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I've been using the Baritastic app for 8 months. it is free and very comprehensive. Among other things, it can figure out the calorie/nutrition data per serving if you input a recipe You can track your mood, feelings of hunger, number of bowel movements, journalling, timers for a variety of things, all in addition to daily food and vitamin intake. If you plan meals ahead, you can input them into future dates. You can also copy items from one day and insert them into the current or future date. I almost always have it open on my phone and use more often than any other app. I intend to keep using it

Thanks for this post, MiniGastricBypassDude! Us Omega-Loopers are a clear minority on the forum, so it's great to read a detailed post from someone further along the journey than I am. I concur with your praise of the MGB - despite a run-in with ulcers and my repeated stalls due to how little I've been able to eat (both have improved immensely now), I'm still super glad I got this procedure. Everything has resolved and it's now getting easier and easier. I can get more calories in now, so the stalling has stopped and I'm losing at a good clip. My surgeon offers Sleeve, RNY, MGB and SADI-S, but is very pro-MGB over RNY because of all you mentioned. He says it has better long-term results, though yes, our supplements are vital. I had originally wanted the Sleeve (the malabsorbtion and potential dumping had me a little wary of a bypass), but because of existing GORD, he talked me out of it and into a MGB. Glad he did, as yes, this is the right surgery for me. I'm also ETERNALLY grateful that I've never had an emotional attachment to food, or BED. I know I'm very fortunate that my head has been in a great space for this, and I feel for folks who are having a rougher time of it.

There's truth in the gherlin explanation, but it's also oversimplified so maybe gives people the wrong impression. There's multiple hormones that affect hunger. Leptin is another hormone that makes you hungry - it is made by your fat cells as they lose energy. Leptin is proportional to the number of fat cells you have, not the volume of fat. Fat cells multiply as you gain weight, but they don't die just because you lose weight - they just get smaller. A normal weight person that used to be fat will be making more leptin than a normal weight person who was never fat because the person who used to be fat has more fat cells. Leptin is part of the reason why people have a "set point," or a weight that their body likes to be at that is maintained by the body by changing your hunger and metabolism. Insulin also increases your hunger in the long term. You make insulin after you eat, while you are feeling full. But if you are constantly making a lot of it, your muscle cells get resistant to insulin and have trouble getting food even if there's plenty of food in your blood already. They will feel hungry and tell you to eat more. This is why sugar is kind of addictive to people who tend towards insulin resistance. If your body isn't getting enough protein, that will make you feel hungry too, even if you are eating enough calories. Also, there's two sets of neutrons involved in hunger - your brain is one set, but your gut also has its own neural network, and scientist understand much less about how this "gut brain" works. One of my friends is a scientist in nutrition and physiology, and a member of obesity research societies. He's the one who told me about this "gut brain" stuff. Scientists in the field don't entirely understand why WLS works. One puzzle is that they've observed that insulin resistance improves right after surgery - within a day or two people will be off their diabetes meds. They know insulin resistance improves when you lose weight and when you exercise, but they don't know why there's this fast change after WLS. Another puzzle is that they've found that a few years out, WLS patients have a higher metabolism that is closer to a person that was never fat, whereas people who lost weight through diet/exercise have a much lower metabolism than a never fat person. WLS somehow resets your "set point," but they don't know how exactly. Scientists have tried to develop drugs that change these hormones like gherlin and/or leptin. "WLS in a bottle" would be much easier than actual surgery. But none of these approaches have worked yet. That's another indication that they don't fully understand how WLS works. But it seems likely that resetting your set point is a process that occurs as you lose weight. It's not just a change that occurs instantaneously when the surgery is done. It's not just that your smaller stomach makes you feel less hungry and you can't eat as much, so you lose weight. It's that the process - losing weight while spending a lot of that time not feeling hungry because your stomach feels really full - changes what your neural networks consider to be your set point, and that in turn makes you feel less hungry without your hunger increasing and metabolism dropping in the long term. If this is how it works, that would explain why the people who stick to the diet more strictly in the beginning have more success in the long term. For instance, if you eat sugar early on, that sugar is going to increase your insulin and insulin resistance and make you feel more hungry over the next week. Even though you may be eating exactly as many calories and have exactly the same stomach size as a person who is more strict about what they eat, that process won't work as well, and your set point won't get as low.

