OutsideMatchInside

@@Shemekasr Never tried them I don't like Beans. I ate soft baked Swai fish when I was on soft foods.

@@Shemekasr Tuna can be tough and dry. You want to eat something really moist at first and take a bite, wait, a couple minutes, take another bite. You are still very swollen from surgery.

@@Heidijenn If you are stressed out and miserable because you are scared, you are going to have a poor outcome. You have to mentally be in the right place. Just because you aren't in that place right now, doesn't mean you won't be later on, maybe in a few months. I had surgery because I was having mounting health issues and I felt in the end I had nothing to lose because my quality of life was starting to tank. When you get to that point, surgery looks like the best option.

@@lovelymilena Since I lived alone I stocked up thinking I might not be able to get out for a while, and my recovery was nothing like that. It doesn't hurt to have some stuff in the house, but just get them when you do pre-op and don't get too much.

I could have salad at 6 weeks. How long are you supposed to wait?

I have all the sugar free Jello I stocked up on too. I have had one sitting on the counter meaning to make it for like 3 weeks. I thought I would use sugar free jello to sooth sugar or sweets cravings but early on. I needed all my eating time and stomach space for getting Protein in. Jello was a waste of time. Now, protein is still my priority, and there are so many things to eat with higher protein content than jello I still don't eat it. GasX strips are useless. The kind of gas you get pains from post op are the gas they use to inflate your abdomen, gas X strips don't help with that. And even with regular gas, GasX strips are still useless, all they do is make you pass gas, faster, which is pointless imo. Good broth comes in those cartons and they don't have the longest shelf life, and the higher the quality of the broth the shorter the shelf life. Just buy them when you are on your pre-op diet, its pointless to buy them months before surgery. The ones I had from whole foods expired before I could use them all. Plus unless there is some sort of catastrophe, you are going to up and around and out and about. I went to the store on like day 3 after I got my nails done, and I live alone and had no one to help take care of me post op. I was fine to shop etc, and it was like 105 degrees here in July.

@@NatashaSaysRawr I don't look for lactose free stuff, I don't need it. If that is the case, just make your own ice cream with almond milk and coconut cream.

@@lovelymilena Nothing. It is not worth it to stock up, because you have no idea what things will be like after surgery. You don't know what you will like and not like and what you will tolerate. A few weeks ago I threw out the Protein powder I bought the first month of my surgery, and I am almost a year out.

Before pictures help me so much, I took pictures every even fat, so I have lots of pictures to look at it. It helps me on days that I feel like ugh, not losing fast enough. I can see where I came from.

@@NatashaSaysRawr http://www.halotop.com/ I have 35 g of this at a time, which is about 1/2 a serving. I measure my serving, and put the rest in the freeze. I mean even if you snarfed the whole pint the calories and Protein are better than a lot of things WLS patients eat. It can be hard to find though, you need a high end grocery store. And it is $5.49-5.99 a pint. A pint lasts me 2 weeks to a month. If ice cream is your weakness then don't try this, it tastes just like ice cream. I don't really like ice cream, and I use use this to add some moisture to my protein brownies some of the time. The lemon, strawberry, and vanilla are delicious.

Yeah I never felt fat, it was only when I looked at myself that I realized my size, kinda. LOL Now I look like how I feel. And I can physically do all the things I wanted to do before but were too hard wen I was heavier. I have a hard time gauging my size compared to other people. Mainly because of how I am shaped now. Even though I still have some gut, I am very curvy because my boobs are huge, and my waist is small. Looking at me dead on I look small, but I my side view is different. Plus my fat is all squishy, so if I wear shapewear I can drop at least a size. At least I don't feel fat like a lot a people do even after they lost weight, because I never felt fat when I should have. It is a crazy head trip.

238 Thanks

The further out you get, the less drastic it seems. You are swollen and healing so it seems drastic. At almost a year, I feel totally like a normal person, I just eat less.

Thanks. The head hunger thing makes sense. Makes me think of I could have controlled that I the first place I wouldn't have needed surgery. Sent from my LGLS991 using the BariatricPal App The difference is, after surgery there is a disconnect between your brain and your stomach. Like even though you may be mentally obsessing about food, physically your body doesn't respond. Surgery makes it easier to resist, if you work with it. You can ignore it and cave, but if you let it work for you, it works.

@@amandaelder4 I have lost the majority of my weight in my lower body. To the point it has changed my body composition, so yes you can lose a lot of weight off your legs. The weight I have left is in my arms, stomach and I have a little back fat left.

@@tryingtobemybest The first 6 months I followed doctors instructions and no eating and drinking. I try to stop drinking at least 20 minutes before eating, and not start for another 30-45 minutes. Depending on what I am eating I might have a few sips with what I am eating, especially if it is a dry Protein. It is something I am still learning. You have to really know yourself and your body because you can easily put yourself in the position of being overly full which is painful.

