Had my WLS on Nov. 11.15 and I lost like crazy the first 2 weeks, I know that was all water weight. Then I would not lose anything up until a week ago and I gained 4 pounds and im just sitting there. I walk a mile a day and do Extreme hip hop step 30 min. every day. I am only eating soft foods at ½ cup 3-4 times a day. I am also 100% Vegan. I am getting in my water and my protein. I called my Nutritionist and pretty much got no help. I am really starting to freak out, and of course I live in the mountains where there is no physical support group. Can anyone tell me if this is normal? Or has it happened to someone else? Am I doing something wrong or did the WLS just NOT work for me? Honestly I was losing more before I had the WLS, I lost 101 lbs on my own before :-(

Congratulations on your weight loss thus far. Pre-op and post-op weight loss both counts towards your goal and 121 pounds is significant. It is common to hit stalls during the "Weight Loss" phase and even gaining a few pounds during the process does occur. The three most important requirements after RNY gastric bypass surgery are meeting the daily Protein, Fluid, and Vitamin requirements. It looks like you are getting good exercise. Sometimes individuals after surgery go all-out on exercise, they convert some of their fat into muscle and muscle weighs more than fat. Thus they may experience a slight weight gain in the process. But your level of exercise does not appear too strenuous.

So let us look at protein. Your daily protein requirement is satisfied by the protein you obtain from meals combined with the protein from supplements (Protein shakes and protein bars). In the beginning the amount of protein from your meals at a 1/4 cup per meal is so low that it is negligible. But as time goes on and your meal volume increases, the meal portion becomes important. The protein shakes that you are consuming contains calories and they can add up. So an important strategy as you progress to larger food volumes is to concentrate on meals that contain significant amount of protein so you can start to reduce the amount of protein shakes you take each day (and the calories these shakes contain). As my meal volume increased, I went for 3 shakes a day, down to 2, down to 1 and then down to none. When I hit my first stall, this was the strategy that I used and it worked for me.

I was thinking this could be a stall myself. I have experienced a few so far and while the sudden gain or maintenance between a couple of lbs is frustrating, it does eventually start coming off again. It seems like you are exercising quite a bit...how many calories are you taking in? I know sometimes I actually had to start taking in more calories to get the weight to come off as I was not eating enough and the additional exercise I was doing just made the deficit larger putting my body into starvation mode (per my NUT).

Being Vegan its kind of hard to get a high number of Cal. in but I'm getting between 400-600 I try hard to reach as close to 600 as possible. I do not take in any sugar of any kind and I do not snack at all. I actually have an alarm set for my meal times. I have not gotten in fruit yet because I do get dumping syndrome and I'm actually scared fruit will be to sweet...for anyone who has not gotten that..OH MAN :-/ I think the closest I get to sweet is unsweet soy vanilla yogurt and that seems to settle well with me. I have actually started lifting weights today, not to much but just trying to tone. But when that scale says I gained it actually makes me cry..I did not have a good experience with my WLS so to not lose is heart breaking.

This is not the end of your progress, it's just a bump in a looong road of mostly success. Stalls are frustrating and discouraging but they do happen. I recently stalled for almost a month, and I was super annoyed the entire time. But at the end of the day (or I should say the end of the year) when I take stock, I've lost almost 90 pounds in less than 5 months, and I thought that would never happens because of stalls. It all evens out in the end. Just keep your Water and Protein intake up, and maybe slightly reduce your exercise and see if that breaks it. As someone above says, a lot of exercise demands enough calories to sustain it, and if you're struggling to reach 600 you may be doing too much for your metabolism.