a day like that until it starts to happen. I was visiting somewhere without toilets I could find yesterday and when I started to feel a little gripey I was more than a bit concerned. I made it back to the hotel but that was more like luck than judgement. If I could just know what sort of day I was going to have and have safe things to eat it would be so much less worrying. However, things are going really well and apart from the dodgy days and the tiredness I am fine. Generally I know when I can't eat any more and sometimes that is very little, other times with other foods I can eat a little more. That is good to know and I feel able to control things a little more. My husband is wonderful and he is plotting everything I eat so I know when my protein has been lower and can try to increase it the next day. We also try to weigh food when we are out because it can be difficult to know how much you are eating. It isn't always possible but it sometimes helps. My check up with the surgeon is next week, the day after we get back. I hope the rest of you are doing well. Thinking of you Claire x

Hiya, It's the unpredictability that is difficult isn't it. Misst, you sound like you have had a very difficult time but as you say everything else about eating seems to be normal for most of us. Zom, maybe you are building muscle and that is why you are not losing weight at the moment, you could be losing inches though. Samantha, I have bad days when I feel like crap for no reason too, why that happens I don't know. I have been on more than soft foods though since 4 weeks and it isn't crispbreads etc that do t. Today I had a fish finger and it got stuck - not pleasant at all. I have had them before though so why it happened today is a mystery. Janette, the tiredness is no joke is it, it's like swimming through treacle! However, apart from the odd bout of palpitations, things getting stuck, tiredness and diarrhoea quite frequently .... things are not too bad. I am managing quite a variety of foods including fruit etc so that is brilliant. I can now eat with other people much more. I have lost 42 lbs and I am 8 weeks tomorrow. To Celebrate we are off to Italy for a week. It is so cold here and I could do with some sun, though it is a bit early weather wise over in the Italian lakes. I might even try a spoonful of Italian gelato. The dietician said to try a small amount and if I don't dump to g ahead. I will try it when I am close to the bathroom and bed, just in case. Fingers crossed! Take care all of you Claire x

Hi, Zom, you poor thing! I like your recipe idea Kim, though we don't have Quest bars here I don't think. The principle must work with other bars though, it sounds like a great idea. I miss all the activity on here too and knowing how people are doing. I a not sure whether I have dumped as such because it is difficult to relate things to foods themselves. I seem to be able to cope with certain foods most of the time, but then sometimes I don't. I think it can be a time of the day problem, I am not good in the mornings. Yesterday was odd I was having palpitations and an uneven heart beat for most of the morning. Never had that before... When I ate I ended up with diarrhoea ++ and feeling really unwell for the rest of the day. I was better in the evening though and was able to eat then. As I was feeling odd before a small Breakfast I am not sure it was the food as such though. I wish that some foods were predictable for when I am out and about, just a limited number of foods would be fine. I never know when I am going to be ok or not which is a tad discombobulating! Rather tired and lightheaded quite a lot of the time which is a pain but all my bloodtests seem to be ok. Otherwise my range of foods is good and I don't seem to have had any real problems with foods... yet. On holiday next week so fingers crossed that all is under control. Take care all of you Claire

Hi to you all, Rae I really hope you get a date soon, you have had such a battle to get this far. Zom, how great to be a poster girl in the future, what an honour. The before and after pictures are looking so good and the weight losses seem to be going so well. Mine is going ok too, although it seems to have stopped for the past few days. It will kick in again soon I am sure but at the moment it is static. I will be 7 weeks tomorrow and my range of foods is actually quite good, I just can't predict what happens after I eat, always a bit of a lottery! Difficult if I am out and about, and i would like to have some foods which are always safe for times like that. I might have dumped a little on one occasion but the actual food I had eaten was not a problem at other times, I think it was a time of the day problem. Take care all of you Claire

Well done Zom, you must be thrilled! Congratulations!!!

Brilliant Erin, Congratulations, you deserve it!

