BigSue

First of all, don't lose sight of the fact that you have done great so far. You lost 95 pounds! That's fantastic. Since you said that you've stalled and are not losing, I'm assuming that means you haven't started regaining any of the weight, right? If that's the case, then you're in maintenance, so if you want to start losing again, you just have to lower your food intake and/or increase your exercise. Diet has a much bigger effect on weight loss than exercise, but exercise has a lot of other benefits, so it's a good idea to get back into exercise as well, even if it's just a little. Leslie Sansone's Walk at Home videos on YouTube are great, and you can start with short ones (there are several that are 15 minutes or less) if you don't want to or don't have time to do a longer walk or workout. Are you tracking everything you eat? If not, I think that's a great first step to kick-starting a change. Apps like MyFitnessPal or Baritastic make it easy, and tracking can help you identify the easiest changes to make. What are the healthiest foods that you already like to eat? Start eating those things more often, and cut out (or reduce) the stuff that's not worth the calories. If you like to cook, go on Pinterest to find some new recipes that are both tasty and healthy. Finally, I recommend not fixating on a specific number on the scale. Everyone is different, and you may not be able to get to 150, but that doesn't mean you failed. I bet you have already had some great non-scale victories with a 95-pound weight loss. Has your health improved? Are you more able to keep up with your kids? Can you wear clothes from non-plus size stores? Are you less self-conscious in social/professional situations? These things are all more meaningful than a number on the scale.

YMMV, of course, but I think it's pretty common to have problems with meat early on but eventually improve. I had a lot of trouble with meat for the first several months after I got to the solid food stage. Even though I was very careful to make sure it was moist (usually with some kind of sauce), eat small bites, and chew well, I would often get a feeling of a bite getting stuck on the way down, and it was very unpleasant but would usually clear up in 10-20 minutes. I'm 20 months out now, and I almost never have problems with anything I eat anymore. Every once in a great while (maybe once in 3 months), I take too big of a bite and/or don't chew well enough and get that "stuck" feeling, but I eat meat all the time without issue. I will say that I've gotten in the habit of taking small bites and chewing well, and most of the meat I eat is in a dish with sauce or a soup/stew, but I don't really have to think about it or be careful because now that's what feels normal to me. I, too, love my smoker and greatly enjoy smoked chicken, ribs, and pulled pork with sugar-free BBQ sauce! I haven't tried brisket since my surgery; I rarely eat red meat in general.

It is unlikely that these results will preclude surgery. It’s possible that they may want you to go on medication to reduce your blood glucose/A1C before surgery, but lowering blood glucose is one of the desired outcomes from surgery, so not a read to deny it.

At this point, the number on the scale is meaningless. Your body is still adjusting to the major change of the surgery. Right now, you need to focus on getting your protein and water, and recovering from the surgery. If you stick to your plan, the weight will come off. It won’t happen instantly (remember, you didn’t gain the weight overnight, so you won’t lose it overnight), but you’re doing great so far, so keep it up and keep the faith!

I had gastric bypass in July 2020 and I constantly worry about slipping back into my old ways. I feel like I can eat way more (volume-wise) than I should be able to. I see people posting on the Food Before & After Pictures thread and saying, "I ate two bites and was full for the rest of the week," or "I merely looked at this salad and was stuffed," but I can eat a "normal" size meal at this point. However, I think back to what I used to eat and realize I am still eating far less than I used to, and I'm eating foods that are much healthier and lower in calories than what I used to eat. A few things that have helped me: I shop almost exclusively online - grocery pickup or delivery. This makes it easy to avoid impulse purchases because I order in advance and don't actually go into the store. I start with my favorites list, and search for anything I need that's not on my list. My point is that I'm not browsing all of the products in the store, but targeting what I want to buy, so I don't even see or look at junk food, and I don't bring it into my house. I eat a lot of vegetables. Every week, I buy and prep carrots, celery, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and sweet peppers. I prepare a container for each day and I pre-add a saved meal in My FItness Pal each day, so I snack on the veggies any time I want during the day (I use Walden Farms zero-calorie ranch dressing as a dip). It's a lot of food for very few calories (not to mention healthy and full of vitamins), and it helps me avoid snacking on other things. I almost look at it as an assignment to eat the veggies -- I have to eat them, so I better not fill up on other stuff first. I find healthy and delicious recipes on Pinterest. I've found so many great recipes that I don't even want things like pizza and fast food. I eat healthy(ish) treats every day. My favorite thing is sugar-free meringue (whipped pasteurized egg whites with 0-calorie sweetener), which I eat raw as a whipped cream substitute, frozen as an ice cream substitute, or baked as a cookie substitute. 25 calories worth of egg whites makes about 1 cup of meringue or 20 small cookies. Other favorites include protein bars (Built Bars are my favorites, and they're lower in calories than most protein bars), sugar-free Jello, protein mug cake, and plain rice cakes sprayed with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and sprinkled with brown sugar Swerve and cinnamon. I think these treats help me stay on track and not get tempted by real ice cream and high-calorie cookies.

