BigSue

I was unable to produce a urine sample because, well, they told me not to drink anything after midnight. The nurse pleaded with me to squeeze out three drops, and I tried, but got nothing. The nurse seemed annoyed that they would have to do a blood test for pregnancy and told me that it could delay the start of my surgery, but that turned out not to be true (when I looked at my test results, the time of the pregnancy test result was around the same time as all the other blood tests).

That's so weird! I've seen a lot of different recipes for sugar-free meringues using all different kinds of sweeteners. I've seen a lot that call for powdered Swerve, but I specifically looked for a recipe with granulated sucralose because that's what I had (way cheaper, especially if you buy the store brand). There's a lot of variation in the ratios of sweetener to egg whites between the various recipes I've seen, so I've experimented with different batches to try to find the best combination. I've never had them come out chewy before. How much of the powdered Swerve did you use? I used 7/8 cup of granulated sucralose and 2 tbsp of powdered Swerve. If I'm using all granulated sucralose, I use 3/4 to 1 1/4 cup of that for the same quantity of egg whites. If I'm making "regular" baked goods, I always measure by weight, but that doesn't work so well with some artificial sweeteners because they have extremely different densities. The granulated sucralose is very light, but it's designed to substitute with sugar on a volume basis (1 cup granulated sucralose = 1 cup sugar, even though it weighs much less). I think the substitution is off, though, and the sucralose is not nearly as sweet as the same volume of sugar.

Now I'm curious: how was the texture of your cookies? I usually use just the Great Value granulated sucralose, but in the batch I made yesterday, I actually substituted 2 tablespoons of what you used (the Swerve icing sugar). My cookies usually come out dry and crunchy, but the ones I made yesterday came out soft and chewy, and I attributed that to the Swerve. The Swerve icing sugar has way more sweetness than the granulated sweetener per cup (which is why I tried it -- I was hoping to make my cookies a little sweeter, and they were, but also not quite right in texture).

Nice! Some recipes actually say that you should leave them in the oven overnight, but I usually just leave them for a few hours and I don't think it makes a difference. What sweetener did you use? I have found that the Great Value brand sucralose that I use is not very sweet, but I like things pretty sweet, so maybe I'm biased. I made a batch with cake batter flavoring yesterday and I love it! I make them at least once a week and some batches come out better than others.

I initially didn’t think my tastes had changed at all, and I was disappointed. Food still tastes the same as it did before surgery. The only exception is that I used to be a wimp when it came to spicy food, and now I crave spicy food — I use a ton of hot sauce and crushed red pepper. I don’t think I taste spiciness as strongly anymore. I also like a lot of onions and garlic in my food now (I’ve always liked garlic, but didn’t used to be a huge fan of onions). But I’ve started noticing that the foods I want to eat are different than they used to be. I’m not sure if it’s a change in taste, or if I’m just getting used to eating healthier foods, or if it’s just because I’ve discovered a lot of good, healthy recipes since my surgery, or what, but I definitely have more of a desire to eat vegetables now. I love roasting vegetables in my air fryer, just sprayed with some olive oil or avocado oil and sprinkled with seasonings. I used to hate cauliflower, but now I eat it all the time. I wonder what the Walmart grocery pickup people thought about the lady who bought 3 bags of frozen cauliflower, 1 bag of fresh cauliflower florets, and 3 bags of frozen cauliflower rice in one order. Cauliflower rice is one of my favorite “food hacks.” I don’t miss regular rice at all because cauliflower rice is a perfect substitution. I found a recipe for cauliflower cream sauce and it was delicious; I used it in a chicken divan recipe, and it was so good that I’m looking for other recipes where I can substitute the cauliflower sauce for white sauce. I also like Buffalo cauliflower now. I’ve always hated fish, but I decided to give it another try. I made some mahi-mahi and actually liked it! I couldn’t believe it. Again, I’m not sure if it’s because my tastes changed or because I have more of an open mind about eating fish. (I will say that I also tried one of those flavored tuna pouches and still did not care for it.) I spend a lot of time on Pinterest looking at healthy recipes. I have a whole board full of healthy recipes that I can’t wait to try. Since I have all these healthy foods that I actually want to eat, I have less of a desire to eat junk food. I do eat some healthy-ish treats, like a daily protein bar (I’m obsessed with Built Bars), sugar-free meringue cookies, sugar-free Jello, and protein mug cakes, but I don’t really have a desire to go and eat fast food or a bag of chips or anything... except when I see other people eating that stuff, and then it’s tough because it makes me remember how much I used to love it.

It's the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative Outcomes Calculator. Not sure why the link wouldn't work for you. Maybe try a different browser? The web page says to use Chrome or Firefox for best performance.

