midorigal

Thank you @@Dub! I happen to have some for my clear liquid diet. Will start drinking!

I had the sleeve and I can pretty much eat anything I want. There are things I choose to stay away from because they are trigger foods. I don't eat bread much because it fills me up so quickly and then I am hungry again in an hour. It's just not worth it. I do eat in moderation. My NUT taught us to always eat your Protein source first. Well, I hit a 5 week long stall so I met with her again. She told me I needed to add some carbs! She actually told me to eat a potato. I almost fell in the floor. I added some carbs in and low and behold I started losing weight again. Now, if I get a baked potato I have maybe 3 or 4 bites with spray butter only. I used to be a big Pasta fan. Well, Pasta is not all that great for you. Now I use zucchini noodles and it is amazing! You adapt. On my birthday, I had a cupcake from the bakery. It took both my husband and I 3 nights to finish one cupcake between us, but I ate it. I have 1/2 cup homemade ice cream on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. I don't feel guilty for it either. Life is about balance. You cannot out exercise a horrible diet. You just can't. I stay away from things like Cheez Its because I love them, but I will eat them until I am sick. I pre-portion my foods so I know what I am getting.

I've heard the same thing about marathoners ????

This calls for a joke to lighten the mood:
How do you know someone is vegan?
Don't worry, they'll f*cking tell you.

Done. I've added it to my signature.

I am not persuaded that the comments we see here about "When can I eat pizza again?" are really due to lack of education or knowledge. Consider this ....
This morning I spent several hours in hospital waiting rooms with a family member who's undergoing medical tests. We were there during the morning shift change, and the halls were full of nurses, doctors, and other medicos, arriving and leaving.
I started categorizing them as "normal weight" vs. "obviously overweight or obese." An hour of this impromptu survey returned these results: The ratio of "overweight or obese" to "normal weight" medical personnel was (wait for it) ... 2 to 1. That's 67% overweight or obese folks -- the exact proportion of US adults who are overweight or obese.
But if anyone should know how to eat / exercise for good health we'd expect medical professionals to be well educated on this front. And they probably are. But their education and knowledge hasn't fixed their weight problems any better than it fixed mine prior to WLS.
I don't assume that many WLS practices leave their patients totally ignorant of what to do post-op or long-term. Even most low-cost tourism WLS practices that offer no or minimal after-care provide their patients with post-op handouts and some general counseling about what to eat long-term. The knowledge is there for the reading.
Yet many WLS patients (no matter where they had surgery or how much they spent for it) seem helpless or unwilling to change the lifestyles that made them obese.
Contemporary US culture is greatly to blame, thanks to the influence of fast food, sedentary lifestyles, a lifetime of terrible habits, and the influence of friends, work colleagues, and family members who are twice as likely to be fat as slim. The pressure from peers and the environmental is horrific, and food that's terrible for us is offered daily as "treats."
In the face of so much temptation it's easy to backslide. Sometimes we feel fury at the food gauntlet we have to run. But what's really hard to create is a serene mental space where we feel safe to make on a regular basis the healthy decisions we want to make.
WLS procedures provides us with significant metabolic benefits: restriction of a smaller stomach or pouch; the cessation of ghrelin-induced hunger urges (with the sleeve); malabsorption (of the bypass and some other WLS procedures); and a 12-18 month window when our WLS surgeries make it easy for us to eat less, eat healthier, and build healthy new habits. Every WLS patient is given these early advantages to reset their lives, whether they take advantage of them or not.
But then weight loss ends and maintenance arrives -- along with diet boredom, holidays, stresses of daily living, health problems (some obesity-related, some not), inclement weather, career setbacks, exercise injuries, the illness and loss of loved ones, etc. In response, some WLS patients return to bad habits and food for comfort. But some don't.
Some stay the same weight or perhaps in a small "bounce zone." Some regain 10-15 pounds. Some folks knuckle down and re-lose the regain -- multiple times. Some just keep gaining. Of those, some stop halfway to where they started out pre-op. But some (50% of all WLS patients) regain more than 50% of the weight they lost -- some even regain all the weight they lost.
Understandably, I'm curious about why people revert to old behaviors and/or can't sustain what started them on their WLS path and, for some, got them to their goals. But I'm most curious about what distinguishes those who stay at or near their new healthy weights for the long term.
Your thoughts?

