summerseeker

(too much) Iron is notorious for resulting in Constipation.
i'm not a doctor, but the first thing i would say is to stop doing whatever is causing you pain and go do your PCP immediately for further guidance.

I feel so defeated.... it feels like every time I try to improve my health I make things worse. A small bit of back story first.... I had my WLS back in 2000, and was never told a lot of what they tell people now. I was simply told to take Calcium, stool softeners and a multivitamin.... not what kind or what it should include etc. I was then told years later I was anemic, but after 2 years with that (PCP) doctor she never addressed it even though I inquired. Due to an extremely large hernia and pain I was having, I went to the bariatric doctor and he said to fix the hernia I would need to lose weight. I was losing weight again (after many years) and was feeling tired all the time. I asked my team about the low iron/anemia and asked if should I address it. I was advised to take 18 mg of Iron daily so I bought the Multivitamin with it included.... I bought a year's worth.... several days in, I became painfully constipated. Nothing worked but suppositories. I also increased my Water intake and Fiber both in food and with Benefiber. I was finally able to go without extreme pain after 2 days. One day of not using the suppositories and I am right back to not able to go again. I don't know if this is something that my body just needs to adjust to or if I messed myself up with all the years of taking stool softeners (that I don't even know if I was getting benefit of because I took soft gels)... I did message my team to ask advice, but with so many here going through similar stuff I thought I'd rant here also! I hate to think I wasted over $100 on the Multivitamins that I can't take now. I'm a retired teacher with limited funds.....lol....

I have been consumed with all things High school these days. My teen’s prom was this weekend and of course she couldn’t make up her mind on a dress. By the time she decided everything was either sold out, not in her size or would take too long to ship. She asked me to make the dress. Here’s the reference and the final product.

696 calories for this salad!
i blame the feta and cashews...lol
the seasoned tofu was absolutely yum and i am already looking forward to ordering it again the next time we do chinese takeout
eyeballing the after pic, im estimating i ate about 2/3 of this salad. will likely eat the rest later (at the very least will eat the leftover tofu...yuuuummmmm)

A viewing of todays meals (might have dessert later who knows)
breakfast- oatmeal with almond powder and strawberries
lunch- romaine (cos), Tomato, cucumber, and chipotle black Beans and the snack also pictured is cottage cheese and strawberries
so dinner I made the kids pappardelle with Italian sausage, peppers and onions in tomato sauce, broccoli carrot slaw, and cider vinegar cucumbers. A child claimed the offending Pasta so I didn’t eat any. I wanted the peppers and onions more than anything but the broccoli slaw was really good. Go me!

8 months out and 191 pounds dropped, and it is still rough. Knees still ache, I am due for both to be replaced, but I have to be under 250 pounds, which is my goal. I can say that I do move better and can walk further, pain is still there but not as bad and they recover faster. I may attempt to try some light hiking this year. Swimming for sure, stationary bike, and even the elliptical is low impact on knees.

Aqua fit is the best fun and exercise for old knees but like you, after 10 years of doing it, my pool has closed. I cried. Now I just walk. I keep to the flatter areas. I also find shopping in the city is quite good because I walk miles, in and out of stores and all around the markets. I buy very little but enjoy the browse.

Hello Carrielee,
Everyone has worries doing this surgery, you are not alone there. You seem to be at a place where there is no going back this time. Most of those things that are wrong with your body will disappear with this surgery. It would be a win, win situation if you could go through with it this time. I will not tell you it will be easy because its not. I had a lot of new stuff to learn and adapt to. I will say that I had zero pain.
I did this, I was very disabled. I can rush around now like a spring chicken. Go and get this amazing life, hold your nerve, its so very worth it.

Hi Carrielee - welcome! I had VSG surgery just about a week before my 40th birthday this past November. I had sworn in the years leading up to it that I would NEVER have any kind of WLS, but here I am! If I could have done it on my own, I would have - I needed help to improve my life, because nothing I tried on my own was working, and I tried it all.
I had sleep apnea, insulin resistance, and bp that bounced back and forth between hypertensive and high-normal. I felt like I was going to die after climbing up a flight of stairs, and I was passing up good opportunities at my job because I didn't want to walk 5-10 minutes to another building and get all sweaty. I had never had surgery of any kind before (other than getting my wisdom teeth out, but it's not like I was intubated for that), so the thought of getting put under and having my innards poked at was rather intimidating.
I would do it over again in a heartbeat. Like @catwoman7 said, I'd do it every year if I had to!
I never needed to use my prescription pain meds post-op. I actually take the "long way" to my car at the end of my workdays now. My husband and I routinely walk to the front of our neighborhood and back, whereas previously, I hated just walking the 0.10 mile to our mailbox. My blood pressure has actually been almost LOW ever since waking up from surgery, my IBS-D has essentially disappeared (and I had days where I couldn't be too far from a restroom before), and I'm a little less sweaty. My knees feel INFINITELY better, and they're a little less noisy when I bend down.
Now, you do have some health conditions that could make any surgery a little more risky (fatty liver, history of PE especially), but your doctor will review your history and will probably have you do quite a few tests and things to make sure it's safe for you to have surgery. I had some weird, random heart palpitations for darn near 20 years that were dismissed as "nothing major", but my doctor insisted that I do a 48-hour Holter monitor just to be sure. When that didn't show anything, they had me do a monitor for a whole month! They actually figured out the cause (occasional premature atrial contractions, or PACs, which apparently darn near everybody has at some point - some of us just feel them more than others), and cleared me for surgery.
Ask your surgeon all the questions you can think of. I watched YouTube videos for months leading up to my surgery just to see what others' experiences were. I crawled through this forum extensively. I read the binder my program gave me over and over and over. I started following tons of WLS accounts on Insta. Do whatever you need to do to ease your mind a bit, and know that there is a large community to back you up!
Trust your gut and go with what you know you need to do, be that surgery or something else. No matter what you choose, we'll be here for you.

Hello Carrielee,
Everyone has worries doing this surgery, you are not alone there. You seem to be at a place where there is no going back this time. Most of those things that are wrong with your body will disappear with this surgery. It would be a win, win situation if you could go through with it this time. I will not tell you it will be easy because its not. I had a lot of new stuff to learn and adapt to. I will say that I had zero pain.
I did this, I was very disabled. I can rush around now like a spring chicken. Go and get this amazing life, hold your nerve, its so very worth it.

Hello Amanda,
Just trust the process, it really works. Hold your nerve. Try to not look for ways to break the stall. Your body needs the small rest to begin dropping again.

Hello Carrielee,
Everyone has worries doing this surgery, you are not alone there. You seem to be at a place where there is no going back this time. Most of those things that are wrong with your body will disappear with this surgery. It would be a win, win situation if you could go through with it this time. I will not tell you it will be easy because its not. I had a lot of new stuff to learn and adapt to. I will say that I had zero pain.
I did this, I was very disabled. I can rush around now like a spring chicken. Go and get this amazing life, hold your nerve, its so very worth it.

I totally understand this. It's not a bad thing AT ALL to step away from the scales if they aren't helping you.
Honestly - if you stick to your plan you will lose more weight than you have already - much more. The issue is that the loss is never linear. If you get stressed by stalls and regains then maybe weigh yourself once a month and Celebrate your losses then. I was and am a daily weigher but I could tolerate the highs and lows associated with that.
Yes - the food volumes we can tolerate increase in the months and years after surgery. If you focus on a diet of Protein and veggies you're not likely to go too far wrong.

chips are slider foods. Most people can technically eat more of them than other foods and anyone can eat a pretty good bit when they are “grazing” Which is eating little bits multiple times throughout the day. Try really hard to avoid grazing because that will can definitely get you into trouble.

Not sure if you’ve seen me on here but I had sleeve three years ago and I lost a quite a big chunk of weight but I did regain my weight just as fast. I was able to eat more than I expected at every stage but even still if I had been eating healthy options three times a day that would not have allowed me to gain the amount of weight I gained.

I gained my weight by sneaking in the not so healthy foods from near the beginning since I was eating so little i thought it was okay because I was still losing. When my hunger came back my portions got a little bigger and eventually I was eating bigger portions of less that ideal food more often than prescribed. Since I never really took advantage of that honeymoon phase to actually change my eating habits to healthy foods this is when things went off the rails. The surgery will not do all the work.

