Bufflehead

My team's plan is 3 meals per day and no snacks other than protein shakes. They discourage snacking as it leads to mindless grazing and taking in more calories than you need. It is okay to be hungry between meals -- you will not starve to death. I lost 200 lbs following this plan and was perfectly healthy throughout. It's a good thing to follow the guidance your bariatric team provides for you.

As the others have said, moving is the best thing to help with the gas pain after surgery. A couple of tips in addition to walking: --when you get transferred to your hospital room after recovery, don't let them put you into the hospital bed. There should be a small sofa or (even better) a rocking chair or glider in your room. Get yourself into one of those instead of the bed. The more time you spend upright, the faster the gas will leave. Also, you'll find it easier to get up and go walking if you just have to get up from a chair rather than heave yourself in and out of bed. You should only be in bed if you must sleep and can't sleep in the chairs provided in your room. --when you are sitting up in your room and not walking, spend some time "rocking." If you have a rocker or glider in your room, use that. Rock forward, and as you move forward, lean the upper half of your body into the movement, cross your arms in front of your abdomen, and press. This helps get the gas out. Good luck!

For most people weight loss isn't consistent on a daily or even weekly basis. Not just for the first few weeks, but throughout. That's why it is good to only weigh once a month or at your post-op doctor's visits, if the lack of consistency is going to stress you out. You can also use a site like Trend Weight to get the bigger picture. A lot of people imagine their weight loss plotted on a graph will look like a smooth, straight line headed down to the right. Instead, imagine the outline of a staircase plotted onto the graph. And the staircase was designed and built by people who were drunk and couldn't see very well. As far as expectations as to how much you will lose -- please, I beg you, put that idea aside. It seems like every day someone is on here, posting that they are freaked out because they aren't losing as much as they expected, and they always expect some insane amount of weight loss. Just get rid of the idea of expectations around weight loss and focus on your own expectations of how well you are going to comply with your post-op program. That's really the only thing you can control, and therefore the only thing that is worth feeling either good or bad about. Good luck!

Sugar alcohols are very common in "sugar free" sweets and they are extremely hard on the digestive system for anyone, let alone someone with a tiny, traumatized stomach. You learned a good lesson -- sweet food, even fake sweet food, should not be what you are trying to justify to yourself right now! Just put it off the menu of possibilities entirely for right now. To make yourself maybe feel a little better, read the critical reviews on Amazon for sugar free gummy bears (which contain sugar alcohols, like most sugar free yogurt). You are not alone in your suffering! https://www.amazon.com/Haribo-Sugar-Free-Gummy-Bears/product-reviews/B008JELLCA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt_rgt?filterByStar=critical&pageNumber=1

Are you required to be on clear liquids? If so, Syntrax Nectar fruit (and tea) flavored powders are good. Mix them with ice water and a sprinkle of Crystal Light. For RTD, I have heard good things about Atkins Lift. I found the Isopure much easier to tolerate if I mixed it 50/50 with a similar flavor of G2 or Powerade Zero. That helped a lot. If you don't have to be on clears, you have a world of possibilities.

The risks of surgery make you nervous, which is understandable. But you have to know that the risks of morbid obesity are much, much higher than the risks of surgery. Surgery has risks, but it also has potential rewards. Staying morbidly obese has no rewards, and the risks of early death and severe health problems are massive. Your family will likely come around once they see you on the mend from surgery and getting slimmer, happier, and healthier. They love you, and that's what they want for you, they just don't understand yet that surgery is pretty much the only option you have to get it.

You can get liquid and chewable forms of vitamins, including vitamin D, that might be easier on you. I relied on Wellesse liquid multi-vitamin (and liquid iron and liquid calcium) and the house brand liquid vitamin D from the Vitamin Shoppe for several weeks post-op. Eventually I switched to chewable high potency multiple vitamins from Trader Joe's. I was able to take iron and vitamin D as pills (they are very small) -- I am also not a good pill taker, at least for large pills. But you can get virtually all vitamins as chewables or liquids. I try to stay away from the specialized bariatric supplements as they tend to be overpriced and very high calorie. My labs have always been great with my chewable and liquid (and non-bariatric) supplements.

Whether or not you are at the end of your weight loss is entirely up to you. How many calories and carbs are you eating each day? If you don't know, get religious about tracking for a couple of weeks so you can figure it out. I actually don't believe in the maxim "you can't manage what you don't measure" -- but I sure do when it comes to food intake and exercise and weight loss. "Eating healthy with some cheats here and there" could absolutely result in you inadvertently putting yourself into maintenance mode. That's the way most normal people eat to maintain their weight, not to lose weight.

