Search the Community

That's an amazing gauge; before my surgery (Sept '23), I had to use the last hole, and it was...snug. Here we are now, a week short of 14 months post-op, down 135lbs and I use the 4th hole unless I'm working out, when I use the 5th hole to tighten it up a little to keep the sensors away from the bottom of my (tattoo) sleeve.

i had my preadmission class yesterday and they spoke about what we can and can't have as well. they don't do the two-week liquid diet before they just have a green and lean diet basically healthy eating that we must do before the surgery and the liquid diet 2 weeks post op. my date is 10/29 so start the diet Monday. they gave us two shakes one we have to take 12 hours before surgury time and the other 3 hours prior to surgery . the day before surgery we can have a liht breakfast and after 12 noon all liquids .

Hi, everyone. I had a sleeve to mini bypass conversion in 2024. It’s been fine except I often have loose stools and need to run to the toilet. Recently I noticed a weird bulge in my abdomen a couple inches to the left of my belly button. I’m not able to see my doctor, as I’ve just started a job and am doing a three month shift in a remote location. There is no pain and sometimes the bulge is not there. It sort of comes and goes. Has anyone been through something similar? Thank you.

Lots of great advice here but I will add my experience with having done this before and just having a revision that exercising and eating clean makes it so much easier. My mood and energy level are so much better this time and head hunger is pretty non existent so far (part of which is a greater metabolic change witb the more aggressive surgery I’m sure but when I don’t exercise as much or I eat processed junk I can feel the difference part of it may also be that I’m just too darn busy to think much about food). For me carbs crave carbs. I learned this after my sleeve but I wasn’t super careful with it. I’m not taking about the better carbs from fruits and veggies, but the processed type. Eating even a smaller portion is a slippery slope for me so I will avoid these as long as I can and if I do have them I know I will have to white knuckle it a few days through the cravings. I make all my food from scratch and freezing food has made it possible to not cook every night. I freeze small portions and I have a note in my phone if what’s on the freezer by date. When I wake up and look at my calendar as I’m drinking my proffee (chilled coffee and protein shake) I decide if I have time to cook and if not I pull a bag out of the freezer and put in the fridge. Then when I get home I put it on the counter or defrost in microwave if necessary time wise and make a veggie to throw it together. A really nutritious and yummy dinner done in 10-15 minutes and bonus, a lot less dishes. I started walking early out and added group classes that are offered at my community center and now i am up every morning walking first thing. I actually put on exercise clothes after my shower and sleep In them and first thing I’m already dressed and ready to go for my walk. ooh and the support groups that my team offers are great in addition to staying very active on here. I actually met a walking buddy there and we walk together down by the river once a week, the day that I don’t have group classes and we cheer each other in in addition to the once a month in person support group meeting. I also chose to tell more people this time. Some were against it but I educated them and now they are starting to come around about it. I think it will be easier fir me to say no thank you to food when everyone around me knows my goals. The first time I did this so many people would say to me you’re doing so good. You can have one slice of pizza or one brownie but the problem was this was my family and I was around them several days a week so just this one became just three or four. I actually told them that when I see pizza or brownies, I already want one bad enough on my own. I don’t need someone else tempting me. I think they got it. We’ll see. I guess if they do it this time.

I had to do the liver shrinking diet pre-op for 2 weeks. 2 shakes a day then I ate a bag of frozen stir fry vegetables with 3 ounces of lean chicken or beef season fried in soy sauce for my evening meal. It was delish. I lost weight. High volume, low calorie. I'd enjoy the food while you can. JS

I'm back in the US for two weeks at the end of this months (I'm a Montana girl no matter how long I've lived in the UK) and I'm hoping I can hit all the thrift stores while I'm there. There's a few thrift stores here, but not so many that have plus sizes. I'm guessing I'm a UK 20 (US 18) now so still a plus size.

I think I was just so happy to be out of the stall, that the possibility of going back into it a week later sucked the spirit out of me. I didn't have the emotional energy in me to even feel properly upset -- or maybe, some part of my brain is trying to protect me from that? But clearly I am still having the feelings somewhere deep down -- cause last night, man, the nightmare I had about anxiety and eating half a box of Fruit Creme Peek Freans in the dark. I've gotten through enough mental health issues in the past that the logical part of my brain knows I'll get through this kind of shut-down phase, but sometimes its just harder to waddle through the mire.

