Bufflehead

I drank Premiere when I had to but never really liked it. All the premade drinks basically tasted like industrial run off to me. I preferred to make my own drinks with protein powder and either Carb Master/Fair Life milk or unsweetened vanilla almond or cashew milk. Some of my favorite protein powders are Syntrax Nectar (favorite flavors: iced cappuccino, chocolate truffle), Syntrax Matrix, Chike, Unjury (favorite flavor: chocolate splendor, chicken soup is also good -- mix with hot water), and Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard. You can buy samples of most of these powders on nashuanutrition.com. The Unjury website is the only place to buy Unjury. I also like mixing in a couple teaspoons of instant coffee and/or some Torani SF syrup flavorings to make things more interesting, like a hazelnut mocha or vanilla latte protein shake.

Here are my tips for dealing with hair loss if it gets bad. Sadly, there is no real way to prevent it other than not having surgery. --short hair, particularly in a side part, layered style works well to hide hair loss --fill-in powders such as Nanogen and Toppik also work really well if the loss gets severe --headbands to pull longer hair back over your scalp also work if you don't want a short hair cut I learned this sort of stuff when I lost most of my hair before I was even considering surgery, just due to bad genetics. For those of you out there who are thinking about hair loss, I'll add one final tip: --keep in mind that hair loss related to surgery is temporary and minor. I know it's no fun but keep in mind that you could be me instead and lost the vast majority of your hair permanently, for no good reason, and count your lucky stars

@@_bribri1001 I have lost over 200 lbs. I exercised (and still do) 5-6 days per week but honestly it was not for weight loss, it was for overall health. I never counted calories burned or ate extra calories because of exercise. Weight loss happens because of your eating habits, not your exercise habits. I was incredibly strict with my eating throughout weight loss. I do better when I have rules to follow and don't give myself permission for any variance. My advice -- do not start down the road with "bad" food. Don't buy it, don't eat it, not even a bite here or there. What you can have a bite of now, you can eat a whole package of some months down the road. My rules (from my bariatric team) for the first six months: 3 meals per day, maximum 3 ounces per meal No Snacks other than Protein shakes Maximum 800 calories and 50 carbs per day Minimum 75 grams of protein per day No sweets, no grains, no starchy vegetables, no tropical fruits (bananas, mangos, papayas) After six months, the rules changed slightly. Meals could be up to 5 oz total, maximum 1100 calories per day, maximum 75 carbs per day, minimum 90 grams of protein per day. Everything else stayed the same. For me, this program was hardcore but worked perfectly.

I started spices and hot sauce very early on with no problems, but like @@Middus my whole family is pretty much immune to anything having to do with spices other than that we do love them. I wasn't allowed corn or any other grain until I reached my goal weight and successfully maintained for a while, but all programs are different. Personally I would not choose a food that post-op doesn't have a lot of nutritional value such as corn but YMMV.

I didn't extend it, but my practice's normal rules are 4 weeks of post op liquids, so that is what I did. It didn't hurt me in the slightest and I think I struggled with introducing food a lot less than people who advance their diets faster. I never had any problems with food, and I think taking things slow helped.

You don't need to worry about eating or your appetite, but it does sound like you need to get more fluids in. If you aren't getting in at least 50 ounces of some kind of fluid, stay in close touch with your surgical team and let them know exactly how many ounces of fluids you are getting each day and what your symptoms are.

It isn't the staples.* I used to set off the scanner exery single time, usually lighting up where I had the most excess skin. It was one of the reasons I got precheck, so I can go through the metal detector instead of the scanner. No more scanner problems plus super fast lines through security, no taking shoes off, etc. Precheck is worth every penny to me even though I don't even fly that often. *the scanners see inside your clothes, but they can't see inside your body, at least not enough to pick up a tiny line of staples.

You shouldn't even be weighing yourself this early out. Your body is recovering from the trauma of surgery and will do all sorts of crazy things. Seriously, it has no relation to the reality of how much you are or are not eating, so the scale cannot possibly give you meaningful information. Have someone hide it from you for a few weeks if you can't resist it.

Mine hurt for a couple of weeks, then the pain just vanished overnight.

Completely agree with the advice from Babbs and OutsideMatch. One thing I will add is that if you are trying to calculate the calories you burn from exercise and give yourself permission to "eat back" those calories, stop. Most calculations of calories burned turn out to be wildly optimistic, and there is even some evidence that when people start exercising, they start gaining weight because they eat more. So, keep exercising, it is great for your health, but do not count on it to either help with weight loss or let you eat more. That is accomplished by being incredibly strict with what you eat and accounting for every calorie. I have been in the process of losing what I gained over the holidays and at 3+ years out it is hard work. I am restricting my eating to unprocessed meat, eggs, green veggies, and small amounts of dairy. I would fail miserably on a liquid diet and I don't recommend it. Good luck!