Lots of good questions, some of which I’m still trying to figure out. I’m concerned about the volume of food I’m able to eat 1.5 years out, BUT I have made major changes to what I eat, so my calorie consumption is still quite low. I have some go-to desserts: Protein bars - there are some incredibly delicious ones out there that taste like candy bars. You do need to be careful because some of them are loaded with sugar and high in calories. My favorite is Built Bars, which taste amazing and are lower in sugar and calories than most brands. Meringue - egg whites are MAGICAL. I use the same basic recipe three ways. For 25 calories, I take 1 serving of pasteurized egg whites (from a carton), 1/8 tsp cream of tartar, pinch of salt, 1 tsp flavoring of choice (I like half butter flavor + half vanilla, and there are tons of options if you look at LorAnn or One On One flavors), 1/2 cup Splenda, and whip in a stand mixer to stiff peaks. I eat it fresh over sugar free Jello (it’s very similar to whipped cream). Or I freeze it and it tastes like ice cream (makes about 1 cup, for just 25 calories!). Or I pipe it in little circles and bake to make meringue cookies (I usually get about 20 cookies in a 25-calorie batch), sometimes using light yogurt as a dip/icing. Plain rice cake (35 calories) sprayed with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray and sprinkled with brown Swerve and cinnamon.

Everyone is different, so there's always a chance you'll be one of the unfortunate ones to have complications (which are pretty rare for weight loss surgery), and you have to weigh that risk against the benefits of the surgery. I will say, though, that this was one of my biggest fears that made me hold off on WLS for years, but I am a year and a half out from gastric bypass and have not vomited even once since surgery.

Sorry to hear about your grandma — that must be rough. I wouldn’t worry about 2 pounds; my weight often fluctuates more than that in a single day. By now, you’ve most likely developed healthy habits and as long as you don’t stray too far from that path, going a week (or a few weeks) without tracking should not derail your weight loss.

Yes, that happened to me, too! My iPad stopped recognizing my face.

Oh yeah, totally relate! I'm so used to looking terrible in everything and dressing to hide my body that I don't really know how to shop for clothes now. I've spent my whole life only being able to shop in plus-size stores that now I don't even know where to buy clothes because there's such an overwhelming number of options -- and I'm too small to wear anything from Lane Bryant. Sure, it's a "good problem" to have, but still a bit of a problem.