Congrats on your success so far and it is a big plus in understanding your struggles to be able to work on them. Glad the Euros kept you distracted through the first few weeks. A year out I find that my eyes are still bigger than my stomach and it takes me having to really think about it sometimes to realise I am full. Another win you will be able to add to your list soon is that when you go out for meals you will probably be able to bring enough leftovers home to do a few meals 😀Two weeks ago a work lunch in the local Chinese meant I brought home enough from my one duck & rice dish to do another two lunches, three dinners and even my cat got a bit.

I know I’m over reacting and not giving myself enough grace but I have gained a pound this week and only lost 6 lbs in a month. I’m so frustrated! I really wanted the weight to fall off after surgery and I have come to terms that it will be a slow process (even though I’m eating so much less than I was). I have even been trying to walk more. I know there is nothing really to do but keep going and it will get better, it’s just so disheartening to not to see the scale going down, especially at 5.5 weeks out.

New Week New Wins! Ladies and Gents look forward to seeing your weeks Wins!

You tend to experience constipation &/or diarrhoea post surgery. The constipation will often remain a regular occurrence. Initially it’s because of the surgery (blood and digestive irritation from the surgery and then because you’re on the liquid diet & consuming so little & not having much to poop out. Best advice is to try to keep on top of it. Add some soluble fibre to your diet, set a routine for a stool softener or similar. For example I’d take a stool softener (coloxyl)or similar if I hadn’t gone in three days. (Going every 2nd day was pretty common for me especially while losing.) Now 5 years out, I’ll take one if I haven’t gone for 2 or 3 days. (I’m on Creons and they tend to firm things up and slow the progress through the intestines which doesn’t help.) Some people swear by smooth tea, or regular miralax. You may have to try a few things but you’ll discover what works for you in time and it may change as you progress and eat more and a greater variety of food types.

@ShoppGirl I am having the same issues right now. I have been up and down the same 2 pounds for almost two weeks. It’s like the doctor jinxed me. He told me I should lose 20-25 pounds between my last appointment and the next visit in 8 weeks. Well, tomorrow makes 2 weeks since I have seen him and I have only lost 2.3 pounds. I am really struggling to get calories and rarely hit 600 for the day. I also struggle with my fluid goals. I can hit protein no problem. I still can only eat about 1/3 cup at a sitting and since I have zero hunger, it makes it hard. I feel like I am forcing myself to eat. I have committed to making the gym at least 4 days a week. Because my knees are “bone on bone” I am limited to which exercise machines are comfortable and walking is not. I think I may call the orthopedic surgeon and see about more shots for my knees. It is funny when you hear people that think this journey is easy. There is nothing easy about this.

Ohhh, this makes me feel so much better. Internally, almost as soon as I posted my inner voice was all "Stop complaining, everyone stalls, nobody wants to hear it," but the rest of me was just needing something to break through the deadened emotions with some logic & care. Even now I feel a little guilty for taking up people's time with all this, lol. @MrsFitz, yes, feeling much better after this weekend, thank you! Feeling back in the positive range again. I think being able to get outside to nature this weekend (more than is possible for me during the week) definitely was a boost. Looking back, I think I was afraid to feel the scary negative emotions & worries, so I just kinda shut everything down. Not the healthiest, but everything is get-throughable.

@Mspretty86 The healing is going great! They look fantastic, I am definitely a full DD which is what I wanted. I still have scabs on my under boobs where they placed the implant, I still wake up swollen but it goes away in like 5min of getting up which is great. I still cannot work out which sucks but hopefully today when I go see him he clears me at least start walking or something. No new bras yet I am still in my post op bra for 8 weeks minimum he said. I have shopped for lingerie and actually wore some for the misters bday and man oh man was that fun LOL He is very much liking them however he's more looking than touching HAHA! He's nervous that he will mess something up, but he's been amazing this entire experience.

