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This is crazy .... I've taken my dog to the dog park every day for the last 2 months. We walk around the edge of the 4 acre park. (Some days I'm panting harder than the dogs when I'm done walking .LOL) Took the dog to the vet -- he lost 2 pounds !!! I stepped on my scale - haven't lost an ounce in the 2 months we've been going there !!!! It's not fair !!!!! LOL Okay - I just had to rant about it in this forum

My surgery is Monday….I’m getting nervous!!!

I don't feel the same way I did pre-surgery. I get an uncomfortable, sort of pressure-like feeling in my chest. When I start feeling that, I know it's time to stop, or I'm going to be sorry. Some people get even weirder signals, like sneezing. I'm not saying you'll never get back to feeling "full" in the same way you used to, I'm just letting you know my experience. It's not the same for me, but after eight years, I'm used to this new "signal".

I throw clothes in the dryer to shrink now instead of line drying to prevent it.

Not everyone experiences a bounce back regain. And not everyone experiences a larger regain. If it does happen there’s often a reason: complacency/&or bad habits returning, a too restrictive way of eating, lifestyle changes, medical/health issues, emotional issues, settling of your weight, … I had a regain of a good two kgs (about 5lbs) rather quickly a few months into my second year so earlier than the usual 3rd year. Didn’t gain any more. Wasn’t happy but was accepting it. Couldn’t really put my finger on why. No dietary changes, no activity changes during that time. But what I did have was a gall removal at 25 months which caused an protein absorption issue. Then almost at the three year mark we realised the gall removal also stopped me absorbing my HRT & caused other issues. Went from a tablet to a patch & slowly but surely I lost a good kilo of that regain over 6 months +/-. I’ve been sitting pretty stable again for about 6 months or so. I keep an eye on the scales, monitor my portions, watch my food choice & fingers crossed I continue to remain stable.

Your body is adjusting, you have to be patient.

French toast made with keto bread. I tracked 2 slices but only took a pic of 1.

I had a very interesting conversation with my doctor recently. I was having some issues I thought may be a bug which included soft motions & wanting to go again later in the day. Did some tests & it showed I had some constipation. Not blockages or impaction but some traffic slowing speed bumps (that’s my analogy 😁). Apparently your body’s response is to thin out your poop so it can go over the speed bump but it also means the bowel isn’t fully emptying hence wanting to go more often. Treatment was a stool softener taken one night, none on night two & then one on nights three & four. It did help. This may not be your issue but worth a conversation with your doctor.

It took me for ever to reach my goals. Like 3 + months. They just told me to do my best. Protein yogurts were my saviour, 2 of these and a pint of milk a day and I had all my protein. Drinking seemed to take all day and all my waking night too. I had my surgery in coldest winter, so hot drinks were easiest for me to manage, although they did get cold before I drank it all. After meals if I found myself thirsty, I would suck a popsicle , its a fluid. Once you can drink your ounces you will feel amazing. Its really worth while persevering, it does get easier soon I had to keep going back a stage because eating 'normal' foods was so difficult for me

I feel for you. Some bandsters never have the left shoulder pain and some only have it for a week or 2. Mine lasted a couple months. It was even my full signal for awhile. I can tell you that it does go away. Mine went away after I dropped some weight and the pressure was no longer on the phrenic nerve. One thing that did help me were equate brand (walmart) menthol pain Patches. They are under $4 and well worth the trip to walmart. I would just put a patch on the tip of my shoulder in the evning and leave it on all night. Here is some info I copied from another banster's post awhile ago: Best explanation of left shoulder pain I've ever found. If you woke up with a pain in your shoulder, you'd probably think something was wrong with your shoulder, right? Maybe you slept on it the wrong way, maybe you're a weekend warrior who threw the football a few too many times. In most cases, your hunch is probably right. Pain in the shoulder usually indicates an injury or disease that affects a structure in your shoulder, such as, say, your subacromial bursa or a rotator cuff tendon. Makes sense, doesn't it? But you might be way off. Sometimes the brain gets confused, making you think that one part of the body hurts, when in fact another part of the body, far removed from the pain, is the real source of trouble. This curious (and clinically important) phenomenon is known as referred pain. For example, it's unlikely but possible that your shoulder pain is a sign of something insidious happening in your liver, gall bladder, stomach, spleen, lungs, or pericardial sac (the connective tissue bag containing the heart). Yup - conditions as diverse as liver abscesses, gallstones, gastric ulcers, splenic rupture, pneumonia, and pericarditis can all cause shoulder pain. What's up with that? Neuroscientists still don't know precisely which anatomical connections are responsible for referred pain, but the prevailing explanation seems to work pretty well. In a nutshell, referred pain happens when nerve fibers from regions of high sensory input (such as the skin) and nerve fibers from regions of normally low sensory input (such as the internal organs) happen to converge on the same levels of the spinal cord. The best known example is pain experienced during a heart attack. Nerves from damaged heart tissue convey pain signals to spinal cord levels T1-T4 on the left side, which happen to be the same levels that receive sensation from the left side of the chest and part of the left arm. The brain isn't used to receiving such strong signals from the heart, so it interprets them as pain in the chest and left arm. So what about that shoulder pain? All of organs listed above bump up against the diaphragm, the thin, dome-shaped muscle that moves up and down with every breath. The diaphragm is innervated by two phrenic nerves (left and right), which emerge from spinal cord levels C3, C4, and C5 (medical students remember these spinal cord levels using the mnemonic, "C3, 4, 5 keeps the diaphragm alive"). The phrenic nerves carry both motor and sensory impulses, so they make the diaphragm move and they convey sensation from the diaphragm to the central nervous system. Most of the time there isn't any sensation to convey from the diaphragm, at least at the conscious level. But if a nearby organ gets sick, it may irritate the diaphragm, and the sensory fibers of one of the phrenic nerves are flooded with pain signals that travel to the spinal cord (at C3-C5). It turns out that C3 and C4 don't just keep the diaphragm alive; neurons at these two spinal cord levels also receive sensation from the shoulders (via the supraclavicular nerves). So when pain neurons at C3 and C4 sound the alarm, the brain assumes (quite reasonably) that the shoulder is to blame. Usually that's a good assumption, but sometimes it's wrong.