Not gonna lie, I consider my two daily calcium citrate soft chews to be a treat -- my reward for taking the rest of my vitamins on schedule (I also get some enjoyment out of my cherry sublingual B-12 and strawberry biotin). Love, love, love the BariatricPal French vanilla caramel and Belgian chocolate caramel!

Welcome! This forum is a great resource and has been tons of help to me as I've gone through the process. Feel free to ask questions that come up along the way. When I started the process, it seemed like surgery was an eternity away, but by the time I got to surgery day, it felt like the time had flown by and I wasn't ready!

I can't answer from my own personal experience because I started with a BMI over 60 and had gastric bypass. But I can offer you a link to a calculator that will tell you the average weight loss at 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years: https://mbsc.arbormetrix.com/Registry/public/calculator/uiCalculator/7?menuId=1013 Enter your data and click the disk icon on the top right of the page to see your expected weight loss. Note that the numbers they give are averages, so your personal results could be significantly higher or lower, but I still think it's useful information to get a ballpark estimate.

I have recently developed a love of pickles. I find them very filling for something so low in calories. You have to check the ingredients, though -- some pickles are loaded with sugar. I go for kosher dills because they don't have sugar, but I found out that sugar-free (artificially sweetened) bread and butter pickles exist and I can't wait to try them. For some reason, I've been craving spicy food since my surgery (which is weird because I didn't really like spicy food before surgery), and I like to put sriracha or hot sauce on my pickles.

If you are a female of childbearing age (and haven't had a hysterectomy), you will almost certainly have a urine test for pregnancy. Other than that, testing can vary depending on what your doctor orders.

That is definitely at the low end! Most of us start with a BMI over 40 (which is the cutoff for most insurance companies if you do not have comorbidities). I started with a BMI over 60. Since you started so low, you should not expect to lose as much or as quickly as someone with a significantly higher BMI. 55 pounds in 3.5 months is fantastic!

No, it's the opposite -- you should take iron and vitamin C together because vitamin C make the iron easier to absorb. You shouldn't take iron and calcium together because they interfere with each other. My doctor says to take them at least 2 hours apart but that advice can vary.

@Creekimp13 would you mind sharing more details of your exercise regimen?

What was your starting weight/BMI? If you started with a BMI on the low end (~40), you're not going to lose as quickly as someone with a much higher BMI. But in any event, 55 pounds in 4.5 months is great. There are a lot of factors that can affect weight loss rate, so you shouldn't worry about how quickly you lose it, as long as you are still losing. Are you on thyroid medication and have you had your bloodwork checked recently? I have hypothyroidism (I take medication for it) and I had gastric bypass, not sleeve, but my weight loss has been good.

This creamy tortellini, spinach, and chicken soup is a very popular recipe for both the Instant Pot and Crock-Pot. Since I'm not eating pasta, I made it without the tortellini and added extra chicken and spinach to make up for the lack of tortellini. It's good, but not mind-blowing (to be fair, maybe it would be with the tortellini). My 5-ounce serving: This was also a perfect time to try out my new Souper Cubes. I've seen several people in the bariatric community recommend these. They are pricey (a set of two 4-ounce trays is $36.99), but I splurged because people say this brand is much better in quality than the cheaper ones. They do feel very sturdy and heavy-duty, and it's easy to pop the frozen cubes out of the trays. I can fit 5 of these cubes in a quart-sized Ziploc bag. I usually use these glass containers (which I love and highly recommend), but the cubes in a bag are a lot more compact, and I'm not limited by the number of containers I have. I will definitely get a lot of use out of these and probably buy some of the other sizes, too!

Have you tried protein hot cocoa? I found that much easier to drink than cold protein shakes. A lot of people like to use protein shakes as coffee creamer (caramel shakes work well for this). Have you tried clear protein, like Syntrax Nectar? That's more like juice than a shake, so you might find it more tolerable. You can also try protein soups, or mixing unflavored protein powder into regular soup. Are you allowed to have purees yet? If so, you can mix unflavored protein powder into almost anything pureed. (I prefer to use flavored protein powders with sweet purees like yogurt, pudding, applesauce, oatmeal, etc. and unflavored in savory foods like refried beans, mashed cauliflower, soup, etc.).

I took Barimelts calcium citrate for the first 6 weeks after surgery. Then I switched to BariatricPal calcium citrate soft chews and I LOVE the Belgian chocolate caramel and French vanilla caramel. I consider them a daily treat. The strawberry watermelon soft chews are ok but not as delicious as the caramel ones. I currently take Citrical petites 1x/day (2 pills) and the soft chews 2x/day (just because the Citrical is a lot cheaper and has no calories... but I love the soft chews so much that I don't want to give them up). For the multivitamin, I took Barimelts for the first 6 weeks after surgery and then switched to BariatricPal MultivitaminOne chewable. I did not care for the taste of that. I currently take BariatricPal MultivitaminOne capsules with 45 mg iron. They are an excellent price for a bariatric multivitamin. Some people take regular drugstore vitamins, but keep in mind that you have to take two of those, so they come out to about the same price as BariatricPal MultivitaminOne. I also take an additional iron supplement (Nutricost iron chelate, purchased on Amazon) because I was iron-deficient. I also take NatureMade sublingual B-12 (it's cherry flavored) and Natrol biotin (strawberry flavored, tastes like candy!). And a prescription vitamin D3.

