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Anyone else told their stall was probably caused by not eating enough calories I am 6 months out from bypass and eat about 700 calories a day. Have been in a stall for 3 weeks. My surgeon said I needed to start eating more not sure how I can barely eat what I do now

I don't mean to annoy anyone but my question is ,I am on a 800 calorie diet and I find it very hard to stay on this diet no because I am hungry but because everything now is loaded with calories. So I am puzzled and wondering is 800 calories a day too much or too little. Dietician says anything over 800 will cause weight gain and disrupt the process with my shots versus other doctors are like 800 is nothing. I am confused.

Getting back to the OP's question about what do do: If they really feel they are accurately logging and are also having a hard time eating less, then the option would be to take steps to increase metabolism. Yes, GLP-1 drugs can do this, but there are other options. First, would be adding muscle mass from strength training. Estimates are that each pound of muscle increases calories burned per day by roughly 6 calories, Each pound of fat contributes ~2 calories burned per day. This latter fact surprises some people, but fat is metabolically active tissue. It's just that muscle is more metabolically active. If someone were to gain ten pounds of muscle and lose ten pounds of fat, that would lead to an increase in BMR of roughly 40 calories. That doesn't sound like much, but it adds up over time. If you also add in EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption), from the strength training needed to add muscle mass, then I'd estimate this would over time lead to ~400-450 extra calories burned in a week. That would lead to a loss of ~6 pounds in a year even while eating the exact same amount of food. If this is not a sufficient amount, then one can always reduce calories a bit as well. Alternately (I know this will sound counter-intuitive), but the OP might well want to consider UPPING their calories a bit for a while. Our bodies were designed to upregulate our metabolisms slightly when calories are available and downregulate it when calories are scarce. This means our bodies can maintain weight at a wide range of calorie intake. If we're constantly in a calorie restrictive diet, our bodies do downregulate metabolism to keep us from what it perceives as starving to death. What I'd recommend instead is going up 200-300 calories per day for about a month. After this "diet reset", drop down again to 1200-1400 for no longer than 2 months before cycling back up again. You can keep this cycle going on indefinitely. One of 2 things will happen here. Most likely the OP won't gain anything during the increased calorie intake diet reset because their metabolism will increase to compensate. However, when they start back at the ~1300 calorie range, their metabolism may not drop immediately, meaning they'll lose a little bit in the following 2 months. If they do find that they gained during the diet reset, but fail to lose when back in the diet phase, then worst case it shouldn't be more than about 2 pounds (less than 1% of body weight). This isn't likely, but even if this does happen, it will at least tell us that 1300 won't work for weight loss for them and they'll need to go lower. I'd also be remiss if I didn't come back to exercise here. I mentioned that low levels of exercise (30 minutes of cardio), really are not going to do anything toward weight loss. It's obviously going to be different for everybody, but current research seems to suggest that the tipping point is about 400 calories per day. What I mean by that is if you can burn OVER 400 calories in exercise in a day, the body can't suppress your metabolism enough in other ways to keep you from going net-negative for the day. Said differently, you'd need to do something that burns more than 400 calories before it "counts" for weight loss and the only part that counts is the part above 400 calories. Unfortunately, 400 calories is A LOT for most people. The good news is the heavier you are the more you burn, but even at 215 pounds, you'd probably have to run over 3 miles to hit 400 calories. Keep in mind, this would just be to break even, so if you're actually trying to burn more calories this way, it will take even more. I'll use myself as an example here. I'm not trying to lose weight right now, but I have found that if I run over roughly 28 miles in a week, I tend to lose weight. If I run less miles, I maintain. Do the math, and for me that's right at about the 400 calories a day mark. In my use case of one, I'm pretty close to the statistical average as shown in the research. Best of luck whatever you decide.

Thank you!! I have been trying to beef up my meals instead of eating small "snacks" I can eat more than the usual bariatric patient I think? lol I am still eating around 1700-1800 calories a day but what I am filling those calories with are very much different and I am glad I am back at it!

