Wanda247

Oh and Oceanlove if you don't have one, and are looking for a scale, drop the extra coin and save yourself some sanity and get a scale that tracks body fat % as well. Trust me, this extra metric has really quelled my frustrations during stalls... seeing the weight not move sucks, knowing body fat % is dropping even though the weight isn't as really saved me from going crazy!

So as my day is coming closer and closer I’m running around trying to decide what I need to get to be ready for that amazing day.
What are some of the things that looking back after your surgery that you couldn’t live without post surgery in the hospital and right afterwards.
I am hoping that this will help all who have not had the surgery be able to learn from those who have had it.
What made post surgery easier for you ? What was your can’t live without items?

Hello...I started at 321 preop...Doctor did not require diet...To date I have lost 100lbs...My anniversary date will be next Tuesday 6/19...Object of the game, when you start feeling full, STOP EATING!...It can be done if you follow the diet...I have not always followed the diet...I've eaten fried food, but in moderation...Most times, meats are grilled, broiled, or stewed...I eat what I want, and am still losing weight...However, I have lost it slowly to which I am happy...I do not have sagging skin...Best wishes to you...

Azmassage, I get it now! I know someone that had surgery 2 and 1/2 months ago. They went in weighing 425 and thus far have loss 40. This was perplexing to me... seem like they should have lost much more in almost 3 months. Then today when I was talking about what I'm eating now the person spoke up and said, wow you're eating more restrictive than me. So I said what do you mean, and they showed me there grocery receipt from this past weekend... ! Salami, pasta... all kinds.. like stuffed with cheese such... just all sorts over processed foods and stuff, wine, diet sodas, ice cream, chocolate MILK.. the list went on and on. I'm like some of this is for your spouse right? And they told me no, that was just their food, the spouse buys their own stuff now so not to be a temptation.... ??? The entire time I was thinking, you need to substitute this with that and this with that... but I didn't dare say a word... we aren't close like that, just co workers. So I did ask, aren't you having problems keeping some of this stuff down? and they said at first but they worked through it.... Where is this person's nutritionist? Are they looking at the food logs?
Now I'm going to stop complaining and thank my lucky stars I am in this long program. Yes it is going to take forever for me to get my surgery but I'm so glad they are giving me the proper eating plans now, making me go through counseling (which I hate) review my weight and food logs every week and all the other stuff. I think some people need that kind of time and exercises before committing to surgery, including me. This person didn't have to do all of that because they went through their spouses plan where it is covered where as we are not covered so I'm having to go through a clinical trial program and there is a lot to do before I can even get final approval for the surgery. So sometimes its good to just be grateful for what God (or whatever higher power a person believes in) has provided you with and stop wishing you had what the other side has.
I'm just shocked but thought about your post and wanted to say yes you are correct!

Highest recorded weight 271.5 in April 2016 but I was probably about 290 a year earlier. I'm 5'3" tall and was 55 at time of surgery. I was sleeved
HW 271.5 April 2016
Surgery weight 246 (8/23/16)
Current Weight 156
That would be 115 pounds. I haven't had my plastics done yet, but that will likely be about another 10 pounds. My body fat right now is around 31%. I'm working on getting it to 28%.
My team has asked me to speak with the support groups as a success story. I've lost a grown person.
Here's a photo of me from the other day (before going to the gym - so hair's a mess and no makeup) standing in one leg of a pair of shorts I used to wear. I went from a size 24 to a size 6.

If u ever look at most people meal plans once they can eat normal that is why they do not lose weight. I been YouTubeing people meals and I am stunned. Even though there might be high Protein in certain meats (one girl had sausage) they are high in fat. They also adding whipped cream to everything they can. This is why u don’t see the loss. The ones I have seen lose 100 under 300 are eating fish chicken turkey and veggies. Putting healthy fats in there diet. And keeping up with the exercise routine with lots of weight training. The others just walk.

Everything and Anything is possible! Even after surgery, stay away from sugars. Aim for 6g or less for each sitting. Weight training helps.
Starting weight: 350lb
Surgery gastric sleeve weight (2-17-17): 325lb
Tummy Tuck on 12-22-2017 and ~ 10lb of excess skin removed
Weight at one year (3-17-18): 175lb
Total weight loss: 175lb

In down exactly 100 lbs. Was 278 at highest 261 day if surgery I'm now 178 lbs. I went from a size 22 pants to a 12 in 7 months 2XX shirts to a medium. Sleeved 10/26/17
Sw 278
Cw 179
Gw 150
Sleeved 10/26/2017

I didn't do a pre-op diet. I started at 232, ended at 135; 97 lbs lost. It's seven years later and this morning I weighed 137. It is possible.

