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My meal prepped breakfast for the week! Quinoa, egg whites, blackberries and walnuts with a side of ham. 262 cal, 25g carb, 20g protein 9g fat, 4g fiber

I am 3 months post op and have noticed a lot that after eating my pulse starts racing and i feel miserable. Does this happen to anyone else?

@Chatterboxdea I have had a similar problem. I have only lost 3.4 pounds in the last 19 days. I was stalled with a pound or so for two weeks. My foods are where they should. I’m going to the gym 3-4 days a week as told. My water is a little iffy by not too bad. we just have to remember that we did not gain the weight overnight and we won’t lose it that way either. Some of us lose slower than others. It obviously doesn’t hurt to talk to your dietician and get suggestions. But you are not alone.

I'm only 2 months post surgery -- Thankfully, I've been very careful with what I eat, and have not yet had to deal with foamies or dumping syndrome. The two main issues I've had, are insomnia and.... I don't really know what to call it. It's not constipation, as I'm still going every day like clockwork, the...volume? is just rather intense and it hurts when I go. The insomnia was insane from weeks 3-6 though. I barely slept at all, I would stay awake all night long, and usually the rest of the next day too, then I would crash and sleep for 15-16 hours straight, then back to being awake for close to 48 hours. It was rough, but then one day it just suddenly straightened itself out again.

So today I am finally at 3 months post op. Here is what that means for me: I can stop taking lansoprazole...YESSSSSSS! I absolutely hate the taste of that thing and if I never have to take it again, it'll be too soon. I can start taking tablets again, meaning I can try my Forceval prescription vitamins. I have heard that these can make people feel quite nauseous, so I will wait an hour after eating in the evening to take it, rather than in the morning as I usually do. I am due for bloods to be taken via my GP, though I imagine I'll struggle to get an appointment! I just wanted to reflect on my journey so far, and where I am at now. It is weird how quickly this becomes your new normal. In the beginning with the gas pain, the extreme fatigue etc, I did wonder how I'd adjust, but here I am! I was shocked at how fast the weight dropped initially, and I know I will keep losing (hopefully) for a little while longer. I think we all go through this weird mindset of being overweight for such a while, and our bodies not responding as we had hoped to fad diets, or us punishing ourselves for 'not trying hard enough', that I truly wondered if the surgery would even work. And it has worked, and it will continue to do so! I am in the dreaded - but very expected - 3 month stall. My weight isn't really moving much, but I know that I just need to keep on with my normal eating and routine and it'll break eventually (thanks to reading all of the posts regarding this phenomenon 🤣) I can still get dizzy when I am exercising, and my strength at the gym has really decreased which I am a bit miffed about, but I'll get there! TMI incoming: but pooping is still an annoyance...the severe constipation I had in the early post-op weeks still results in some little tears when I pass a bowel movement, so I am dealing with my new normal 😂 Positives: I passed my driving test and I am picking up my car on Saturday! I really do attribute passing to losing weight, and how it has made me feel more confident and capable. I can walk around for hours and not have pain in my hips and lower back. Pre-surgery this was absolutely excruciating, even the 5-6 minute walk home from work I had to stop 2-3 times due to the pain and being out of breath. No such worries now! I can see the weight loss in my face, which makes me happy. I can fit into a pair of denim shorts that previously couldn't even make their way up my lower thigh! My current weight is amazing to me, even though I am not at my goal YET, I haven't been this weight since 2017. In general, I just feel happier in myself, and I can't wait for the future! If you have read all of this, thank you! ❤️

My goals are to fill up my bank account, Christmas is a beast. I want to visit all my nearest family. Today I booked a future trip to see my older sister and her family. Its a long train journey which I love. So thats my start. I want to hold my weight I want to get rid of more stuff I want to spend 3 solo weeks on a Greek beach with books. I did it last year and it was one of the best thing I have ever done. I want to get out of the house one more day a week

6 week update: Down to 252. So officially 10 pounds down. I feel good. Clothing is fitting better. Snacking habit broken. More energy from eating better foods.

I have a tentative surgery date of June 17th so I'll be starting my 2 week liver shrink / pre-op diet the first week of June. My nutritionist said I will have to drink meal replacement shakes for breakfast, lunch, & supper. I have Premier Protein powder at home, but he said that is not a meal REPLACEMENT, it's just a high protein shake. What meal replacement shakes do you recommend? Which ones tastes the best? I don't think I can drink the ones that have a heavy vitamin taste.