Thank you! I've read numerous posts about "set points" and always thought if it was actually a thing then why did I need surgery (my body would have stopped at its set point) or why even bother giving plans for exercise if my body has a "set" point!? I realize that most of it is to get our minds set to a healthier way of thinking with follow through, but its simple math: calories in vs. Calories out vs. Bodies requirement = weight/health. Nothing has really changed other than our awareness of this math and adherence to it. It all comes down to calories in calories out. If set points were actually a thing none of us would have needed surgery. Anyone can gain weight if we exceed calories beyond daily needs or lose if we exceed calorie burn. Even those ppl who are bone thin and complain no matter what they do they can't put weight on, if they exceed needs everyday they too would gain. Thank you for an excellent post!

So if I'm understanding your post correctly, you've been eating 1200-1400 kcal per day yet your weight has been stable at ~215 pounds. This either means: Your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is also around 1200-1400 calories per day, OR You're eating a lot more calories than you think. Let's explore each of these in more detail. Based on your height and weight, your TDEE should probably be 1800 to 2200 calories per day. Just your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate (the number of calories your body burns per day just to keep you alive), should be ~1500-1800 calories per day. There are lots of reasons this could be lower, but for your TDEE to be 1300, you'd have to have a BMR in the neighborhood of ~900 calories per day or as much as HALF of what we'd expect. This would be exceptionally low considering your size. BMRs that low tend to only be seen in elderly frail women. To be clear, without having a metabolic test, we can't know for sure, but this does seem unlikely. A more logical reason for this discrepancy is that you're actually eating a lot more than you think. Calorie overestimation is extremely common (unlike extremely low BMRs), thus I lean toward this as an explanation. I have seen some suggestions stating that the magnitude of this may be as high as 40-50% underestimated. In other words, someone could think they're eating 1500 calories, but they are actually eating 2200+. So where do people go wrong? Misreading/misunderstanding nutrition labels. It's not uncommon for people to confuse a serving with a container of food. Sometimes, manufacturers will list a serving of something, but what you're actually eating may be 2 or more servings. Accepting as fact the calorie counts on nutrition labels. In the US, calorie counts on nutrition labels can be off by as much as 10% before manufacturers would be expected to adjust the calorie count. Keep in mind, though that manufacturers are self policing here and really don't have a lot on incentive to make sure these are correct. Many people simply guess at serving sizes, especially if it's a meal they made themselves. This can lead to wildly inaccurate calorie counts Also very common when they are making meals themselves is to just look up a calorie count for a similar food, but this also can be really inaccurate. Lots of people guess at amounts, thus you may think you're getting say 1 cup of a food, when it's actually 1.5 cups. Speaking of measuring by cups, this also is wildly inaccurate. To properly measure calories, you really need to weigh EVERYTHING you eat IN GRAMS. Any other method just isn't very accurate. I also wanted to touch briefly on your comment on exercise. While I think it's great that you're exercising, this really has nothing to do with weight loss. Lot;s of studies show that increasing energy expenditure through lower levels of exercise like you're getting typically leads to lowering your energy expenditure elsewhere throughout the day. This means you really have no increased calories burned and shouldn't think this means it's okay to eat more as a result.

If you opted for the surgery - you would loose weight for sure. BUT once at target you would still need to increase your calorie levels to a maintenance amount. Without much exercise my maintenance level is around 1500 - 1600 cals a day. To eat more I would need to increase my exercise drastically or I would gain. So when you maintain on similar calories, you will gain if what you say is true. If that is so, baritric surgery is not a fix for you.

Can you share details on your stats? height/weight/starting weight/current weight? Calories consumed?

I guess I shouldn't respond late at night like I did above because I left out some common mistakes people make when logging calories: Mindless eating: either failing to log those little nibbles here and there (including when tasting food during prep), or trying to log it, but guessing after the fact as to how much they actually ate. Not understanding that raw vs cooked food can have vastly different calories. A classic example: The USDA says 100 grams of raw chicken has ~106 to 120 calories per 100 grams. The problem is that when cooked, 100 grams of this same chicken is ~165 calories. The primary reason is due to water lost during the cooking process. This is not an issue if you properly portion out how much of the chicken breast you ate, but if you are using the raw calories and weighing it when cooked, you'd actually be eating a lot more calories than you think. This is a big one: not counting liquid calories. for reasons I don't fully understand, a lot of people just either ignore or don't log liquid calories. That juice they drank for breakfast? Didn't log it. The milk in their coffee? Nope, not logged. That energy drink they had in the afternoon? Not logged either. I think you get the idea. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not a huge fan of logging calories since it's really hard to do correctly and even when done to the best of our ability, it's still often wrong. I think, as it may be in your case, it also can become a crutch. There is no cheating physics here. If you eat more calories than you burn in a day, you'll gain weight and if you eat less, you'll lose. As I hope you'll see from what I've posted, in all likelihood, you're eating more than you think. Let's just for the sake of argument say you're really great at logging and you really are just eating 1200-1400 kcal a day. The only other explanation would be an exceptionally low BMR. This would really suck if it's true, but if we assume it is true, then that would still mean you're eating too much. Either way, you have to eat less than you're eating now if you want to lose.