Hi Sokoyoko, I am so very sorry that you feel so bad. I can't imagine what you have had to go through to get to this stage. I don't know why people are reluctant to take you on because you have had a clot. Surely that is just terrible for you, but not your fault in any way. i can understand why you are feeling so depressed and desperate with all this going on. 4 weeks of soup is no joke either and is very depressing in its own right. I can understand why you feel resentful and feel like you have made the worst decision in having this done. The lap band was obviously causing you problems and it doesn't sound as if it could have stayed in there. You made the decision for a reason but you didn't sign up to this. Try to stick with thinking about the reason why you made your decision to have this surgery and then try to think that you are just having a terrible time but that things will get better. I am thinking of you, I really am, and I hope that you soon feel better/more positive and that someone agrees to take you on and look after you. Take care Claire

Hi, I saw the nurse and dietician last night and I was reassured that I am having a good variety of foods and the calorie and protein levels seem to be fine too. I haven't been measuring in cups and ozs though but grams so I don't think I am much help. However having converted I am having about the same as you are Zom, and that appeared to be ok. In fact if anything they seemed to feel that my weight loss was on the high side and I might be better if I increased my food a little if possible. I am 5 and a half weeks postsurgery and I have lost 31lbs. I don't know if that helps at all. Kim you poor thing, I hope that everything is ok. Take care Claire

Hi, Great news Zom. Way to go! Kim I hope you get some answers at your appointment, so sorry you are trowing up all the time, I really couldn't cope with that. Mr&MrsB all the regimes seem so different and it doesn't seem as if there is any evidence based reason why this is the case. it seems to be just the personal views of those who give advice. The general principles are the same: keep your protein levels up (but views vary about whether this is through protein drinks or not), listen to your body and gradually introduce new foods starting with soups, yogurts and then soft foods and moving on to more normal foods. However the speed of this progression and what is advised depends on the practitioners involved. In my mind I want to know what is bad for my pouch, what could cause dumping and what is just healthy eating advice, but as separate entities so I can make up my own mind in terms of how to manage things, because we are all different and we will respond differently. All very confusing! Claire

Hi, Welcome Mr&Mrs B, and yes I have had yogurt since the day after surgery but all our regimes seem to be so different. It took me another couple of weeks to cope with it again though! It sounds like you have had a really rough ride getting to this stage. Dreamingbig I really don't think that you will not be losing just because you have moved on to solid food. I think we can get rather twitchy abut what the scales say and read into it things that are not true. I had 2 days when I didn't lose anything and thought maybe it was what I was eating. Then I thought it really can't be that because if that is the case I can't eat anything... ever! So I tried not to worry and today I lost a pound again. I think sometimes your body can have too little and go into starvation mode and having been on fluids only your body is probably just trying to hang on to everything, but you will lose, you can't fail to on so little. Otherwise none of us would be losing either. I hope you are coping with everything Sokoyoko, I am thinking of you. Claire

Hi, Wow Samantha you are back to work already, I do hope that you are managing ok. That must be hard. Are you a nurse, it sounds like you could be from your name? I have not taken time off work as such but that is only because a lot of my teaching is online and I tried to arrange the surgery to avoid my face to face teaching sessions. If I had been doing the job I was doing up until November i have no idea when I would have felt ready to go back. I am having the usual blood tests next week and it will be good to know if my haemoglobin is where it ought to be. I am rather pale, interesting and tired at the moment. Hope you made it through today ok an good luck for tomorrow Claire

