FluffyChix

Also, someone told me that "enzymes" help. They keep some kind of papaya blend enzymes and pop one when they get the foamies or something stuck. It supposedly helps digest the stuff in the tummy and break it down so it passes? But I don't know what to get, how much to take, whether or not it really works or anything. LOL!

Don't laugh y'all. I made the "big haul" at Big Lots today. I found a Hamilton Beach smoothie maker for $15.00. (Damn you Drs. Weiner and Vuong! Damn you both. LOL. Because of you I'm STILL jacking with making green smoothies, trying to lose weight despite the increase in "healthy" carbs, thinking that I can UP my nutrition by blending the crap outta my greens and a few berries and twigs. So I'm still trying to find a blender that will pulverize better than my big Ninja which just shoots me the bird every time I try to use it.) I also found Tuna Pouches for $1.00 (and no they aren't expired). I also found sardines in water for $1.00 and can's of smoked oysters (thanks Mama...) for $1.25. So I have cheap lunch lined up from here to tomorrow! LOL. Now. Today was Day2 of Big Ass Salad. Can I just tell you I'm a little obsessed with cucumber for some reason? Today was another Greek salad and instead of shrimp, I opened a pouch of lemon pepper tuna. It was just "okay." Can I tell you it sounds much better in theory? Cuz come on. Pouch tuna IS more convenient. But in the end, it's still tuna that lives in a pouch. I love real tuna-raw or cooked. But I'm not so crazy about pouch tuna. I ate all of it though. I'm pleasantly full...worried I could eat so much, but some say you can eat more salad than other things. And my doc says canned tuna and chicken aren't as dense as fresh cooked or frozen "solid" proteins. So I'm comforting myself with that one. Also, I added 10g of shelled roasted unsalted sunflower seeds. Damn, way to jack up the calories on a salad! Hope they had some deep nutrition. LOL. I nearly gasped at the nutrition. I don't often have a meal that goes over 200 cals! Nutrition: (same ingredients as yesterday's listed salad, but with tuna rather than shrimp) 210cals; 23g protein; 9g fat; 9g carbs; 1g fiber; 9g net carbs; 2g nat. sugars.

((hugs)) And hang in there sweetie!

Dang guys. I'm so sorry for your struggles. Do NOT give up. You HAVE to keep trying. Just try slowly. Foamies DO suck though. Fo' shizzle! I use the Celebrate Chewables. I bought a huge jug of them so I'd get the cheapest I could. I chew one after breakfast and one after lunch. If I take them before a meal I get nauseated. @Orchids&Dragons Next time if your cake is dry, make a "parfait" with Greek yogurt sweetened with vanilla stevia. crumble it up into it and have mixed a little bit with the yogurt so it will act as lube. It might last you 3 servings, but it will still be easier on your tummy.

Thanks. It wasn't me, though. I was channeling Dr. Now... (And everyone has my permission to forcefully remind me of this when I'm in the OP's position in a few months. Cuz I might not see the forest for the trees then and may need my ass kicked back into reality. Deal?)

You know, I think it's technically probably too early to spot the trends for us. I think maybe why mine "appears" to be somewhat apparent is that I do get into a lazy rut with food. I pretty much eat the same 3-4 things for breakfast and lunch every day--week in and week out. LOL. And 98% of our dinners are a grilled or pan-seared protein and a veg then avo-tom salad. LOL.

Ok, lol, then use your power for good, Luke. Spend this day filling out your profile and signatures and surgery information so we can all see more about you and relate to you weight loss journey! That way we'll be better able to help you and cheer for you!

Bumping too. Cuz I selfishly want to see those numbers!!!

Yay girl!!!! Congrats!!! Love your thinking!!! So glad you're on the way back down. Pre-surg, alcohol would completely stall my losses for 4-5 days any time I drank.

Beware of excessive whining this week chillins. It's "that" week. I'm due for a low week. The scale has not moved significantly in 5 days. LOL. Making me a fairly angst-driven bi*chy female. LOL. But the only saving grace is, thanks to my weekly graph, I can see, that my weight loss is falling into something that appears to be a pattern. I'm now in Week 11...*le sigh*. My food is beautiful. My exercise is beyond perfect. No cheats. No slip ups. LOL. So I know this will pass. But it still makes me cranky. Cuz I'm the scale's little bi*ch. LOL.

