Jacks133

Dalila you are doing great! You’ve reached your goal and you need to be a bit kinder to yourself. It sounds like you’re making very sensible food choices. Everyone stretches their pouches - you would not be able to sustain enough nutrition for a normal life if you didn’t. You are a success story! Enjoy your yogurt with strawberries and peanut butter - it must slip down very easily and sounds nutritious, tasty and highly digestible. Brilliant!

I think you’ve probably answered your own question in that you realise you’ve gained a bad habit, and why. It’s going to take determination and willpower to break that habit and eat differently. If you’re now getting enough food and your weight loss has stopped, you don’t need to snack - it’s as simple as that. The stopping of snacking is not so easy, because you have to retrain your brain. It may be that you need to construct some other ‘habits’ by working out something to do instead of snacking. If you DO want to snack, put aside small portions of healthy snacks you will allow yourself, but only so many in the day. Calorie count them if necessary. Avoid making your snacks sweets and chips. You must have other, healthy things, you could eat. But don’t allow yourself to snack too much anyway - find a strategy. Sticking to it at first will be hard, but like with any habit, it can be broken and a new habit can be achieved. You do not want to start gaining again, because it’s demoralising and you don't want that. Your brain is telling you that you NEED these unhealthy things - you don’t. You can retrain it!

It could be coincidence, of course - I can’t imagine what the dentist could have done to you to upset your stomach. Maybe you found it extra stressful after all you’ve been through, or maybe you’re actually a little unwell. If you are concerned call your team for some advice, but otherwise I hope you’re feeling better soon!

Tofu is a magic ingredient - high in protein and so versatile. Once you can tolerate them nuts are amazing - I ate them quite early, by grinding them down in my mouth until they were practically liquid before swallowing. Once you can eat them they are brilliant for adding high protein and energy.

Looking good, Lisa! You’re going to need to change your profile picture I think! X

I think maybe you need to talk to your surgical team about a diet sheet and guidance - plus there are posts on here about cook books for bariatric surgery. I suspect a change of food mindset is required - you may have loved Greggs pasties before your surgery, but Greggs pasties maybe have contributed to your problems in the first place - I don’t know. But melted cheese and onion sounds very dense and clogged to me, and not the sort of thing your small stomach will find easy to deal with. I used to love getting a spaghetti bolognese if we were out for a meal and picking the mince and sauce out of the pasta when I was further down the line - a tiny bit pasta, well chewed, may be fine - but the prize was the protein and the tomato sauce… in easily chewable and digestible forms. You started this thread saying you are 9 days post op - you shouldn’t really even be thinking about pasties - please get your surgical team to do their job and give you guidance on what to consume. You are in this for the long hall and you need to take things slowly. All the best.

I agree with Bariatric Evangelist - high levels in the blood do not necessarily indicate high usage - actually the opposite. I was always told by my bariatric team that you should take 5mg Folic acid a day to help you process and absorb the B12. Otherwise it’s not being utilised by the body. The tiredness is more likely to be because you cannot utilise the B12 in your blood, not that you’ve got too much of it. The reason the blood count would be so high would more likely be because of non-absorption to the tissues. Further investigation is needed.

Don’t be scared to drink. Just let your stomach settle for a little while. It sounds like you had no room for the water, and it simply tried to expand your stomach further. Well done for sorting it out - it doesn’t sound like dumping syndrome however, which is the effect of the food being processed in your gut. It sounds like you’d eaten something too indigestible or got a block from the food - maybe not chewed enough, or something clogging together. This is why when you vomited it felt better immediately. After my daughter had her bypass she had a number of times when she ate the wrong thing and it ‘clogged’ and the pain was awful, she said. It put me right off doing that when I had my operation. I have always remembered to stop eating before you feel full, and leave it for a bit to see how well your stomach deals with the food before eating more. Never eat to feel full… Feeling full after bypass or sleeve surgery is NOT a nice feeling at all.