Count me in - I was 292 at surgery time, hit goal of 190 at about seven and a half months (after slowing things down at six months to keep from over shooting the mark too far) and eventually hit 185 before correcting it to 190ish. I could have taken it lower but that would have meant losing too much muscle mass rather than fat,

I’m in that vicinity, I was 304 at the start and 296 at surgery. It’ll be 6 months next week and I’m down to 216. Goal is 190 and I expect to hit that, though loss has slowed recently to 1-2 lbs per week due to lots of exercise (I’m building muscle while I lose fat). 100 lbs is definitely doable.

Amy, is it possible you are the ONE person, sure but possible and probable are not the same thing.
How old is your last complete blood panel. If the answer is more than 90 days get it again. You need to rule out a medical issue.
Zero sugar
Then - cut the carbs to under 50g with all of those coming from veggies
Protein - and Fat should fill out the rest of your calories.
The goal is to get to fat burning and that process has a defined route. You must burn the stored glycogen in your muscles followed by the sugar in your blood followed by the sugar in your liver (the cause of a fatty liver)
When all of this has been worked down then the body will process stored fat for energy. Stored fat is the very last energy source our bodies tap cause it is the energy of last resort and we are programmed to survive.
If at any time you spike your blood sugar with sugar, carbs, protein your insulin will rise and you will enter Fat storage mode and can not return to fat burning mode till insulin levels return to normal.
You mentioned hormones and you are correct all weight loss and gain is hormone driven. The longer you were overweight the more issues with metabolic syndrome you will have. If you have other medical issues as you have stated you will have that to mess with your hormones as well.
Dont eat if your not hungry, dont eat late at night it delays the start of fat burning when you Fast and everybody Fast's when they go to sleep unless you sleep walk to the fridge i guess.
Dont start your day with any carbs at all. Protein and fat only
If your not a Breakfast person wait for first meal till you feel like it.
If you have a workout in your routine and you can, do it in the morning before you eat.
lifting weights followed by 20 minutes cardio minimum.
Do with this what you want but you have to get as much control over the hormones with your diet as you can.
It is critical that you use a food app to track all your Macro's
Remember there are Essential Amino acids(protein) and Essential Fatty Acids(fats) but there no essential carbs
You cant control what you dont understand and that starts with tracking your food.
I wish you luck and hope you find a way to go forward with your weight loss.

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.)

Just like there is a difference between War and Peace and Cosmo there is a difference between tracking your food and counting calories. Tracking your food provides Info. You cant make good decisions without information.
1 hydrate (i should learn to cut and paste this ****)
2. Protein
3. no added sugar
4. no simple carbs
5. complex carbs from veggies
6. No snacking - if you need Snacks for your mental health you need help with your mental health period.
Do not use food to self medicate- that is what got all of us here in the first place
Track your food - lots of free apps that do this
weigh your servings - package labels allow 20% variability
No less than 12 hrs between last calorie in for the day and first calorie in the next day. You will be asleep the vast majority of this time it should not be difficult.
You asked so do with it what you want.

Sad, Sad, Sad - Your are worried about a 7 year relationship but not worried about the lifetime relationship with yourself that you giving up on. This guy is not your forever - he isn't even your right now! He is a 7 year room mate that wants everything in his life to stay in his control and that includes you.
You want your ankles to stop hurting - have the surgery lose the weight
You want some control back over your life - have the surgery - chose yourself over others.
You can not ever expect someone to truly love you until you love yourself enough to want the best for you.
I am sorry i don't do the sweet talk and tend to upset people but you clearly have some emotional baggage and this boyfriend is just something you are afraid of letting go because the unknown is very scary.
The unknown is also your best bet for a future because all the things you do "know" are failing you.
good luck and i truly do hope you make the right decision for Your life.