What it’s like being a mini gastric bypass patient on BariatricPal – what I found useful, and why I needed a pause from participating on the forum I think the forum is a fantastic resource, I love the store, and I can’t imagine not having read all of you wonderful people’s stories along the way. However, you feel lonely here as an MGB’er, because it’s very America-centric and there’s just not a lot of MGB’ers in America. That’s how it is. Consider this my tiny contribution to change that. What drove me off the site is the already-discussed-ad-nauseam rigidity you meet, and I seriously urge anyone to consider if they’re posting their “I can only eat half a lentil a week, am I losing too fast?” story for themselves rather than for others. Now that I’m below goal, I can say: I had a LOT more calories than what you’d believe was necessary to be a success. And I’m still losing on 2000-2200/day. Had I gone by the consensus here, I would’ve given up a long, long time ago. And I see some of the posters who had surgery around the same time as me, who were very active, and very judgmental of me and people like me, well … they’re not posting anymore. That makes me sad. Because I know why they did that; they needed the resolve and the boost from telling others they were doing it wrong. I hope they made it and that they’re happy wherever they are in their lives. I am back to say we should be so much more forgiving, kind, and open to each other’s experiences. We have a whole world judging us and frankly, we shouldn’t put up with it. That starts with forgiving ourselves and each other, and then stick together, us former, current, and future fatties

Alcohol and MGB So this will be controversial for the Americans. Sorry in advance. I’ve had alcohol weekly since week 5. I made room for it in my calorie count. Sometimes, I went over. And then got right back on the counting the next day. Alcohol is a part of life where I live. And I’ve found myself wanting to go out more. I get drunk super fast, and I have to pace myself. It hasn’t really been an issue; I can see why people get addicted, but I’ve never been the kind of guy who would drink alone and that’s a hard rule for me. YMMV is what I’m saying. If you’re reading this thinking you’ll never drink again, well, a lot of us are while being successful still. Don’t you wish you had refrained from drinking and then your EWL might have been 95 instead of 89? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have gotten to a year by staying in. I did this my way, and it worked for me.

My diet and calories – stages + what does a typical day look like after a year? My post-op plan was pretty standard: 1 week of fluids 1 week of puréed 1 week of soft solids and then gradually into solids. It was easy, but I had reached out for help prior to surgery and had family take care of me. I could’ve done it on my own, but I do recommend letting all pride go and simply take as much time off work as you can, ask for all and any help you can from the people around you. You have no idea how willing people are to help. That first month is so crucial to get off to a great start – it’s a long journey – and we deserve it. I had alcohol less than a month after surgery (for NYE) and it was fine. It was OK’ed with my surgeon’s team. I understand this is different for different cultures, but alcohol is a major part of life where I live, and I am done doing unsustainable things. So I had to practice flexible control right off the bat. It works well for me. For me, tracking calories and protein has been crucial I was on: 1400 cals/day for 6 months, then 1800 cals a day for 3 months and then the bariatric team asked me to stop losing and find my balance. Since then, I’ve lost 7-8 lbs as I’m finding my equilibrium. I stopped tracking on weekends, and I still track on weekdays. It’s good to keep that sense of what 2000-2200 calories look like, but it’s also a more long-term sustainable solution for me to not sit at a restaurant and think about whether I go 50 over or under on a Friday. This gets into the mental game, and I’ll cover that below. A typical day now looks like this: Breakfast Protein Oatmeal (around 200 cals) Lunch Meat + mixed salad + a little dressing at work. Small plate. Early afternoon A protein snack, like Quest Protein Chips. Late afternoon Usually some fruit, a slice of protein bread with low-fat cheese. Dinner I’ve grown fond of Thai curries with chicken + cauliflower rice. I truly have no desire for, say, burgers and pizza – it’s too heavy for my system. I repeat: it’s not that I can’t have it, I just don’t really want to. New times indeed. Evening snack(s) I tend to leave 400-600 calories for after dinner (which is easier on 2200 calories, mind you). I unfortunately work a bunch, and this has been the problem in the past – working and snacking all night long. I spend those calories on a smoothie with protein and fruit, and usually a bariatric-friendly treat like sugar-free chocolate, popsicles, or something like that. This keeps the habit of stuffing myself with empty calories somewhat at bay, while also not setting me up for failure by pretending I can go from 7pm to bedtime at 1am without eating. I can’t, so I don’t.

