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This sounds so frustrating. Could you track everything you eat, even for one week (on my fitness pal or similar) and get a handle on what you're actually taking in? Do be careful about drinking calories - so easy to do with sweet tea etc. Totally empty. I do that with alcohol sometimes 😟 NickelChip is absolutely right - it might be really helpful to eat more whole and freshly prepared foods. Protein first (it really honestly does fill your sleeve up), veg second and carbs (including coating on chicken, etc) a very long way behind.

What does your plan say and what in that is concerning you? From your profile you're less than 3 weeks post op - is that right? I have a sleeve not a bypass but at that stage it was more about sticking rigidly to my surgeon's plan than measuring anything. I was happy to get in my protein shakes and fluids. Everything else came much later. I hope you are doing well, not worrying too much, and get the maximum benefit from your surgery.

Just to echo what @SpartanMaker has said in developing a habit - I only started going to the gym a few months back, after pressuring and guilting myself into not going to the gym since the start of my weight loss journey. I just started with going once a week, doing a short full-body workout, and then from there I sort of just fell into it once I realised my body was capable, and I wasn't in pain with it! I think my brain was putting it off so much because I was relating it back to my experiences with exercise when I was 100+ lbs heavier! Needless to say, it was painful and I hated it. Just take baby steps, and find what works for you, even just a short walk to clear your head (which may help with the mental health too), and go from there. Wishing you all the best ❤️ You have smashed it so far, you will smash this too!

Yes, Core Power is a Fairlife product. They actually make a number of different products, so it can be confusing. Fairlife Core Power Elite is 42 Grams of protein in a 14 oz serving, for 3 grams per oz Fairlife Nutrition Plan is 30 Grams of Protein in a 11.5 oz serving, for ~2.6 grams per oz Fairlife Core Power (Regular, not Elite), is 26 Grams in a 14 oz serving, for ~1.88 grams per oz Finally, they have "Fairlife Ultra Filtered Milk", which also has more protein than regular milk. it has ~1.6 grams of protein per oz. If you compare that to an 11.5 or 14 oz serving respectively, it would have ~19 or 23 grams of protein. For comparison, regular milk has about 1 gram of protein per ounce. Edited to add that all the "shakes" (in other words everything except the milk), are flavored and at least to me taste about the same. As such, I'd recommend Core Power Elite for most folks here since it has the most protein for a given volume. I use the milk religiously for everything I'd use regular milk for as an additional way to get more protein per day.

Ohh, I didn't know you had access to a gym! I might have modified this a bit because I was trying to make sure these exercises were something you could do without equipment. Here are some suggested modifications if you are using a gym: If your gym has a hip thrust machine, feel free to use that instead of doing the glute bridge. As I mentioned, hip thrusts offer a bigger range of motion, so are an even better exercise. Push Ups are probably fine as they are, but once you get to doing 10-15 knee pushups, you might also start doing the chest press machine, or doing a bench press with dumbbells. Once you get to unsupported squats, you can start adding some weight. Some gyms have hack squat machines or leg press machines and both will work great here. Another one to consider would be a goblet squat (google it). The nice thing about this one is that it will emphasize your quadriceps a bit more, which might be good since we're hitting your glutes and hamstrings pretty hard with the hip thrusts and lunges. As to rows, feel free to skip all the ones I wrote and do a seated cable row or do something called a bent-over row with dumbbells. With leg raises, do them as listed, but if you get all the way through those, then the next logical progression is to move to hanging leg raises. These can be done on a dedicated machine (sometimes called a captain's chair). The lunge exercises are probably fine as they are, but feel free to add weight (hold some dumbbells in your hands), if you get to where the versions I listed are not enough for you. As an optional thing, if you wanted to add in one additional exercise per session, I'd do a Bicep dominated exercise one day, a Tricep dominated exercise another day, and a Calf dominated exercise the 3rd day. The actual exercise selection does not matter much, so do whatever exercise you like or whatever machine your gym has. You can even do a different one every week. Again, if you're happy without this, then skip it. it's not going to make a huge difference, because we are hitting these muscles some already. Best of luck!

