I Hi All!

I had surgery on July 15 so I’m just about a month out. I’m panicking because I started out at 250 before my 2 week preop diet. During my preop diet I lost 9 pounds. I went into surgery at 241 pounds. I’m now almost a month later 226 pounds. For the last week it’s been at 225 and today it jumped to 226.6. Last night I had about 600 calories…previously it’s been between 350-500. I decided to jump it up some to see if I could get over my stall and I gained!! Ugggggh…what am I doing wrong? I got this surgery to better my health and to lose weight of course and I feel Im on an up and down cycle again. Please help with advice. I figured adding more calories would help with weight loss…guess my body said nope! Feeling a little defeated!

Unless you bumped it up by like 3500 extra calories you did not really gain a pound in a day. Small fluctuations happen on the scale. In a little time it will go back down, probably that pound plus another. That’s how it seems to work for me.

Water alone will make your weight fluctuate quite a bit. You should be drinking (at a minimum) four pounds of water a day so that could be the reason for the scale issue. If you’re going to weigh daily (personal choice on whether you can handle the ups and downs) I suggest doing it at the same time and under the same conditions each day. For instance I do weigh daily (always have even before surgery)…. I weigh naked in the morning after my coffee and after my poop/pee. My coffee alone is 0.75lbs so you can see that one small change in pattern will affect it. I only poop every few days (I give it the ol’ college try every day) and I can lose two pounds just from that. Basically what I’m saying is if you weigh daily you are going to have fluctuations that aren’t really related to how much weight you are honestly losing. Stick with the plan, trust the process, and be as consistent as possible with your weigh ins if doing it daily.

Oh and to add… you’re likely in the infamous three week stall. It’s very typical, doesn’t always happen at exactly three weeks but most people experience it to one degree or another. You’re probably losing fat but your body is adjusting to the new food intake and is storing water again as your glycogen levels rise. Here is a great read on that topic:

https://www.dsfacts.com/weight-loss-stall-plateau/

three-week stall. Almost all of us go through our first major stall with the first 4-6 weeks after surgery (we call it the three week stall because it's USUALLY the third week, although not always). If you do a search on this site of the three week stall, you will find about 17,000 posts on it (and no, I am NOT kidding!). Just stick to your plan and stay off the scale for a few days - and know that it'll break and you'll be on your way again.

btw - that uptick in weight is almost certainly due to water retention or you have more in your bowels than you did the last time you weighed. There's no way you could gain true weight eating 600 calories. As others have said, fluctations of a couple of pounds are normal. If they play with your head too much, then just start weighing once a week instead of daily.

I found this article an interesting explanation of the three week stall.

https://www.sagebariatric.com/what-you-can-do-about-weight-loss-stalls/

On 08/11/2021 at 07:56, Officially Not Fatty Matty said:

Water alone will make your weight fluctuate quite a bit. You should be drinking (at a minimum) four pounds of water a day so that could be the reason for the scale issue. If you’re going to weigh daily (personal choice on whether you can handle the ups and downs) I suggest doing it at the same time and under the same conditions each day. For instance I do weigh daily (always have even before surgery)…. I weigh naked in the morning after my coffee and after my poop/pee. My coffee alone is 0.75lbs so you can see that one small change in pattern will affect it. I only poop every few days (I give it the ol’ college try every day) and I can lose two pounds just from that. Basically what I’m saying is if you weigh daily you are going to have fluctuations that aren’t really related to how much weight you are honestly losing. Stick with the plan, trust the process, and be as consistent as possible with your weigh ins if doing it daily.

Thank you for your reply! Yes, since weight has been a focal point in my life, I’ve been weighing myself daily on every single plan I’ve ever done, from HCG, to Keto etc. I started my current journey many months ago when I was going through the 6 month approval process. I weigh myself each morning, naked…after using the bathroom and before consuming anything to eat or drink. I was completely baffled when it said 226.6 this morning when the last two days it has said a solid 225. Im going to have faith this is just for today lol! The only thing I changed is I added some more calories thinking that would help break the 225 stall. The only other thing that has changed is that for the last few days, I’ve went for 20-30 min walks.

On 08/11/2021 at 08:02, Officially Not Fatty Matty said:

Oh and to add… you’re likely in the infamous three week stall. It’s very typical, doesn’t always happen at exactly three weeks but most people experience it to one degree or another. You’re probably losing fat but your body is adjusting to the new food intake and is storing Water again as your glycogen levels rise. Here is a great read on that topic:



https://www.dsfacts.com/weight-loss-stall-plateau/

Thanks for sharing this!

On 08/11/2021 at 08:33, catwoman7 said:

three-week stall. Almost all of us go through our first major stall with the first 4-6 weeks after surgery (we call it the three week stall because it's USUALLY the third week, although not always). If you do a search on this site of the three week stall, you will find about 17,000 posts on it (and no, I am NOT kidding!). Just stick to your plan and stay off the scale for a few days - and know that it'll break and you'll be on your way again.

btw - that uptick in weight is almost certainly due to Water retention or you have more in your bowels than you did the last time you weighed. There's no way you could gain true weight eating 600 calories. As others have said, fluctations of a couple of pounds are normal. If they play with your head too much, then just start weighing once a week instead of daily.

