FluffyChix

So the thing is, life happens while we are either making plans or trying to implement those plans. But, we're all human. We all make less than the best decisions at times. That's why I'm so broken record about "trying" to be 100%. Cuz the reality is, no one can be 100%. Evs. And life happens where you WILL pick less than optimal choices/meals/days/weekends--no need to plan them. Cuz they WILL happen. Guaranteed. As @VIKING 0424 the important thing is going right back to TCB. I've found that to be true for me. After this weekend, I went in at the bottom of my weight window for maintenance and Monday morning I was at the top! So immediately on Monday, it was nope, nope, nope. I don't get to eat x,y, z today cuz I choose for today to be a no-shenanigans day. And I'm going to eat strictly to plan. I've done that now for Mon-Wednesday and this morning I'm back to the middle of my range. And by Friday I expect to be back at the bottom of my window. It is a 5lb range. I gained 5lbs over weekend shenanigans. If you are in ketosis (most of us are), then 1 slice of cake will cause you to go out of ketosis temporarily and it signals your liver to fill the glycogen stores back up (reserve fuel for fight or flight--like extra rocket boosters). Each molecule of glycogen can hold 2 molecules of water. That literally translates to anywhere from 2-4 lbs of fluid just from the liver. Then factor in the water retention in other parts of the body and I've seen swings in people from 2-12lbs overnight. But once you stay the course, and don't spaz over it...and go back to good choices, that weight will vacate the premises once the brain/body knows it's not gonna be needed again and you use up those glycogen stores. It's not fat. It's fluid.

I didn't have to do purees - went straight to softs. But in my full liquids phase here is what I thrived on. It helps with hunger to keeps carbs to 20g or less per day. Swearsies. 1. Cottage Cheese or ricotta (ricotta bake from WorldAccordingToEggface blog) 2. Foil wrapped tilapia and basa filets with lemon 3. Chicken or tuna or salmon salad blitzed to a puree (pate) consistency with lots of Greek yogurt and dijon mustard to make it super creamy and smooth. You can even lighten it up with ff Fairlife Milk. 4. Cream soups with extra protein powder added to them. (Did this A LOT!! Made every flavor you can think of: pizza, alfredo, mexican, asian, etc.) 5. Blended soups/stews to a puree. 6. SF jello with yogurt (still love it) 7. SF popsicles 8. Protein pudding (SF jello pudding made with Premier Protein and FF Fairlife Milk) 9. Green smoothies made with protein powder, frozen spinach, frozen blueberries, peanut butter powder, liquid stevia. 10. Roasted Smashed Cauliflower puree with greek yogurt, nutritional yeast, and herbs. Same thing with canned pumpkin.

Laughing at this idea! Love it! But so sorry to hear of your feet. Aching feet are no joke!!! I can relate hon. And fwiw, I like em. But they look super uncomfy (heel height)

In no one's reality is throwing up daily or twice daily normal--not even in recovery. You're surgeon was cray and wrong. I'm glad it's less, but daily is NOT normal and it IS damaging.

Congrats!

I'm sorry to hear of your dad's looming surgery. Glad you are calling a doc today. In my personal experience, it takes weeks or months to see a specialist. You can't find anything, cuz your situation is pretty abnormal. Most people who throw up that often and regularly know to get it checked out. You most likely have stricture, but only medical tests and imaging is gonna show what condition you're dealing with. If you have to go back to protein drinks and thinned down yogurt, you will quickly lose any regain, but it isn't a fun type of eating for sure. I'd also try pureeing soups and stews and keep it very liquidy to see if you can handle any meat proteins. Try blending egg drop soup and see how it goes down. That's the texture you should aim for. But you have to be sure you are getting all of your protein in, so make sure to have protein drinks. What you are describing is a serious situation. I am not being tough-love. I'm being pragmatic. Letting a problem of this magnitude continue for 1.5 years+ is not normal. There must be a payout for that behavior. In 1.5 years of daily throwing up sometimes multiple times a day, you could have done crap tons of damage to your anatomy (Barret's Esophagus, Esophagitis, pre-cancerous cells, esophageal erosion, ulcers, hernias, strictures, webbing, esophageal spasms, and more fun.) At that point I would say your behavior is bulimic in nature. There is always a payout with aberrant behaviors.