As you probably know, PCOS can affect metabolism. This means you may be getting a double whammy from PCOS and your height that really pushes your metabolic rate down. As I mentioned earlier, without having an expensive metabolic test done, we can't know for sure how many calories per day you burn on average. If I had to guess, I think it could be as low as about 1000 to 1200 calories per day for your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is basically the amount your body burns just keeping you alive. If we add in a bit more to account for the fact we all burn some additional calories (even if we're mostly sedentary), then that could put you around 1300 to 1500 calories per day. If you're eating ~1000 calories a day, that means at best, you'd lose about 1 pound a week, but it could easily be closer to 1 pound every 12 days or so. If you do the math (I did ), then this would put you losing right about 2.5 pounds per month or 10 pounds in 4 months, which is right where you're at. Now for the record, I didn't factor in anything for the fact that as a DS patient, you are actually also benefiting from reduced absorption. These are all made up numbers anyway, so don't get too caught up in the hard numbers here. Remember: Even if you think you're super accurate in logging food, variation in caloric content from one piece of food to the next means your calorie counts may or may not be that accurate. Don't trust manufacturer calorie counts as accurate either. They can be as much as 10% or more off. We don't actually know how many calories you burn in a day on average. My guesses are just that, guesses. Bottom line, you've got a few things working against you here, but as long as you continue to follow your surgeon's plans, there's no reason you can't lose the excess weight. It's just going to take you longer than most people. I know that sucks, but it is what it is. Knowledge is power, so hopefully you'll come away from this with a little more knowledge. That should give you a little more power over your unique situation. All the best.

Thank you 🙏🏻 my gastroenterology appointment is in three weeks so I am going to start there and I look forward to figuring it out because it’s not fun I have talked to a few doctors on the scope of my PCP…. One has seen complications/odd symptoms in long term gastric bypass patients. When I say complications, I mean digestive complications because there are plenty of people who don’t have enough nutrient, etc., and have issues that are beyond that. I pretty much covered all of those in my first 10 years when I really didn’t know how to take care of myself from a nutrient standpoint and vitamins. I do think it could be a parasite, or potentially a combo of diverticulitis and acid reflux. Most of the potential diagnoses have weight loss associated with them, and that is definitely not the case unfortunately lol. Yes, I would love to press the fix me button, but I know I have to do the work on this

I think it's a sad state of affairs when we feel like we have to hide our decisions from others because of how we know others will react. I'm not judging anyone that makes that choice since I did it too. I told my family, but specifically decided not to tell my co-workers since I was expecting people to say dumb things like this. The cheating comment I find specifically odd, personally. To me this was life or death, and I chose life. It definitely wasn't some game where the concept of cheating might be meaningful. I feel like it would be no different than if someone were to say to me that I "cheated" when I had open heart surgery. How could you even think that? My choices were either have the surgery, or die. As to weight loss surgery being "the easy way", as all of us here know there is nothing easy about this. Those of us that have reached our goal weights know that the surgery was just a tool, but the important change is what had to happen between my ears. Nothing about that was or is easy. It's still hard work every. single. day. I also wanted to comment on this: I can virtually guarantee you I eat better and workout harder than your son. I NEVER would have been able to workout as hard while I was still obese. It took losing almost 100 pounds before I could even really walk much. Now I run 40+ miles a week. It's hard for people that are not obese to understand just how hard even simple movement can be. Weight loss surgery was the catalyst that allowed me to be where I'm at today.

I am in the same saggy boat. It is depressing isn't it to go through all this weight loss, still not be comfortable in our own bodies and just wearing smaller size clothes but still hiding the same areas? For me, I have bad lipoedema so from the knees down is horrible and nothing can be done really unless I want to go down the lipo route and then wear compression gear for life and even then no guarantees. Where I live in Europe, if you can prove justifiable reasons such as saggy skin interfering with your life and mental health following weight loss the national healthy insurance will pay 80% of the costs. I got approved last week for an arm lift so I am just waiting to hear back from the surgeon with a date. When I had my initial consultation with him he said he had a six month wait list so I have asked if possible to be fit in during October or else wait until January as I don't want any impact on my Christmas travel plans etc. I have not told my family yet as I live overseas and they got upset at just the thought of me doing something elective as I had such a bad post-op sleeve experience. My Mum actually broke down in tears when I told her I was going to schedule an initial consultation so not sure how or when I will say anything but will cross that bridge when I have an op date.

