JamieLogical

I would be able to eat salad? Like chicken salad? An I'm suppose to stay away from nuts A month out I was allowed chicken salad and tuna salad. I was not allowed to eat salad like a garden salad. No raw veggies that early.

I never had a FitBit before. I had a Bodybugg years ago and a Body Media Core more recently. Neither of those tracked heart rate. The were straps that you wore on your upper arm and they tracked skin temperature, movement, and skin conductivity. I've also worn a chest strap heart rate monitor for most of my cardio through the years.

Good point. At a month out I was on soft foods. So the hard boiled egg or yogurt would work, but not the pepperoni & cheese cup I mentioned. Another thing to check might be if they have Soups or chili. Our food court always has two soups of the day available.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about surgery and the post-sleeve life. I'm going on 19 months post-op, so not a true "veteran" yet, but I have experienced all of the adjustments that living with the sleeve requires and I consider myself to be very successful so far!

Awesome!

Glad it's going well so far! Make sure you don't keep your calories TOO low. Especially if you're now cleared for exercise. You will need to increase your calories as you increase you exercise in order for your metabolism to not slow way down.

I work at a college and our little food court are has pepperoni & cheese cups, hard boiled eggs, and yogurt. You should look for those kinds of things.

I guess there are worse cravings to give in to! I wonder if it's the sodium? I miss pickles and pickled things.... I can't do any uncooked vegetables anymore. They make me SUPER burpy. Even pickled things.

Always a HUGE deal! Congrats!

Awesome progress so far! Stick to your program and I am sure you will continue to see good results. Just brace yourself for the inevitable stalls and slow downs. They happen to the best of us, but if you hang in there, they will pass.

That and "will I ever feel normal again" were the two questions I was CONSTANTLY asking in those early days post-op. I promise, it gets MUCH better!

I wouldn't. I'm not even the stickler for processed foods that a lot of people are and I still wouldn't eat them. The crackers would be a big no-no and the amount of preservatives and sodium? Yuck! I eat cheese and nuts for lunch almost every day now (I'm in maintenance, wouldn't recommend in weight loss phase because of the high calories). But the cheese I eat is real cheese. I just looked up the nutritional info and they only have 11 grams of Protein. I aim for 16-20 each meal to meat my daily protein target of 100 grams.

First of all, I want to say you shouldn't get down on yourself for deciding not to have the surgery and thinking you could do it on your own. You DID do it on your own. Unfortunately, losing weight, both pre and post-op is the easy part! As you have found, it's maintaining the weight loss that's the real challenge. I like to think of my sleeve as "Weight Maintenance Surgery" instead of "Weight Loss Surgery". I was a pro at losing weight. I did it MANY times over the years. Keeping it off was always where I failed. The good news is, maintaining my weight post-sleeve has been a whole different experience. I reached my goal weight right around the one year post-op mark and have been maintaining below for almost 7 months now. That is much longer than I've ever maintained any weight loss in the past. There are a few things that make maintaining post-WLS different than maintaining after a "diet". First of all, you are never "done" with your sleeve. When losing weight through a "diet" you always have this goal weight in mind and can't wait to reach that goal and be "done". The problem is, as soon as you are "done" you start slacking on the exercise and go back to eating crap and the weight starts to pile back on. But with the sleeve, it's always there, restricting your intake. You are never "done" with it. The rules about putting Protein first, taking your Vitamins, drinking your Water, not eating and drinking at the same time, not grazing.... all of those things are truly lifetime commitments that you can't just revert away from once you reach your goal weight. In the vein of your sleeve always being there, another thing that would always happen in the past was something would happen in my life to derail my weight loss or maintenance. An injury, an illness, moving, starting a new job, etc. Anything that threw me out of my routine would send me into a spiral where I would regain weight. Now, my sleeve is there through all of that stuff. I can't just stop using my sleeve or ignore my sleeve when life happens. For example, I had a CRAZY summer/early fall. My sister and her 4 kids moved in with us when she split up with her husband. Meanwhile we decided to sell our house when we looked at a new one and decided we wanted to buy it. Well, we hadn't been planning to sell our house for a few more years, so it was a mad scramble to do a ton of home improvement projects we'd put off, get the house ready to show, show the house, and sell the house. Then we had all the stress of buying the new house and moving as well. It was complete madness. I went almost a full 5 months without a regular exercise routine and I had insane amounts of stress to deal with on almost a daily basis. I managed to maintain my weight loss for that full 5 months! Yes I was stressed. Yes I was out of my routine. But my sleeve was still there for me every single day, every single meal, and every single snack. Do I still have to WORK to maintain my weight? Of course! I'm training for a half marathon, so I am exercising every single day now. I still consciously think about everything I eat and make sure I reach my protein goal of 100 grams every day. I still make sure I have water with me at all times. I still eat on a schedule to avoid grazing. I still make an effort to avoid slider foods. I still take all my vitamins every day. I still don't eat and drink at the same time. I still plan ahead to make sure I have access to appropriate foods if I'm going to be traveling or doing things outside my daily routine. So there is a lot of effort to be made and work to be done, but it comes as second nature after 19 months.

