catwoman7

stalls are a normal part of weight loss. I'd just stick to your surgeon's plan. The stall will eventually break and you'll start losing again.

Water retention - constipation - hormones - all of those would do it.

watch out with the drinking. Not only can you sabotage your weight loss, transfer addiction is REAL. Alcohol tastes way better to me now that it did before surgery - so I avoid it like the plague. The last thing I need is an alcohol problem...

M1 -16.4 M2 -11 (-27.4 total) M3 -12.4 (-39.8 total) M4 -12.2 (-52 total) M5 -11.8 (-63.8 total) M6 -11.2 (-75 total)

I'm over four years out and still take a capful of Miralax every morning. If it gets to be three or four days without "going", then I take MOM. That probably happens once or twice a month these days...

I was cleared for everything except for weights at four weeks out. (I think I had to wait until eight weeks out to do weights). So for that first month, I just walked.

I had glue, not tape. It took about four weeks before the last of the glue flaked off. I had surgical tape with my plastic surgery, though. I think it came off (on its own) at around three weeks out.

I lost 16 lbs the first month - most of that the first two weeks. Then I had the infamous three-week stall - after that broke, I started losing again, but it was a lot slower than the first couple of weeks.

I had those in the hospital, but I don't think I had to do them at home. As I recall, those don't really hurt that much, though. The needles are pretty short.

No brainer. RNY. I've seen WAY too many revisions from sleeve to RNY because of worsening GERD. Yes of course there's a chance that that wouldn't happen to you, but the risk is real. Go with RNY.

30 is also rare among those of us "normal" bariatric patients. It happens, but it's the exception rather than the rule. You see that more among the "600 lb Life" crowd, since they're starting at a much higher BMI than most of us are. You are doing fine!!

I lost 16 lbs the first month - and I ended up losing ALL of my excess weight - over 200 lbs. People lose at all different rates for all different reasons - most of which you have no control over. The one thing you DO have control over is whether or not you stick to your program. If you stick to your program, the weight WILL come off, whether fast or slow. And to be honest, since the average weight loss for us "non-600-lb life people" seems to be in the 15-25 lb range the first month, you're going to end up in that range. So...you're normal!

PPI

we were told not to count calories at first - just focus on protein and fluids. It'll probably be awhile before you'll be at risk for eating too many calories. I don't think I was ever given a calorie range, but after the first few months I tried to stay in the 600-800 range, and after a year out I was around 1000=1200. I stayed there until maintenance when I had to experiment to find my "maintenance range".

check with "The World According to Eggface" (blog) - she has a lot of recipes for every stage

ranitidine (Zantac) is actually an H2 blocker rather than a PPI - and a lot of people got moved over to them when all the bad press started coming out a couple of years ago about PPIs. They say Tagamet - another H2 blocker - is still OK, so you could ask about that. But I don't know what on earth people are supposed to do now...

yes a lot of people seem to be pretty carb-sensitive. I'm pretty sure I'm not - but I know a lot of people on here *are*.

I think people are more likely to eat those kinds of things (or a limited amount, anyway) once they hit maintenance. Or at least I hope so. I didn't touch anything like that while I was in weight loss mode - and I don't eat much of it now that I'm in maintenance (actually, just bread - occasionally. I still don't/won't eat pasta)

people's tastes are so different that you're bound to get a bunch of different recommendations. I got a bunch of individual packets to try to see what I liked - cheaper than buying those big two-pound tubs and discovering you hate it after plunking down $30+ for the tub. that said, my personal favorites were Unjury and Syntrax powders. But again, you're going to get a lot of different answers...

are you on a PPI, such as omeprazole (Prilosec)? A lot of surgeons have their patients take it for the first six months or so post-surgery.

oh yea - pineapple is pretty acidic. I couldn't eat much of it even BEFORE surgery...

I believe stenosis and stricture are the same thing. I haven't heard that they can heal themselves - they usually keep getting worse until they're stretched, but of course your surgeon would know way more than I do...

if you're sure you're eating slowly enough and this keeps up, call your surgeon again. It doesn't say when you had surgery, but strictures are not uncommon when you're 1-3 months post-op (they're pretty rare after the three month mark).

I had two - first one was a lower body lift. I think that one was about four hours. The second was an arm lift and a breast lift - he also made incisions down each side from my arm pit past my waist (to get rid of "side boob" and pull off some of the excess skin that was under my rib cage that he was unable to reach during the LBL). That surgery was six hours long.

no - RNY is different. It's a gastric (i.e., stomach) bypass - although a small part of the small intestine is bypassed with the RNY, too. The DS has a sleeve stomach + most of the small intestine bypassed. converting from VSG (sleeve) to DS is very straightforward. VSG is essentially phase 1 of the DS - so you already have that. They'd just add the intestinal bypass part of it (phase 2) to do your DS. conversion from RNY to DS is very complicated. They have to take down the RNY, then do a sleeve stomach, and then do the intestinal bypass. Not many surgeons do this surgery.