Oh wow! Ok, I’ll search that. Totally through me off this morning in a panic when I saw my weight had gone up ugggh!! So much to learn here. Thank you! What’s your take on the calorie amount though? Am I where I should be?

5 hours ago, Ready21 said:

I Hi All!

I had surgery on July 15 so I’m just about a month out. I’m panicking because I started out at 250 before my 2 week preop diet. During my preop diet I lost 9 pounds. I went into surgery at 241 pounds. I’m now almost a month later 226 pounds. For the last week it’s been at 225 and today it jumped to 226.6. Last night I had about 600 calories…previously it’s been between 350-500. I decided to jump it up some to see if I could get over my stall and I gained!! Ugggggh…what am I doing wrong? I got this surgery to better my health and to lose weight of course and I feel Im on an up and down cycle again. Please help with advice. I figured adding more calories would help with weight loss…guess my body said nope! Feeling a little defeated!

If you are drinking your water, sticking to the food program and walking then you should come out of the stall just fine. Don't panic day to day.

On 08/11/2021 at 12:37, Tony B - NJ said:

If you are drinking your Water, sticking to the food program and walking then you should come out of the stall just fine. Don't panic day to day.

Thank you!

Your stall will break when your body is ready. They always do. Your body is going through a lot & needs to take a moment. I never changed a thing I was doing when I stalled. I figured I didn’t want to stress my body more by changing my calories or activity again. The stalls always broke.

You’ll soon work out your weight fluctuation window. Mine is about 1kg (2lbs). It’s just life. Unless you are eating or drinking the exact same amounts of the exact same thing, & you’re peeing & pooping the exact same amounts every day, you’ll will see fluctuations. The trick while you’re losing is to look at the downward trend & not just on your daily weight.

Good luck & congrats on your weight loss so far.

On 08/11/2021 at 20:10, Arabesque said:

Your stall will break when your body is ready. They always do. Your body is going through a lot & needs to take a moment. I never changed a thing I was doing when I stalled. I figured I didn’t want to stress my body more by changing my calories or activity again. The stalls always broke.

You’ll soon work out your weight fluctuation window. Mine is about 1kg (2lbs). It’s just life. Unless you are eating or drinking the exact same amounts of the exact same thing, & you’re peeing & pooping the exact same amounts every day, you’ll will see fluctuations. The trick while you’re losing is to look at the downward trend & not just on your daily weight.

Good luck & congrats on your weight loss so far.

Thank you, you brought up an important point about looking at the downward trend of overall loss. I need to remember that!

One way to easily track that downward trend (if you insist on weighing daily) is to keep a second list… so list 1 is your daily weight… 231, 230, 229, 229.7, 230, 228, etc… the second list is take your weight seven days ago and subtract your weight today. This will show how much you lost in the last week, but still updated daily. It really highlights stalls and for me made it much easier to assess how I was really doing without focusing on those daily fluctuations. Here is what my two graphs looked like. The first is just the normal “my weight today” and the second looks back seven days and counts how many lbs I lost. The closer it gets to the top line (0) the bigger the stall… you can see when I do it this way I really didn’t have that many TRUE stalls, even when it felt like I wasn’t losing there was still some small weekly losses. It also shows the super fast loss at first and the gradual decline. It’s a very easy thing to set up in excel or google sheets if you’ve ever work with those.

On 08/12/2021 at 04:53, Officially Not Fatty Matty said:

One way to easily track that downward trend (if you insist on weighing daily) is to keep a second list… so list 1 is your daily weight… 231, 230, 229, 229.7, 230, 228, etc… the second list is take your weight seven days ago and subtract your weight today. This will show how much you lost in the last week, but still updated daily. It really highlights stalls and for me made it much easier to assess how I was really doing without focusing on those daily fluctuations. Here is what my two graphs looked like. The first is just the normal “my weight today” and the second looks back seven days and counts how many lbs I lost. The closer it gets to the top line (0) the bigger the stall… you can see when I do it this way I really didn’t have that many TRUE stalls, even when it felt like I wasn’t losing there was still some small weekly losses. It also shows the super fast loss at first and the gradual decline. It’s a very easy thing to set up in excel or google sheets if you’ve ever work with those.

Awesome! I will try this. Thanks for the detailed explanation. Continued success to you

On 8/11/2021 at 7:25 AM, Ready21 said:

I Hi All!

I had surgery on July 15 so I’m just about a month out. I’m panicking because I started out at 250 before my 2 week preop diet. During my preop diet I lost 9 pounds. I went into surgery at 241 pounds. I’m now almost a month later 226 pounds. For the last week it’s been at 225 and today it jumped to 226.6. Last night I had about 600 calories…previously it’s been between 350-500. I decided to jump it up some to see if I could get over my stall and I gained!! Ugggggh…what am I doing wrong? I got this surgery to better my health and to lose weight of course and I feel Im on an up and down cycle again. Please help with advice. I figured adding more calories would help with weight loss…guess my body said nope! Feeling a little defeated!

Don't give up. Stalls happen to all of us. Make sure you are drinking water, eating healthy and staying active and you will be fine! Best of luck to you