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dinner (not a cake, but *almost* just as yum...I HEART BLUE CHEESE!!) 116 calories...ate it all 👍🏼

Burger and fries for dinner. Ate mine with mushrooms, onions, peppers, cheddar cheese, stone ground mustard, Mayo, spinach and tomatoes. The seasoned fries were meh so I’m glad I only ate a few. Calories are including a full serving of fries though. And then one of my full days calories. Also breakfast was an Atkins chai protein shake and some buffalo flavored combos.

Since everybody is different here are my stats. I am currently a little over 1.5 years after revision to rny (gerd reasons). I am 5'3, in my 60s, no formal exercising, currently averaging around 1500 cal total calories, and weigh 107.7 lbs. I stayed about 800 cal till I got to my first basic goal weight (140 lbs). Then I upped it a little each month till my weight loss slowly leveled off. I was (and still am) slowly losing weight as I grapple with finding my maintenance calorie level. I do look at my net calories for interest but I do not go by net calories since the calories burned calculations are notoriously wrong.

I've heard so much about head hunger on this site. So far, I'm just not interested in food at all. It's been hard to meet the calorie and protein goals. I am 5 days post-op, anyone into the pureed stage? When did you really start wanting food?

you're in a stall. They usually last 1-3 weeks, so you should be nearing the end of it. I wasn't eating that much at a month out, but then, you're exercising more than I was. i don't really trust those machines because I think they overestimate how many calories you're burning, but you're definitely burning some calories. Once this stall breaks, if your overall trend is down, then you're fine.

...then an afternoon snack and some Netflix. sweet and salty Kettle corn popcorn & some bbq chips. 435 calories for the bowl. split it with mr, and i ate about half (probably less, but i'll round up)

Mini tasting menu Japanese lunch. I had a taste (about a teaspoons worth) of everything, except the Chawanmushi (which i ate in its entirety) plus a miso soup with clams that i didn't take a pic of. For perspective, each bowl is about the size of a tennis ball. Est 355 calories for what i ate...mr. ate the rest. Clockwise from top: spicy salmon sashimi & avocado on sushi rice; braised beef tongue and tamago (japanese style rolled omelette); Chawanmushi (savory steamed egg custard with shrimp and mushrooms), squid, Ikura (salmon roe) and a quail egg on sushi rice); seaweed salad in the middle.

I am 1 month post-op today and I’m down about 18 lbs. I healed quickly, I’ve been back on the treadmill since week 2 and am walking 2+ miles a day. I had very little pain post surgery and I have had NO problems with any foods. To the point where I feel like I SHOULD be having more difficulty. I have lost little if any weight since January 25th. A girlfriend thinks I’m consuming too many calories. I am eating between 800-1000 calories a day, but burning between 400-500 on the treadmill daily. I’m tall. 5’8” and my SW was 290. CW is 272. I started the pre-op diet at 303.2. Am I eating too many calories? Should I feel ok that my NET calories daily are closer to 500-600 calories a day? I feel like my mind is slipping into that dark space where I feel like this surgery is gonna be a failure. Like…. The weight just isn’t going to come off. I know this “stall” was to be expected…. But I would feel better with more directions aside from meet your protein and fluids (which I’m doing). Would love to hear your thoughts.

First off, I am another one of the "lucky" sleevers who dump, we're less common than RNY patients but we exist. Secondly, I was about where you are at 3 months, could barely get 200-300 calories down and certain things would not agree with me AT ALL (specifically eggs and potatoes, and I'm 16 months out and still have problems with potatoes). I had burned my esophagus with stomach acid due to really bad acid reflux, and it took quite a while for me to heal. I'm doing fine NOW, but I feel your pain and I hope your doctors are taking your concerns seriously. Be a squeaky wheel until you get answers. Sending you warm thoughts; I know it sucks and the only way out is through. Stay strong!

At around 3-4 months I was eating about 500 calories a day and struggling to even get that down. My surgeon was concerned that wasn't enough and tried to get me to raise it by 100 each week until I got to 800. Your numbers may vary; I am a woman and I'm very small in stature so it's likely your team will want you to eat more than that.