Start a file to show him it's right for you. Hey we all are landing hard on you? Sweet Sleevie I could be the worst of all. I am 72,yeah you read that right, and at this late date I'm still growing up. See I was what you could become, I was married 44 years to someone, when I look back , was very emotionally controling. Why did I stay there? My generation was taught you put up with a lot just to keep a man, you're nothing without a man, ooh I'd could tell you until nightfall, but now I'm finally,standing,on my own 2 feet, not easy,when every joint is broken down by arthritis. My parents didn't want me to rush my health, I didn't have surgery, I got married, my husband put,me down for my weight, I didn't stand up to him about,it, I stifeled my heartbreak and kept,on, doing any thing to appease his anger so I could keep that man, and I grew a little heavier, had a daughter, raised up until she started school, goody half the responsability, now b I can have some time for me, lost a little weight, felt a little better about myself, did Mr Perfect notice? He complimented me to others but never to me, I was the fat blob,that should always obey him, asked about surgery, told what good would that do? As since I had be taught not to rock the status quo, I gave in, I was warm in a house, yes I had groceries, as long as I cooked what he wanted when he wanted it things were peaceful. I was such a good robot that when the 2 subsequent children cried I took them somewhere, took them for a walk so their noise wouldn't disturb Mr Perfect, the Great White husband, and I started gaining again, when he told me how ugly I was getting, I just gave in , agreed thinking that would make him love me more. Did it work ? Maybe,but he was still against a surgical change for me. And my arthritis kept on getting worse but I gritted me teeth and went on. And my children grew to young adulthood and then adulthood. Did I leave them or him? No I had promised to stay married to him in the wedding vows and my main duty was to,prep him and all the children happy, my wants got stuffed down and I continued on in my warm sheltered prison. Even when I got a job I was expected to return home promptly, gave my check into,the family coffers and kept my mouth shut, I wasn't out in the cold that way.
Toward the end of my marriage I got a little more independant, having a job gave me a little more fire in my soul. I didn't hardly,mention WLS but I decided I would eventually have it for I felt my bodybstarting to slow down from the years of weight.
The last few months of his life he started a new tactic on me. I couldn't cook right, now the children were mostly grown and not around to hearing him, he could try a few more belittling things. People at work started noticing I wasn't as bouncy and cheery as I once was, they attributed to me approaching retirement age, I didn't admit the unhappiness I got at home. I had started walking for exercise with a friend, I was accursed of having an affair with her. I couldn't keep the house clean, he could ha e helped, wouldn't, not a mans job so I did what I could in between working, decided he didn't feel like driving me back and forth, started using public,transit, asked if he would help me regain a license, I hadn't driven in years. Thought,maybe I drive it there with him in other seat, because I had learners permit , then if he drive the car back I could drive home. Seemed reasonable to me, he didn't think so, why would I want to be so silly and do that? And he started talking more about my ugliness, if weight,was,mentioned it was my fault,i was fat and ugly. Got a pedometer to check , my exercise level was quite adequate. I finally Rationlized maybe he was getting Alzheimers, if so maybe he couldn't help what he was saying. The unhappiness must be all my fault. And he started getting thinner, maybe I wasn't making sure he was getting enough to eat. He was always home, did he fix his own food, nope? Found out later after he would announce he was too tired to drive me, he would go out to eat. But I accepted everything was my fault. Didn't admit problems to anyone, that would admit my imperfections. After pointing out to me that he could control his diet and the diet didn't control him, another dig at me. He offered his ultimate insult,I was so ugly that not even a blind man would touch me, and if I did ever find,one, it would take every dollar in my wallet to pay him, for no intelligent would do it for free.
And still he did this and I meekly accepted it.
Then we lost power during a bad storm in 2012, no cold drinks, he wouldn't drink warm drinks or Water so he basically dehydrated and died on the 4th of July. After he died I started going through his personal papers, turned out his doctor had told him he was in kidney failure, without intervention he would die. Had he told me, the woman who gave up college, sublimated her wishes, her self respect and did her up most to please him for 44 years, 2/3rd of her life?Nope, and suddenly the blinders fell off my eyes. I had given everything up and got little in return. I was basically alone, yes I still had my son, although he was and still,is a comfort, to me I would have to be an adult, yes the self-same person told,she was nothing wihout him to,lean on. Guess what he was wrong then and he's still wrong. I am loved in this world for being,me,not somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's parent, loved for me and me alone. And like a prisioner wrongly,imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, I am free! And since I am now freed, I can want and achieve a dream, bariatric surgery, yes it is a late date in my life, but I can still have a few more years to live smaller, fitter and with a greater degree of health. And sad to say, there probably surgeon's that will say,i,am too old, too physically depleted for surgery. So now I have to carry,my own banner, at 20,30,40 even 50 people are happy to March with you on such,a journey. At 72 I am forced to,make my own kind of music, sing my own song, but even then, the sound of my voicecspeaking up still deserves to be heard.
You said he is not supportive of your plans for surgery? Well earlier today I wrote a poem, well I do write poetry, that part of my personality didn't get killed. You'll find it posted under Surgery is it the easy way out? I may be a little proud of my own work but I think,of is pretty good. Go read,it, everyone else reading can too. Then get back to me if you like. I'm almost always within earshot,of my android phone. Your older but wiser friend Frust8

I haven’t had a single issue with food, outside of milk. It is so nice, I eat mostly healthy but have allowed myself a treat here and there. I don’t believe in the theory of absolute restriction from anything with carbs or sugar, and neither does my doctor. I have noticed that we eat pretty healthy meals (and did so before the surgery), so my diet hasn’t changed much. I have stopped snacking so much, as tiny portions and Water keep me full. It is so nice and the best thing I have ever done.

That, right there, is a form of mental sabotage. Trying to make you give up on it is just as bad, if not worse, than... I don't know, substituting high-calorie versions of your healthy foods without you knowing.

So sorry you are having a rough time. This is a huge life change.
What you described sounds like you are going through a grieving process or withdrawal from food addiction, which can also be a grieving process. Totally normal after such a huge life change.
Don't feel hopeless. . . Please... just take care of yourself by drinking Water and trying for the protien goals. You won't get a Vitamin deficiency if you miss a few while you adjust to tour new routine. Be easy on yourself, this is a lot to take.
keep coming here for support.
Sending you virtual hugs ☺