This got way longer than I expected, so let me start with the TL;DR: If you have gotten counseling that has helped with your WLS success, can you please give me some tips for how to find a good therapist? And what I should be discussing with that therapist? I'm looking at you, @Creekimp13 and @catwoman7 (since you've both mentioned the importance of therapy in your long-term success), but I would love to hear from anyone who has gotten this kind of counseling... I've seen so many people say that therapy is really important for long-term success with WLS. I'm almost a year out and I've been struggling lately, and I've had a hard time finding a good therapist. I searched my insurance company's website for therapists who treat eating disorders. I reached out to a practice that had a few therapists who had eating disorders listed as one of their specialties, and they sent a very curt reply saying that they don't have anyone on staff who treats eating disorders. I called another practice and explained that I'm a WLS patient looking for counseling on food and eating issues, and they assured me they could help, but the therapist they assigned to me knew nothing about WLS. I had a few sessions with him and it was useless. I had to keep explaining basics about WLS (like food restrictions, dumping syndrome, not eating and drinking at the same time, loose skin -- which he thought would go away on its own if I exercise enough and when I explained that the only way to get rid of it is plastic surgery, he suggested I ask my bariatric surgeon to do it at my next follow-up). He didn't seem to understand my issues at all. In hindsight, I probably should have walked out of the first session. When I started telling him my WLS story and mentioned that my highest weight was 341 pounds, he interrupted me: "Sue?" I stopped and said, "Yes?" He replied, with a big smile on his face, "Sue, you were FAT!" and then busted out laughing, like it was cool to make fun of how fat I used to be just because I'm not that big anymore. When I told him I wanted to get counseling to address my food and eating issues to make sure I don't gain the weight back, he replied, "You won't gain the weight back. If I had a $100 bill right now, I would bet $100 that you won't gain the weight back," and then we never discussed regain again in the next 3 sessions. I think he was under the impression that regain was an irrational fear and he did his job by reassuring me that it's not going to happen. Then I found another practice that has a whole paragraph on its web site about the support they offer for bariatric patients both before and after surgery. I called to make an appointment and said that I had bariatric surgery last year and I was interested in the post-surgery counseling they described on their web site. The receptionist told me she needed my surgeon's office notes from my most recent visit, and was oddly insistent that the notes come directly from the surgeon's office and not from me downloading them from my electronic chart and sending them. I had to sign release paperwork for the surgeon's office, and when the counseling practice got it, they called me and said they were confused because my surgeon's notes said I already had the surgery so there was no need for me to get a pre-surgery evaluation. I guess they thought I was asking for a psych eval for surgery approval and couldn't understand why I would need counseling after I already had the surgery. I cited the paragraph on their web site and they sent me to a seemingly random therapist (probably the first one with an opening) who had no experience with WLS patients. She's better than the last guy, but the sessions have been pretty generic -- basically, she asks me how my week has been, I talk about things that happen (usually relating to WLS issues), and she asks me how I feel about it or how I handled it. Doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere -- just feels like a WLS patient Q&A. I told her this and she suggested I think about what exactly I want to discuss and tell her next week. I'll give that a try, but to be honest, I don't really know -- she's the therapist, so I was counting on her to provide that kind of guidance!

My main strategy is to fill up on low-calorie foods. Once a week, I buy and prep a bunch of snack veggies (celery, carrot chips, cucumber slices, pepper slices, and cherry tomatoes). I portion them out in meal prep containers, one for each day, and I have a saved meal that I enter in My Fitness Pal at the beginning of the day. Then I snack on the veggies whenever I want (I usually split them between mid-morning and mid-afternoon), knowing that they’re already accounted for. I use Walden Farms “calorie-free” dressing as a dip. It is a LOT of food for ~60 calories. If I’m in the mood for something warm, my go-to is cauliflower rice with Flavor God cheese seasoning and Mrs. Dash. Or I make a soup with cauliflower rice and chicken broth. 20-30 calories and very satisfying. I have a great substitution for ice cream! Whip pasteurized egg whites (safe to eat without cooking) with cream of tartar, calorie-free sugar substitute, and flavoring of choice (vanilla is delicious but I like to experiment with different flavors of One-On-One) and freeze. It’s best to eat before it’s frozen solid, or after letting it soften for a few minutes. It makes about 1 cup for just 25 calories, and it’s dairy-free and high in protein. I also use it (without freezing) as a substitute for whipped cream and put it on 10-calorie sugar-free Jello. Sometimes just looking at the nutrition information is enough to deter me. One time someone brought donuts to work and they were calling my name. I looked up the nutrition info to see how bad a small glazed donut would be, and it was 280 calories! I could eat two Built Bars for that and I would enjoy them more, and once I looked at it that way, I had no desire to eat the donut. Not worth it!

I'm a side sleeper, and my body used to be so wide that I needed 2 or 3 pillows to hold my head up high enough to align my neck with my spine. Now I just need one pillow!

