OutsideMatchInside

I keep my food really simple. As a single person that is easier for me and I don't get stuck with leftovers. I just eat dense protein. What I do focus on is varying the spices I use with my dense protein to vary the taste.

Well this is weird to me, since I lost most of my weight eating Keto, high fat, and basically no carbs. Your body needs good fats, you have no biological need for carbs. If you are a female and you want young healthy looking skin, you need fat in your diet. There is a reason I look 10 to 12 years younger than I am. FAT. So you basically eat just pure protein each day? What are your macros like, on a normal day? She talks a lot about diet here, don't be mislead by the title.

Over 1.5 years out and I have never had rice since surgery. It has no nutritional benefits to me, at all. Why would anyone even want to eat rice post-op? Just buy rice cauliflower or make your own. Almost no calories and it won't ruin your plan.

If you aren't getting the results you want, WEIGH, not measure everything. Measuring is inaccurate. I weigh everything, including condiments. If I eat a piece of meat with a bone, I weigh it with the bone and I weigh the bone afterward and subtract the weight. Use an app. Track everything, every single thing. You are over/underestimating something. At 5 months you should still be losing at a pretty good pace. In fact months 4-6 are usually some of the highest loss months. So you need to evaluate what you are doing wrong. Have you talked to your team? What was your starting BMI?

No but I don't really eat off plan often. I'm almost 2 years out also. Honestly my digestive system and body function exactly the same, the only difference is my stomach is small. No changes to tastes, no food allergies, same alcohol tolerance, etc.

Too much exercise, not enough calories to support that level of activity. How many carbs? Do you weigh everything you eat? Do you track in an app? I'd also raise to the protein to over 100. 1 gram for each pound of lean mass is a good goal.

My tastes aren't different and nothing affects me differently, coffee or alcohol. Even though I rarely drink alcohol, I am not a light weight, my tolerance is still very high.

I get my B-12 from Sam's club but my multivitamin needs to be high quality and the brand I like isn't sold at big box stores.

I'm going to offer different advice. If you are going to snack, snack on Protein. Protein Bars (they make chocolate), Quest protein chips, pork rinds, Jerky, etc. Most of us need to eat lots of "meals" to get our protein in. You just need to make sure that you are eating things that work with you, no against you. Get protein replacements for your favorite Snacks. Going on a liquid diet that far out from surgery is going to be useless. You will be starving. If you feel you need to do something drastic to break bad habits, then eat dense protein. Steak, pork chops, chicken breasts, ONLY. Just dense protein. You will feel your restriction and be satisfied for a long time with dense protein. Also Track all of your food and weigh it. I have a portable scale I use at work.

@Proud2BeMe Nice to see you posting again! I'm glad you worked out your alcohol issues, we were worried. I think that those of us that were super morbidly obese and lose to normal or close to normal size really face special issues. Most of the people that post here now are not and have not been super morbidly obese They start in the 200s if that. So their opinions to me don't carry that much weight (ha!) There are very few people that are in the situation that people like you and I are in. People can't and don't understand. It is a really huge mental trip, and most people will never experience it. I would normally say seek counseling but I am going to be honest, it isn't going to be very useful. Not many of them are going to have experience with what you are going through. You have to really just work through your feelings and emotions in your own way on your own path. I would rather see you abusing carbs than alcohol, but the fact you feel the need to go overboard on anything is an issue. I think time to adjust to yourself is the best and only realistic solution. I eat keto/low carb (less than 25G per day) because it keeps me upbeat and my moods balanced. I enjoy it and it is healthy. You should eat in a manner that makes you feel good and is healthy for you. You probably just lost weight because you upped your calories, not the carbs. So just eat more protein. I'm going to PM you.

I would lower carbs, up Protein, and up your calories. 1200 calories of pure protein for a week

I lost 7lbs. Liquid diet was a complete waste of time for weight loss.

A lot of people flat out had bad nutritional advice or ignored the advice given to them. The people that maintain easily long termine, raise their calories and get them to a normal level 1200 or above asap. Keeping your calories at 8000 to 1000 for a year pretty much guarantees you are going to ruin your metabolism. The best way not to gain post op is to eat dense protein first and not to introduce carbs.

The 5 day pouch test is basically a fad diet and people push it all the time. If people just ate dense Protein first, they could avoid all these issues.

