Butterthebean

People, come back from the ledge. Do not freak out. First of all, size of your sleeve does not matter. You are the one who has to control what you eat from here on out. The sleeve will be like a helping hand, but not a crutch. Do not depend on it to do all the work by letting your feelings of fullness tell you when to stop eating or drinking. Your capacity will increase, and it will keep increasing for a while. One day a few months down the line you will wake up and be able to eat double what you could at 2 months out. That does not mean you should eat double. Measure your portions and learn to eat that and then stop eating. The idea is to eat till you're no longer hungry, not full. If you're like me, and you're not terribly good at recognizing that point then measure you're food and you can't go wrong. If you're still on liquids then work to get in your water but do not bloat yourself.

Welcome and good luck. There have been 2 or 3 posts in the man room about doing MMA after surgery so I'm sure you can find some fellow grapplers to chat with.

I like the Quest bar because it has some of the lowest net carbs of any bar I've found. Less than 5 if I remember right. But they are very hard to chew straight out of the wrapper. I give them a couple of hours sitting on the dashboard of my truck, or 10 seconds in the microwave and they are much better.

Can you tolerate fish or shrimp? Both are very high in Protein and usually easier to chew and swallow than beef or chicken.

Why not replace the broth with water? You need the water way more than the broth at this point. Once you get your water intake up to the minimum then you could start having the broth again. But bottom line, until you get your water intake up everything else should take a back seat.

What you lose in the first week has almost nothing to do with fat loss so why worry about it?

Fiddleman, while I am still 2 levels below a novice and know next to nothing, I'm going to throw out a couple of ideas. Firstly, if you're hitting a wall at 40 minutes that could be your glycogen stores being depleted. From what I've read the average person has between 30-90 minutes of glycogen stores available to use, which is your body's primary fuel source for fight or flight response. I can't speak from running but I've experienced this many times from cycling. A hard effort forces you to burn glycogen. When it runs out your body will send you signals to quit or eat something. This is where many distance athletes would eat an energy gel or something. When it gets real serious you bonk, but you could be getting the pre-bonk signals....just a guess here based on the way you described it. Also, I know most runners run above the aerobic threshold which forces you to burn glycogen (I certainly cycled that way...always pushing yourself). I've been reading stuff about the ultrarunners who run such long distances. Many of them say they run below the aerobic threshold, so instead of burning glycogen they burn fat. It allows them to go much longer because you have way more fat reserves than glycogen. I've read in a couple of different books that these extreme distance athletes train at a ridiculously slow pace in order to get proficient at staying in this zone and out of the glycogen zone. I believe I mentioned Stu Mittleman earlier. That's what his whole training approach is. Basically running slow enough that you are not laboring and keeping your heart rate in a lower target zone. Gradually you get more efficient at this and can go faster while still keeping the heart rate low. I am still learning but here lately I can't get enough of books about distance running, especially the ultras. I will say this about the food, I was eating some simple carbs and PB2 before all of my runs. Just maybe 150 calories, but if I didn't I would feel like crap 30 minutes in. After reading Mittlemans website I cut out the carbs and ate some fats instead (almonds) and I feel just as good but without eating any sugar. I always ran super slow so I really didn't need to change anything there. My speed has not progressed much at all since I started running but the ease at which I can run has improved big time, along with the distance. If you learn anything new please share because I'm very interested in this topic as well.

Yeah I think he did run across the US. But have you seen that documentary "running the Sahara"? Three guys run 4300 miles across the Sahara desert. Pretty amazing. The equivalent of 165 marathons in 111 days.

Y'all should read Scott Jurek's book. He runs and wins all those ultra marathons on a vegan diet. "Born to Run" is another great book about running. I loved it. Yes, it's the book that got people talking about barefoot running, but the whole book is not really about barefoot running. It's actually a great story and has some good info about learning to run to prevent injuries. It made me rethink my running form. Now I run mostly in my vibrams and I have zero knee pain. Before I had to wear neoprene sleeves on both knees or I would hurt like crazy.

20 miles? I wanna be you. On a side note, have any of you ever read any of the stuff by Stu Mittleton? He's the guy who ran 1000 miles in 12 days. Anyway, his whole shtick is to train your body to burn fat not glucose (sugar). You have way more fat reserves than glycogen. Even when ou carb load. According to him the way to train your body to do this is by never eating sugar (starches) and slowing down to stay below the aerobic threshold. Obviously this is not something that can be done in one day. It would take some time to train the body to be more efficient at burning fat. I only ran across this because I would like to run farther than the 3 miles I'm up to but can't without eating some sort of simple carbs right before a run. Any of you runners have any thoughts on this?

It will be an interesting Christmas around your household with 2 post ops. Hope everything goes well.

Without pics it didn't happen.

I would try to monitor your intake so you know how much you're taking in, then if you have a doubt about it you could ask your doctor. But it's unlikely you're going to hurt your sleeve sipping Water. Now guzzling may cause you some severe discomfort, but it's not likely to cause a leak. I had my surgery during the summer when it was hot. A couple of times after the first month I worked up a big thirst working out and tried to guzzle some water because that was my old instinct. I got real bloated real fast and had to slow down. But it passes quickly and you learn not to drink like that anymore.

Yep, my new addictions are exercise and online shopping. Damn Paypal makes things way too easy.

In spite of that, I think there are plenty of reasons to stay away from caffeine that have nothing to do with hydration. Once my chemical dependency was broken, I saw no reason to purposely allow myself to become addicted to caffeine again. And it is highly addictive. Crossover addictions are a very real threat and now that the crutch of food is taken away post op, I'm leary of finding a replacement addiction.

I'm not sure I understand the original post. Who is going overboard and how? Are you saying people who decide to eliminate chips, ice cream and cake from their diets forever are going overboard? Yes I could eat those things, but after all I've been through why would I want to? After surgery you can try to eat all the bad foods you ate before surgery and hope the sleeve limits your portions, or you can learn to eat healthy.

There are actually studies now suggesting that caffeine is not a diuretic. I think the scientific community is divided on this issue. Until a person is far enough post op that he or she has no problem taking enough water I would error on the side of caution and stay away from caffeine.

The fact that you don't have any problem getting water down is a good sign. It means you should have a smooth recovery.

The water just passes through you faster than you can drink it. Unless you're chugging like a frat boy I don't think you have anything to worry about.

way to go susie. looking good

If you do try the Vibrams, I suggest reading the "how to guide" section of barefootrunninguniversity.com. It takes some adaptation to build up to that style of running unless you are already a forefoot striker. As for recovery, I think it's different for everyone. I think mine is improving. I ran saturday morning and then again today, sunday afternoon. When I first ran, I couldn't run again for 2 weeks. That was in September.

Ebay is the best thrift shop. If you look through the junk you can find some good deals.

I use about 1 tablespoon per Protein shake. Somedays I have just 1 shake, other days it's 2-3. Depends on the day.