Spinoza

Enjoy the ride 😍

Aw, you had the roughest ride gal. Of course you need to mourn for the year you expected - that never materialised. I hope today marks the time when you can try to move ahead, putting it behind you as much as you can (and as much is healthy for you) and get on with living your best life. You have done so very very well xxx

Interesting! I have not yet run up against this. I think my photo on passport looks *just* enough like the new me never to have drawn comment. I'll now be ready for when it does though. Driving licence the same. And yeah, I'd also put up with the crappy photo for 10 years before paying an extra penny for the nicer photo, LOL.

I think you have absolutely got this. Forewarned is forearmed and you have definitely done your research. With regard to your two categories of successful maintainers I think there might be a crossover too. I did clean up my act AND I track everything. I regained 8lbs from my lowest weight about 9 months ago. I knew/know I was eating more than the approx 1600 calories I need to maintain (even if not eating crap) but wasn't upping my exercise. No further regain for a couple of months so I am hoping that's me done (?) Best of luck on your journey 😍 and interesting thread!

So pleased to hear this @ShoppGirl. I know you have researched this to the hilt. I wish you all the luck in the world. Please tell us EVERYTHING about your revision. Here for you.

Left field suggestion - now that you're where you want to be, would it be possible for you to completely stop weighing yourself for a few months and just go by how your clothes feel, etc.? I am a huge believer in our body choosing its own new set weight. Mine was well below my target. Others' are well above. You could just go with the flow - just keep eating what you like and what is good for you and see where you end up?

I am 2.5 years post sleeve and 2 hours between eating an meal and wanting to eat again is absolutely my norm! I extend this time with my fruit and veg portions for the day (even fluids) - they typically buy me an hour or so. So I end up eating a 'meal' every 3 hours instead of 2. I also don't eat breakfast, so I start late morning and end a couple of hours before bed. I hope the prep for your revision is going well @ShoppGirl

Early post op I liked to think about exercise as just 'moving more'. It allowed me to think of a short walk as a huge win. As I lost weight I could walk further and faster and even tried jogging a bit. And it didn't kill me. Now, at maintenance, exercise is a regular and enjoyable part of my life. It's never worked for weight loss, but it's so good for my wellbeing and cardiovascular health generally. Now I'm not morbidly obese I can do most things within reason (I'm just into my 50s now, LOL). I advise baby steps, finding something you like (I love Pilates but if you'd asked me to do it 10 or 20 years ago I would have laughed out loud). Dance classes are fun too (but I have NO co-ordination). Keep an eye on things locally and try taster sessions. Hopefully something will click with you and then it won't be a chore but a joy.

I am an outdoor walker through and through - all weathers. I have dogs so this has always been non-negotiable, LOL. I also do Pilates (indoors obvs) 2 or 3 times a week nowadays. I enjoy that in a different way. Honestly anything you can do and enjoy you're more likely to keep going with. If you can click with that then do it. Horses for courses!

I will say, as I often do, be careful with processed and ultra processed food. That's what made most of us obese to start with. Its raison d'etre is to encourage us to eat more of it. Chemicals are added for flavour, mouth feel, even the noise when you open the package or can is researched to the hilt to encourage us to buy more and eat more. If you look at the ingredients and you don't have those in your kitchen then eat in moderation I think. I love BeanitoDiego's recipe. I've made something very similar with flax meal when I really wanted something akin to the bread I used to eat (I call it a MIM and it dates back to my Atkins diets of yore). If you cook it from scratch it won't be like processed bread and that might be slightly better (for some of us anyway). I wouldn't have made that until I was about 18 months post sleeve, and honestly only once or twice so I could e.g. have food that I and guests I was cooking for could share, but that's my choice of course. Depending on how far post op you are you will want to keep an eye on protein first, veg second, fruit third, carbs a looooong way back fourth if you have room to spare (so you get your protein and vitamins in). Having said all of that - welcome to your new life and here's to making good choices that keep us healthy.

Ah why do we do this to ourselves? Mind games. OP you've just done the best thing you ever could to secure your ongoing long-term health. Please trust your procedure and please follow your plan. It's there for a reason. A week out (and I had a sleeve not bypass so maybe slightly different) I think you need to be pushing for your fluid goal first and protein goal second. It won't harm you, it'll only help if you can get close, I promise. After that everything will be good. Not drinking in particular seems a recipe for disaster and a readmission for fluids.

Totally agree. Nothing to be gained from beating yourself up. Life is hard enough. You did super well for a long time after your original procedure. MUCH better than most. If you can identify key points when your control lapsed then take them forward into your revision and embrace it? Even if you can't then do your best. That's all any of us can do. We're human, we live in an obesogenic world. We're trying. Every flipping day. Not to be obese. Please can you keep us updated? I'd love to hear your story moving forward.

