heidikat72

It likely means you don't have as much swelling. Did your plan give a time limit to meals? I ask because mine said to limit to 30 minutes. Basically it said to take the full 30 minutes to eat but that at 30 minutes to stop.

i had to do them twice a day for 14 days after i left the hospital. yep - great big bruises that stayed for a couple of weeks after i stopped. Even had some little hardened areas under my skin that probably took a month to go away - my surgeon and my primary doc both said that was completely normal with lovenox injections and not to worry.

Dr. Dumon is great. HUP was so so. They tell you up front that your recovery will be in a ward that only deals with bariatric patients but that wasn't true in my case. In fact, I was the first bariatric patient any nurse on my ward had ever dealt with and they had no idea what the protocol was - I had to keep educating them. For instance, the day after surgery I must have had 5 separate people bring me a can of full sugar ginger ale and a straw to drink. Had to explain to each of them why I couldn't use a straw, why I couldn't have any carbonated beverages and why I couldn't have sugar. Then they would offer to bring me coffee to "perk me up" and had to explain why I couldn't have caffeine. Plus my surgery was at 9:30am, I was in the post op recovery area before noon but didn't get to my actual room until almost 11:00pm and they refused in the recovery area to let me get up and walk and they hadn't even bothered to turn the compression wraps on until I complained for like the 10th time. I think they just take on more surgeries in general than the rest of the hospital is prepared to deal with. But all that said - I had no complications and it was only two nights in the hospital and the nurses I had did want to learn. And the pre and post support through Penn has been great. Just make sure you understand your immediate post op requirements (they will be explained to you in the nutrition class that you have about a week or two before surgery) because your nursing staff in the hospital may not actually be familiar with them. The next support group meeting at the perelman center (right next to HUP) that I'm going to is November 12th - if you attend, please come up to me and introduce yourself!

Depending on your level of lactose intolerance you might be ok with the whey isolate powders (example syntax nectar and unjury). My dietician said many of her lactose intolerant patients did fine with those. She said if those still triggered the intolerance there are soy protein isolate powders.

I think HFFM has the most likely explanation. She probably asked an admin or someone else to send you "something" and didn't specify what to send or go into detail about what surgery and that person thought "oh, i'd love for someone to send me cookies so I'll send her cookies"

I know how you feel. My nephew and his wife sent me a big arrangement of chocolate covered strawberries for my birthday two weeks after I had a long talk with them about my surgery and went through details about what I can/don't eat etc. Try not to let it bother you - this is an emotional time anyway. She may have only remembered you were having surgery and it may not have really registered with her what surgery you were having. If you have family at home - let them eat the Cookies. I took the strawberries to work.

I liked the chicken soup flavor - I would make it with warm bone broth (bone broth has a little more protein than regular chicken broth). You do have to closely follow the instructions with regard to tempterature - too hot and it will clump and be gross. It was a nice warm savory change from the cold sweet shakes

you are NOT being attacked. I'm sorry if this has come across that way. We are all cautioning against comparison because it is something we see very often on here with people getting extremely upset/depressed/angry and going so far as to blame their surgeon for "screwing up their sleeve" because they didn't lose over 30lbs in their first two weeks. So when someone asks what everyone else lost in their first two weeks - it raises some concern for that person. Everything that has been said in response to your question is out of concern for you because we don't want to see you setting yourself up for dissapointment. For a long time I didn't post about my progress but now when someone asks the question I do simply because I want them to see a response at the opposite extreme of the "I lost 30+lbs in two weeks" response. And the reality is that in the first two weeks, your body is recovering from major surgery and is focused on healing not on losing the weight. We want to make sure you are kind and patient with yourself during that time and allow your body to heal instead of focusing on weightloss the first month. So please take the responses with the intent they were originally posted in - trying to assure that you won't have unrealistic expectations that could be detrimental to you emotionally.

You are a rock star! that is amazing!!!! Congrats for putting in a lot of hard work and effort to achieve your goals!

nothing. not even a tenth of a pound. my body was healing. i just focused on getting in my fluids and protein and walking as much as I could tolerate at that point. Still lost 22lbs the first month, and 63lbs in 4 months. Everyone loses differently so please be careful about comparing your weightloss to others. I understand the desire to have a feeling for what to expect just try not to obsess about it (which is easy to do).

I used the sugar free torani syrups - i bought a couple of flavors. This helps to just change up a flavor a little bit when you start getting bored of the shakes. Sugar free coconut syrup in a vanilla shake (it doesn't take much) was a favorite. I've also added a tiny bit of instant coffee to a chocolate shake. For my syntrax nectar fruit flavor powders, I made them with crystal light lemonade - it helped cut some of the protein-y taste and smell. My nutritionist allowed for a small amount of banana to be added but cautioned that she didn't really recommend it because of the amount of sugar it adds but said it was an option if we really couldn't handle the taste of the shake without it.

I eat carbs - but i choose them wisely. I don't have rice, pasta or white potatoes or white bread. All vegetables have carbs. and once I'm further out, I do plan to have whole grains like oatmeal or a half slice of whole grain bread occasionally. But binging on pasta and potatoes? Not in my plan and if I do it, I will consider that as a personal failure that day on my part and get right back on track. I know what trigger foods I have that I need to avoid because they will just cause me to want more. You seem so convinced that I will never be able to avoid binging on pasta - do you think every recovering alcoholic in AA is DESTINED to stay an alcoholic? Or is it possible to mature enough to know your issues and develop coping mechanisms to prevent going down that slippery slope again? If I wanted to continue to eat the way I had been, I personally wouldn't have gotten the surgery.