I think I was pretty much exactly where you are at 3 months post op! My team went one step further and didn't give me ANY goals at all. Just food consistency phases. I learned how to eat and what to eat mainly by reading this forum. I think I still had to push myself to reach 800 calories a day - I remember at that stage often having to take a few spoons of nut butter or some cheese at bedtime just to hit the 800 some nights but I never wanted to eat any less than that. I was drinking alcohol at weekends by then too so my intake was well over 1000 on two days a week - that was by choice though. It may have slowed my weight loss a little but luckily it didn't stop me reaching goal. I mainly walked, but I walked *very* fast and did (still do) it several days a week. I have never adjusted my intake to make allowances for that - never felt the need. I was very conscious of squeezing every pound of loss that I could over the 'honeymoon period' when I wasn't hungry - with my own personal concession being a couple of glasses of wine on Fri and Sat night. Over the months my calories have kind of drifted upwards really - never planned. I can just eat a bit more before I get full, and I get properly hungry now which forces me to eat again at the most 3 hours later - at 3 months out I was pretty much eating by the clock to get 100 or so calories in every 2-3 hours. You had your surgery almost exactly a year after me and you started 4lbs heavier. I've just looked at my diary and this time last year I was...218lb exactly, same as you today. What are the chances? You are doing brilliantly. 😍

How did you know it was time to up your calories? I am 3 months post op and averaging about 750-850 calories a day. I am hitting my recommended protein and fluid goals. I recently started working out regularly and burn about 250-400 calories a day from exercise (according to my Apple Watch). I am starting to wonder if I am not eating enough and it is hindering my weight loss. I am still losing, just slowly, and it is more of a yo yo type loss. I am worried about not properly fueling myself and wrecking my metabolism. I am not feeling overly hungry or deprived. My dietitian/surgeon won't give out calorie goals. They take the approach that if you follow the protein/fluid/serving size guidelines, everything else will fall into place naturally. They want us to track what we eat, but only focus on protein. It's hard, because on MFP all the other numbers are right in your face (calories/macros). Just curious what your calorie intake looked like around 3-4 months post op and how you knew it was time to adjust your calorie goals as you progressed. Thanks!

how about protein powders that you can mix up with water when u get there? ?and even on the plane). i used to also bring along bags of beef jerky and chicharron (i.e., pork rinds/cracklins). The latter is high in protein but also really high in calories and fat, so depends on your plan.

The blurry leftover half of my turkey pastrami and cheddar wrap I had for dinner. Would’ve been around 240 calories for the whole thing. But I’m too exhausted to eat any more… and too full of donuts that got dropped off at our unit today.

I’m praying for u mine stopped at 30 pounds now more exercising sticking with 90 grams proteins 800 calories and 64 oz water I’m praying I still have 70 pounds to loose ugg

I had a VSG on 01/06/23. I loss 38 lbs since the pre-op liquid phase. I consume 800-1000 calories a day and aim for 80+ grams of protein a day. I feel good. I haven't had any issues with any foods. Well except that I cannot tolerate protein shakes at all so I rely on protein rich foods. I can also tolerate unflavored Genepro in my Crystal Light and some protein bars.

im going to be a semi-dissenter here, based, of course, on MY personal experience. disclaimer, disclaimer, etc., etc., and all that. I did not follow my teams plan. Instead, i went with what my body could handle and the results it produced (i.e.. i went less calories than recommended; i went less carbs than recommended; i went against the recommended macro distribution; i drank coffee, carbonated liquids, did not have breakfast; did not eat set meals but grazed throughout my eating window; all actions that were contrary to what was told to me by my NUT). I also told my NUT everything i was doing. in short, if something worked (and had no undesirable effects), i continued doing it, if it didn't, i stopped. i realize this is not an approach that would work for everyone, but it did for ME. I paid more attention to what worked in my favour vs. what other people told me worked for THEM, or what they thought i should be doing. i'll say it now, and i'll say it again: there is no one size fits all approach for everyone, no matter what stage u are in (in my humble opinion). as for the topic of willpower: i would say, for ME, it was more about conditioning (and still is). the surgery gave me the awesome gift of immediate (and sometimes aggressive) feedback when i ate too much, or too fast, or ingested too much sugar. All of which are things that got me to obesity in the first place. The unpleasant physical symptoms of doing any of the above due to the surgery has effectively Pavlov'ed me out of being fat. Which i am immensely grateful for. I am 4+ years out of surgery and have maintained below goal weight ever since i reached it at 7 months post op....all thanks to my absolute distaste for feeling overly full and dumping. well, that and my desire to wear bikinis, lol. In short, do what works for you, use your team for guidance, and if something isn't working, stop doing it. AND if you struggle to do the above, a good therapist would go a long way to help (which, granted is hard to find). Good Luck! ❤️

I'm 5 weeks out and my Dr and Dietician said I should be consuming 800-1000 calories a day.

