NtvTxn

It can creep up when you turn your back, so don't turn your back on it! I gained 16 while my back was turned, then 6 more when I tried to lose it.... finally found a plan that worked and am down below the 22 gained, it took me WAYYYY longer to lose it than it did to gain it, so keep an eye pealed, and get back on track, you can do it!

Thank you everyone for great advise!!

I also weigh myself daily. It's the only way I can keep ahold of this. At first I felt I was being obsessed, but honestly, that's what I need to do for ME to remain in control.
And if I see it go up a lb or two, I correct myself. I tend to gain a lb or 2 when I lose sight of reality (lately with me, it's too many aloholic beverages). And I put myself back in check.

I also weigh every morning. I'm always so surprised when people on here say it's unhealthy to do that. I would flip out if I weighed only once a week and my scale said I was up 10 lbs! My body wants to be fat so I must keep on top of it. I would rather be up a pound in the morning and deal with that then be up 10 and be freaked out on how to get it off.Good luck with your tummy tuck!

Good morning! I am so sorry about the weight gain. All I can tell you is what I do, what I've done from the beginning. For me it is a total lifestyle change, as natural to me as breathing. I call this my 'dashboard'.
1) I weigh EVERY day. I KNOW how quickly I could gain eight or ten pounds, and that would be overwhelming to me. If I'm up a pound or two, I just make a change or two and it's gone in several days.
2) I weigh and/or measure my food when I am at home (eye ball it carefully when out)
3) I log my food on my fitness pal. Before discovering MFP, I used fitday.com and at the VERY beginning, I have a spiral notebook and wrote it down.
4) I attend support groups
My comfort zone is 142 - 145, I weigh first thing in the morning, out of bed, go to the bathroom and on the scale. A pound or two is manageable, but for me, I cannot go by how my jeans fit, by that time I'd be up ten pounds and it would take me a few months to get that off, I'm sure of it. I must track my calorie, there is a fine line for me between maintaining, gaining and losing. I've been doing this for over 2.5 years, so I've got the hang of it, but I can never be complacent. Like I said, this is my new normal. This is why I call what I do, my dashboard, if a 'light' comes on, and to me, being up a couple of pounds, or my calories being above what I need.....those are my lights. I just change things up a little, meaning, I lower my calories by 100 -150 and that takes care of it.
Make sense? My advice is, find something that works for you, something you can do forever, there is no end date, we've made a lifetime commitment.....and make it part of your life. Good luck, you can do this.

Good morning! I am so sorry about the weight gain. All I can tell you is what I do, what I've done from the beginning. For me it is a total lifestyle change, as natural to me as breathing. I call this my 'dashboard'.
1) I weigh EVERY day. I KNOW how quickly I could gain eight or ten pounds, and that would be overwhelming to me. If I'm up a pound or two, I just make a change or two and it's gone in several days.
2) I weigh and/or measure my food when I am at home (eye ball it carefully when out)
3) I log my food on my fitness pal. Before discovering MFP, I used fitday.com and at the VERY beginning, I have a spiral notebook and wrote it down.
4) I attend support groups
My comfort zone is 142 - 145, I weigh first thing in the morning, out of bed, go to the bathroom and on the scale. A pound or two is manageable, but for me, I cannot go by how my jeans fit, by that time I'd be up ten pounds and it would take me a few months to get that off, I'm sure of it. I must track my calorie, there is a fine line for me between maintaining, gaining and losing. I've been doing this for over 2.5 years, so I've got the hang of it, but I can never be complacent. Like I said, this is my new normal. This is why I call what I do, my dashboard, if a 'light' comes on, and to me, being up a couple of pounds, or my calories being above what I need.....those are my lights. I just change things up a little, meaning, I lower my calories by 100 -150 and that takes care of it.
Make sense? My advice is, find something that works for you, something you can do forever, there is no end date, we've made a lifetime commitment.....and make it part of your life. Good luck, you can do this.