Not to dis on your friend, but that's just not how this works. The ski slope chart itself may be about what your weight loss looks like for many people, but I promise you, you are losing fat the entire time. You just can't overcome basic physics. Think about it. If you eat less calories than you burn, your body has to make up that difference from somewhere. Even the leanest people on the planet have something like 40,000 plus calories of fat stores. This is what your body uses to stay alive when intake is less than output. Do the math: Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), is made up of your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), your Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT), and your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). The average normal sized person has a resting metabolic rate somewhere between 1200 and 1800 calories. It's even higher for overweight and obese people. This is just an estimate, but yours is probably somewhere around 1900-2000 based on your height and current weight. EAT obviously can vary quite a lot from basically nothing if you don't workout, to well over a thousand calories per day if you exercise a lot. NEAT is important as well. The basic idea is that very few of us are completely sedentary. We are moving around cooking, cleaning, doing chores, etc. This is what we sometimes call "Activities of Daily Living". This tends to add another 15% to 20% to your overall calories for most people. The point of me adding all that is because very few people really understand how many calories their body needs per day just to stay alive. If your body needs 3000 calories per day and you are only consuming 800, then the rest of your energy needs for the day have to come from your tissues. If we do things right, the vast majority of that will come from fat, though no matter how hard we try, some of it will come from muscle tissue. Regardless, (and here's the point of all this), there is never a period of time when eating a very low calorie diet like we do after bariatric surgery, when you just lose water weight, or stop losing fat. Early on, you will lose a lot of water weight, but what you are losing is not JUST water. Later, you may experience stalls, but that's not a period of time when you stop losing fat. Instead, you may be putting more water weight back on (this IS part of the healing process), but you're still losing fat underneath that water gain. Note that there will be other times when your weight plateaus or even goes up some. This is 100% normal and not a cause for concern. If you are following the diet plan your surgical team sent you, you WILL lose fat. It's impossible not to. This is why I said it's just not healthy to weigh yourself daily. Scales LIE. They don't measure our amount of fat loss, they just measure weight, and weight is made up of so much more than just fat.

Hi! I'm new to this forum but definitely not new to this journey! I'm a mum of three adult kids from Newcastle region in NSW Australia. I'm an RN and have gone back to University for more torture (learning lol) I was sleeved in August 2021 and was successful in losing weight for 6 months before I plateaued and then stopped. After extensive investigations from my surgeon and other surgeries, I was booked for a revision and underwent my mini bypass with single anastomosis on 19th August 2024. I'm recovering well and would love to provide support (but not medical advice) to others who are considering undertaking any kind of weight loss or bariatric type surgery.

OMG, see that size looks amazing on you and I really think that eventually it would on me but I know my brain just takes a while to get used to things and unfortunately I don’t have the time I would prefer. I think you guys have talked me into going for the smaller size though. I really do enjoy my yoga and I have wanted a reduction for years because of them just being in the way during activities, difficulty finding an adequately supportive sports bra as @SpartanMaker mentioned, back and neck pain and ill fitting clothing at any size because my breast are the last place that I lose weight so they stick with me. Volume wise I have only lost one cup size so far and I have lost 80 pounds!! I mean that doesn’t matter now because it’s gonna be all implant anyways in a few months but I’m just saying that I am over the big breast thing. At the same time when you’re used to looking at a pretty large chest for a decade I can imagine that a C cup is gonna look pretty tiny at first. My estimation is I will have like two weeks to get used to it before I start radiation and I’m pretty much locked in to that size. Then again, I will get used to it for six weeks I suppose because I will be flat to begin with. The radiation oncologist did say that it may be possible for me to go with like expanders for one cup size larger and then decide to put in the smaller implant so I intend to ask the surgeon about that at my preop appointment. Maybe I will actually be able to find a really good fitting sports bra and try jogging for the first time since my 20s!!

GLP-1's have been put back on the shortage lists? The pharmacies have been adding other compounds for quite awhile which is how I originally started on Ozempic. The articles I've read though as of a few weeks ago stated since glp's were being removed from the shortage lists compounding would no longer be allowed, which is why I was asking.

Today’s win for me is finally starting to feel like I have found a bit of a balance with my life. For the past two months everything has been on hold and life has been 100% about my recovery, nutrition and fitness but I finally able to juggle my crocheting and make time for my hubby to hang out and do things. I was really not making time for crochet very often so I joined a second group so at least I am working on it twice a week but I have been working on it more than that this week. I did decide no handmade Christmas gifts this year though. I make chemo caps for the local cancer center and they are more important than my family getting new towel toppers if I have to pick one.