Don't wait until your dad's surgery. That means either the problem doesn't bother you enough, or it satisfies something inside of you (ie allows you to rationalize eating crackers and slider crap, allows your excuse for regain, allows you some semblance of satisfaction that at least you are throwing up some of your daily calories to control your wait, allows you to "fill-in-the-blank". It's pretty textbook rationalization behavior. There has to be some payout as to why you continue to deal with this irregularity and dangerous condition.). We all know it will take you at least a month or so to find a replacement surgeon and from there it could take as long as 3 months to get a new patient consultation. So start the process now. What you are describing is not normal. You NEED to look at your diet. Go back to purees and see if you can handle them. Protein forward. Ditch the crap and sliders. Go back to protein drinks. Add omeprazole and see if that helps at all? Change it up. Sometimes, if you don't make your new anatomy adjust to solid foods, recovery stops and you get locked into eating at the current stage. Try eating foiled baked fish, foil shrimp, poached chicken, ground turkey simmered in broths. Or puree stuff as I said previously. Sorry you are struggling.

Ugh, it was a short lived celebration. LOL. After this non-birthday weekend, I'm now up to 135.4lbs this morning. Gah! Didn't take long to get to the top of my weight window. Back to IF and abstemious TCB today. LOL.

Yes, I had that. The answer was in 40mg omeprazole. You can also try taking the 20mg omeprazole with the capsule opened up onto a spoon of applesauce. Sorry you are having this problem!!

I lost 14.8 lbs the first month. You can see in my signature.

Gosh I'm so sorry!!! ((hugs)) Rant away!!! I think the ge junction is the gastoesophageal junction where the esophagus meets the stomach. And if so, that is where the tear is and it would be very painful. It's a valve, not a stoma there. The stoma is at the gj junction where the gastro jejunal junction where the tummy pouch meets the jejunum. (I think?) No excuse for their behavior. But in future, you simply have to make sure they plan you as the first case of the day and if they won't or can't, you schedule for the first day where you can be the first case. Accidents happen at the end of the day.

Congrats!! Super excited for you!!!!

ty!!! I'm gonna try this version tomorrow. https://ketorewind.com/the-best-chaffle-recipe/

Welcome back! Looks like you know what is behind the regain and now you just have to WANT to lose it badly enough, that you don't let these outside influences determine how you medicate with food. You have to make your health a priority. That's not easy. What kind of help do you need?

Hahaha! I was gonna make this point. It's actually due to the composition of one ingredient in the pill and not for the active ingredient. So likely, they are reformulating it now. I'd just switch to pepcid AC or tagamet. And I'd call your doc and ask for a PPI prescription for omeprazole 20 or 40mg.

My doc said I will probably be taking omeprazole for life. I presently take 40mg per day.

Yeah. So strange. It is her, not you. It's like you cheated on her or left the group, or something and now "due to cheating by having surgery and taking the easy way out", you are "one of them"--the skinny bi*ches. And she now feels more self-concious about her fattitude and condition. She also doesn't WANT to change her reality. She would rather have her food comfort/drug rather than change her life and eating habits. Sorry you are experiencing that! My middle sis is highly competitive with everyone, but especially me. And although she is proud of me and compliments me often, I can see it bothers her that she is now the "heavy sister". She watches everything I put in my mouth and I can tell, she chooses smaller portions and dishes she wouldn't normally eat when we go out. Meh...you can only do you. Can't control anyone else...

Ok, so I think I told you yesterday after the vomiting thing to go back a phase or 2 for a couple of days? Why on earth would you eat a P3 with nuts in it? In the early days, nuts were one of THE hardest things for me to handle? LOL. Going back a phase means, you go back to yogurt and protein drinks and maybe cottage cheese until your tummy is able to heal a little again. It's usually a couple of days. No wonder you didn't feel like eating. He has you on a Zone macro plan: 30 30 40 only he's flipping the protein and carbs so that protein is 40%. For your size, 74-75g is about the target protein amount especially in the early days. It's called the moderation approach, but the intention is to use those carbs for good. Only healthy carbs. You will have to experiment and see if that allows you to lose. It should as long as you stay at or below the 800cal deck. It should also confer metabolic reset for you. Dr. Michael Mosely wrote a book about the research from a UK scientist/dr. who reversed patients' diabetes on a 800cal diet that had a bunch of plant based carbs in it--and more Mediterranean style eating. It was called the 8 Week Diet Cure (I think--on Amazon--good book.) You can't customize macros beyond P/F/C in the free MFP version. So you just have to choose to track sugar as one of your 5 macros and keep an eye out for it yourself. Hope you are feeling better today. Take it easy on your food choices.