Airfried hamachi collar (208g with bones) with 48g rice and a umeboshi plum. I ate the rice and 80g of the meat, gave the rest to my begging cats lol. Calories eaten 217 calories. I had steamed gai lan (Chinese broccoli) with oyster sauce later not shown.

junky meal(s) alert: went out for dinner yesterday to a mexican place (forgot to take pics..but i had 1 tilapia taco, a couple scoops of guac with tortilla chips? and a chili coconut margarita, est ~750 cals for what i ate). BUT i also ordered some a tres leche cake for dessert that went straight into a take out box cuz i was done eating. i ended up eating about 1/4 of the cake (probably a little less) and 1/4 of an oatmeal raisin cookie for a snack while watching tv later that night: 152 calories. (seems like it should be more cals but whatevs) i AGAIN ate the same amount of the same desserts today for breakfast/lunch. i figure i have at least 2 more meal/snacks of cake-cookie ahead of me unless mr. gets to it first.

Same. I eat alot of junky "meals", and sometimes i post them (i'm looking at you cheese popcorn dinners!), but i am afraid sometimes that posting these junky meals may be triggering for some people and may not be appreciated (or get judged: i drink alot of alcohol) i dunno.... It's true that i don't eat much in volume, but i do get up there in calories (like 2K a day) like @GreenTealael proposed, i'll try to show more varied examples of what i eat (fair warning: they may not be pretty!) i agree that the more people post what they eat, we all get a better idea of how varied we all are, and hopefully gain some acceptance and recognition that there are a whole host of ways to be...and that's ok. ❤️

There's a lot to unpack here. Let's start with why we're told to eat slowly: First of all, recognize that you had a bunch of nerves cut. There are multiple ways your digestive system signals your brain that your are full, but these nerves are the immediate feedback mechanism. Unfortunately, that immediate feedback mechanism is basically broken for a while after surgery. The other signals that you should stop eating are mostly hormonal, but these take a lot longer to activate. (20 minutes is often thrown around, but this is dependent on lots of factors like what and how much you ate.) Bottom line, if you eat faster, it's easy to eat enough to make yourself really sick before you ever get the signal to stop. Obviously this is problematic partly because your stomach is smaller and will fill up faster than it used to, but you also need to remember that early on after surgery, your stomach is also really swollen and inflamed. An inflamed stomach can't stretch like it's supposed to, so there's not a lot of difference between empty and over-full. Taken together, the eat slow recommendation is primarily to keep you from making yourself sick. A secondary consideration is that your team wants you to learn "mindful eating" where you're much more aware of everything that you consume. Being mindful of your consumption is correlated with better outcomes for bariatric patients. Hopefully that answers your original question. I want to touch on something else that's a bit of a personal pet peeve: you mentioned, and I hear a lot of others worrying about "stretching their new stomach". There's more myth than fact here and this idea really needs to die out. The truth is that stomachs are designed to work like a balloon. They stretch out as needed, but when empty, they return back to their original size. Can you make it stretch it out to the point it allows you to eat more over time? Yes, and that's exactly what should happen! This is one of the reasons every bariatric plan I've ever seen allows you to slowly increase how much you eat the further away you get from surgery. You need this to happen so that as you get to maintenance, you'll be able to eat enough calories to maintain your new healthy weight. What you're not going to do is somehow "ruin" your new smaller stomach just because you overate once or twice. It would take overeating a lot over time for excessive stretching to happen. I think what sometimes happens is the inflammation starts going down and people find that they can eat more than expected. Remember, the stomach stretches as needed (up to a point), so they start to panic. That does not mean there's a problem. It actually means that things are progressing like they should. If this is you, just stick to plan and you'll be fine.

I'm going to cut out the alcohol for the time being. I'm also going to figure out how to crank up my steps a notch. But it will also take cutting back calories I'm sure. If I can break 259, I'm sure more progress will follow. It took me a long time to break into the 260s too. A good hard workout at the gym tonight. I think I found that I need a pre workout snack for energy, like I did today. If I lose another 30, there won't be a lot left to lose, except maybe skin. I'm not the kind of guy who will get below 200. My lean body mass at 0% fat says I weigh 198. So 15% body fat would be about 225 to 230. My scale says I'm at 22% now.

Around October last year I fractured my tibial plateau badly, along with damage to my ACL, PCL and meniscus and was bed-ridden in a locked leg brace for seven weeks. I was over a year post-op at the time, so weight loss was way slower and the chances of me snacking over my calorie limit was high, particularly with the boredom of forced bed rest. Still dropped two kilograms over that time, despite thinking that I was for sure going to put a bit back on. At ten weeks, your surgery will still be at its strongest, so if you stick to the plan you'll be fine. Sore, but fine. (I also broke a rib just before Christmas. I'm apparently collecting broken bones now 🙃)