Good morning! I am so sorry about the weight gain. All I can tell you is what I do, what I've done from the beginning. For me it is a total lifestyle change, as natural to me as breathing. I call this my 'dashboard'.
1) I weigh EVERY day. I KNOW how quickly I could gain eight or ten pounds, and that would be overwhelming to me. If I'm up a pound or two, I just make a change or two and it's gone in several days.
2) I weigh and/or measure my food when I am at home (eye ball it carefully when out)
3) I log my food on my fitness pal. Before discovering MFP, I used fitday.com and at the VERY beginning, I have a spiral notebook and wrote it down.
4) I attend support groups
My comfort zone is 142 - 145, I weigh first thing in the morning, out of bed, go to the bathroom and on the scale. A pound or two is manageable, but for me, I cannot go by how my jeans fit, by that time I'd be up ten pounds and it would take me a few months to get that off, I'm sure of it. I must track my calorie, there is a fine line for me between maintaining, gaining and losing. I've been doing this for over 2.5 years, so I've got the hang of it, but I can never be complacent. Like I said, this is my new normal. This is why I call what I do, my dashboard, if a 'light' comes on, and to me, being up a couple of pounds, or my calories being above what I need.....those are my lights. I just change things up a little, meaning, I lower my calories by 100 -150 and that takes care of it.
Make sense? My advice is, find something that works for you, something you can do forever, there is no end date, we've made a lifetime commitment.....and make it part of your life. Good luck, you can do this.

Good morning! I am so sorry about the weight gain. All I can tell you is what I do, what I've done from the beginning. For me it is a total lifestyle change, as natural to me as breathing. I call this my 'dashboard'.
1) I weigh EVERY day. I KNOW how quickly I could gain eight or ten pounds, and that would be overwhelming to me. If I'm up a pound or two, I just make a change or two and it's gone in several days.
2) I weigh and/or measure my food when I am at home (eye ball it carefully when out)
3) I log my food on my fitness pal. Before discovering MFP, I used fitday.com and at the VERY beginning, I have a spiral notebook and wrote it down.
4) I attend support groups
My comfort zone is 142 - 145, I weigh first thing in the morning, out of bed, go to the bathroom and on the scale. A pound or two is manageable, but for me, I cannot go by how my jeans fit, by that time I'd be up ten pounds and it would take me a few months to get that off, I'm sure of it. I must track my calorie, there is a fine line for me between maintaining, gaining and losing. I've been doing this for over 2.5 years, so I've got the hang of it, but I can never be complacent. Like I said, this is my new normal. This is why I call what I do, my dashboard, if a 'light' comes on, and to me, being up a couple of pounds, or my calories being above what I need.....those are my lights. I just change things up a little, meaning, I lower my calories by 100 -150 and that takes care of it.
Make sense? My advice is, find something that works for you, something you can do forever, there is no end date, we've made a lifetime commitment.....and make it part of your life. Good luck, you can do this.

Just weighed myself bc my jeans don't fit. I gained 12lbs!!! I'm totally miserable. I know what I'm doing and can't believe that I am doing this to myself again. I'm going for a TT in 12 days. I have to get the bulk of this off. Back to basics? Or any suggestions??

Just my two cents worth, and it's only my opinion, but the lower the calories the better. I couldn't get in 700 until almost 6 months out. I reached my doctor's goal in 5 and mine in 6.
The PhD doctor that speaks at a support group I attend said that unless we are in a POW camp, we aren't going into starvation mode and low calories will not alter our metabolism. You can take that for what it's worth, but I went from who knows how many calories a day to starting out post op at 300, and never more than 800 when I was losing.
I was very cautious about what I ate, that whole honeymoon period thing was forefront in my mind. This has worked for me, like this doctor told us, we had surgery to eat less. I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years. At 1300 I maintain, at 1400 I gain. If i drop back to 900 - 1050, I'll lose. It's a fine line, but I'm finding it easy to do, knock on wood.