The surgery: what is it, how does it work, what does science say about weight loss and complications with MGB? What is it? There’s nothing ‘mini’ about the MGB. The name was given by Dr. Rutledge who invented it in 1997 to describe its simpler configuration compared to Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Basically, the stomach is divided and a long, narrow pouch is created (a little like the sleeve), but the rest of the stomach is left in place (like with RNY). A loop of the small intestine is then connected to the pouch, and that’s it. There’s one connection point – one anastomosis – and unlike the sleeve, the food travels directly down into the intestine, as the pyloric valve is bypassed. The bypass is anywhere from 150cm – 350cm (3 to 9 feet), though recently most surgeons do 150cm to avoid malnutrition later on. Here’s a diagram: How does it work? As with all bariatric surgery, there are things we know and things we don’t know. We obviously feel full faster due to the smaller stomach, but because it’s ‘open’ in the bottom to the intestine, and this anastomosis is not especially narrow, we can usually eat pretty large amounts fairly soon after surgery. My personal experience is that I’ve only felt I ‘had no more room’ a few times, and always with minced meat, weirdly enough. The big trick is that you feel satisfied very quickly, because the food lands undigested pretty far down the intestine. It’s like the feeling after a huge Christmas dinner. Technically, I could eat more, but I feel stuffed (and satisfied). So I don’t. We have at least 3-4x the malabsorption of RNY, so there’s some calories being flushed right out. Personally, I can see when I eat a higher-fat meal that some of it goes through undigested (sorry for theTMI). How much do you lose? Unlike what people think, there are tons of studies out there documenting that weight loss is generally greater after MGB than after sleeve and RNY. Not a single study out there shows less weight loss with MGB when comparing MGB and RNY. Excess Weight Loss (EWL) ranges from mid-60s % EWL to the 80s after one year (a few studies show even higher WL, but those are generally from cohorts of fairly low-BMI study populations). All-in-all, weight loss is excellent and looks like it’s long-term durable in the studies. Especially when compared to the sleeve. Complications? For some reason, there’s a ‘feeling’ among American bariatric surgeons that MGB carries a higher risk of stomach cancer. This is not true, and it has been studied. A few patients experience bile reflux, but this is a lesser concern with the Spanish ‘anti-reflux stitch’ most MGB surgeons now use. Mine did as well, and while I suffered heavily from GERD prior to surgery, this is no longer a problem. Long-term, malnutrition is an issue, so take your vitamins. Think of vitamins as being generally a good idea for sleevers, mandatory in the beginning for RNY’ers and then see how your labs develop as the years pass, to very important for MGB, also long-term, and life-or-death for our duodenal switch friends. This reflects the malabsorption – none in sleeve, a little in RNY, a moderate-to-significant amount in MGB, and a lot in DS.

[MINI GASTRIC BYPASS THREAD – PLEASE CONSIDER YOUR SURGERY AND EXPERIENCES MAY NOT APPLY TO MINI GASTRIC BYPASS PATIENTS] Hi all BP’ers and lurkers out there; especially hi to everyone who had the mini gastric bypass (AKA the one-anastomosis gastric bypass/single-anastomosis gastric bypass/omega loop gastric bypass) It’s my surgiversary! I can’t believe it’s already been a year. But what a year it has been. Man. I wanted to share a lot of thoughts about my journey – there’s not a ton of MGB patients out there yet, and especially not in the US. I’ll admit I’ve been working on this for a while, because I want to share the good word about the MGB and contribute some of the things I simply cannot find out there. Well, now I know, at least how it’s been the first year for myself. So that’s my small contribution. Below, I’ll post the following posts individually so it’s easy to browse for anyone new: The surgery: what is it, how does it work, what does science say about weight loss and complications with MGB? My journey to weight loss surgery My weight journey for a year after the mini gastric bypass My diet and calories – stages + what does a typical day look like after a year? Exercise – what and when and how much? Alcohol and MGB What I wish they had told me prior to surgery Setting a goal Why I think you should consider the MGB What it’s like being a mini gastric bypass patient on BariatricPal – what I found useful, and why I needed a pause from participating on the forum What now? I hope you’ll find some of this enjoyable.

Oh yes, I was ravenous until I got on semi-solid food like eggs and cottage cheese. Personally, I attributed that to getting more protein. I really did not like the taste of protein shakes, and even though I was choking them down, I don't think I was getting as much protein as my body needed. But also, solid food makes you feel more "full" than fluids, no matter what their nutritional content. Studies of gastric emptying show that fluids leave your stomach much faster than solids, even if they have the same calories. (Water goes through your stomach even quicker than liquid food.) Once you start eating solid food, the fact that your stomach is smaller will really start fully working. Bariatric surgery doesn't just work because you can't eat as much. It also changes your hormones. Ghrelin is called the "hunger hormone" and your stomach makes it when it is empty. You make less of it after bariatric surgery because you have a smaller stomach. But you also make less of it when your stomach spends more time feeling full.

Yes....it will get better for sure. There are a lot of feelings you are having that may even be related to gas, medication, bloating, swelling etc. You will start to feel a lot better very quickly. Stick to it and don't waiver. Make sure you are taking your protein shake in the morning which gives you a feeling of fullness and will get you through to lunch. If you are feeling hungry between meals, have some bone broth which helped me feel a little less hungry and it has protein as well...only 45 calories for a 10 ounce serving. You get your water AND you protein. Do not miss on your water. When you don't get enough water it can make you feel hungry as well.