Oh for crunch. Toast up some pepperoni in the air frier or bake them till crispy. Use the “chips” to scoop some hummus or mashed black beans or whatever. Or eat plain. But watch calories :). They are addictive.

As a general rule, I would not recommend eating back calories burned for a few reasons: People misunderstand metabolism. Our bodies are highly adaptable and our non-exercise calorie burn is also highly variable day-to-day. We know from recent research that your body tends to try to conserve energy balance, meaning unless your burning over ~400 calories per day in exercise, your body will lessen your calorie burn elsewhere during the day to try to "make up" for the exercise calories. In short, you're not burning as many overall calories on those exercise days as you think you are. Our ability to accurately determine calorie burn from exercise is hard and often we think we've burned more calories than we actually have. For example, you may think you've burned say 400 calories, but it may have only been 250. We also aren't very good at accurately tracking caloric intake, so you may be eating a lot more than you think you are. Adding in even more calories to "eat back" your exercise calories is not going to be accurate, even if the two points above were not true. Something here is not adding up for me. You mentioned you're trying to do a body recomp, but also that you still have a lot of weight to lose. That just doesn't make sense. It's fine to say you want to lose fat and gain muscle, and as a newbie to weight training, you can do both, but you really need to make fat loss the priority here. At best as an untrained woman, you might be able to add 10 or 12 pounds of muscle in the course of a year, but in all likelihood it will be less. I don't mean to discourage you, but most obese people already have more muscle mass than a "normal" person, so you can't expect to add as much muscle as they might be able to. My point is that when we talk about a recomp, what we really mean is trying to stay at about the same weight, but simultaneously lose fat and gain muscle. In my opinion, you need to focus on fat loss first, then try a recomp once you're closer to your goal weight. My suggestion would be to focus on two things: Most importantly, are you still losing weight? If not, then you're eating too much. If you are still losing, is it at a reasonable and sustainable rate? I'd want to see no more than about 3% per month considering that you should hopefully be also adding some muscle mass. This factor is really the primary determinant of where your calories should be. If you're losing faster than ~3%, then it's probably a good idea to eat a bit more, but don't change things by more than a couple hundred calories a day. If you're not losing weight, then as I said, you're eating too much and need to consider scaling back. The second factor here is how you're feeling. If you're eating so little that you can't even think about completing your workouts, or you're just exhausted all the time, then that's a sign you probably need to be eating more. Even so, take it slow here. Add in a couple hundred calories a day and see if you feel better. You can go up to where you need to, but keep in mind, you may also slow or even stop the weight loss. If that happens, you may need to modify your workouts. The flip side of this is if you are feeling good, but not losing, that's probably a sign you're eating too much. In the end, it's a balancing act of eating enough to fuel your workouts, but no so much you stop the weight loss. It will take some time to find the right point for you. Best of luck. (Oh, and in the future, I'd strongly recommend just starting a new thread. This one is several years old.)

just a note on BMR - I've heard this from both a former dietitian of mine and from a nutrition class I took a couple of years ago at UW-Milwaukee on obesity and weight loss, so it's likely true (seems to be the case with me, anyway...). It's very common for formerly obese people to need to eat 300-400 calories less per day than a person of the same height/weight/activity level who's never been obese in order to maintain their weight. So in other words (and I'm just pulling this example out of the blue), if a calorie calculator tells you that it takes about 1800 cal/day to maintain your weight, if you were formerly obese, that could mean that for you, it's probably more like 1400-1500 calories to maintain. That being said, I do agree with some of the others that you may be underestimating your calorie intake since I would think you'd be losing weight at that intake level. It might be helpful to cut back by about 100 cal/day for a couple of weeks and see if the scale starts moving again. if not, cut another 100 calories for a couple of weeks. Rinse and repeat until the scale starts moving. I've had to do this a few times to get things moving..

