winkydinks

I was 355 on the morning of surgery. I lost 40 pounds my first month. At 3 months, I was down 80. 5 months in, and my total loss was 115 (I had begun relatively intense exercise too). Enjoy the initial melt. It'll slow down. In my experience, this came at around the 3-4 month mark.

28 here!

Cut out 90% of the carbs you're eating. I was 355 on surgery day, and then I stalled out at 315ish for about a week. Eliminating carbs was my solution, and the only carbs I eat now is a bit of watermelon each day if I want a little extra something between meals. My stall was about 3-4 weeks ago, and now I'm down another 18 lbs since I adjusted my diet.

Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Take a deep breath. In fact, take three. Working yourself into a frenzy isn't going to help anything. Now let's evaluate. It sounds like the scale at work is accurate based on your "test" of it. Try your scale at home again, and if it's wildly off, chuck it out. It's broken. So, with that being said, it sounds like you're 235 lbs. Now we have to figure out why that is so we can begin changing it. First of all, as a 5'5 woman, 1200 calories is hardly a deficit in the long-term. It may be initially, but your body will adjust, and your metabolism will slow to compensate. Nowadays, it may even be a bit more than you need. My surgeon, who was a pioneer in bariatric surgery and has done thousands of procedures, said that most people only need 1000-1500 calories a day. There are obvious exceptions for athletes and whatnot, but generally speaking, that's the rule for both men and women. Now, I know you don't want to hear me simply tell you to eat less. However, if you can find a couple hundred calories to cut out from your current diet, it definitely won't hurt. To me, it sounds like your body found a comfort zone with 1200 a day and whatever level of activity you have, and it stopped dropping weight as a result. Just to be sure though, are you POSITIVE you're only eating 1200 calories a day? There are hidden calories everywhere. Passing by the candy dish at work a couple times a day, oil in the pan, a glass of wine with dinner, cream and sugar in your coffee, etc, will all add up. Now, as someone who just got himself out of a stall by doing this, here's going to be my biggest suggestion. You've heard it before, it isn't sexy, but it works. Cut whatever amount of carbs you're eating by at least 50% and get rid of anything made with flour or sugar entirely. You're only supposed to be eating 1000-1200 calories a day, and you can't afford to spend them on starch. You may feel like crap for a week, but I guarantee you that you won't feel like crap when you see the number on the scale going down. Plus, it's also incredibly easy to end up eating far more calories than you intended when you're eating this stuff. It takes most people 3-4 bites to eat a 200 calorie serving of pasta.

I was told to eat three meals a day from the start of the 4th week onward, and when I say I was "told", I mean they really hammered it into me. Whenever I talk to the nutritionist at my surgeon's office, it's the first thing she's asking me about and the last thing she's reminding me to do.

The problem with traditional dieting is that after you've lost weight, your body literally fights you to the death to put it back on. This has been scientifically proven. I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that humans have evolved to survive in a feast and famine environment throughout 99% of our history. Nowadays, the feast never ends. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and our bodies haven't had time to catch up yet from an evolutionary perspective. It's the reason why the lasting success rates of programs like Weight Watchers, etc are incredibly low. I believe the weight gain relapse odds plummet after two years of keeping the weight off. Most people don't have that much willpower. The only program besides surgery that I've seen truly work is Overeaters Anonymous, and that's for the people who truly work it. This generally means meetings multiple times a week, step work with a sponsor, service work, etc. It's a complete psychological and lifestyle change. Give it another shot if you want, but one thing I'd say is to trust your track record rather than your emotions. It sounds like you've been dieting on and off forever. What'll make this time any different? If nothing changes, nothing changes. I don't think anyone here wanted to have surgery. We did it because we were at our wits end. As for the people in your life who're telling you not to do it, ask yourself how much they really know about it. Like I used to, they probably think it's only for people big enough to be on TLC, super drastic, etc. It's really not, and frankly, I don't think anyone really needs a football sized stomach that produces tons of ghrelin in this day in age. It sounds like you've done a lot of research on the matter. You have a well-informed opinion, which means that you can disregard ones that aren't well-informed. A calculus student probably wouldn't take an algebra student seriously if the algebra student looked over his work and told him that it was all wrong. Btw, staying obese is generally far riskier than bariatric surgery. Diabetes, clogged arteries, high blood pressure, etc versus some very minor surgery risks. I don't know what your personal health situation is, so take what I just said with a grain of salt, but if a decent surgeon looks you over and says you're good to go, you're probably good to go.