So I'm going to just address the naked king in his new clothes standing in the middle of the room. IMHO, you are both maintaining. You are NOT stalled for 4 months. You are eating the amount of calories along with your surgery that allows you to maintain. But beware. You are both approaching the end of the honeymoon period within the next year or 14 months ish. Then those same calories you're taking in right now, will quite likely cause you to start creeping up on the scale. It's impossible to help you. You're not giving us enough information. I could come to you and ask the same question. But because I track every bite of food, good and bad, I can present samples of my day, I can present an excel spreadsheet showing the relationship of macros in a month to average weight loss. I have a LOT of data to look at and tweak. You don't have any of that, even a food log. How can you possibly know what it takes to lose weight? You've no earthly idea. This is not magic bean surgery. It's WL surgery. It's SCIENCE!!!!! You HAVE to count sh*t. The End. And any RD who says you don't has a butt-load of peeps keeping her in job security who never forking make goal!!!! I read yesterday that this surgery is 40% surgery and 60% you. I don't know if that's the exact ratio, but the reality is, weekly cheat days are just that...weekly events that derail your progress. They can do nothing but create a GHDWL situation (Ground Hog Day Weight Loss=where you gain and lose the same 2lbs over and over and over again until you want to chew your own leg off to see a drop on the scale). Go back to basics. For me, and from a lot of vets, the ideal losing phase is a caloric intake average of about 600-900 cals per day. Maintenance is personal--anywhere from 1000+ depending on so many variables. Go back to no eating or drinking 30-30 Water >64oz per day Vitamins every damn day Exercise (walk) every damn day--don't go cray with working out right now Weigh and measure everything (60-80g protein for the day; <30g of carbs daily; around 30g fat for the day; <10g naturally occurring sugars for the day) Log EVERY bite that goes down your piehole If you're drinking alcohol--stop that sh*t right now!!!! Eat 3 meals a day + 1 snack (no grazing, no crap foods, no slider foods) Eat your meals in a window of 15-30 minutes Protein (dense) first 3oz per meal Veggies next Healthy Fats next If any room leftover then low glycemic fruit/berries (but if you have more room, fill up on fibrous veggies) Accept that you are gonna feel like jack sh*t for about 2 weeks. You're eating carby crap and sugar. What do you really expect. Sadly it WILL be fuc*ing hard! You don't have the excitement of the looming surgery, you've got diet boredom, you've lost faith in your tool, and you're being self-indulgent and going back to bad habits. It's gonna hurt and you WILL have to force yourself to get over that hump. Get mad! Do it! Suffer. And do it. In 4 days it will get easier and each day after. If you do those things, I can ALMOST guarantee you will both start losing again. And remember, you can NEVER out-exercise a bad diet. Oh and get your butts to the counselor (someone who specializes in bariatrics). P.S. And I "get" that you want to have a normal relationship with food. I "get" that you want to eat intuitively like all the other skinny girls in the world. But what you don't realize is that many (maybe most) of those skinny girls are secretely limiting calories, fats, sugars, foods or worse, purging, or anna stuff to "effortlessly" look like they are naturally skinny girls. If we were capable of having normal relationships with food, we would have never made it to the obesity ball in the first place. If we didn't have seriously, and I mean SERIOUSLY broken metabolisms, we would never have become MO. Once you are MO, the "normal" rules of skinnydom no longer apply. You can not take the set of rules for naturally skinny people and apply them to the subset of MO and formerly MO people. You just can't. It's like trying to feed a lion a peanut, or trying to feed an elephant a dead gazelle. It's apples and oranges. DUE to our disease, we will ALWAYS have to be more vigilant, try harder, do more, and live differently if we EVER want to maintain our weight loss.)

Yay! Congrats to you. Welcome to the other side!

Yay! WTG. Great report and welcome to the other side!

Short of tapeworms and sewing your mouth shut, this has been the most intense, all-consuming, and most challenging year second only to 9 rounds of chem, 35 daily radiation treatments, and a double mastectomy. LOL. Will I lose weight? Yes. And I already have. Will I keep it off? I've bet everything on the win. I'm all in. There is little else I can do to effect lasting change at this point. Do most people have to go balls to the wall in order to lose and maintain? I don't think so (these are the ones who have are normal weight and are dealing with the 5lb turkey day gain). The rest of us battling this fight know differently. This is so far from easy, it's laughable. I would actually have a superior smirk and pitying laugh at his ludicrous and uninformed opinion.