@@AmberFL I get between 1700 and 1900 calories per day right now, it's working well for me. I'm having a surgery tomorrow though and won't be able to work out for a least 3 -4 weeks and will likely try to cut my calories to 1400 per day to avoid weight gain in that time. We'll see how well that goes, lol.

Last night I was lazy and made a road trip out for a 5 calorie iced coffee and grabbed a Southwest grilled chicken salad with creamy salsa ranch dressing from Chic-Fil-A.

At the end of the day, it is calories in vs calories out. If you are eating less calories than you expend, you will continue to lose weight. Those calories can be from cookies or steak... the benefits from what your getting from those calories is the difference. Ask yourself, am I getting a balance of all the vitamins and nutrients that I need from food? If you had a day where you ate amazingly healthy with variety, a cookie is probably not going to hurt.

Hi all, I am almost 8 months post op bypass. I'm down 68 lbs (31 kg) I feel and look fantastic and I'm quite happy but I still need to lose 33-44 lbs and well it's barely coming off these past months. Now my question is I'm eating pretty well and counting calories and protien content. I'm focused on calories mostly but I think that's where the problem is. I should focus on my protien only which means I should eat 115g of protien daily which might mean more calories and it scares me.. I m active and go to the gym too (not as gym rat but not lazy) so what am I doing wrong? Do I need to up my protein? Also how much of the food is actually absorbed? Does bypass really mean ill def lose and maintain the weight? I need reassurance. Help me understand what to do now and if I'm safe

Research does support the idea that BMR will be lower in a formerly obese person vs. someone of the same body composition that was never obese, but the magnitude of the effect was only 3-5%. I'm not discounting the 300-400 calorie number entirely, I'm just saying that if it's accurate, only maybe 50-70 calories of that is coming from BMR. The rest is coming from something else like activity level. Keep in mind that the most common way to quantify total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), is with a 4 component model: Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is sometimes listed as Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), although that is slightly different. Either way, this is a way of quantifying how much energy your body burns just to keep you alive. Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT). This is calories burned in intentional exercise, such as running, cycling, etc. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). This is all the other activity you do aside from intentional exercise. You can think of this as things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. Some people refer to this type of thing as "activities of daily living", although other things also fall into the NEAT bucket like fidgeting, how much you stand vs. sit, etc. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). Note there is no such thing as a negative calorie food. That said, it does take some calories to digest the food we eat. On average, it's about 10% (so if you eat 1500 calories, it takes 150 calories to digest that). Note that protein tends to be a higher percentage, yet another reason to eat more protein. While it's potentially possible that formerly obese people are somehow more efficient at digestion (meaning some of the effect could come from here), this could only account for a very small difference since TEF is just a small percent of your overall calorie burn to start with. The reason I wanted to list all that is if BMR of formerly obese people is only downregulated 3-5%, then any potential 300-400 kcal/day difference would have to come from somewhere else like NEAT. Since NEAT is known to be lower in obese people as well, it's likely the bulk of the difference here is simply coming from less daily movement (perhaps habit?). This also means it's likely highly variable. The good news to me is this should also mean it's changeable as well. Food for thought.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions: When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues: Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

I am not to goal yet but I can tell you that as long as I keep my protein high i seem to lose weight independent of actual calorie goal. I am 6 months out and am shooting for 130 grams of protein and somewhere around 1500 calories. Continuing to lose a couple lbs a week even though it’s not terribly linear lol.

I never got information about that either. I was just told the portion size and to eat the protein first. I'm 6 months post op and to be honest, I don't even think about macros or calories except to make sure I get protein in first. That's probably not good for me in the long run, I know, but counting calories has been to much for my mental health at the moment so I've been focusing on portion size and protein.