I've had pretty much the opposite experience when it comes to keeping things down, but in terms of the other issue, I dealt with it for about half a week until it stopped.

My surgeon only had me on 3 days. Started on a Friday for Monday surgery. Most of my calories just came from Sprite and Jello. You don't have to do diet everything.

Had surgery on a Monday. Went on Friday morning.

1. Make sure you're eating solids. Things like yogurt and whatnot will just liquify in your stomach and flush through, thus leaving you hungry again. 2. Going along with point #1, don't drink anything during or after meals. Again, liquids will just push any food you eat through. 3. Are you eating a lot of fat? Doesn't take much oil, butter, cream, cheese, etc to get you up to 1400 in a hurry. 4. Follow your plan to a T. Three 25 minute meals, broken down nutritionally with solid foods without liquid. If you're doing this perfectly and your stomach's growling, then call your doctor's office. If your stomach doesn't feel empty, then you're not physically hungry. You're mentally hungry. Surgery's going to get rid of that for some, but for many, it won't. Try to distract yourself, and if you need to, find a therapist to talk to.

Being constipated can make a difference on the scale if you're weighing yourself multiple times a week. The human body can have up to five pounds of excrement inside it at one time. I'm on day 16, and about half a week ago, I didn't lose anything for 2-3 days. Not to be unpleasant, but I had some major bathroom time on the third day and was three pounds lighter the next morning. Idk if you're eating any significant amount of salt (broth can have a lot if you've been having that) but if you are, that can easily cause a couple pounds of water retention too. Idk how many calories you're eating per day, but there's no way you're not going to be burning if it's the typical amount for this point in time. Try not to be despondent. If this issue does persist going forward, you might want to go in and get checked for fatty liver disease or a thyroid problem. Both can hinder weight loss.

Hello All, So, I had my gastric sleeve done about ten days ago. Had a lot of pain in the day or so afterwards, but that dissipated fairly quickly. However, with the physical pain reduction has come something that's also painful. Food cravings. Food cravings more intense than any I've ever experienced in my entire life. Multiple times a day, and my mouth literally waters. I haven't been eating stuff besides protein shakes, broth, and sugar-free Jell-O for obvious reasons, but there's no question that I would be if I could. This isn't just "in my head" either. My stomach is definitely involved as well. I can feel it empty (although certainly not as empty as 500 calories a day would've left it before surgery). This has been a shocking experience for me. Nobody at my surgeon's office gave me a heads up about anything like this potentially occurring. With that being said, can anyone offer any explanation? Is this common and/or just a mental thing? Did my surgeon do a bad job (apparently my stomach was one of the biggest he's seen in thousands of operations, and someone literally took pictures of them standing around it in the operating room after it was out)? I've also considered the possibility that my body is "fighting" me atm, as I've been losing weight rapidly (was 355 on surgery day (4/4) and was 334.5 this morning). Anyways, can anyone assure me that this is temporary or offer any wisdom at all? Thanks.

4 oz water mixed with 1 scoop of Muscle Milk powder 3x per day for 2 weeks. Foods like yogurt and oatmeal get introduced in week 3, but I'll continue drinking 2-3 protein shakes per day depending on how well I tolerate the actual food. No more protein shakes from the start of week 4 onward.

My surgeon has me on three 4 oz low sugar protein shakes every day for two weeks (I use Muscle Milk, which has 140 calories and roughly 30g protein per 4 oz serving) and broth/sugar-free Jell-O as I want it more or less. Unless you're having sugary drinks or Jell-O (which obviously aren't good), then idk how the guy expects someone to go two weeks essentially eating nothing. I'm obviously not going to tell you to begin drinking protein shakes if your doctor doesn't want you to, but your regimen makes no sense to me.