@@tryingtobemybest This is how it went for me. eggs were terrible. Eggs were my first soft food and they hurt like hell. They are the one thing that makes me sick or feel too full. Unless they are poached or fried. Scrambled is a disaster. so I avoid eggs for the most part. At 3 months I could eat a lot easier. I actually at got better 6 weeks too, but at 3 months it gets a lot easier. At 6 months I was healed and it was almost like a switch flipped. I got to restaurants and get what I want, but what I want has changed. What I can eat and the amounts depends on the moisture content and density of the food. I split appetizers but I might only have 1/4 to 1/3 of an appetizer that is Protein. I will order a regular entree possibly and eat the protein, guessing at the weight. I either give the rest of my food to the person I am with or I leave it. I can eat enough that it is enjoyable. I also don't eat at family, or casual restaurants. The portions and the amount of time between courses at a nicer restaurant are more friendly to eating small portions. Yes it gets better. Use the time when food is uncomfortable and hunger doesn't exist to develop good habits and learn to resist head hunger, because once that fear and feeling of extreme tightness from swelling goes away you can eat a lot more, and graze away your progress. So enjoy this time and maximize the benefits.

I would be in so much pain if I drink while eating. It makes it way too easy to over fill the stomach to the point of pain. the few times I have had something to drink too close after eating have been horrible.

@@Diana_in_Philly I had a FitCrunch bar over the holiday weekend. They are delicious, but 380 calories is almost 8 ounces of steak. That is the same calorie count as most of the sweets at Starbucks. It is just too many calories for me, but yeah totally delicious. If I was a body builder and needed calorie excess for muscle gain, I would be all over them. The FitElite bars are just kind of meh. I'm glad I tried them both this week so I can quit looking to them. They are waaaaaay over hyped.

@@lsubabe33 you can't expect to lose weight drinking sugar Water. Not only that, drinking sweet tea will just fuel your appetite and it will make things without sugar taste worse than they really do. You are ruining your new palette. Have you tried adding these to your water? They don't have that chemical taste http://www.shopsweetleaf.com/stevia-water-enhancers/

Even at a month out, it is unlike those nerves have reconnected at the stomach. As @@judanna77 asked, are you taking a PPI? Acid can feel like hunger. Are you hungry for anything or just one thing, like a cheeseburger? If you are hungry for just one thing, that is head hunger not real hunger. Also wanting to eat and needing to eat are 2 different things.

I have barely been losing weight the past 6 weeks or so. Partially because I have a period every 2 weeks now, and its summer and I am retaining Water. I am however smaller, all the time. Measure yourself every week, it helps when the scale isn't moving. Also I think a lot of my freak out about my weight is because everyone says you lose the most in the first year, my year is almost up and I am 30 pounds heavier than I wanted to be at this point. I am trying not to focus on that so much, because I am the size in clothes I thought I would be at this point, which means in the end, I am probably going to end up smaller than I ever thought. Think positive, being stressed only retains weight.

Do not buy anything. There are always sales, seriously, always. You might skip sizes. I went from 30/28- to 24, then I was a 20 for like 2 weeks, then an 18. Weight loss isn't a natural stair step progression. If you have to buy anything get dresses. Pants look the worst after weight loss, tops, dress skirts, are more forgiving. A saggy ass is not.

I track my food with an app. I find comparing macros of items important because it keeps me mindful of what I am eating it helps me make better choices. I think of calories more as a cost of an item, and it helps me evaluate its worth. Like a huge salad in the afternoon is 20 calories. An extra tablespoon of half and half is 20 calories. I get more bang for my buck with the salad, but some of the time I am low on fat, so I need the extra tablespoon of half and half. Not being mindful of what I was eating and not tracking my macros is what got me in this situation to begin with. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. Eventually I probably won't even care about calories, because how I eat I am low on calories all the time, but also I have to watch to make sure I get enough calories and Protein in. I have a lot of muscle and I love it and don't want to lose it.

Mentally you might feel like you are starving, but you won't feel that way physically. The best advice I can give you is learn to deal with head hunger and find a way to ignore or cope with it that doesn't involve caving into it. It is easier to learn this skill in the first 3 months than it is later on. People that don't learn this struggle and many fail. If you are staving for one thing or one type of thing, that isn't hunger, that is head hunger. If you are hungry and broth sounds delicious, then you are really hungry. If you are hungry and the only thing that will satisfy you is something off plan, you aren't really hungry. I deal with head hunger by focusing on my end goal and then distracting myself with walking and exercise. Even just jumping jacks. Learning to make head hunger your bitch, and learn it fast.