I haven't tried the sweet & spicy, but I like G. Hughes original and hickory. I have family who don't care about sugar and they like G. Hughes, too. @Kris77 I buy G. Hughes sauces from Walmart (which has the lowest price). I've also seen them at Target, and they're available in some online stores including BariatricPal, Vitacost, and Netrition.

Wow, you are being really hard on yourself! Don't forget that a year sober is a big deal. It looks like you had to put weight loss on the back burner to focus on your sobriety, and that does not make you a failure. You are taking active steps to getting back on track, and that's great. If you don't give up, there's always hope.

Well, I'm glad it's not a heart problem for you! Gotta say it's a bummer to have had this surgery to improve my health and end up with heart problems I didn't have before. Have you had bloodwork recently? It's quite possible that you have an easily fixable deficiency. I was hoping that was my problem, but my bloodwork was fine. The back pain when you drive might improve as you get used to your new body. For a while, my butt hurt all the time because I lost so much of the, uh, padding I used to have there, but it doesn't really hurt anymore. The discomfort from eating will probably improve. For the first several months after surgery, I had problems with the feeling of food getting "stuck" (usually meat), but that very rarely happens anymore. In fact, my biggest worry now is that I can eat too much. I see people posting in the food before & after thread who eat, like, two bites of salad and they're full, and I can easily eat a whole big bowl of salad. Are you doing any strength training? That might help with the upper body strength, although I still have issues with that. Part of it is just not having as much mass; things like pushing/pulling doors or furniture are much more difficult without the extra 200 pounds to anchor me down. And I used to have no problem, say, opening a jar, and now I do, despite the fact that I work out and do strength training. I kind of thought that might be related to the bradycardia, but who knows?

Sorry to hear you aren't feeling well. For me, the first 9 months or so (after the initial recovery) were great. I was never hungry, and I had a lot of energy even though I was eating very little. But then things started to change. I felt weak and fatigued all the time. My resting heart rate was less than 40 beats per minute, which my surgeon said was probably because my heart was used to having to work much harder when I was carrying 200 extra pounds, and now that I'm so much smaller, my heart has slowed way down to compensate. My surgeon and the cardiologist to whom he referred me said the bradycardia was probably the cause of the weakness and fatigue, so you might want to get that checked out if your resting heart rate has decreased a lot. Like you, I look much better, but I feel worse than I did before surgery, when I was super morbidly obese. To make matters worse, people keep congratulating me on my weight loss and condescendingly say, "I bet you FEEL better, too!" No, actually, I feel worse than I've ever felt in my life, but hey, at least my body looks socially acceptable now! On the other hand, I was in bad shape before surgery, with hypertension and diabetes that probably would have just kept getting worse if I hadn't lost the weight, and now I no longer have either. It's hard to say whether I'm better or worse off overall than I was before the surgery, but I think it's useless to think about it that way because I made the best decision I could based on what I knew at the time, and there's no going back now.

Before my surgery, I used to eat pizza, candy, chips, ice cream, and basically all of the junk foods. Eating indulgent food was basically my only pleasure in life. I ate a frozen pizza every Friday, and I looked forward to it all week long. But my tastes have changed after surgery. At first, I tried to make a bariatric-friendly version of pizza, with a Mr. Tortilla tortilla as the crust, sugar-free marinara, low-fat mozzarella, and turkey pepperoni. I also tried a chicken crust pizza. These are fine, and somewhat satisfy a pizza craving, but I don't even really want pizza anymore. There are so many things I'd rather eat that it's not even worth it to me to eat chicken crust pizza. I don't really desire chocolate anymore, either. I used to eat a whole bag of fun-sized Snickers in 3 or 4 days, but now, when coworkers bring candy to work, I have little to no desire to eat any of it. Part of that is because I discovered Built Bars, which I think are even better than actual candy bars. The things I look forward to eating now include fish fajitas (BTW, I hated fish before surgery and now I love it) and turkey wraps with low-carb tortillas, grilled chicken with sugar-free BBQ sauce (I love G. Hughes BBQ sauces and I think they're just as good as the sugar-laden ones), mashed cauliflower, riced cauliflower (cauliflower is another thing I used to hate but now I eat it almost every day), salad, and other healthy foods. I have found things to satisfy my sweet tooth (e.g., protein mug cake instead of cake/cupcakes; protein bars instead of candy bars), but for the most part, I don't even have much of a desire to eat junk food anymore.