Wendy, I just want to thank you for this. Seeing your experience and your positivity really helped. They did give me an abdominal binder and I also did the pillow method for coughing. 2 weeks out now and I’m feeling a million times better. I hope your journey is going amazingly!

@AmberFL thanks for this it's very helpful! Girl I'm over her cussing saying 🤬to myself that I am not getting no other work done 🤣. I think I mean it to. He done a phenomenal job with the auxiliary fat removal and my breast, but I'm like over it! We shall see what goes on in the weeks to come.

Yes, eating and drinking gets much more comfortable. You're less than a week out now, so everything is still healing. That's why you have to progress through the food stages before you get back to regular food. I'm almost 5 years out now and I tolerate most things, at least in small quantities. Like most people, I struggled to sip enough fluids in the first few post-op weeks, but after a few months, I could drink at a completely normal pace. Everybody's a little different in terms of what they can eat and what causes discomfort (and what kind of discomfort), but you will learn what you can eat without issues, and that will just become your new "normal."

This is such a great perspective, I'm gonna try to reframe it as an opportunity during those long weeks. And to remember that I will feel very differently about food post-op than I am right now during liquid diet. Thanks for the advice & words of encouragement!

@Lily2024 Good luck on surgery!! I was not able to work out for 7 weeks it was so tough, but getting back into the swing of things!

Its a tough ask to ask people who are very overweight to eat like a sparrow. We all feared this part. I thought it was bitterly cruel doing 3 weeks of milk and vegetables. I was so over this diet I ran into the operating theatre. The only thing that kept me on the straight and narrow was the fact that if my liver was still fatty, the surgery would stop and I would wake up with out the surgery. It has happened to a few people on here and they were heart broken. We are with you and if you want to vent, somewhere in the world, is a person on here ready to listen

Hi Ladies and Gents! I am scheduled for a bilateral tummy tuck, belly button reconstruction and breast implants on 3/17/25 I am kind of scared kind of excited!

Well, we are all different so take this with a grain of salt, but I was the same BMI prior to my preop diet as you are now so relatively close and I just looked back at my weight log and Iwas losing about 6 pounds per week on average in the beginning, but I also had the SADI which is quite a bit more aggressive than the sleeve or even the bypass so my loss statistically should’ve been more rapid than yours with a sleeve. Frankly, I think that you are doing very well with losing a pound a day and I wouldn’t be too shocked if it does slow down a bit. It definitely will not be a perfect line where you lose the exact same amount every day though. There may be times when you even gain a pound or three and hold it for a few days and then one day you will just drop those 3+ another pound. But if you only log your weight once a week, even if you must get on the scale every day, if you only look at the once a week or even once a month, your trend will be far more consistent. Some people only get on the scale once a week or once a month. I know I couldn’t do that but it really would be better for your mental health if you could hide your scale and just do what you’re supposed to do and trust the process.

I had my gastric sleeve surgery 10/31/2024, turned 57 2 weeks later. Had hysterectomy 1/20/2024….so slapped into menopause then g. sleeve…..my hair is 1/3rd the thickness it was 18 months ago…had started thinning in late Jan 2024….but handfuls are coming out now. 😭

Hi. I’m 6 months post op and have started to have pain in the upper stomach area. I’ve had the upper gi and barium swallow test, everything is normal. I space between eating and drinking. No matter what I eat after 3/4 bites I immediately get full. That’s for another day now my main concern is the pain I feel. It’s uncomfortable in any position except lying down on my side. My question is it ok to do a detox to cleanse my stomach or what should I do to remove this bloated painful feeling in my stomach?

Thanks a million. I think I get a two week sick cert and was then going to do two weeks homeworking and possibly add in some annual leave (seeing as the surgery is instead of a vacation) to not put too much pressure on myself or risk doing too much too soon. I also think I will hire a nurse/aid for an hour or so each day for the first few days, figure it might help ease my family concerns.