Yes, there really is a 'honeymoon' period which is why I was soooooo rigid with myself. NOT one thing I should not have, no fried, no sweets, bread, Pasta or rice. Now I eat like a naturally thin person, and nothing but carbonation is off limits, but when I was losing, I treated it like the most important diet of my life, and it was!!!

I would also ask:
Are you logging your food
Attending a support group
Weighing or measuring your food
Weighing yourself daily
???
What works for me is doing all of the above, I call it my dashboard, just like on my truck I look at it daily and it
will tell me if something needs to be changed or adjusted a little. I am 3 years, 4 months out, I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years. This is my new normal, as natural to me as breathing.
At this point, I eat whatever I want, nothing is 'off limits' except carbonation. There are things I choose to not eat or not eat often, and this surgery helps make that pretty easy. I don't feel deprived and for the first time ever, I don't feel guilty. I need 1300 calories to maintain and I am having no problem staying at 1300 and many times UNDER by a little. It's easy to get more calories than you need, when I was losing, I never got over 800, but that was at the last, my average was 450 - 600 calories. I made sure I got all my Protein and chose well.
I am certain, with a few adjustments to YOUR dashboard, you'll start seeing the scale head in the right direction!! Good luck!

Just my two cents worth, and it's only my opinion, but the lower the calories the better. I couldn't get in 700 until almost 6 months out. I reached my doctor's goal in 5 and mine in 6.
The PhD doctor that speaks at a support group I attend said that unless we are in a POW camp, we aren't going into starvation mode and low calories will not alter our metabolism. You can take that for what it's worth, but I went from who knows how many calories a day to starting out post op at 300, and never more than 800 when I was losing.
I was very cautious about what I ate, that whole honeymoon period thing was forefront in my mind. This has worked for me, like this doctor told us, we had surgery to eat less. I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years. At 1300 I maintain, at 1400 I gain. If i drop back to 900 - 1050, I'll lose. It's a fine line, but I'm finding it easy to do, knock on wood.

Just my two cents worth, and it's only my opinion, but the lower the calories the better. I couldn't get in 700 until almost 6 months out. I reached my doctor's goal in 5 and mine in 6.
The PhD doctor that speaks at a support group I attend said that unless we are in a POW camp, we aren't going into starvation mode and low calories will not alter our metabolism. You can take that for what it's worth, but I went from who knows how many calories a day to starting out post op at 300, and never more than 800 when I was losing.
I was very cautious about what I ate, that whole honeymoon period thing was forefront in my mind. This has worked for me, like this doctor told us, we had surgery to eat less. I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years. At 1300 I maintain, at 1400 I gain. If i drop back to 900 - 1050, I'll lose. It's a fine line, but I'm finding it easy to do, knock on wood.

Chub rub, Sweet mother of god, chub rub! Will be so happy when my thighs stop touching after weight loss
TP being stuck in you after going to bathroom due to folds
Sweating at the slightest bit
Spending a fortune on limited, ugly plus size clothes

I won't miss being the president of the " you have such a beautiful face club. ". People really think this is a compliment! Including my own mother

If you went on the charts, I needed to lose 48 pounds to get to a "normal" BMI of 24.9 or 155 pounds at 5'6". At 65%, that would have only lost 31.2 pounds in a year. Well, I lost 70.8 pounds in less than 9 months. Seems like a lot of us on here have met our goal or are very close to it in 1 year or less.
I wonder if this is a stat for all WLS as a whole? I know there are some who struggle with losing the weight on VSG, but it seems to be a small percentage. And, I don't mean that to sound as trite as it probably does in writing. I so feel for anyone struggling with any weightloss - VSG, RYN, DS, Band, calorie counting etc. We've all been there and know the scars of those battles.
As far as getting to where I am ... I wish I could say it was all me and my strict compliance, but I haven't done very well at all on the exercise and haven't been such a stickler on the carbohydrate counting either. Having said that, I know that more exercise will help tone me up more & get off the last 7 I want to have gone by Christmas.
All of that is to say, I don't know why your nut told you this. It does sound a bit defeating, doesn't it? Maybe use it as a way to motivate yourself to "beat the numbers". Show them that your sleeve will take you to your goal!