It is a weird concept to adjust to - the separating of eating and drinking. All our lives up to this point, you have a drink with your meal. That's what you know. I will say that now at 4 months post op - not drinking with eating has become second nature. So you do adjust to it. THe only annoying bit is restaurants because even when you say you don't want a beverage, they still bring you a glass of Water. Which I just leave sitting on the table untouched. But it's there and can be tempting - I know some people ask the waitstaff to remove it. For your specific issue right now - you might want to put a call into your nutritionist. If really thin oatmeal is counting as a full liquid - you may not need to separate or at least not wait the full 30 minutes. But only your nutritionist can answer that. And it is a good idea to start practicing the separation times anyway. Hang in there - it does indeed get easier.

It's not hypocrisy. As you rightly mentioned, eating for pleasure got me to over 400lbs and limited mobility, high blood pressure and borderline diabetic. I understood when I decided to have surgery that food and I could no longer have the same relationship. It's a hard mindset to change but if I want to be successful (which I do or I wouldn't have had a major surgery to significantly alter my body) I have to stop thinking of food as comfort and pleasure and treating food as what it is supposed to be - sustenance only. I find pleasure in the activities I can now do. So I don't hate food because I'm losing weight. I'm getting healthy because I changed my relationship with food. Any of the successful post ops - of which there are many on here and I plan to be one of them - will tell you this process is much more mental than physical. The surgery is just a tool to help you as you actively address the mental aspects. The surgeon only changes your stomach, you have to decide if you want to address the issues that led you to needing surgery and if you do, that work to address them is all on you.

i struggled with fatigue through month 3. and as counterintuitive as it sounds, what seems to have finally gotten me through is to literally just power through and amp up your exercise even when you feel too tired to exercise, do it anyway.

i tolerated the orange and the green apple. but yeah - they must be very cold. I only had them the first couple days post op - and even then could only drink half of one a day. I would pour out about 4 ounces at a time so it didn't get to room temp before i could finish it. Plus that way I had to keep getting up and walking in order to refill my fluids in those first few days. You can also try pouring them into popsicle molds and freezing them.

i think we have different definitions of what a "good" food is. For me - Pasta, rice, bread are just empty carbs that take up valuable real estate in my sleeve without offering anything good nutrition-wise. SInce my sleeve limits how much volume I can consume, I want to focus on consuming things that actually provide nutrition like Protein and non-starchy veggies. Plus for many post ops - pasta and rice are not tolerated well since they tend to swell in the stomach which will make you very uncomfortable/miserable after eating. If you want to add carbs to your diet, do it - it's your body but don't expect the same weight loss results as someone who doesn't. And if you eat them and don't reach your goal weight, understand that it is because of the choices you made and not that the surgery failed.

everyone is different. stalls happen but not on a set schedule. For example - I didn't lose ANYTHING the first 2 weeks post op, nothing. I can't really even call that a stall, more like a delayed start. Right now just focus on healing and following your program and stay off the scale for a while if it is going to upset you that much.

what omeprazole are you taking? if you are taking prilosec OTC (or generic equivalent) you should not be crushing it. It's a time released tablet and crushing it will destroy the time release mechanism, meaning you get the full dose at once and it will lose effectiveness quickly. Please check with your surgeon again. Small tablets like omeprazole you should be able to take without crushing. I only had to crush/chew large tablets like vitamins and one of my blood pressure meds.

the stress test is for cardiac clearance. If you aren't able to do the treadmill stress test, there is an alternative - you lay on a table and they inject a drug (through the same injection site as the dye) that will put mild stress on your heart/vascular system as the treadmill would. Due to mobility issues I had when I started my journey, I couldn't do the treadmill so I had the alternate. It is an odd feeling to feel like you just ran up a flight of stairs even though you didn't move.

have they said you cannot lose more than 5lbs? I'd get that clarified. While some insurance will take the final weigh in BMI, some use the BMI from your initial consult for determining eligibility. Do you mind sharing what your current BMI is?

start now! I managed to lose 78lbs pre-op - how did I do it? started logging immediately on my fitness - and be honest with it. Once you see it there in front of you - it's very easy to see what you should cut back on. I started with cutting out sugary drinks altogether and started cutting back on carbs - potatoes and pastas were my go to foods. Each month, I dropped my calorie goal a little more. And each month I increased my activity/exercise more. Working on the exercise and especially building some core strength is going to make your recovery immediately post op so much easier! And start working on the mental - this journey is really about changing the way you think about food. Figure out what triggers your eating. And find other things to take the place of food. Even though you won't have much physical hunger post-op, the "head" hunger and cravings can still hit you with a vengeance and you'll want to know how to reset your brain and get rid of the food craving - for me it is doing something active, particularly with my hands (it's hard to put food in your mouth if your hands are busy doing something else).

i had to pay out of pocket for my psych eval too - i think that is pretty common. just remember that in the grand scheme the cost of the psych eval is well worth the benefit to your health that you will gain from this journey. Congrats on getting those clearance tests knocked off - it seems like such an ordeal but they are worth it.

meats like chicken that tend to be dry can hard. In addition to Kristen's suggestions, I usually have something to dip it in for added moistness. Plain old yellow mustard is super low cal/low carb. Or I'll take some plain nonfat greek yogurt and add some herbs or spices to it, I've even mixed in a little pesto before. The moistness helps the meat go down and sit a little easier. Don't give up - it takes time to figure out what works for you.