vikingbeast

I also was able to eat more than your average sleever. But also, I suspect my surgeon made my sleeve a bit bigger knowing how active I was even before surgery (it's hard to be so active when you can't eat enough!).
When I was three months out I was restricting myself to 800 calories and my center's nutritionist had an absolute conniption at me. Said I was ruining the tool and if I wanted to just gain all the weight back, that was my business. I was devastated for a hot second before I absolutely lost my temper at the top of my lungs and fired her so loud they heard it in the surgeon's office across the hall.
A friend of mine recommended a nutrition program she used, and I am so glad I found it. Immediately my nutrition coach (who had coached other bariatric patients before) upped my calories to about 1200, still prioritizing Protein. Over the last six months she's increased it to 1600-1800, and we're just now backing off a little bit because I feel like all I do is eat. I have just a few pounds left to lose, so they will be harder to shift. I expect maintenance will be around 1600 calories depending on activity level.

Weight loss is weight loss, of course, but there are things that LGBTQ+ people may have to deal with that don't really have parallels in the straight community. As an example:
The bear movement among gay men was started in direct response to body-shaming of fat gay men by lean gay men. It was truly awful—gay bars, which were the only safe spaces, started putting what were called "cow catchers" out front—poles set narrowly together, so that only people with lean body types could pass through without turning their bodies or hitching. If you couldn't pass through without turning or hitching, you couldn't go in. So the fat hairy gay men created their own safe spaces (440 Castro in SF and Rockbar in NYC are examples) and their own community.
But flash forward thirty years or so and now the bear community has its own judgmental labels and body shaming. Oh, he's not fat enough to be a bear. Oh, he's not hairy enough to be a bear, he's just a chub. Oh, he thinks he's a cub but he's just a skinny old otter. Someone who is gay and identifies as a bear (hi!) who then loses the weight may lose his community, which makes compliance just that much harder. Or he could lose his relationship, because maybe his partner is only into big bears.
I'm fortunate in that I don't think I'll have that problem, but it's an example of a situation that only gay men face. There could be situations particular to lesbian women, to trans people (who face issues getting quality medical care even when not obese), for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community.
Does it warrant its own forum? I don't know. Maybe, because if you're a member of the LGBTQ+ community and you're searching for answers to your problems, finding a "safe space", or at least a collection of LGBTQ+ WLS issues all in one place, could be a really good thing. I just don't know how much traffic it would see.

If you can get to your Protein target by eating three hours after you finish eating, go for it.

Well, this certainly went in an unexpected direction.

I think the OP basically wanted us to tell her that there was some way for her to both lose her weight and make no further changes (because "sacrifices suck").

I did want to add one thing, though, for the future people who read this. Your body can carry an INSANE amount of poop. So the OP, starting her post-colon-cleanse weight, already was down as much as ten pounds (I 💩 you not!) just from having it all out of her.

And it doesn't matter which scale you use as long as you use the same scale every time.

The picture on the right was yesterday; the one on the left was me close to my fattest. I'm eight months post-op and still losing weight, albeit much more slowly now. I was wearing size 46 pants that barely buttoned around my waist on the left; size 32 on the right. Size 4XL shirt on the left, L on the right. (The left is blurry because I had to crop and it didn't do it nicely. You can still see puh-lenty!)

The picture on the right was yesterday; the one on the left was me close to my fattest. I'm eight months post-op and still losing weight, albeit much more slowly now. I was wearing size 46 pants that barely buttoned around my waist on the left; size 32 on the right. Size 4XL shirt on the left, L on the right. (The left is blurry because I had to crop and it didn't do it nicely. You can still see puh-lenty!)

The picture on the right was yesterday; the one on the left was me close to my fattest. I'm eight months post-op and still losing weight, albeit much more slowly now. I was wearing size 46 pants that barely buttoned around my waist on the left; size 32 on the right. Size 4XL shirt on the left, L on the right. (The left is blurry because I had to crop and it didn't do it nicely. You can still see puh-lenty!)

I don't see why not. The pills are pretty tiny.

Don't eat past your hunger cues.

One of the things that I want to beam into everyone's head is that for a LOT of us, aftercare is pretty horrible. My surgeon's bariatric nutritionist lit into me for eating 800 calories a day 3 months out - I work outdoors and work out for an hour a day. My surgeon actually skipped two check-ins in a row after that. So I went and got a nutrition coach (whom I absolutely LOVE).

I could always eat more than they said I'd be able to. But as long as I ate slowly, the restriction kicked in eventually. I lost weight hand over fist (it has since slowed down, but I'm 8 months PO and not far from goal).

I wouldn't worry about it. But do watch out for stalls. They happen, they suck, and they shouldn't derail you.

This may sound like a weird question, but which scale did you use to determine your starting weight?
Here is what I mean: if the 251 mark is based on your home scale and your home scale is off by 15 pounds, doesn't that mean you started at 266 on the work scale?

I'm only a week out, but I was taken off all my diabetes and blood pressure meds the day I had my surgery, and I have to check both twice a day now to watch for any indication I need them back. As of today, literally 20 minutes ago, my blood sugar is 119 and my blood pressure is 128/76!!!!!!!!! So it looks like I'm holding steady completely off those 3 meds!!!!! Massive happy dance going on here I have been on blood pressure meds since 2010 and diabetes meds since 2009. This is AMAZING!!!!!

The picture on the right was yesterday; the one on the left was me close to my fattest. I'm eight months post-op and still losing weight, albeit much more slowly now. I was wearing size 46 pants that barely buttoned around my waist on the left; size 32 on the right. Size 4XL shirt on the left, L on the right. (The left is blurry because I had to crop and it didn't do it nicely. You can still see puh-lenty!)