I can't speak to the Baritastic app, but I've been using the free version of MyFitnessPal for almost two years, so yes, it is sustainable, and you don't have to get the paid version.

Thanks. It's surreal sometimes to realize that I have lost over 200 pounds. Two hundred pounds! And yet I still feel like the same old Big Sue a lot of the time. TBH, I've been struggling a lot in many aspects of my life, so I'm not in a great place to be offering encouraging words to other WLS patients right now. I do still look at new posts, though, and I have to admire you for sticking around after all these years to educate newbies on things like the three week stall.

My surgeon said no alcohol for a year, but I'm 16 months out and haven't had even a sip since my surgery. I didn't drink much before surgery, either, because I was a lightweight when it came to drinking, even when I was over 300 pounds. I'm kind of afraid to drink now because most people say that alcohol has an even stronger effect after surgery. I don't particularly enjoy drinking, anyway, so it's not much of a sacrifice for me.

I didn't cancel my surgery, but I started the preliminary steps to getting surgery about 15 years before I actually went through with it. I considered it again several times in between, and like so many people, I say in hindsight that I wish I had done it earlier, but I don't think I was really ready for it until I actually went through with it (July 2020). And I think if I had done it before I was really ready for it, my results wouldn't have been as good. it is a huge, life-altering decision, so I think if you felt such a strong sense that you weren't ready for it, it was probably the right decision to cancel/postpone.

@ms.sss Is that the low-cal Asian dressing you enter in MFP? I've been wondering what brand that is because I haven't seen one like that in stores. I'm so excited to see that it's something you can make! I think I have all the ingredients on hand except the chili paste. I love Skinny Girl salad dressings, and I think they're all 5-15 calories per 2 Tbsp serving. Their ranch is pretty good, but it has a thin consistency. The poppyseed is my favorite. Walden Farms has a line of "zero-calorie" dressings (they obviously have some calories, but they're allowed to round down to zero if it's less than 5 calories in a serving) that are surprisingly good. Their ranch is thicker than the Skinny Girl ranch and probably closer to a regular ranch dressing (they also have a chipotle ranch that's a little spicy if you're into that). I love their thousand island dressing. These are all available at Walmart (both online and at some stores) for a reasonable price. Walden Farms has some other flavors that I haven't tried because they're not available from Walmart and third-party sellers charge outrageously expensive prices for them.

I think a lot of bariatric programs adopt a "one-size-fits-all" strategy because, frankly, it's easier than tailoring it to each individual patient. They go with something conservative and simple that should be fine for everyone, even if not ideal for all patients. To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with your asking these questions, and you're probably better off for looking at it this way and trying to optimize your own nutrition. But I can also see how this kind of discussion can be confusing for some patients. Hang out on this site for a while and you'll see a lot of posts from people who have alarmingly little knowledge about what they're supposed to be eating post-op (although I suspect some of these are trolls). Some patients basically need to be micromanaged and told exactly what to eat and drink at every stage. Plus, the surgeon might be afraid that if he tells you that a different shake is ok, other patients will either hear what they want to hear ("If Unjury shakes are ok, I guess that means I can drink any shakes I want, and I like McDonalds shakes!") or start bombarding him with questions about other specific products. That could explain why he is more reasonable when you meet with him one-on-one as opposed to in a support group setting with other patients. Anyway, I'm with you about real food vs. shakes. For the first several months, I relied on protein shakes and other protein-fortified products a lot, but I'm 15 months out now and I can easily get enough protein from real food, so I don't want to waste my calories on protein shakes that I don't even enjoy! I would much rather have a grilled chicken salad or a Mr. Tortilla turkey wrap or a broccoli slaw omelet than drink a protein shake.

When I was in the hospital for my gastric bypass surgery, the first meal tray they brought me had a bowl of fruit cocktail! Apparently, they were out of sugar-free Jello, and they decided that fruit cocktail was the best substitution they had. When the nurse came in and saw it, she gasped and said, "You didn't eat any of that, did you?" and went to give the food service people a talking-to.