You will get loads of sympathy here OP - for a woman (usually more than a man I think?) our hair is often tied into our identity more generally, for better or worse. Massive weight loss causes our non-essential body functions like hair growth to stall completely. Body thinks - no calories - what can I ditch? I know - hair! Once we get through the biggest rate of loss and our body is regrouping then the stalled follicles get pushed out by new growth. I lost masses of hair in I think 3 distinct phases, about 3 months apart. It's truly properly shocking, that first hair fall. (And for me the second and third - I hope you don't get those too!) Please please be reassured that most of it grows back for most of us. It just takes a while and it's so worth it.

Meat here too. If we're not vegetarian or vegan (i'm not) then we have the luxury of mixing it up a bit. I do do lots of veggie soups with pulses or cheese as protein though - vegetable soup with barley and lentils, hot and sour lentil soup, broccoli and stilton soup, etc. Basically everything we eat post op has to pack a protein punch. If you build your meals around that then you won't go too far wrong OP. I also avoid ultra processed foods as much as I can. Basically anything with an ingredient that you don't have in your pantry you shouldn't put in your mouth - that's what made us obese in the first place. I do realise that I have the luxury of being able to cook pretty much everything I put into my mouth from scratch. Not easy if you don't.

Yes that's common. Many of us won't get a full feeling for many weeks after surgery because nerve endings get cut and take a while to grow back. We need to stick to the stages and volumes of our programme until we do get those signals back. From about 3 months post op I got a runny nose and/or sneezed when I ate too much. Had this no later than today when I was eating a lovely lunch and decided I needed just another few forkfuls...

Wow. Absolutely amazing. I really really hope you hit that secret goal, whatever it is.

Sounds absolutely awful. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect the second half of something you've already eaten to behave in a similar way to the first half!!! It might have been that one more bite of wrap was enough to make you dump. Anyway - bad luck, sounds like you're on it now!

OP you have done amazingly well. I know lots of us beat ourselves up lots of the time but honestly, to drop almost half your body mass after surgery, AND then regain only 15 - 20lbs three years later, AND to have had a baby in the meantime is unbelievable. Third year regain is common - the norm actually. Trying to get back to your lowest weight ever might not work if your body has chosen a higher new set weight. It will fight you all the way. Forever. Please cut yourself some slack. It might be helpful to ask yourself what exactly you're aiming for now. Is it a goal weight/BMI? Or a state of mind where you accept and celebrate the huge changes you have made to your health and your life and now that of your baby. If you have a set goal, why is that better than where you are, and how much effort or angst do you want/need to devote to achieving it? As a general observation processed and ultra processed foods (products with ingredients you don't have in your kitchen) are what make people obese. The sooner you can ditch those the better IMO. Freshly prepared food is less likely to cause regain. I am a big fan of Dr Matthew Wiener's book A Pound of Cure. Might be worth a read!

That dress is amazing and she looks beautiful in it. You've done your daughter proud.

Also 🙌🎉🤩👯‍♀️👑🎈🏆🥇 just because the emojis here are so weird 😂

You're the absolute poster girl (WOMAN actually!) for gastric sleeve surgery. So many of us here have benefited from your wisdom and willingness to share your experience. Thank you for that, huge kudos to you for getting where you are, and I hope the next 5, 10 and 20 years are just as successful and fulfilling for you.

I haven't ever noticed this and I can't think of a scientific reason for it! What I will say is as humans we are hard-wired to look for patterns and then read into those something significant. I suspect you've just hit a stall. We all do, many times, on our weight loss journeys. If you can just relax into it and wait for it to break and then resume losing I think you'll be good. My experience with WLS is that my body chose a new set weight and I just got there with a bit of effort and sticking to the rules. Totally agree that with previous diets my set weight might have been very different but those haven't intruded *at all* into my life post sleeve.

Hi Debby! Please can I ask what the purpose of the detox is? I know people do these for various reasons. If you have regained some weight after your bypass (if so, how much?) and you're wanting to kick start further loss then I agree with the others above - eat your protein first, veg second and fruit/carbs last. If you have another (health?) reason for a detox then it might be OK to follow what sounds like a very restrictive plan. I'd be worried about your protein intake with what you're proposing though.

Oh that is so helpful - thank you! I really rate this doctor and I expect the program will be helpful. OP you haven't filled in the stats in your profile. What procedure did you have? What are your starting and current weights? Are you close to your goal or wanting to lose a lot more weight? I agree with everyone else - our macro goals and weight loss goals depend on where we are, where we want to be and lots of other variables. I wish you lots of luck on your journey.

Oh I was just full on starving on day one of my pre op diet! hope you're doing OK. It settled around day 4 or 5 when I got into ketosis and after that I could relax a little. After your surgery is when you really see the difference I think. I was a lucky person whose hunger didn't return for many months but when it did I knew the difference. I agree with the others - if you can use the time you get to retrain your body to expect wholesome nutritious foods then you should do really well. I wish you the best of luck. It's a hell of a ride.