As a general rule, the effects of supplementation of any kind on weight loss will be extremely minimal. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say for most people, 90-95% of weight loss is calorie intake alone. Other factors like exercise might make up a few percent, and supplements would be down at the bottom of the list probably only making 1% or less of the impact. Since 1% might mean something like 20 calories a day, you can see how it would be really easy to overcome that effect just by eating a tiny bit more. Keep in mind there is no overcoming basic physics. If you want to lose weight, you have to consume fewer calories than you burn. Things people worry wat too much about in my opinion instead of placing the focus where it matters on calories: Types of diets: Things like keto, low fat, low carb, intermittent fasting, etc. may help with compliance, but otherwise make no appreciable difference in weight loss. Bottom line, eat the way you want as long as you meet your nutrient goals and eat less than you burn in a day. Exercise: Exercise is critical for overall health and fitness, but as a general rule, you are not going to lose much if any weight from exercising. The reason is that your body is really good at stabilizing your overall calories burned in a day/week/month. What I mean is that studies show that for the most part, your body will slow down other processes to "make-up" for the exercise calories you burned, so whether or not you exercised won't actually mean you burn more calories per day. Exercise CAN help in weight loss for some people, but as a general rule, you'd probably need to be doing something that burned more than 400 calories a day, every day for you to see any impact at all. One place where exercise really comes into its own is in weight maintenance post-weight loss. Here the data is super clear. Those that exercise at least 1 hour per day were significantly more likely to maintain their weight loss than those that don't exercise. Supplements: As I pointed out above, at best, supplements might have a very small impact on on weight loss and this impact is really easy to negate by simply eating more. Typically weight loss supplements fall into two categories: Thermogenics (things that increase metabolism), and Appetite Suppressants. Some claim to have both effects. Without going into too much detail, the vast majority of thermogenics work simply because they are stimulants. Caffeine is the most well known and well studied (and frankly probably the most effective), but since you already are a coffee drinker, you're pretty unlikely to get any additional benefit from switching to another source such as green tea. Appetite suppressants are really a mixed bag. These sometimes work for some people, but again, the effects are really small. This is a little old, but I still think worth taking a gander: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8406948/#:~:text=A total of 1945 participants,morbidity%2C costs or patient satisfaction. It's a meta-analysis of the impact of green tea on weight loss. The conclusion they came to after looking at 15 different studies: "Green tea preparations appear to induce a small, statistically non‐significant weight loss in overweight or obese adults. Because the amount of weight loss is small, it is not likely to be clinically important." Best of luck.

This isn't surprising. In addition to their appetite suppression benefits, GLP-1s also can increase metabolism, meaning you'll burn more calories per day without a change in activity levels.

63 pounds is quite a bit of weight to lose in 3 months. I also highly recommend that you track your calories, especially during the weight loss phase. It is easy to under/overestimate how much we eat.

Starting height before surgery 5’8/389lb - January 8, 2025 Today - same height/326lb April 29, 2025 I’m not sure on exact calories consumed.. but I know for a FACT it’s less than 700 a day

I realised my response above was a bit lacking on practical recommendations. Let me try to summarize what I'd suggest: Since you're right where I'd want you to be in terms of weight loss per month, don't change anything at this point. Only consider changing if you find the weight loss completely stops for 2 months or more. If weight loss does stop for at least 2 months, I'd actually recommend UPPING calories by 250-300 calories a day. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, especially considering that a negative energy balance is the only way to lose weight, but let me explain. Remember when I said above that one of the main jobs of our metabolic regulation system is to keep us from dying? No matter what we do, our metabolism slows when we diet. The rationale behind upping calories (by a small amount), is that we want to convince that system that the "bad times" have passed, and it's okay to ratchet up metabolic processes again. I'd recommend eating this increased calorie amount for at least a month, but two months would be better. Somewhat surprisingly, most people won't gain weight if they do this because their metabolism will increase to compensate. After that diet break, only then do we drop calories for a month or two in order to drop some more weight. You can keep up this intermittent dieting (not to be confused with intermittent fasting), until you get to your goal weight. I know this sounds like a slow process, but I promise, in the long run it's actually faster than if you just tried to keep cutting calories to get to your goal. Please keep exercising for your health, but also so that once you do get to your goal, you'll have a much easier time maintaining the loss. I would strongly recommend a minimum of 3 days per week of aerobic exercise and 2 days per week of strength training. This will set you up really well to maintain weight, as well as for excellent health as you get older. Don't be afraid to seek out a good mental health counselor. None of us got as big as we were by having a healthy relationship with food. The vast majority of people that fail to lose weight or that regain lots of weight after bariatric surgery do so because they fall back into old poor eating habits.