Hi Karla, I'm 9 days post op. I had all the same worries. But the whole point of the pre-op diet is to lose weight quickly. As long as you stick to it, it's almost impossible that you won't lose anything. I know about cravings. Before surgery, I would have killed for a big mac. I was on a prolonged weight loss and lover shrink diet so it was 12 WEEKS (yes 12 weeks) of liquids. Once the first week passed, I got kind of used to it. Post Op, I just want anything solid becaue I'm so sick of soups. It does get better. You're on the right track and you can do this. We believe in you!

Yeah nobody can control the snow except God. I'm not worried about the snow. It usually does snow in early November here in upstate NY but lately over the past 3 years or so it hasn't started snowing until Janurary. Hoping this year is another repeat of that. Time will tell. They gave me a whole booklet that my surgeon gave to me when he explained the various different surgeries to me and a bunch of other people about 7-8 months ago. It has everything that I need to know in it like what I'm supposed to be doing 2 weeks before my surgery 2 weeks afterwards ... everything. I just haven't had much time to give it a good going over its been a busy 7-8 months. They always ask me at the end of my appointments if I have any questions and I think I have some for my surgeon that I'll probably be asking him the day of my surgery so if I have any I can always ask. Most of my questions are medical questions though that I think only my surgeon can answer because I'm curious how my mental illness is going to affect my surgery and my weight loss journey after my surgery. It's definitely going to be more of a struggle than usual. Do all of your hunger pains and cravings usually go away with the surgery? Or do you still have to worry about the urge to eat?

My win is that I have had zero Halloween candy so far, even though its been in my house and at my office all week! This is a big deal for me because sweets were always my go to before surgery.

Wow you are doing great one week out! I was one week out and couldn’t even be outside and not feeling dizzy.

Only you can decide if surgery is right for you, but if you are obese, you overeat... full stop. One fundamental rule of weight loss is that you cannot break the laws of thermodynamics. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you'll lose weight and if you eat more calories than you burn, you'll gain weight. I know some people don't like to hear that, or think it doesn't apply to them, but physics is physics. You can't add body mass unless those calories are in excess of the number your body needs to keep you alive. Look at it like this: your body burns a certain number of calories per day. It's not exactly the same every day, but for most folks, it stays fairly consistent. The problem is in your case, you stated you only eat 1400 calories a day. That number alone is completely meaningless. Because weight loss, weight maintenance, or weight gain are all about energy balance, you also have to also know how many calories you burn in a day. If you are gaining weight on 1400 calories per day, there are only two possibilities: You are underestimating how much you actually eat. I know you probably think you're being accurate, but underestimation is incredibly common. Study after study shows that almost everyone underestimates how much they actually eat, even if they think they are accurately measuring everything. Part of that is measurement error, part is variation in foods, part is failure to count certain parts of a meal, part is "eyeballing" foods, and part is due to inaccurate calorie listings. The bottom line is that calorie counting is hard and often not nearly as accurate as we like to think. You may have an exceptionally low resting metabolic rate. As I said, 1400 calories consumed per day is irrelevant because you don't actually know how many calories you burn in a day. Since the basic principle here is you have to consume less than you burn per day to lose weight, 1400 calories consumed doesn't matter if you don't also know how many calories you are burning. Let's move on to how surgery works. Bariatric surgery works primarily by simply limiting how much someone can eat. Yes, there are also hormonal changes, but those are about satiety, so in your case, those may be less important. There is also some reduction in intake calories through reduced absorption (yes, even in sleeve surgery), but that's a fairly minor component overall. At the end of the day, this is no different than weight loss drugs like GLP-1s, or even diets. They are all designed to reduce calorie intake. If you truly have no problems dieting, then it sounds like you need to just reduce your calorie intake until you start losing at a sustainable rate. You need to forget what someone may have told you about how many calories you're "supposed to" eat to lose weight, because it sounds like that whatever that number was, it's not the correct number for you. Once you're losing at about a 2-3% per month rate, just stay there until you reach your goal weight. This should be simple for you since you said you have no problems sticking to a diet. Best of luck.