Make a list of all those things you want to change. Pick just one to focus on THIS week. Make sure though, that it's something small that you can measure in some way. For example, you can't say "I'm going to eat better", because that's too big and too vague. Instead, pick something even smaller and definitive like "instead of eating ice cream after dinner every day this week, I'm only going to eat ice cream 4 days this week". That's probably small enough that your brain won't make a huge fuss over it, and is also easily measurable. If you successfully make that change and can keep doing it for two or preferably three weeks, then you can more on. For example, maybe after three weeks, you decide to move to only eating ice cream once a week. Again, you need to be able to successfully do that before moving on again. If you fail, no worries, just try again. If you keep struggling, you may have picked something too big and you need to scale it back. I would also recommend alternating diet and exercise goals. Thus if you successfully made a diet change that you're able to stick with, next time maybe it's "I'm going to walk after dinner 3 days this week". By alternating in this way, you'll find the diet changes are easier to adjust to and at the same time, you'll be improving your health. Just make sure to go slow with these as well. I often see people in the gym (especially this time of year), that tried to go from basically doing nothing, to working out 5+ days a week. Sadly, the failure rate for such people is well north of 90%. Here's the thing. This will take a LONG time, but if you try to go faster because you're feeling impatient, the likelihood is that you won't be able to maintain the loss, you'll fall off the diet, and before you even realize it, you'll be right back where you were before. I also want to be clear, I do still recommend seeking out counseling for a possible eating disorder, as well as help from an RD. Dieting is HARD. if it was easy, we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic. The smart play here is to stack the cards in your favor by getting help from experts.

4 weeks in going to update the stats: SW: 262 CW: 254 GW: 200 Down 8 pounds in a month which I’m happy with. Hoping for similar results for the next month!

So glad to hear you are doing well. Yea when the cravings come back it sucks. I have been doing okay. Tomorrow is my last day of the infused chemo. Surgery on 3 weeks then radiation in five. I will be on the immunotherapy another year and maybe oral chemo depending on the pathology from surgery. 🤞 I don’t need the chemo because that may mean I’m immunocompromised still and I’m so sick of the isolation of trying not to get sick and miss treatment. I got a tiny little cold that made me septic and spent 10 days in hospital which made me miss two weeks of chemo so I’ve had to be super careful to not get sick again and all along they have told me once I get to radiation I won’t have to be so careful. I mean sick would mean I would miss treatment but only for a day or two while I had a fever or felt really crummy and it wouldn’t be life or death. Anyways, I only read about the oral chemo on the patient portal tonight so I will ask Dr more about it this Friday when we chat. Maybe it’s not a big deal. I have pretty much maintained my weight till recently. I’ve gained a few pounds. I’m still on the heavy steroids and the immunotherapy caused thyrotoxicosis I think it’s called. I was hyper thyroid to start but then like 3 weeks later it went back to normal and then to hypo thyroid and apparently it usually stays that way. I reached out to my bariatric team and asked him if I could start on with Govee to help get me off of some of these processed carbs and he acted like I was being crazy to be worried about my weight at a time like this. I said I’m not trying to lose weight. I know I’m not supposed to and I haven’t Since December when I started the Chemo, but I don’t think that if you’re so concerned about me, maintaining my weight to fuel my body and help myself recover that the foods I’m eating in order to sustain an overweight body weight are really helping me recover from anything. I said all I want to do is be able to stop eating the garbage and start eating healthy nutrition again and I would be willing to log all my food again and check in with you to make sure I’m not losing too fast or anything, but he says no way not until I get the all clear cancer free from my oncologist. But I’m helping my oncologist can reach out to him and tell him that I’m not gonna get that for another year and if I wait that long, I’ll probably be as big as a house again without any help. Or I may just have to go through an endocrinologist or my family doctor or something. Anyway, anyways, trying to not worry about it too much but I didn’t appreciate that. He acted like I have some kind of eating disorder or something and I have like a death wish. I mean, I wasn’t saying that I wanna take something that’s gonna make me starve myself to death. I was just saying that I want to change what I’m eating and eat healthy obviously if the medicine made it where I couldn’t eat anything. I would stop taking it. I’m not insane. 🤣 but it is very discouraging to see the numbers on the scale go up even if it’s only 5 pounds.

It's best to get clearance from your surgical team before starting any exercise routine. This honestly holds true after any surgery, not just bariatric surgery. Most will give you the okay between 2 and 6 weeks post-op, but it really is up to the surgeon.

My Gastric bypass surgery is scheduled for August 18, 2025 and here in Hawaii, our liquid diet is only for the first 2 days after surgery, then we move on to pureed for the next 2 weeks. I am trying to prepare because I know the day will be here shortly so just wanted to get some ideas of how most of you managed to get a lot of protein in with such small portions.

For some… cami is hyperemisis syndrome can be problematic as well. Also during your first few weeks… there is a lot of mental health triggering with coming off your food addiction, from conversion to new addictions, hormonal changes, poorly studied effects on gastric motility and canibus mixed with a kinda ridiculously large surgery, and taking what is considered a depressant and appetite stimulant…cannibus is great for many folks and diseases I am sure, but… until we know more of what we are doing….it’s not a great idea. Sorry. For some it may be great, but it’s another bump in the road and we’re not sure about the car during the first few weeks.