Hi, Oh Sokoyoko you poor poor thing. What a terrible and frightening time you are having. You must be feeling so miserable and worried, as well as being in major recovery mode. No wonder you feel tired and weak, I still feel that way 5 weeks down the line and I haven't had any of your problems. How can you think that you are a failure tough? Look at what you have been, and are going, through. You are truly amazing, to keep on your track to have the body you want, and deserve, despite all the set backs. As you say the fact that it was diagnosed so quickly is the only piece of positivity in all this. You will get there, but feeling so miserable must be normal, considering how bad you must feel. You will get support on here and we are all here for you. Just keep telling us how you feel and we will try to help in any way we can. I think feeling angry and resentful is part of it. It is easy for other people to say the wrong thing to me and I am normally a calm person. I haven't had anyone saying that it is easy option, I don't think that they would live to see another day if they did! However just concentrating on how much I have lost when there is a major bereavement process going on here is not good either. Making assumptions about how I might feel and assuming that everything must be fine if I am not having post op recovery problems are other annoying things. Feeling irritable and angry must be par for the course then, so that is something else that must be normal for us. I suppose I do feel that I was eating as healthily as possible and was already doing all the right things and denying myself things I like, and it just isn't fair that I have had to put myself through this too. So nobody else has the right to think this must be a good thing and they wouldn't find it too difficult. They should try it themselves! food might have been a friend, but it was a toxic friend. Like all toxic friends it gave us something that we thought that we needed, but it wasn't wanting our best interests and was making us feel worse about ourselves as a result of it being our friend. So it was no friend at all really. However, it was a highly sociable thing to know and it allowed us to be sociable with others and to fit in with what other people are doing and was fun and entertaining. We miss what it enabled us to do, but not how it made us feel. We are now starting to make new friends, who perhaps are not quite so much fun, but they allow us to be sociable too. They are things like gluten free multigrain crackers, and they are our friends and nobody else's. Other people have other friends, but these are the only friends that we can go out with so it really isn't fair when people want to go out with them too. No wonder we are angry, why can't people just let us have our own friends at least, because we can't mix with old friends who were not really friends at all. These friends will make us enjoy life more and will maybe become better friends over time, but we still miss our old friends. That is my interpretation at least! So we have a right to miss our old friends who were different types of food, and want to be back out with them. We also have a right to feel angry and resentful about people who mix with these old friends, and try to take our new ones.. However, toxic friends are not good and they lower our self esteem and confidence and make us less than we could be, we don't need them but we need to adapt to life without them. It is all a bit of a bereavement process - disbelief, denial, anger, resentment and finally acceptance. We will get there, we have new friends in food, but more importantly we also have other new friends, who are actual people, who understand how we feel and help us through bad days. A lot of them are on here, on this forum, and we certainly couldn't do without them. We can get through this together, being honest about how we feel stops us feeling lonely and isolated. Long may this honesty continue and we will then be able to support each other. Thinking of you sokoyoko, I hope you feel a little stronger every day. Carry on getting better Dreaming. Take care Claire

Hi, It is great to see Julie on here, because I find it such a supportive forum, and we all need that. That "buyer's remorse" feeling seems to be very common, as does trying to cope with how to eat/drink. I don't actually regret my decision but I do feel that I have done something terrible to my body which will always have a negative impact on me and my health, as well as a positive impact. It is a lot to get your head around. I do like your phrase "you got this", we don't really use it over here but it really says it all. We have all got this, we are strong people who can cope with this, we know what we are doing and why we are doing it. Things just don't always go to plan every day. I am trying to concentrate on the small daily successes in eating and the positives, whether it is weight loss or other things. They all mount up. I am 5 weeks post op on Tuesday and really there is no comparison with how I was 1 week ago, let alone 2 weeks ago. Last night I even had a 3 course meal!!!! Well it was a long meal while we were waiting to go to the theatre but I did manage 3 things. I tried a bite of bruscetta which didn't go down, I think because it had some grated apple on it, so I had half a breadstick dippped in guacamole instead so that was my starter. Then I had a small amount of lasagne which was new and then some pieces of melon. So 3 courses! I was really pleased. My small successes are: small amounts of fruit - plum, grapes, melon, raspberries, strawberries, banana, pineapple - and avocado pasta - macaroni, tagliatelle, lasagne crispbreads with philly cheeese They all feel great and so normal. That is such a relief. So think ahead a few weeks Dreamingbig and you will be able to have more variety, maybe not the things you are craving at the moment, but anything that feels as if it is progress is wonderful. Also to get your social life back for me was a really big thing. So today I am celebrating and if we listen to our bodies we can gradually creep up on this thing that we have all done. We will get there together, we have got this, it just doesn't always feel like that every day, but the trend is that we are all getting better. Take care Claire