I'm really shocked they have you on ibuprofen, especially so soon post-op. Keep up with your sipping. I know it's hard. I found it a little easier if I marched in place while sipping. And as for being tired and napping a lot, that's perfectly normal. Just make sure you get up and move around every hour or two, if even for just a couple of minutes.

That is so cool! I work at a college too and I often wish I had a public platform to share my story here at the school. I see so many students, faculty, and staff that might benefit.

I had pre-ordered a FitBit Blaze back in February and received it on February 26th. Since then I have been wearing it 24/7, except in the shower or bath. I have also been tracking all of my food intake on the FitBit web site and so far I am happy to report that it appears to be pretty accurately monitoring my heart rate and calculating my calorie burn. The first week or so, when I worked out, I wore my old chest strap heart rate monitor as well as the FitBit, so I could compare the two. The heart rate readings on both seemed to match up pretty well. The only thing I noticed was that toward the end of my long runs for my half marathon training (past 6 miles or so), the FitBit seemed to read my heart rate lower than my chest strap. My theory is this had to do with fluids pooling in my extremities making it harder to get an accurate reading through my wrist. The major discrepancy was that my HRM calculated a much lower calorie burn for my workouts than my FitBit. But I have come to believe my FitBit is the more accurate of the two. Even though my HRM was programmed, with my gender, height, and weight, I think the algorithms it used to calculate calorie burn were just off. FitBit has so many users and such a large market share, I am inclined to believe they have been able to hone their algorithms over recent years to be more accurate. Over the 19 days that I have been wearing my FitBit, I have averaged a caloric intake of 2010 calories a day and an average calorie burn of 2344. I'm not actually trying to lose weight right now, but with my half marathon training, I have found it challenging to eat back all the calories I'm burning. So I have had a total deficit of 6338 calories over the last 19 days. That comes out to a loss of about 1.8 pounds and that has been pretty much exactly what I've seen on the scale. So, overall, I've found that both the heart rate reading and the calorie burn calculation seem to be pretty accurate. I'm going to continue tracking my food a bit longer just to get a bit more data, but ultimately I will be happy to stop tracking my food, because it's kind of a pain! I think I would recommend the Blaze to anyone who is looking for a fitness tracker that is also a serviceable watch. My main complaint about the watch functionality is the limited number of clock faces available (only 4 right now). I am also a little put off by how expensive alternative bands are, but there seem to be some 3rd party replacement bands coming on the market now, so that might not be a problem much longer. Hope this helps some people who might be interested!

What? I have literally been on these forums for 2 years and spent hundreds of hours researching WLS and I have never heard any of this nonsense. In my personal experience, in my 18 months post-op, I haven't been sick any more frequently or severely than I was pre-op.

Doesn't sound like bragging to me! You have done fantastic! I think it really helps for the pre-op and immediately post-op folks to see these sorts of posts. Shows them that it will all be worth it in the end, but also shows that it takes work and dedication to be successful with WLS.

I'm sorry that you had negative experiences with your after-care in Mexico. I hate that certain surgeons and programs give Mexican surgery a bad rep. Definitely one of the reasons to fully research your surgeon and the surgical center prior to surgery. I have been very fortunate to have had excellent post-op care in Mexico after both of my surgeries there (plastics in 2011 and VSG in 2014). Hopefully your post will serve to better inform future potential patients so they can make the best decision for themselves.

Oh! @@Spiceyfrog reminded me that it's a good idea to stock up on loose button up shirts. Much easier for dressing than anything you have to pull over your head!

Definitely sounds like you know what you need to do, based on your original post. Going back to protein shakes alone isn't going to solve anything. You need to get back to putting protein first, taking your vitamins, not grazing, not drinking your calories, not eating and drinking at the same time, pre-measuring your food, tracking your food, and exercising. Switching back to shakes, might be a good "jump start" but it won't change all of those other behaviors long term.

Call your surgeon. We aren't doctors.

How many calories are you getting. If you are exercising intensely, you may not be getting enough fuel for your body and it may be clinging to every pound to survive. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, when you increase your workouts, you need to increase your calorie intake as well. Otherwise your metabolism will just take a nose-dive.

@@MrsKarenC2008 I'm just paying forward all the help I received on this site back when I was a newbie.

The program existed LONG before there was an app. I remember doing it years ago and I wrote the "walk" and "run" times on a post-it note each week and stuck it to my treadmill console. That would have been back in 2009 or so? Some enterprising people have turned it into an app now so you get video and audio queues from your phone for when to walk and when to run. But as you can probably tell just by looking at it, the web site has been up since before smart phones existed: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml