vikingbeast

Topiramate (long, long pre-surgery) made me absolutely ravenous, which is stupid because it was prescribed as part of a weight loss regimen. As soon as I stopped it, the hunger went away.

We don't have central heating, only space heaters when it gets really cold, but they really spike the power bill.

What a difference!!

I just told someone I was shaming my Viking ancestors... 15ºC (59ºF) and I'm freezing cold all the time even though it's 21ºC (70ºF) in my house.

As I shrink, I'm getting skin tags in my armpits and they're incredibly painful. Did anyone else have this? How did you get rid of them? The dermatologists are all backed up for months and it is driving me BATTY.

Hoo boy. Ya. Look into getting some Isopure. You can get it in packets to mix with water or in bottles. It’s not all sweet, it’s quite tangy.

Congratulations! You're about where I was 6 weeks out... it's kind of insane how quickly it dropped off. I noticed my joint pain is just... gone.

Nearly every insurance company approved for anyone BMI > 40 regardless of comorbidities.

1. Could you feel your stomach? No, not really. I felt the incisions, but honestly there was so much gas that I didn't feel anything. I worried about this too, especially as I started to drink my liquids, but it was fine. I did feel my stomach about three weeks post-op as the nerves re-grew, but it truly wasn't even pain, just sort of "what on earth is that sensation..." Now I'm fine and doing sit-ups and tuck-ups and kip swings off a bar and bracing for heavy weight lifting no problem. I never took any of the serious pain drugs, and only needed 4-5 doses of Tylenol the first week. 2. Did you have a drain? No. There was a tiny bit of discharge from the largest incision (where they withdraw the stomach), but only for one day. 3. How long on clear fluids? Not at all. I was started on full liquids literally in the hospital. I had to have one day of clear fluids pre-op in order to clear my system so they could see what was going on. 4. Cold, tepid, or warm fluids? At first, tepid or warm fluids felt better. Cold ones were a shock. Now I can drink whatever (8 weeks out). 5. Sipping? I took trepidatious little sips in the hospital. By the time I got home later that day (I didn't even stay overnight), I was taking small but normal sips, at least 3/4 ounce. By three weeks out I was able to take nice little gulps. Now, 8 weeks out, if I want to (if I've been running, f.ex.) I can take 3-4 real gulps in a row. 6. Can't drink for the first 24 hours? Absolute b*llocks. I literally was handed a tray with broth, unsweetened cranberry juice, and cream of rice as soon as I was transferred from the recovery room to my hospital room. That said, I did have dry mouth even drinking. Get you a thing of Biotene at any drugstore and spray it in your mouth. It's the weirdest sensation but it helps immensely. 7. Sleeping? I spent the first night on my back because I would have to wriggle a bit to get on my side. I went back to side sleeping on Night Two. Oddly, as I've shrunk (down 51 lbs from surgery weight) I feel more comfortable sleeping on my back despite having been a side sleeper for decades.

Another vote for savoury broths, but watch out because some are very salty. I loved miso ramen broth; phở broth was a little bit too salty for me.

Pasta. I love pasta. I make my own pasta. I have an array of pasta-making tools. I know how to cook pasta and how to marry condiments to pasta. It all tastes like gluey wallboard to me now. Which is fine, because I certainly don't need to be eating it. But it's a bit heartbreaking. I have found I don't actually want more than a bite of anything sweet. And I mean a bariatric-sized bite, not a "barely fits on the spoon due to the intrusive influence of gravity" bite. We had something quite spicy yesterday and I bought a piece of flan ("chiquito", she called it, "really small", it was probably 8 cm/3 in on a side). A tiny bit, not even enough to assuage the chile fire within my mouth, and I pushed it away. My fiancé was shocked, because in the Before Times I would have hoovered up the entire piece and gone for seconds. And deli roast beef now just tastes like those fake dead powdered spices they use on it. I don't have an issue with beef in general, even steak, but deli roast beef is gross to me now.

I don't think anyone thinks you're an idiot. Those guides are written to cover a wide variety of folks and it sounds like your stomach just isn't ready yet. So just go a little bit slower. And do try the "problem foods" a month later. I couldn't eat whole beans (puréed were fine) and then suddenly I was okay.

Okay. Deep breath. Exhale. 'Nother deep breath. Exhale. One more. Exhale. If you search these forums, you will find almost 20,000 posts on the infamous "three-week stall". That is exactly where you are, and sometimes it lasts a few weeks. Stay on your plan, stay OFF the friggin' scale except ONCE a week, and just be patient. The constipation is almost certainly part of the issue, though you're not eating enough to really be backing stuff up. But you can go and get an enema at any drugstore; sometimes it just "packs" and you have to break the pack. (Gross, sorry, I know, but facts.) You're also almost certainly not getting much if any fiber. It does get better. One thing you might want to try (though who knows if it'll work for you) is INCREASING your food a little bit. I know it sucks, but anything helps. Soup. Tomato soup. Cream soup. Whatever. Just increase calories to about 500-600, in concert with your nutritionist's guidance, and see if that moves things along.

Applesauce and yoghurt/skyr were both allowed on my full-liquid diet.

I'm being encouraged by my NUT to eat a more diverse array of foods, and she wants me to have carbs in there too if there's room. So I eat really tiny normal meals. Today for lunch I had 3 oz. of ground turkey cooked with a little Korean barbecue sauce; about a quarter cup of basmati rice; and five asparagus spears. It is possible to eat "normally", just not as much, and not right away. And I'm still losing weight hand over fist.

Thank you for the warning. They arrived today so I'll try them tomorrow—mit food.

This is one of those times when being a guy is a blessing—we tend to drop weight FAST after surgery. (There are exceptions!) You'll be shocked how quickly your health problems resolve. I was off ALL of my blood pressure meds (amlodipine 10 mg - a calcium channel blocker; losartan 100 mg - an angiotensin II receptor antagonist; and hydrochlorothiazide - a diuretic) within a month after surgery. I'm curious to have my cholesterol checked. I've never had bad cholesterol, usually it's firmly in the 140 range though it's been as low as 110 which apparently is bad for your testosterone if you're a guy. Like you, I am pretty active, both athletically and in a side thing which is fairly physical and outdoors.

It does get better, and some people can guzzle and others can't. I can finish a 500 ml bottle in about 10 minutes, and that's a little less than two months post-op. I get about 90 ounces a day (or whatever 2500 ml is because I do not understand that conversion), not including my protein shake that I consume every morning.

Don't be discouraged. And don't beat yourself up! Be nice to our friend greenwitch17, she's pretty awesome. The delays are unfortunate. Did the former office at least get you started on whatever program is needed for your insurance to cover? Some insurances like to see 3 or 6 months of "medically supervised weight loss" 🙄before you can move forward with surgery. Or there are all sorts of other hurdles, like getting sign-off from your psychiatrist, etc. As for the depression—many of us have been there. I am discovering that my weight was a HUGE part of my depression, both emotionally ("why can't I lose this weight, what is wrong with me") and physically (obesity causes depression which causes obesity, etc., etc., etc.). I am on a quarter dose of my antidepressant which feels liberating because I don't have many bouts of depression anymore even on such a low dose. They're going to try to take me off in a couple of months, and I'm curious whether that will actually happen. (My depression manifests as lethargy and The Impossible Task™.) You will get there. And we're here for you both now and later. And a year from now you're going to be living your best life, #hotgirlsummer or whatever hashtag we're using next year.

Honestly, I only had to take little baby sips for a few days. I could take water no problem after that. Now I do split my supplements into a couple of "rounds" (at least until I get those vitamins that @lizonaplane recommended!) because the amount of water I need to take that many pills does fill my pouch.

The gas is seriously no joke! But the more you walk around, the sooner it'll be gone. Ask your nurse if you can have chewable simethicone (a.k.a. Gas-X), it helped me IMMENSELY.

I had exactly the same thoughts... if I can drop this weight like this during the pre-op diet, why can't I just... continue? But I couldn't have, and I talked to my surgeon's staff about it. The pre-op diet (not that I had one necessarily, I put myself on it so I didn't go from nought to sixty in one day) is meant to be a crash diet. It is meant to shrink things and get a little visceral fat off you so that it's safer to do laparoscopic surgery. It is not sustainable long-term without surgery, and it is not meant to be. The other thing is—all or nearly all of us have binge-eaten in our past. Whether we have a healthy or unhealthy relationship with food, we've all overindulged. Well, after surgery, you literally CAN'T binge... and, bizarrely enough, most people don't WANT to. The first time you take ONE BITE too much, you will really feel that restriction and the resulting sensations (for me, it's massive chest pressure, and terrible gas that causes me to spit up) will make sure you learn what "full" feels like. I was a pizza eater. I could demolish an entire pizza myself in one sitting, because once I started I couldn't stop. Yesterday (just over 7 weeks post-op) I delivered pizza to my daughter's dress rehearsal, opened up the box, took a slice, had one bite, shrugged, and threw the rest of the slice away. It's like my body's been given this tool and it is forcing my brain to reckon with how I eat/ate. I wish I had found this site and gone for this surgery ten or more years ago. When I was nervous about the surgery—I had exactly the same thoughts as you—my family reminded me that I had tried REALLY hard, and never gotten below 330, then gained it all back until I was two cheeseburgers shy of 400 lbs. I went below that 330 mark 13 days after surgery. I'm now closing in on TWOsday, and I honestly feel like a different (and happier) person. Ultimately, only you can make the decision, but I think you'll find the ratio of yeasayers to naysayers here at BariatricPal to be massively tilted in the "yes do it" direction.

That is astonishing. Well done! And inspirational. I am closing in on double digits down from my start weight (in old money!) and can't wait for that to happen.

My coach wants me to get a weight vest, load it up to where I was when I started, and try to run even just 400 m. I'm skeert.

@catwoman7 has it exactly right on the NSAIDs—Aleve is right out, too. My bariatric vitamins literally were gummies. I mentioned it to my surgeon and he said just chew it thoroughly ("enjoy that artificial berry flavor from the New Jersey Turnpike," were his exact words). As long as the amounts of each on the back were what he wanted, he didn't care. No issues with gummies.