I'm only 3 months out and my surgeon said the same, but if you look here a lot of people lost their excess weight and more! That is what the average person loses but I'm hoping to lose most of my excess by going to the gym and working my sleeve to the max. I lost more than half of what i want to lose now(about 60% of my excess), so I'm quite confident that I'll lose more, and I'm even thinking now that I don't wa\nt to lose that much more cause i think I'll be too skinny. So i guess it depends mostly on us and the way we work our sleeve and not so much on the statistics

I agree with you.....I want to know where I am calorie wise. I have my daughter doing this and she is not a WLS patient! She'd gained a little when she had her baby 4 years ago. She has been on myfitnesspal for 2 months now and is 15 lbs lighter. Fifteen was her goal, now she is going for a five pound pad!! Hey, I know I'm obsessive, actually my nurse said I was a 'bit rigid', and early on, while I was losing, I was......but I "freak out" over very little! I never have. Up and down, up and down, that is what normal people do.....this is all a game to me, I have fun, it's part of my life. Weighing daily, weighing or measuring food and tracking calories.....is my new life, as natural for me as breathing. I can't imagine paying almost 13k, out of pocket to have 85% of my tummy removed.....and then, that's it. I am very aware of everything I do. I am not deprived of anything, but I am much better at resisting and making wise choices when I need to!

So tracking calories is bad, why?

How? Do everything you say you will not do or be prepared to literally work your butt off. Make it a lifestyle change, one or the other. What I do, it's a habit. It's as natural to me as breathing.
I'm almost 3.5 years out. Reached goal in 6 months, maintaining for over 2.5 years. How do I know when enough is enough. I used that honeymoon period to absolutely weigh and/or measure all my food when I'm at home. I weigh myself every single morning and I log my food. That is how I know. It's what works for me. It is not something I will get bored with, these are not things that will have to stop if I twist my ankle and I'm not going to get so old I can't possibly go to the gym to do 4000 crunches, lift weights or exercise on an elliptical machine!
You do NOT have to do what I do, this is what works for me...but rest assured, you must do something. Either become a gym rat or get a little obsessive. Anyone who thinks the doctor removes our stomach and that's the end of it. They were fooled or foolish. There is no end date, this is forever....it isn't a fad diet, but it is NOT a magic bullet, it is NOT the easy way out, you must do something, make changes one way or the other.
I don't mean to be harsh, but some times reality just is.