You all look amazeballs!!!! Congrats everyone!!

Yay! What an awesome report! Congrats on breaking through to the other side!

I wish I could love this post a million billion trillion zillion times!!!! I *almost* have no words!!! You look fan-FRICKIN-tastic girl!!!!!! Whoooooooooooaaaaahhhhh! WTG. Big congrats. Celebrations are due! And I hope you feel as wonderful and confident as you look. LOVE the outfit!!! Sincerely, Fan Girl

LOL. Here's lunch today. It's sooooo crunchy and tangy and delish I can't stand it!!! Greek Salad with Shrimp. YUM! 133cals; 20g protein; 3g fat; 7g carbs; 1g fiber; 6g net carbs; 2g nat. sugars

LOL. Yeah it is!! Hang in there! It will get better about day 3 or 4!

I dunno, but if you "choose" to just wait-and-see, then it's "on you" and not on them from leaving the danged piece inside you in the first place.

Wow! Congrats!!! Do you feel better?

Me having a brain fart. LOL. Sorry, it was baby organic spinach. Have NO idea how chicken became spinach. MMMMmmmmmMMMM word soup!

Ok, so I am lovin' the walking outside in tshirts and shorts. It's like I received parole from life in prison. So free!!! And I'm sweating when I walk!!! I've been walking in my house since last year so that if I fall, I can just call Mr. F. or 911. No way would I have been able to get up and that way, I could pause or sit if necessary! But now, holy wow!! I'm walking on schedule and as planned! No skipping a day of exercise for me! Tomorrow is the last day of PT for the week. Then we're meeting friends at the minor league ball team in our area for baseball and Friday fireworks. Trying to decide if I'm wearing jeans or shorts and a tshirt! Seriously? Who the fork am I and what have I done with Fluffy? I went to a local support group meeting. I've now been to 3 of them. This one was HUGE! Maybe 30-40 people--about half pre-ops and half post. The speaker was a bariatric psychologist and he talked about emotional/stress eating. It was very informative and helpful. Cuz let's face it. None of us got to the obesity ball by stress eating apples and carrots and spinach. Am I right? Afterward, we split into 2 groups for intros and support. At 10 weeks, I was one of the most advanced in our group. And I was also the most progressed as to how much I could eat or drink. So I don't know that I got much out of it. I did meet some nice people though. I will give it another shot to see how it goes. I know I will continue with the Tomball group (which only meets every other month) and maybe either my RD group or my doc's group or this one last night. Man! If you guys haven't tried nuking your eggwhites yet? You should totally do it. I get the carton egg whites called Real Egg Whites (oddly enough). And it's only ew's. That's it. Then I add a cubed wedge of light Laughing Cow and some turkey crumbles. I nuke spinach and mushrooms ahead of time and put on a plate. Then do the eggs separately so they don't have any water from the veg. And it makes the eggs huge, puffy, and tender. Way more volume and tenderness than in an omelet pan. And I use no oil at all. Here was my after-walking breakfast: Egg, cheese and turkey crumbles with spinach and mushrooms: Serves 1 (about 1cup of food/5.3oz by weight) 75g Real Egg Whites 14g Turkey sausage crumbles (Jimmy Dean) 1 wedge lite white cheddar (HEB) 1oz baby organic spinach 1oz mushroom 14g Hatch green salsa verde (HEB) Nutrition: 96cals; 14g protein; 3g fat; 4g carbs; 1g fiber; 1g sugar

I'd want it out. No telling what kind of damage it could or would cause. But I would question the removal in an office visit!

Can you do little things like chomp on a meat stick or cheese stick or down 1/2oz of almonds or walnuts? I'd make it work for you. The 3hour snacks morning and afternoon might take a little figuring out...even protein latte. I do this too: decaff and 2oz of premier protein as the coffee creamer. Do that twice and you get fluid and 4oz of protein which I think is about 12g of protein Believe it or not, eating too little can make you stall and will keep you from meeting your protein but more--your nutrient needs each day. I know. It happened to me. And the second I added 200 more calories and 14g protein to my day I started losing again.