Been a while since I checked in. A friend of mine said, "You know, if you do a French tuck*, you can show off those belt buckles of yours. You're slim enough now."
I am not convinced this is the style for me (feels like I wasn't paying attention after pulling my pants up and accidentally buttoned them around my shirt), but damn if it didn't feel nice to actually be able to do it. So here I am, another almost 40 lbs. down, 39 to go. Three quarters of the way to goal.

* French tuck - you tuck in the front but not the back. I know no French people who do this, but maybe it's named after Tan France instead of France France.

I am The Most Unlikely CrossFitter (started at my heaviest weight) and also mourned the enforced detention from the barbell.
I was told absolutely no weight at all for two weeks, walk only. After my two-week visit, I was cleared to for running, jumping rope, and biking (but not rowing, just because of the mechanics of it) and given a 10-lb. restriction which I will freely admit I stretched to 15 lbs so I could use a training bar. I went back to the gym and modified things heavily.
I was cleared to return to the gym fully at 6 weeks which was last week. I strongly, strongly suggest you plan to go slow as you return. If you used to go five days a week, go 2-3. If you went 3 days a week, go 1-2.
Scale. Absolutely. Everything. Your body will hurt just like it did when you started, and after the gyms reopened post-quarantine. We are finishing a strength cycle that I wasn't here for, so I'll just be kind of doing moderate weight and seeing how my mechanics have changed (cleans feel TOTALLY different), and will start the next strength cycle.
I will say that my running got better IMMEDIATELY. I went from a 14-minute mile where I had to stop and use an inhaler, to an 11-minute mile in just four weeks, and my inhaler is in a drawer. I ran an 800 m in under 5 minutes and didn't die. I actually can't wait to see how much closer I can get to a pull-up or a toes-to-bar with the increased mobility and less of a leaden weight in my @$$.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I was able to pull 60% of my heavy deadlift for 5 reps absolutely cold the week I returned. Will there be strength loss? Probably. But it's not as bad as I feared.

Ignore those people even if those people are your dad.

Besides, what exactly are you supposed to do, magick up a different size stomach??

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!

I had almost exactly the same experience yesterday—I went to go buy a decent set of clothes (better than the ranch wear I'm normally in) and went for a sport coat, dress shirt, and decent non-denim trousers. I ended up in the "athletic fit" trousers and the "slim fit" shirt... my neck went from 22 with a collar spreader to 17.5, my jacket size from a 58/60 to a 48. It was bizarre to go try on trousers, need a smaller size, and then realize they didn't have any in stock, not because it was at the upper end of the range, but because it was the most common size.

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!

Don't do this. Don't try to set yourself up for metrics like that, because everybody is different, and most importantly, every BODY is different.
I will say that my bariatric centre's nutritionist tried to shame me for eating 800 kcal a day and told me that's why my weight loss stalled. I fired her loudly and found a different nutrition coach, who increased my calories based on my activity level, and weight loss resumed. I currently eat 1500-2000 cal a day at seven months out and am still losing, though I am extremely active and also taller and heavier than you are.
I do want to say one thing, because I'm a total control freak and had to weigh myself every day. Get out of that habit right now. And if you must weigh often, then keep a running average. Pick a day—let's say Wednesdays. Every Wednesday add up your total weights and divide by the number of weigh-ins. Then track that average.
Why? Because your body has way more going on than just fat loss. If you eat salty, or if it's time for your courses, or if you've been doing a lot of weight lifting, or if you're constipated, etc., etc., your weight can fluctuate by as much as 3-5 lbs. over the course of just a couple of days. Does that mean you "gained weight" (as in fat)? No... you couldn't eat that much. So it's inflammation, or bloating, or muscle inflammation.
Learning this saved me from the terrible things I would say to myself if I stepped on the scale and had an unexpectedly high weigh-in.

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!

But you've recognized it, and you're here because you're thinking about doing something about it.

I will tell you, I wish I'd done it fifteen years ago. I look back at pictures from a year (and 110 lbs) ago and it's like I have a different life now, one that's not ruled by food. I don't plan the next meal as soon as I put the fork down from the one in front of me. I don't plan vacations around restaurant scenes. It's... liberating.

You can do it. It is a hard journey, but after the first week post-op, it gets easier. A lot easier.

The fairlife brand are SO good. And I'm a big fan of the Premier cafe latte. But the Premier Cookies and cream flavor tastes like bagged popcorn to me (yuk), and the banana cream flavor was so revolting I couldn't get it down.

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!

So my first NSV for the week is making me scratch my head. I'm still losing, which is nice, but I had to return a pair of American Eagle brand shorts because they were too large—apparently I'm a size medium now. The idea of a six-foot-tall, 268-pound man being a medium in ANYTHING clothing related is just too bizarre for words. I expected it in Carhartt work t-shirts because they're like Chucks, they're known to run very large and you have to size down. But a teenage clothing line??
But that's not the weird NSV. The weird NSV requires some backstory.
I live in a two-story home that is a little older (by local standards; stop laughing, Europeans).
My beloved offspring's bedroom is directly above the doorbell—the actual thing that makes the chime sound itself.
Whenever I would walk across her room, my weight would compress the floor and press down on the wall that the doorbell mechanism is mounted on, and because of how it's wired, the doorbell would ring.
It took me WEEKS after we moved in to figure out what the heck was happening. I'd be putting her to bed and the doorbell would ring. She'd wake up and need Water or to chase away a nightmare at 2:30 a.m., and I'd walk in and... the doorbell would ring. Freaked me out!
Well, the other day I was putting clean laundry on her bed ("put it away yourself!") and I noticed that I don't make the doorbell ring anymore. Not even if I hop up and down on the spot. Nothing else has changed except the size of me, and so... weird non-scale victory!