One thing I got early on was a set of body composition scales - like Tanita. There are lots on Amazon. This tells you a lot more about yourself that just your weight. As you’re small like me (I’m 5ft 1 inches) we need a lot less ‘maintenance’ calories than the average for a woman. It’s not hard with an unmeasured calorie intake to be having too much. Equally, if you deprive your body of maintenance calories too long your body will try to conserve rather than spend your fat reserves. Starving yourself is not a good option. It may be that some of the foods you’re eating are too high calorie for you. Because you’re a sleeve patient rather than bypass you won’t have the same issue with malabsorption and it is possible a year out from surgery that you’re simply eating too many calories. The gas and nausea doesn’t sound nice though and I would not have expected this a year out, so good to have a talk to your physician about this. Maybe you’re just going through a difficult period - you’ve lost over a third of your body weight from your start date, which is amazing! I wish you every success getting to your goal.

my dietitian thinks I should be losing about 4 lbs a week… your dietitian is probably thinking that if you’re walking 10km a day they would be losing 4lb a week…. You are doing great! You’re probably converting fat to muscle as well, which is heavier. You don’t want to lose as much as 4lb a week, you want your weightloss to be steady and healthy. You’re going great. You’re in this for the long term - it’s not a competition. Xx

My daughter had a RNY bypass up 2011 and went on to run over 100 marathons in a year… She loved it. She found she eventually tolerated the gels, although they wrecked her teeth! She ran most weekends until her dog pulled her over during a walk and she hit her hip and damaged the cartilege. She found she needed to eat almost every waking hour if she wasn’t running to keep her weight up. It was hard work managing as she also couldn’t eat much before she ran. Taking on fluids was the most important thing and she would need the salt tablets too. She was also a vegan at the time… It can be done!

Sorry you feel this way, Pookie, but try to be positive. Thinking you should never have had the op 5 weeks afterwards is not helpful. This is a life-change, and a life change that is not immediate, but takes time, like the opening of a lovely flower. I am 8 years down the line. There have been times (like when I’ve had serious dumping syndrome from stupidly drinking a few mouthfuls of sugar-laden milkshake) when I’ve thought I never want to eat or drink again IN MY LIFE… but it passes. From being a little short, depressed ‘pudding’ who couldn’t walk down the stairs in the morning because of the pain in my joints, and would refuse requests to go out because a couldn’t walk anywhere without discomfort and pain, who had to by huge clothes to get over my ginormous bosom, I am now a normal woman, who can look in a shop window and see a slim lady who can walk without pain, without her thighs rubbing together, who has the energy to enjoy life and likes what she sees. Who no longer has to take blood pressure and heart drugs, who has a normal pulse rate and no more GERD. I could not have done this, and kept it off, without the op. How could I regret giving myself a chance of a healthy life being the person I want to be? You must keep your eyes on the prize as well. That’s why you’re doing this. It will work, but it’s not a magic wand, it takes time. But you can do it! X

Lizonaplane, My daughter may be atypical, but she is bipolar and had a RNY bypass over 10 years ago. She was on three meds; antidepressant, psychotic and anxiety. They tried crushing the tablets which made her throw up, so they changed her to Epilim as it was a liquid. Part of her weight gain had been the bipolar drugs. After her surgery she started to lose a lot of weight. Unknown to me, she weaned herself off the drugs, going cold turkey with the anti anxiety meds, because she started running. She found the endorphins from running made her feel good and moderated her condition. At her peak running she was doing 2 marathons per weekend many weeks. She is highly unusual as a Bypass patient in being able to do this! She injured her hip, and couldn’t run, so now she lifts weights. She was determined to take control of her life in every way. She has been drug free for years and is fit, healthy and active. I wanted to share because her psychiatrist at the time said the Bypass would not help her with her mental health, and refused to sanction the op. We paid a psychiatrist to assess her and they concluded she was sane enough to make her mind up. As a person who had previously attempted suicide on more than one occasion, she is an example of the positive outcome possible from gastric surgery. It saved her life, literally, and has given me my daughter back. I wish you all the best.

The principle of not ‘washing’ your nutrients through your stomach too quickly (and thus increasing malabsorption or decreasing time until you feel hungry again) is an important one. However drinks do not all take 30 minutes to go through your stomach. Liquids leave the stomach faster than food or soup because there is less to break down: Plain water: 10 to 20 minutes. Can go through as fast as 5 minutes on a completely empty stomach. Simple liquids (clear juices, tea, sodas): 20 to 40 minutes. Thick soup can take hours… As long as you are prioritising protein and healthy foods, once you are a surgery ‘veteran’ (so some way down the line) and your stomach has expanded, you should not always have to wait 30 minutes after drinking before eating, especially if it’s water.

Only for the first weeks/months. I drink now immediately before eating - I’m Bypass 8 years on. I don’t drink while I’m eating because I don’t want to fill up on liquid. My daughter can, though, eat and drink at the same time. She’s 10 years out. To start with when my stomach was tiny I did the 30 minute before, 45 after thingy - then narrowed it to 15 mins before, and then eventually no delay after drinking. It depends on the size of your stomach…