So welcome and congrats! Yay on being on track and problem free. Make sure to MAKE yourself hydrate. It's more important than eating or vitamins! Initially during the first 3-4 months (what the RD and doc call the healing phases), your job is very simple. 1. Get your fluids in each day. 2. Get your vitamins in each day. 3. Get your protein goals met in each day. Stick to the food stages in your manual! Advance foods per the doc/RD and how easily your pouch handles the new foods/stages. 4. Walk for 60 minutes each day--minimum. 5. Sleep well each day. 6. Live. Love. Enjoy your new reality. 7. Stick to the plan. Remain focused. Do not revert to old partying ways that got you to the Obesity Ball the first time around. 8. Get to goal. Those are your driving motivators each day. Each day will have different challenges. Hormones WILL flow. You will have picky pouch days. You will have hungry hungry heifer days. You will have days filled with head hunger. You will have days filled with food apathy and aversion. Every day is different, but those 8 rules above never change. They are you J-O-B! And no one can do it, but you. As you progress, they will give you a little more information with each visit. Right now, your sole focus is on fluids, vitamins, and protein. The calories take care of themselves and to an extent, so do the other macros. But honestly, I avoided things like cream of wheat or potatoes in favor of meeting my protein goal. If you have room for cream of wheat, you have room for protein, so no excuses for not meeting your protein goals each day, nor drinking too little.

Ok, so now I'm approaching the chaffel bandwagon. I love them made with egg whites rather than whole egg. No eggy aftertaste to contend with. I also used Daisy 2% cottage cheese as part of the cheese and added a spoon of protein powder to up the protein even more and add to the crispness. Even though I overcooked these (should have been closer to 4 mins rather than 5), the turkey club sandwich was the closest I've come to an honest to God sandwich since a year before surgery! AND, go run and immediately buy these Twin Peaks Protein Puffs from Alex in the Bariatric Pal Store. Cuz I kid you not...the ingredients aren't crazy bad AND they taste and feel so much like miniature "cheesy poofs" aka UTZ cheeseballs that I feel like I should confess being bad. But the whole meal was less than 300cals and less than 8g net carbs, and had 37g of protein. Lemme repeat that in case you missed it...37g of protein. I feel like I'm yelling. Am I yelling? I ate the whole damn thing. It wasn't really a trigger meal. But I absently continued to eat cuz it tasted so great and was so exciting to eat as a sandwich with cheesy poofs. Can I just say, I heart the crap outta maintenance? Here's the MFP info. The order of the macros is: cals; protein; fat; carb (whole); fiber; sugar And here are the Twin Peaks Protein Puffs I ordered from Bariatric Pal Store. I'm so STOKED about these. TOTES worth the $25. Seriously. A serving size is 1 cup and there are 10 servings. But I only served 6g of protein puffs with my meal and it was PLENTY! These are not very sliderish cuz of the protein content. So I felt replete from them. So I should get about 50 servings per container. Bargain! (I love these enough, that I'm racing to leave a review and I rarely review things!) I can't wait to order the other flavors!

You're welcome...

Ooops. Clearly skimming is not my forte. Leave what you hate and pick the rest.

Oh...forgot about quinoa, eggs, and fish! Good ones! I'm presently on a fish and shrimp kick!

lentils, black beans, kidney beans, white beans edamame, tofu, miso chia seeds, hemp hearts, almonds/walnuts/pecans, pumpkin/sesame/sunflower seeds, nutbutters of all kinds yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream, whey protein supps/protein bars, protein mug cake leafy greens, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, bean sprouts, okra, eggplant, tomatoes edamame spaghetti, shirataki noodles with tofu Hate when that happens!