My recommendation is to take this time where your tool is really working for you to try out some new healthy options and recipes and find a variety of things that you like so when the actual hunger comes back you will have changed your habits.

I had so many, they lasted from a few days to 3 weeks in the first year. The second year they lasted much longer, I had one lasting 3 months and I thought I had finished loosing. I stepped on the scale one morning and found that a whopping 5 pounds had fallen off me.
Just hold your nerve and follow your plan, good luck

Hello Amanda,
Just trust the process, it really works. Hold your nerve. Try to not look for ways to break the stall. Your body needs the small rest to begin dropping again.

Yes this is a good tip. I have a certain eating out handbag that just fits my box. We don't always get the option of a doggie bag here so I always go prepared. My husband is always a grateful benefactor of my left overs

Yesss! Could not survive without my electric blanket in bed. I keep it on low all night, other than on the warmest nights (we have very few here ,LOL).

Hello Amanda,
Just trust the process, it really works. Hold your nerve. Try to not look for ways to break the stall. Your body needs the small rest to begin dropping again.

Thank you I will check it out

I never had gerd or reflux until I got my sleeve. Then the gerd was so incredibly bad I ended up with gastritis and esophagitis. I had to take Nexium 80mg 2x per day plus Prevacid daily as needed (needed daily). The PPI was in such high doses so often that I developed an incredibly large amount of polyps all through my stomach. It took 4 endoscopies to get rid of all of them. I had a revision to bypass and haven't had a single issue since.

Hello and welcome in the forum.
Yes its awful. I got this after the sleeve too. After 2 years I have found foods and drinks that trigger it for me. Wine, orange juice, spicy food etc. My issues are mainly in the night. I don't know if my symptoms are better than before or I just manage them more efficiently. I wish I had zero problems and could eat curries again
You might already be doing these things but I will mention them just in case.....
Use a wedge pillow under your normal pillow
Sleepy on my left side is better than the right ?
Don't eat 3 hours before bed and no fruit after 6pm
I take Lansoprazole twice a day, religiously at 4pm, 2 hours before my evening meal and at Midnight, the time I go to bed. These times work ok for me. I have the liquid and tablet form of Gaviscon, yuck. I swig it in bed if I have it and have woken with a half sucked tablet stuck to the top of my mouth.
Never heard of blowing air in a stomach ? Would it not just stretch a stomach ?
I have read of one person on here who had the revision and still had issues. Lots have been cured

Yes its a thing. My fat coat insulated me so well and I never realised it. I wear so many layers now. My poor suffering husband sits in his boxers in the lounge and I huddle under a blanket. I had a Amazon delivery yesterday and when I opened my front door the guy laughed and said ' Wow you live in a green house '
If I guess the English weather wrong, I get so cold I feel ill. We really can have all four seasons in a day.
Strangely, if I over eat I also begin to shiver

So you’re in your third week which generally is purée. Can you give us an idea of what you’ve been eating.

Yes, some take longer to heal & therefore need to move through the stages more slowly so move back a stage for a few days. Like the purée you’ve eaten is still too thick for you yet. Try thinning them with Water, stock, milk, etc. Some allowed foods can still be too heavy for our tummy yet & you may experience discomfort though I wouldn’t say pain as you’ve described. And yes, eating too quickly can cause again discomfort. You can even have the foamies if something is too heavy, coarse or you eat to quickly but you’ve haven’t experienced that.
I’d still check with your surgeon or go to a hospital because you really shouldn’t be experiencing pain as strong as you’ve indicated.

lunch this afternoon....a giant piece of garlic toast (really should call it garlic LOAF, it was so thick!), with a side poached egg and a garden salad w/ sesame vinaigrette.
ate 1/4 of the toast-loaf and probably 1/4 of the egg (i dipped the toast-loaf in it, so can't really gauge how much i ate if it) and all the salad.
also had a sample (2 forkfuls) of the Kid's soufflé pancakes with some the the berry sauce (too sweet) and whipped cream (yum!)
(and a mimosa beforehand, not shown )
guessing 400 cals for everything i ate.