Yes to both questions. 🤗 It was my first thought as well and the first thing I mentioned to both doctors. I think, after doing extensive research after I thought to look at possible ties to GLP's I might have an answer to the sharp nerve pain as well as the hypersensitivity/pain on my leg. Its a very little known side effect of Ozempic-Wegovy type Glp-1's especially at the higher dosages (above .5). Apparently not so with Zepbound. Luckily, I have an appointment with my GP in few weeks at which time I'll mention it. Although, most ppl with this said their doctors dismissed it being associated... but it is listed as a rare side effect and ppl said it stopped upon switching or lowering the dosage. Luckily my doctor is always receptive to my suggestions/questions/research. Fingers crossed! As far as the joints hurting...still researching that! Thank you for your response and questions. Hopefully if anyone else ends up with this they'll find this forum topic!

same! first day of puree stage i pureed some beef and barfed a little in my mouth at the result. tossed it and just extended my "full fluids" stage another week then went to afterwards "soft foods"

I just wanted to echo what @FifiLux has said - I haven't heard of Drs putting plans in wherein you can eat all food (inc. solids etc) 2.5 weeks after surgery. If that is the case, and you are eating solids and other 'normal' foods, that would likely be the problem. I know that a lot of people have had a strict 4-6 week post-op diet to follow, and solid foods are introduced slowly. I was always advised that I should not have water until 30 minutes after eating, and that is a rule I have stuck by - maybe give it a go! Definitely do check in with your team, though. It seems like you are in a lot of discomfort and it would be good to get some professional advice. I hope you feel better soon.

It definitely does have a little bit of a stall around that point - I was in the same place around then, and I have finally started losing a bit more now. That is amazing you are getting the exercise in - that is something I desperately need to get more of. I am going to the gym maybe once a week, but my energy levels are so low due to me struggling to get food in 😅 I shall maybe just go and try to do some light cardio rather than weights!

Omg I can’t believe it’s almost time! I have to be at the hospital at 5:30 am CST. I hope I can at least get in a nap. 3:30 comes early!

Good morning. I'm not discounting anything SpartanMaker posted above. However, I was in the exact same boat as you. I was eating 1200-1400 calories, religiously measured/counted everything, plenty of water, I played with my macros till I was blue in the face and for 10 months I did not lose and I did not gain. I'm a nurse so I probably have more background in nutrition than most, so I'm confident in how I was eating was appropriate and what most providers would "recommend". In February I went to my two year follow up. My labs were perfect, my vitals on point and I had not lost one ounce since the last visit nearly a year prior. After having a long conversation with my bariatric provider, the only change since the losing stopped was I was pretty much into full menopause. We discussed options and ideas on how to "overcome" the hormone influencing my insulin processes that was affecting my metabalism hurdle I may possibly be facing. She said based on her research zepbound might be a great option as it also can help in reducing "hot flashes" which I was having twice a day, everyday. Long story short, even with my insurance, zepbound would have been around $700 a month, so I choose to do the my budget friendly compound tirzepatide route (the compound equivalent to zepbound) with my provider's blessing. I have been on the weekly injections for 6 weeks and have already been able to shed 19#. I have not ate any differently, no change in my physical activity AND the hot flashes are gone. I'm not suggesting this would be the answer you need, but it's been a game changer for my journey. Good luck ❤️

the aforementioned bacon as a garnish to butternut squash soup! soooooooooooo yuuuuuuummmmmm! (me and Mr. shared this, not exactly sure how much i ate of it - probably 1/3 - but i did eat all the bacon, ha 😂 !)

I’ve been shopping at Trader Joe’s lately and absolutely love their salad. One package of it will give me about 3-4 meals. I like to add chicken, shrimps or beef with it.

Yes. you're all right of course. I'm just blowing this out of proportion. As the saying goes. "it's a bad day. not a bad life." I think I'm stressed about my long trip to on Sunday and seeing people for the first time in 20 years. And your definitely right. I've been eating more than I have in weeks and more than I shoud, but definitely less than this time last year.

No my followup is on the 30th. Wednesday is just a week after I had my psych eval. I called the bariatric clinic Monday they said it takes at least a week for the results and to call back Wednesday and they should have the results then. So tomorrow hopefully I should know how the appointment went.

By 6 months out, I feel like I could eat double of I can right after surgery. Nutritionists said that’s because I am working out now. It’s not where near how much I used to be able to eat, but I sometimes feel worried that I could eat so much more now compare to just 3oz. I think I could eat about 6-8 oz if I really want to. I need to eat denser food to feel full. I could drink a full bowl of soup and still don’t feel full. So I eat a lot of meat. I work out about 3 hours a week. I think more though. On the days I work out, I do consistently feel that I want to eat more.