They remove the Gherlin by removing most of the stomach, that is what the surgery is. And the Gherlin part only lasts for so long, your levels go back up eventually, not to what they were pre-op but they go up. By not having the full procedure, you are basically handicapping yourself. It is like buying 3 tires for a car. It is pointless. A well formed sleeve, once you heal has more capacity, eventually for some people up to 2 cups. If you have even less removed than other people you are going to end up with almost a full sized stomach in the end. You will just stretch the stretchy part out with over eating. With a sleeve you don't have that stretchy part left at all, that is how the restriction works. If your biggest concern is being able to eat large meals post-op, then surgery isn't a good option for you. You aren't in the right mental place for it. You should be more concerned about your health than if you can eat a lot on family holidays. Think about what really matters to you long term.

That would be pointless. That still leave most of the stretchy part of the stomach. You can still enjoy family meals. You can only eat small amounts for a short time. I'm a year and a half out. I eat with people and no one can tell I had surgery. No I am not downing a 12 ounce steak but I can make a decent dent in my plate. Also as time goes on you learn what you can eat more of. The amount of time you can only eat a few ounces of food is just a few months. You can eat more at 3, 6, 9, 12, and onward.

There are a lot of people that post these great loses on forums but they don't post how they are getting them. There is a poster, that used to post here, I haven't seen her in while. Yeah she lost a ton of weight in very beginning but she did because she was not getting any protein in. She was living off like water and gatorade. She was posting all the time how she was starving. Then 6 months later she was posting about her great loses and her new life, she she left out the part where she didn't have any nutrition the first 6 weeks. People that were new were patting her on the back and congratulating her on her great loss, not knowing how she got there. Follow your program and you will lose. You are not going to lose as fast as you did, when you were 400 lbs. I lost my first 100 lbs very fast. That last 100 is much slower but still fast compared to people who have not had surgery. This is a life long thing. Not a sprint. Keep your eyes on the long term goals, which is good health, not just dropping weight as fast as possible.

Rebecca I think you quoted the wrong person.

This is some of the worst post op nutritional advice I have seen in print and they had the nerve to put it in a table. This plan is guaranteed to ruin your metabolism and have you on starvation rations for the rest of your life. I don't even understand that first week information. I had more than 200 calories in the hospital before they would discharge me. I had a Protein shake, broth and Jello within 24 hours of my surgery. I had 3 Protein shakes a day for the first week, hitting 90 grams of protein a day. I'm 19 months out and I eat about 1500 calories a day and I am still losing. I never or very rarely go over 25g of carbs a day. And I'm not active beyond walking. OP keep your carbs under 25 and increase your protein to 100. How are you hitting 40 carbs anyway on those calories?

If you aren't sure then you shouldn't have surgery. You should have a clear idea that surgery is for you, it is your best option and it is going to save your life. Knowing that surgery is your best and only option makes getting through the hard times easier. It makes resisting food easier. You will have fewer regrets in the long run. You posted you are emotionally attached to food, you need to work that out before surgery or once you can't self medicate/comfort with food you will be miserable. It is like going cold turkey off heroin. You can't self soothe with food post-op at least not immediately and if you are not in a good mental space with food you will be tempted to advance your food stages and put yourself in danger or you will just be miserable and full of regret.

How many calories are you eating? I eat 4 to 6 times a day to meet my Protein goals. I had to especially early on when I did not have a lot of capacity. I know a lot of doctors say 3 meals a day and no Snacks but that seems completely unrealistic for WLS patients. There is no way to meet your protein goals on 3 meals a day with real food. I am 19 months post-op and I can't meet my protein goals on 3 meals a day (granted my protein goal is higher than most people, but I would still struggle to hit 60 on 3 meals a day). How many grams of protein are you able to get in like that I doubt you are getting the bare minimum of 60? You are basically starving, no wonder you are having head hunger cravings. I would add to additional meals of pure dense protein. Crackers and hummus are counter productive to your weight loss goals.

What is your BMI before plastics?

Only if you have really bad rashes and infections and even that is going to vary. And all they will do it chop the skin off, it won't be plastic surgery.

Because I wear them to workout/walk and I take them off, I don't wear them all day. I can't workout in a skirt, I'm not Amish (not that there is anything wrong with being Amish). Once I lost so much weight, I have to wear high compression leggings to hold my loose skin when I'm active. So like I said, the only pants I would have bought the whole time were compression leggings for working out. Buying jeans when you are losing weight rapidly is like setting money on fire.

What do you need to tell them? You aren't going to come back looking different. You don't have surgery and drop 100 pounds over night. They are all going to see you eating less and losing weight. you don't need to explain anything.