My two cents worth. I WISH I'd done it when my BMI was 32, I wish it had been around and perfected 20 years before my surgery 3 years ago!!! I was off and on a diet for 30 years. I have ALWAYS been able to lose weight. I've lost 5o lbs on three different occasions and lesser amounts, ranging from 15 - 30 on more occasions than I can count. I've been on WW's three different times, I've taken phen/fen, Alli, regular ol' prescription diet pills, Medifast, I've seen a nutritionist and then we have the South Beach, Adkins and the ones I've forgotten about. I lost weight on every single one, every time. That is not the problem, as most of us know, as soon as you get OFF the diet, the weight comes back and so many times with it comes an additional few pounds. I had NO health issues, blood pressure, cholesterol, all ok. No diabetes, sleep apnea or any of the other weight related problems. I'd do it, without hesitation. I don't know how tall you are, but unless I miss my guess, you do not have a huge amount to lose, I went into this 'wanting' to lose about 50 lbs, it came off SOOOOOo quickly that I soon realized two things. I underestimated what I could do with this new little tummy and two, I was fatter than I'd thought. I've lost 84 lbs, I wear 4's and 6's, which is very exciting and a "first" ever!!! I am pretty sure I went from children's size 6X to a jr 13 overnight when I was a kid!!! I was very 'rigid' during the time I was losing, and I have made some of my habits part of my new life and love it. I lost 23 lbs prior to surgery and reached my physician's goal in five months, my goal of five lbs less, a month later. This morning I am 6.5 lbs under HIS goal, I've lost two pounds this week and I'm not sure how! If Portion Control is what you need, look no further, this has been by far the easiest thing I've ever done to lose weight. I do not think it is the 'easy way out' for a few reasons. One, when you go under the knife to have 85% of your stomach removed, it is not 'easy'. Two, it isn't a cure all, having the digestive tract of a hummingbird or field mouse, like my husband likes to say.....will NOT prevent you from eating poorly, but having the hunger hormone substantially reduced makes it much easier to walk away, to resist when you need or want to....heck, to even throw food away. I know ** gasp ** I made home made pizza last weekend......I DO eat pizza now that I am at goal and easily maintaining, but rather than split a large with my husband I eat one slice, maybe two if it is a small pizza, and there are small pieces. I ate my one piece, he ate several and there were three pieces left over. I did NOT put them into the frig, actually, I put them into baggies, just habit, that is what I've always done. I asked if he'd want them for lunch on Monday, when he said no.....I took the baggies and threw them away. Pizza IS a temptation for me, one that I could probably resist, but why risk it. I seldom eat pizza, once a month or less. My point is.....prior to surgery I'd have NEVER thrown pizza away!!! LOL I still don't get hungry, I have what I call my 'new hunger', it's more of an empty feeling, when I know it's time to put something there. I hope it stays like this forever, I still eat because I like to, it's social and I must, I just eat much, much less. Good luck to you, I hope this helps, there will be some who think your BMI is tooooo low to even consider sleeve surgery, but keep in mind, all of us had YOUR BMI at one time. Why would you wait until it is 40 or 50? Mine was under 36 and I wanted to have fun shopping, mission accomplished. I love it my husband can pick me up......and when I NEED to sound less shallow and vain, I say it was preventive maintenance. All my dad's deceased sisters were heavy....over 300 lbs heavy and none were as tall as me. I fought to stay at 225, a constant "diet" - I knew the older I got, the harder it would be. I haven't regretted my decision at all, it's been a wild ride and I've loved every minute of it. If you do it, enjoy it all. I suspect if you are as 'rigid' as I was during the honeymoon period, you'll reach your goal and beyond in under a year, that is just MY guess because of MY experience. Everyone's is different.

How? Do everything you say you will not do or be prepared to literally work your butt off. Make it a lifestyle change, one or the other. What I do, it's a habit. It's as natural to me as breathing.
I'm almost 3.5 years out. Reached goal in 6 months, maintaining for over 2.5 years. How do I know when enough is enough. I used that honeymoon period to absolutely weigh and/or measure all my food when I'm at home. I weigh myself every single morning and I log my food. That is how I know. It's what works for me. It is not something I will get bored with, these are not things that will have to stop if I twist my ankle and I'm not going to get so old I can't possibly go to the gym to do 4000 crunches, lift weights or exercise on an elliptical machine!
You do NOT have to do what I do, this is what works for me...but rest assured, you must do something. Either become a gym rat or get a little obsessive. Anyone who thinks the doctor removes our stomach and that's the end of it. They were fooled or foolish. There is no end date, this is forever....it isn't a fad diet, but it is NOT a magic bullet, it is NOT the easy way out, you must do something, make changes one way or the other.
I don't mean to be harsh, but some times reality just is.

Hey there -- welcome! I'm north of Dallas, and hoping for a surgery date before the end of November. My packet is being pulled together now for insurance, and will be submitted after my final NUT appointment on Nov. 5. My sleeve will be placed in Grapevine.
Your hospital may not offer a support group, but there are several available in the Metroplex. Here's a list my NUT gave me.

Edited to say I'd be open to coffee sometime! It would be nice to have a local(ish) sleeve buddy.