Jaelzion

About to eat my yogurt, LOL.

It's true that any weight loss surgery has the potential to work, but that doesn't mean that they are all equally good options. There's a reason most bariatric surgeons no longer offer the Lap Band. Although gastric banding was a promising treatment for obesity, its high long-term complications and significant failure rate have caused a significant decrease in LAGB insertions.7 This trend is also seen at our institution, where LAGB has been essentially abandoned. With this decline in band insertion comes a steep increase in LAGB removals. At our institution, the rate of band removals increased from 1 per year to more than 50 per year within a 7-year period (Fig. 1). The literature supports this trend.1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7006354/

Exactly what @catwoman7 said.

It's okay, at 5'1" I'm at peace with being short, LOL. I'll be at the forefront of the petite revolution, LOL. And it is important to note that my level of intake is nowhere near average. I'm small overall, in late middle age, female, and I have a lifetime history of yoyo dieting (so my body is very efficient at conserving calories). No one should expect to eat the way I do in maintenance.

OMG, me too! I'm an apple shape, so my thighs were always pretty small, even when I was a big girl. And now they are really small and I have a thigh gap. Who'd a thunk it?

3 months is still pretty early in the process. Over time, many people get some or all of their appetite back. For me, after year 1, I got about 60% of my pre-surgery appetite back. I'm hungry less intensely and less often than I did before surgery, but I do get hungry. As I was approaching my weight loss goal, my doctor advised me to incorporate higher calorie foods like avocado and nuts (more calories but not more volume). And that worked to slow and then stop my weight loss. Ironically, I do eat about 1000 calories per day, but I'm normal weight at this point, I'm older and I'm short at 5'1". So my BMR is pretty low. With all your activity and being a bigger person overall, I'd expect your eventual maintenance level of intake will be higher than mine.

I'm another grazer. I eat 6 mini-meals in a day. I start with my morning latte and I'm eating every 2 hours until about 6 (I'm not much of a night eater and I go to bed early).

You will definitely be able to eat more later. And you're being medically supervised through this process, right? Your doctor will be checking your bloodwork regularly to make sure your nutritional needs are being met. You have protein goals to hit (and you can track your food to make sure you get there every day). You're taking a bariatric multivitamin. Also, you don't have to eat more at one sitting to up your calories. You can add an extra snack or even an extra meal, if necessary. You shouldn't have to live with so much anxiety. Have you talked this over with your doctor? It might be a good idea to track your food carefully for a few days, then call and go over it with the nutritionist or nurse on your bariatric team. Any surgical intervention carries risks. But there's risk associated with remaining the size you are now too (said by someone who had a BMI of 47 not that long ago). At least the risk you've taken will pay off down the road with better health, a better quality of life and hopefully a longer life.

Yeah, I was well-hydrated and I had a beastly headache after my vaccination (both doses). I think it's just part of your body rallying its defenses against the virus. But I came home and went to bed and the headache was gone the next day (although I slept a lot the day after both shots).

I can understand the impulse to ask "Exactly how much CAN I eat now"? The difficulty is that things are different after the surgery. Pre-op, I could tell when I was getting full and I'd automatically slow down my eating and then stop. Post-op, the cues that you've had enough can be much subtler. One. single. bite. can be the difference between "satisfied" and "miserable". Early on, when I was about 3 weeks out, I ate too much for the first, and last time. The combination of pain, nausea, and distress was horrible. It was so miserable that I've never eaten too much again, in two years. I was lucky in that, the episode was short-lived because I threw up. Since then, there have been a couple of times when I took one last bite and then spit it out because I felt like it was going to send me over the edge. So when I caution you about this plan, it's coming from a place of remembering what it feels like to overeat in the early days after surgery. No bueno.

It's usually yogurt. That's my last snack before bed.

"I have a medical condition and my doctor has advised me not to fly". The exact nature of your condition is no one's business.

Yeah there and I'd also take some of my boobs back. I mean, I wanted to smaller, but sheesh! LOL 😂

Sounds pretty good!

I find myself in this category (even though I am not sedentary - I walk 1.5 miles per day and strength train 3 times per week). But I am short, and older, in the normal BMI range now, and I've spent a lifetime doing on-again, off-again dieting. Far from being a starvation diet, I am maintaining on 1000 calories per day. I was lucky that my body found its own equilibrium, when I eat whenever I'm hungry (but eating good food, not junk), it naturally adds up to about 1000 calories and that's what I need to maintain.

This is pretty much what I do as well. I try to respond when I see a 5 lb gain, so I won't have to deal with re-losing larger amounts. I reduce processed foods, reduce carbs, forego off-plan treats, and focus on protein. In other words I go back to how I ate during the weight loss phase. So far, it works for me.

I've never really thought about ignoring anyone. If necessary, I just scroll on by...

Well said. I also generally agree with your overall point @Creekimp13. Self-starvation is harmful, non-sustainable and counter-productive in the end. And my experience taught me that SPEED of loss is not as important as continuing to lose. It took me almost two years to reach goal and toward the end I was losing only about 1-2 pounds per month. But even that slow loss adds up over time and I got where I wanted to be! But as @BayouTiger said, we really are all different. For instance, you said: This may often be true, but I am currently in maintenance and eating about 1000 calories per day. I'm not restricting myself to that number, I eat about six mini-meals per day and plus small snacks whenever I am hungry. And I am exactly maintaining on that intake (besides normal fluctuations). I track my food pretty carefully, so my calories counts tend to be pretty precise. Some days I may have what I call a "munchie" day and eat more - I don't fight it. Some days I'm uninterested in food for some reason and I'll eat less - I don't force it (besides trying to hit my protein goal). But it averages to about 1000 calories per day. I'm short at 5'1", I've lost more than half my body weight, and I'm guessing I have a fairly low BMR. So the assumption that everyone eating 1000 calories a day or less is crash dieting for quick results is not always valid. As @BayouTiger said, I know your heart is in the right place and someone out there probably needs to read what you wrote. But you can't lump everyone together.

Oh I see! With that additional information, things are very much broken. My best advice would be to seek a therapist, preferably one that has experience treating bariatric patients or people with eating disorders. This state of affairs is unsustainable and won't end well.

This right here

No one can say for sure because there are a lot of factors that go into how much loose skin a person will have after a very large weight loss. But age is on your side, your skin is hopefully still elastic and that should help. And I've never heard anyone who lost a lot of weight complain about the loose skin. Most of us wouldn't trade our new bodies for tighter skin. It'll be okay, one way or another.

I experience this too. Often when I walk up to a mirror, I momentarily think my reflection is someone else. I haven't yet learned to instantly recognize that silhouette as ME.

28 pounds in 4 weeks is phenomenal. I'd say you're doing everything right!

You're pretty far out from your surgery so you may not have this issue, but I found that Xarelto no longer worked for me after surgery. My hematologist actually predicted this because Xarelto needs to be taken with a substantial amount of food to be bio-available. He directed me to switch to Eliquis but my insurance refused to cover it. So we stuck with Xarelto and six months after surgery, I got a clot. Now I am on Lovenox (injectible) twice a day. You may be able to eat enough by now that it won't be an issue for you, see what your doctors say.

I was one of these, LOL. I had regular coffee with my breakfast in the hospital. My bariatric team didn't have a rule about coffee but they did say not everyone tolerates it well right after surgery. I had no problems and never stopped drinking my one cup a day.