I would suggest that. I have been athletic my entire adulthood with a really good muscle tone and maintained a really healthy weight for decades until a very bad ankle sports injury that caused my weight to balloon up. At one point I was exercising 6 days a week for 2 hours, that's when my weight suddenly went up 4 kilos out of the blue and I didn't know why. A few months later I was forced to cut back to 4 days a week (1 hour each) and my weight dropped on its own. What I found out is that 4 days of 1 hour workouts suited me much better than 6 days of endless time at the gym. Now that I am below goal weight I follow the same, 4 days of workouts (2 Pilates sessions and 2 heavy weight lifting days with cardio). My body is comfortable and the weight is melting off. I workout hard, but I rest hard as well. During the first few months I lost a lot of weight rapidly and I was weak and frail, so I stopped any sorts of weight lifting. The first week I started weight lifting again I was so incredibly sore and guess what, I hit my first ever stall since surgery, not only that but my weight even went up that week and took me a good 2 weeks to break through the stall. Muscle fatigue causes inflammation that causes water retention within the muscles. Rest days are just as important as workout days. I am not saying that this will 100% work for you but might be worth giving a try. Good luck!

Okay pretty much what I do now LOL I run 5x a week, HIIT once a week, close min 10k steps a day, lift heavy 5x a week. Maybe I need to incorporate Pilates then. Do you feel like you need to eat more? I am closing close 1700-1800 calories a day. I tried to cut back and I was sooooo tired. My protein is above 150g a day. you look phenomenal! Your stomach is so flat, and not to be weird but are you blessed up top or did you have a breast aug? My have completely depleted. I went from a 44DD to a 36A (barely) LOL

Nothing much to report this week, everything is just ticking over. Weight is stable, no losses this week after the unexpected losses of the week before. Happily going to the gym 3 times a week and I do feel improvements even if I can’t see them. Been to see my GP today (she’s the one who put me forward for Bariatric surgery) I’ve had a sharp pain smack bang in the middle of my chest. First time was a couple of months ago - it woke me up and lasted about 5 minutes or so. Could only be eased by sitting forward. Then nothing else until the pain happened again yesterday afternoon. The area still felt tender when I woke up this morning so rang the docs and actually got a face to face appointment - the shock!! Anyway, GP listened to my heart and chest, asked a stack of questions and came to the conclusion that it’s some sort of ligament pain where something is slightly out of alignment. I then explained about the endoscopy 💩show I had - pinned down, thrashing around etc and she thinks it could be caused by that as the timing adds up. She did ask if I was taking ibuprofen and I said no and explained about not taking anything until my next set of bloods (17th) in order to give my liver some breathing space. Advised to take after my bloods if needed as it will help recovery. Thankfully the gym isn’t causing any pain so I was cleared to carry on with that. We did have a chat about WLS and how everything has been so far. She is so incredibly supportive, it makes such a change. She said she’s updated with everything from the hospital and is really pleased with how things are going, so that was nice! So, that’s about it. Hope everyone is having a great week so far. Onwards and Downwards 😉

Not sure if this is a win? my weight has pretty much remained the same for 1.5 months now, but the last couple of weeks my arms, abs and legs have shown a lot more definition and my pants definitely feel looser. I’m more or less the same weight In both pictures but I can tell my body composition is different. September: October:

It’s takes a little while. They have to transcribe everything and make it all official so it can go to the insurance. Some doctors don’t have anyone on staff to do that and they have to send it out so to speak. Mine was over a week.

Pardon my ignorance! I had gastric Bypass on January 15th. I had mine done due to gastroparesis not for weight loss. I weighed on average 250lbs before surgery. As of now I'm at 220lbs. Yes I have lost nearly 30lbs. Most of my weight loss was right at first and have hit two major plateaus after surgery. I consume little amount of calories. I mainly have protein shakes which consist of Premier Protein or Redcon1 MRE. I eat ground proteins like lean beef or turkey. I am very strict on my diet. I work out daily and put in at least two hours. I would thought my progress would have been greater. I'm trying to lose weight before I return to work and build up my strength. I feel like I'm failing and I don't know what to do. Is this normal? I've been stuck at 220lbs for almost two weeks now. Please don't beat me up too badly in the comments.