From what I've read on this forum, many (most) of us have a lot of trouble meeting our fluids goals first the first couple of weeks after surgery. It's harder than it looks, and no matter how much you read about it, you can't fully understand until you actually go through it (which is why most surgeons don't understand how hard it is, and give us overly ambitious goals). It got a lot easier for me after the first few weeks. I'm 8 months out now and have no trouble at all drinking fluids. I can drink water just as quickly as I did before surgery. I suggest trying warm beverages like tea, coffee, or protein hot cocoa. My favorite beverage is Crio Bru, which is cacao beans that you brew like coffee. It's delicious with a little almond milk and sugar-free flavored syrup. In my early post-op days, I found that warm beverages went down more easily than cold.

I used this recipe (but I only baked them for 1 hour and 15 minutes): https://thesugarfreediva.com/how-to-make-sugar-free-meringue-cookies/ And this sweetener (I've seen a lot of recipes that call for powdered Swerve, but that's pretty expensive): https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Granulated-No-Calorie-Sweetener-Value-Pack-19-4-oz/37415080 I made this batch with egg whites from a carton, and I only used the equivalent of 3 egg whites because I have found that the carton's idea of one egg white is more than an egg white from a whole egg. Also, I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer and it is too powerful to use on high for this recipe. I only turn it up to 6 -- any higher than that and the egg whites will be over-beaten and collapse in the oven.

Sugar-free meringue cookies -- egg whites, cream of tartar, zero-calorie sweetener, and flavoring (this batch is vanilla marshmallow). Ready to bake: Out of the oven: The number of cookies depends on how big you make them; I got 64 out of this batch and split it into 4 servings of 16 cookies. 19 calories for this whole plate:

I also take a walk outside every day (usually 1-1.5 miles, and sometimes one or two shorter walks), but I do the workout videos for cardio.

I really wanted to like the Body Project workouts, but the guy who leads those doesn't follow the beat of the music and it drove me crazy. I don't always follow the Leslie Sansone steps (I did at first, though) because I find that my heart rate drops during certain steps, so I do something else during those. And when I do back-to-back videos, I don't want my heart rate to drop, so I do different and/or faster steps during the cooldown/stretch of the one that's ending and the warmup of the next one. I don't like the ones with complicated steps because I don't like having to slow down or stop to watch what they're doing and try to get it right, and I feel like I'm not getting as much out of the workout if I'm not doing the steps. I also find it stressful; sometimes by the time I figure out one move, they've already moved on to the next one!

Thanks for the recommendation! I don't think I've seen this guy; I'll try one of his tomorrow. I've tried some other ones that look similar to Leslie Sansone, but the problems I usually run into are that (1) they don't follow the beat of the music, and/or (2) the steps are too complicated or change too often/without warning. Part of it may just be that Leslie's videos are the first ones I tried, so I'm used to them and I know what to expect and don't have to think too hard. I've done most of the ones that are available on YouTube many times; I do 30-50 minutes every day, so I often do 2 or 3 shorter ones back-to-back so I can mix it up a bit. My favorite Leslie Sansone videos are the ones with Nick as the walk leader. I wish there were more of those. It's funny because he annoyed me at first, when I saw him in the background of videos led by Leslie, because he just looks way too happy to be exercising, but he's pretty funny and seems to have a genuinely positive attitude. I still wouldn't say it's "fun" but it doesn't seem as onerous when I do his videos. I also think he does a better job of leading the walks than Leslie because he always gives a heads up when he's about to change steps and he is honest when he counts down (it kind of drives me crazy when Leslie counts down from 8 and I think we're done with that step and then she does 12 more).

Lucky you! I had a 2-week pre-op diet. The first week was 3 protein shakes plus one small meal per day, and the second week was just 4 protein shakes per day. It was rough! But yes, pre-op diets vary a lot, and some surgeons don't even require them (except for the last day before surgery, like yours). The purpose of the pre-op diet is to shrink your liver to make it easier for the surgeon to access your stomach. Some surgeons go on a case-by-case basis, so if your BMI is on the lower end (~40) and/or you don't carry a lot of weight in the midsection, the surgeon may not think it is necessary. Some surgeons are comfortable working around the liver even if it hasn't shrunk. The bottom line is, your surgeon knows what he or she is doing, so as long as you follow your surgeon's instructions, you should be fine.