Could you get down from 390 to 200, or even lighter, and then keep it off? Yes, absolutely. Anyone can, with or without surgery. However, there's a difference between can and will. Obviously, I don't know your physiological intangibles such as your muscle profile, body type, genetics, ability to stick to goals, follow a bariatric diet, etc. BMI doesn't account for these things. Because of this, we can crunch some statistics, and assuming you're average when it comes to the intangibles, we can begin to get an idea of the odds for you. Based on the BMI chart, every pound over 154 pounds is excess for your height, which leaves you with 235 pounds of excess weight. Now with sleeve statistics, the average person loses between 60 and 70 percent of their excess weight. Obviously, some lose 100 percent or more of their excess weight, and some lose much less than the 60 to 70 percent average, but again, let's assume you have an average surgery experience and lose 60 to 70 percent (we can call it 65 percent as an even marker). 65 percent of 235 pounds of excess weight is 152.75 pounds. 390-152.75=237.25. So, by math alone, 237.25 would be your most likely outcome, which is obviously 37.25 pounds over your goal. To meet your goal, you would have to exceed statistical expectations when it comes to average amount of excess weight lost for sleeves. Instead of losing 65 percent of your excess weight, you would have to lose approximately 81 percent to hit 200. I'd certainly say this is doable, albeit not easy. Now the unfortunate thing about losing weight is that your body fights you on it, and it has various forms of ammunition. Cravings, plateaus, and different types of phantom hunger are all in its arsenal. Bariatric surgery depletes our bodies' weapon stock to an extent and limits the damage should we fall into one of its traps. It's something we can lean on. It won't do the job on its own, but we've essentially enlisted reinforcements that swing the odds of success in our favor. However, the one thing that bariatric surgery won't change as we get closer to our goal weights is adaptability, and this is probably why your weight loss has stalled in the past. Our bodies learn our tricks. They adapt to low carb and low calorie diets, and thus, the weight loss stalls until we give up. So what do we do? If a plateau occurs, we have to change our tactics (even slightly) to catch our bodies off guard again. Change the diet and eating patterns slightly. Try a little intermittent fasting, or maybe switch out your carbs for fat for a bit. Same thing with exercise. If you're exercising (let's say running for example), switch things up and go to HIIT training or swimming for a while. Once your body adjusts to that, then go back to running. It's a little weird to be "at war" with ourselves, but the reality is that we are. Got to be smart and merciless when it comes to confronting the weight monster.

Do you think it's possible that you were using food as a bit of a self-medication for depression? If so, what you're feeling would make sense. Take away the cure and the original disease manifests again. Dual-diagnosis drug addicts often experience similar feelings when they try to get clean. The only difference is that they always have the (unfortunate) option of relapsing. You don't exactly. Take a deep breath and try to remember the unhappiness that drove you to make that first call to the surgeon's office. Please call someone too. Find a good therapist. Maybe a psychiatrist would be helpful as well? Now for the tough love part. I'm truly not trying to sound brash when I say this, but at the end of the day, you made a choice, and well...you're going to have to live with it. Regret can be a monster if you indulge it, and we can't change the past. You can either make the decision to dwell on what you at this moment wish you hadn't done, or you can work to move forward with your new life.

Get rid of flour of all varieties. White, wheat, corn, etc. It doesn't matter. They all affect our bodies the same way. Refining carbohydrates like that gives us a rush (much like sugar), which induces the quick dopamine spike, ensuing crash, and resulting cravings. I lost 17 pounds in the three months prior to surgery just from doing this (although I didn't go crazy with other stuff either, so there was a bit more to it than just getting rid of flour). Staying off carbs forever isn't realistic for most of us, but if you're going to eat carbs, go for the whole food varieties. Rice and potatoes definitely aren't the best things in the world for us, but they're a hell of a lot better than bread, breaded food, pasta, tortillas, dough, etc.

Cheesesteaks, high quality pizza, and Chinese food.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. My doctor said 3 days of clear liquids is all he needs. Maybe others want the liver even smaller, but everything went fine for me doing that.

Interesting... I've had the complete opposite experience. Had surgery Monday. Weighed 355 in the hospital right before it (and after 3 days of liquid diet). Got out of the hospital on Wednesday. Weighed 348 on Thursday night, and then I weighed 337 this morning. Hope I'm not dehydrated.