I am 5 weeks out. Doctor daily recommendations: 100-120g of protein/day. 800-1000 calories (or 600-800, if I wanted to 'push it') 50% protein, 25% veggies, and optionally 25% carbs. Meal wise: Protein shake for breakfast. Protein shake midmorning, after workout. 2 meals (lunch / dinner) 1 snack. I am currently doing 600-700 cals / day

Program fluids: 3-5 shakes plus at least 64 oz. of clear fluids. After surgery, the 64 oz is bare minimum, and often people return to the hospital with dehydration if that’s all they can drink. Recommended guidelines are 1/2 to 1 full oz of fluid per lb of body weight. The reason psyllium husks are allowed is because they are not like other fibers which will add carbs/calories.

@Queen ApisM I’m encouraged to hear all that! I am planning to get Miralax. It seems sketchy the bari programs haven’t figured out a better plan. Like indigestible fiber adds no carbs or calories and should be part of the diet—at least!!

I struggled with giving things like that up as well. I ate sugar free jolly ranchers or other sugar free hard candy during the pre op and early post op. I’m 6months post op and if I really need something to suck on occasionally I have a sugar free cough drop. Just be carful with the sugar free candy bc some has a lot of calories per piece.

I recommend the Baritastic app. It tracks your protein, carbs, fats, calories, water, exercise, etc. and provides you with charts to see your progress as well as a daily log for writing your thoughts and activities. It's much easier than looking up each food item in a calorie counter. It will measure grams as well as ounces, so its compatible for you.

I’m 6 weeks out…. I went back to a shake for breakfast plus 2 meals of usually about 200 calories each plus a couple of appx 100 calorie snacks. Average 700-800 calories per day.

Sorry, all! I read my calorie counter wrong last night and gave you all the wrong numbers! Yesterday's total was 44.1g carbs, 19.7 protein, and 351 calories! Thanks x

I’m eating 3 meals a day. 70-80 grams of protein. 700-800 calories. The scale is going down. I’ll hit week 4 on Tuesday. I’m eating soft food at this time.

That's a very good point, I never thought about a stall! It could well be that indeed. I will see my loss next week and if it isn't anything brilliant I will inform my bariatric team that I successfully did the 2 week period but didn't have a big loss. I suspect the actual pre-surgery one will be more liquids than solid meals, so that might have more of a success. I have downloaded a UK-based calorie counter to make my life a bit easier so I can track things better too. Fingers crossed! Honestly thank you so much, I find it hard to lose weight because of my PCOS so I should give myself more credit than I do. Congrats on your 36 pounds! I hope you hit that target weight! X

Just checking in again today my sweets. Still stuck at a 4lb loss 18 days post op and really needing my whoosh now! Am taking in about 600 calories a day and around 60g protein. Pain is getting better every day - the only time I notice it now is when I straighten up too quickly after bending over, or when I try to sleep on my side at night. Hunger was less noticeable yesterday - it has been hard, so nice to see it subsiding at last. All in all, everything going the right way, kind of apart from the weight, which has to come soon, right?? Just about to start a big Sunday roast here, which I will puree for myself. Also boiling ham for lunches (everyone else) during the week so I will use the stock to make some 'ham', lentil and veg soup for my own lunches! How has everyone's weekend been so far?

Kirsten I suspect you just hit a stall at the wrong time! You've already lost 25lbs so if they need evidence that you can stick to a diet there it is! At 800 calories a day you will definitely start losing again, I really hope you see a good loss this week, sounds like you're doing amazingly.

I'm wondering from ppl that are around 6 weeks post op...what are your macros & calories? Daily protein? Are you still losing? how many meals are you eating daily? Thanks [emoji846] Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app

1/4c at meals at 6weeks post op...I believe my nutritionist would tell u to get that to 1/2c and then to 3/4c. I think you might be consuming too few calories. I'm in the same boat. 6 weeks post op and A LOT of stalls already. Be careful with fruits. Still have lots of sugars. Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app

Well I'm 6 weeks out and I hit a stall at 2, 4 & now my 6th week. Now, that's frustrating. I would look at your macros, water intake and vitamins. Calories as well. Might have to eat more calories, less or more protein. Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app

I'm your wls twin. I was avg. About 300-500 calories. My nutritionist and surgeon were not happy with how little my calories I was eating. Encouraged to eat a minimum of 600, up to 900 calories. They want me aiming for 90g of protein daily and more frequent high protein meals. I have had like 3 stalls on my journey. It has be mentally tough on me. However, I will say that when I'm eating 1k calories...I feel better. I broke my stall. So, I'm not sure why they're wanting u to literally starve yourself. That's crazy to me. Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app