When I was taking calcium supplements I used liquid calcium (Wellesse brand). Not the greatest tasting thing in the world but better than swallowing those pills. The bariatric specialty candy calcium was too high calorie, high carb, and high price for me.

citrate

I am going to advise giving a little more info to your college professors than taking care of a personal or family matter. You don't have to go into specifics, you can say "getting treatment for a medical issue" or "having surgery" without going into more detail. But as a professor myself, if someone just told me they needed to be out of class for "personal reasons" without more, I'm not sure I would allow it without deducting from their grade. Either that or I would allow it but carry on with the assumption that the student was 1) a flake; 2) an addict seeking treatment; or 3) a criminal who was going to spending time in the county lockup to clear their burglary/assault/drunk driving charge.

@@10stackzz no, the hair loss post op doesn't have to do with vitamins. You could take them by the truckload for years before surgery and they would have no effect on post-op hair loss. If you decide to take them as a precautionary measure thinking it can't hurt -- keep in mind that many people find they don't help with hair loss on your head but will help you grow a thick crop of hair on your face, belly, legs, etc.

Protein: minimum 75 grams per day Carbs: maximum 60 per day Calories -- varies depending on how much you weigh and how fast you want to lose. Basically, as a starting point, take your current weight. Multiply it by 10. Then subtract 500. Use that as your resulting calorie limit to lose approximately 1 lb per week. So, if you weigh 180 lbs, try eating 1300 calories per day to lose 1 lb per week. If you want to lose 2 lbs per week, eat 800 calories per day. If you weigh 190, then those numbers would be 1400 and and 900, respectively. Every time you lose 10 lbs, readjust your calorie intake in order to keep losing at the same rate. If these numbers don't work for you, then play around and get them to a place where they do work. These are just rules of thumb to use as a starting point. A couple more ideas that you may find helpful: --make sure you are weighing virtually all your food portions, no guessing or estimating --don't drink liquid calories other than a max of one protein shake per day --focus on eating unprocessed meat and green veggies in order to stay satisfied and keep cravings for junk at bay --do not attempt to count calories burned or "eat back" exercise calories. Good luck!

If eating too few calories could cause people to not lose weight, then no one would ever die of starvation and anorexics would be chubby. You do want to make sure you are adequately nourished. But when we are morbidly obese, we can get the vast majority of the calories we need from the fat stores in our bodies. Also, the pre-op diet and then the first few weeks after surgery are just a blip -- they will not affect your long-term metabolism or anything like that. Good luck!

All programs vary, you should get in touch with yours for their guidelines. That said, I was allowed to try rice and other grains after I had reached my goal weight and successfully maintained for a few months. For most people, during weight loss, the idea is to focus on protein and nutrition. Rice doesn't provide much of either. Why do you want to eat rice? This is a time to break old habits with respect to food. Is rice a habit in the past that you miss? Is it a comfort food? Do you just like it? These might be reasons to eat a food in the past, but this is a great time to develop new tastes for healthier foods and new reasons to pick the foods you eat.

The DS (of which the sleeve is a component) is the most powerful and successful weight loss surgery available, due to the combination of restriction (sleeve) and malabsorption of calories (intestinal re-routing). I think the question that more people should ask is why NOT get the DS, if they want the best odds possible for weight loss?

@@BigViffer lucky for me I am no longer tempted by Noosa. I brought the rhubarb one home once. That very day I opened it up and found the thing absolutely covered in green and black mold. And it was well within its expiration date, too. Ever since then, any time I get tempted by Noosa at the market, I just re-live opening up that container of rhubarb yogurt and it is extremely easy to keep walking right by the Noosa.

Try Fage or Siggi's yogurt for much better nutrition -- lower calories, carbs, and sugar and higher protein.

"no matter what I do" -- what have you done? I don't want to give you a bunch of ideas if you have already done all of them!

Feeling hungry and rumbly stomach noises are both common symptoms of too much stomach acid. Too much stomach acid is a common side-effect of gastric sleeve surgery. Most surgeons put their patients on a prescription for a PPI after surgery, such as omeprazole (Prilosec), Nexxium, or Protonix. If you aren't on a drug like that, contact your surgeon and ask for a prescription. Or, start taking one over the counter. I know for omeprazole the standard dose post-op is 40 mg per day, 20 mg in the morning and 20 mg at night. If you are on one of these drugs already, contact your doctor about either increasing your dose or trying a different, stronger drug.

The important thing is if they don't serve something you are confident you can eat, then don't eat then! Don't risk it. If anyone questions your not eating (I am imagining my typical professional conferences where you may be seated with acquaintances or people you don't know at all) just tell them you aren't feeling up to food. If they look alarmed, reassure them that you are not contagious. Make sure you bring non-perishable foods you can eat later in your hotel room such as tuna packets. You can also get things like scrambled eggs from room service. Try to make sure you have a mini-fridge in your room, then find the nearest market and stock it with Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese sticks, hard boiled eggs, protein shakes, etc. I know a lot of people rely on protein bars in this sort of situation -- I personally find them a trigger food and detrimental to weight loss, so I stay away. YMMV. If you can eat soup, there will often be that available as an option for you at conference meals as well. Good luck!

way too many calories and carbs

When I was roughly at your phase I was eating 3 meals per day of under 3 oz (85 grams, or roughly 175 ml) each. All of those meals had to be high protein: meat, dairy, eggs, or tofu with a little bit of soft green veggies. In between meals if I got hungry, I had a low calorie protein shake. An alternative to that is to have a small amount of diced chicken breast.