Ohhh yeah, this bugs me too. My doctor specifically discussed this with me when I brought up something similar (friend of a friend has had the sleeve, and was already asking about being cleared to eat crap again).
He told me that ANYONE will lose weight in the first year or so - even those that eat total crap like fast food, high carb/fat. The sleeve will be controlling the portion sizing for quite some time, and unless you're bedridden, you'll lose due to the small amount of food you actually consume.
The goal is to use this time (roughly 12-18 months) to reteach yourself how to eat HEALTHY. Protein first, then healthy veggies, then complex carbs and rarely eating the crap foods. The real purpose of this surgery is to give you the restriction to help you drop weight NOW, along with reducing or even eliminating the overwhelming hunger most of us feel (due to the hunger hormone ghrelin, which is produced in the stomach... that is almost completely removed when they take most of the stomach out). This allows you to make smarter food choices since you should not be driven with uncontrollable cravings and better able to make smart choices.
I've also learned healthy versions of dishes I used to love that weren't all that good - so I can still have things I used to love, but they're not nearly as bad for me.
It only takes a few months for the new eating style becomes habit. That is the ultimate goal - learn to eat good, healthy foods for the majority of the time, and still be able to have occasional indulgences.
If a person has this surgery thinking they'll be able to eat everything they had eaten before - fast food, fried everything, drink and eat total crap - sure, they'll lose for a bit just because they can't physically get that much in their sleeve, but then as they get further out and it gets a bit easier to eat, they'll regain and gripe about how the sleeve "failed" to work for them. They are the ones that failed however. No one can do well on a diet consisting of high fat, carb and sodium for any length of time. Most crap foods have very little nutritional value as it is, so eating those regularly is just asking for failure.
You can eat anything after 6-12 months. Cake, doughnuts, Cookies, bread, Pasta, fried foods, deep dish greasy pizza... Should you? NO. You should make those types of foods a very rare event.

I reached my goal weight of 150 pounds at 8.5 months after surgery. Surgery day I weighed 216 pounds. But my highest weight (2 months pre-op) was 235. During that pre-op period I lost 11 pounds on my own diet and another 8 pounds on my surgeon's pre-op liver-shrinking diet.
I was SO ready to get that wagon rolling! I'd had enough of being fat, immobile, agoraphobic, yuck! I wanted my health and my life back more than it is possible for me to communicate -- even to others who understand what that's like.
Since I reached 150 pounds in mid-April 2015 I've very slowly lost another 15 pounds and am now at 135 pounds. I eat so well -- healthy and tasty food and also have some treats. My calorie goal in maintenance has been 1700 calories on the average. I recently just determined I need to raise that to 1800 calories/day to stop losing weight.
I don't need or want to lose anymore. If I looked any hotter (at 70 years old) it would be a felony!

With two minor exceptions, I can eat anything I want. I.E., it will not make me throw up, feel queasy, break out in hives, etc. The truth is that unless I stick to a high Protein, low carb way of eating FOREVER I will gain back the weight that I lost. "Just choose to eat smaller quantities" or "eat what you want in moderation" is not a concept that works for me. Why it doesn't work is irrelevant and I try not to worry about it -- I just have to deal with the fact that it doesn't work (for me) period, full stop, end of sentence.

Surgery on 2/15, first day of pre-op diet. 3 Protein shakes a day and a lean balanced meal under 300 calories Lean Cuisine or 3-4oz lean Protein, 1 cup veggies, 1/2 cup starch and a light snack (string cheese and small apple).
Feeling ok, trying to distinguish body hunger vs. head hunger. I'm a bit worried about catching a cold/flu since co-workers are sick.
Nervous about surgery in general since it will be my first. Husband will be with me during surgery and overnight. He's been supportive but I know he is worried as well. Trying to read up and prepare everything also been training my mindset.

February 15th

My surgery date is February 15,2016.

Surgery on 2/15, first day of pre-op diet. 3 Protein shakes a day and a lean balanced meal under 300 calories Lean Cuisine or 3-4oz lean Protein, 1 cup veggies, 1/2 cup starch and a light snack (string cheese and small apple).
Feeling ok, trying to distinguish body hunger vs. head hunger. I'm a bit worried about catching a cold/flu since co-workers are sick.
Nervous about surgery in general since it will be my first. Husband will be with me during surgery and overnight. He's been supportive but I know he is worried as well. Trying to read up and prepare everything also been training my mindset.

Surgery on 2/15, first day of pre-op diet. 3 Protein shakes a day and a lean balanced meal under 300 calories Lean Cuisine or 3-4oz lean Protein, 1 cup veggies, 1/2 cup starch and a light snack (string cheese and small apple).
Feeling ok, trying to distinguish body hunger vs. head hunger. I'm a bit worried about catching a cold/flu since co-workers are sick.
Nervous about surgery in general since it will be my first. Husband will be with me during surgery and overnight. He's been supportive but I know he is worried as well. Trying to read up and prepare everything also been training my mindset.

It'll get better. I'm only 7 weeks out but I so relate to your feelings. It's definitely a scary and vulnerable place to be. I just started more solid foods this week and I'm seeing light at the end of this tunnel.
My advice would be: pay attention to those food wants during this time. They're obviously not tied to need or to real hunger. It's a head thing.
What do those foods do for you emotionally? What is driving the desire? Is it anxiety about something? Boredom? Fear?
Those impulses won't go away unless we deal with their roots. How can we replace food in that equation with an alternate healthy coping mechanism? This is a good season to start working on these things.
Courage!!
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It gets better. You're still in the sore/hurting/swollen, difficult part.
The bread/pasta thing is head hunger. You're craving comfort foods because that's what you did before when you were upset/feeling bad/whatever.
But you should also tell yourself that having bread/pasta isn't going to fix things... they are part of the problems that got you to this point in the first place. Think of this time like you're detoxing from a really bad drug addiction; a drug user is going to wildly crave the drug they're trying to kick and it's going to seem like the most wonderful amazing thing and why oh why can't they just have a little bit...
But it will get better. And maybe eventually, you could have a little bread or small serving of Pasta. But stop glorifying them and telling yourself you have made a mistake and miss these things and pine away with the wanting of them. They are not good for you, and they aren't going to help you.
Stay strong, remember that this time is going to be just a tiny blip on your journey and you're going to be happy and healthy soon. Good luck!!

When I had my consult with my surgeon he mentioned 3 weeks. After I got my date and talked to the scheduler, she said 4-6 weeks. I'm telling working 4-6 weeks to prepare for the worst but really hope to be back after 4 weeks or 5 weeks max.

Same date for surgery and same pre-op diet date! Liquids and one small meal for me daily.

Same date for me! Good luck!

I'm confirmed for Feb 15th! Pre op on the 11th.

This is one of my big concerns. Such vanity, I know but my hair is something I've always felt good about myself. It doesn't help that I've noticed just with age my hair is getting thinner. I just ordered the Nioxin system and started on my liquid Biotin. I'm hoping both will help with re-growth!

I'm either the 8th or 15th! Find out Monday.

@@midorigal
I know what you mean, i feel bad about how vain it sounds in the grand scheme of things. But just like you my hair was always something I always felt good about. I think I'm going also start taking Biotin it cant harm it (my hair) and maybe keep it as healthy as can be expected when i color it. ????

This is one of my big concerns. Such vanity, I know but my hair is something I've always felt good about myself. It doesn't help that I've noticed just with age my hair is getting thinner. I just ordered the Nioxin system and started on my liquid Biotin. I'm hoping both will help with re-growth!