I would not have been allowed that as the carbs are too high and the protein too low for my plan's requirements.

I have no clue, I only weighed in at the surgeon's office for my checkups during the first six months. Much less stress that way. Don't set yourself up to compare yourself to other people. Comparison is the thief of joy -- Teddy Roosevelt.

I take a high potency multi-vitamin, iron, B12 (2x per week), and D3.

The gastric bypass is a great surgery -- I know several people who have had it, including family members. They have all done fantastic with their weight loss and maintenance and are in terrific health. The bypass should also cure your reflux so you won't have to deal with that any more. I am sure you will do great -- good luck with getting everything resolved quickly before surgery!

Have a cream-type soup, no chunks.

The first thing I ate on purees was Greek yogurt with almond butter (breakfast) then pureed tuna salad (lunch) then ricotta bake (dinner). As you can see, each meal had more than one ingredient! No type of food ever gave me trouble. The important thing was to keep portions small (1.5 ounce max) and eat slowly with small bites. Good luck!

I buy the grilled chicken from Trader Joe's and just chop up 3 ounces in the morning. 90 calories, 0 carbs, 19 grams of protein and it takes under 2 minutes to prepare. Hard to beat.

Yes, that does sound like dehydration and possibly just over exertion so soon after major surgery. It takes a long time for your body to recover, treat yourself gently and maybe don't push so hard. With respect to your weight loss -- you've lost more than I had at five weeks out, and I was *not* a conversion patient and I started at a super obese level BMI, so theoretically I should have lost faster. I have always felt good about my weight loss (200+ lbs down!) but if people keep complaining about "slow" weight loss when they lost significantly faster than I did, I am going to get a complex

Not standard juice, at least not on my plan. Regular juice is basically liquid sugar. "Diet" juice would have been okay, like Ocean Spray Diet Cran-Cherry (5 calories per cup). However, I am trying to imagine that with protein powder added and I think it would have been awful, disgusting, at least with unflavored protein powder. It might work better using one of the Syntrax Nectar fruit flavored protein powders, like diet cranberry lemonade with the Roadside Lemonade flavor from Syntrax Nectar.

My surgeon has no problem with patients swallowing pills as long as they are small enough to fit through a standard size wedding ring. I was swallowing pills within a couple hours of waking up from surgery, no problem. Larger meds required either a substitute prescription for a liquid version, or consulting with a pharmacist to figure out an alternate form of consumption (not all pills can be crushed or chewed).

It really depends on what is required by your insurance and your surgeon. It could be anywhere from a month to six months to longer if something goes awry in the process. Good luck!

Meeting your protein goals really won't help with hair loss, I am sorry to say. I ate high protein for weeks before surgery, hit my goal of 75+ grams of protein every day starting within 24 hours of surgery, and still lost tons of hair. I also did all the other stuff you are supposed to do, biotin, zinc, etc. even though my surgeon warned me it was useless and I was just throwing my money away. It either will happen or it won't. If it does, there are lots of good ways to disguise hair loss if it gets really bad (Nanogen, Toppik, shorter hair cut with a side part, etc.) and it will eventually stop and your hair will come back. Good luck!

@ my insurance required me to do a 6 month supervised weight loss program and fail at losing weight, I guess to prove that I really do need the surgery and am incapable of losing weight without it. Well, I had been obese my entire life (at least since toddlerhood) and am quite the expert at failing to lose weight. I know exactly how to do that. My six month "test" was not very challenging, let's just say.

I did a chewable probiotic for the first four weeks. After I was able to eat yogurt I discontinued the extra probiotic, but the chewable form was very easy to take and never gave me any problems.

As long as the chickpea water is strained so that it is clear (you can see through it) and no chunks, it shouldn't be a problem. You may want to check with your dietician to be sure. I don't have a recipe but I drank a lot of the ginger miso broth that you can buy at Trader Joe's during the first couple of weeks.

It really depends on your insurance policy. You need to get your hands/eyes on the "plan document" or "member benefit handbook" and read about bariatric surgery under your specific plan. Assuming your plan covers bariatric surgery -- and that is a big assumption -- the most typical policy rule is that you only need co-morbidities such as high blood pressure or diabetes with a BMI under 40. So, don't lose any weight before your initial consult with a surgeon! Your plan may require you to have 3 or 6 months of supervised weight loss or dietary counseling before your surgery, but that will fly by before you know it. You definitely want to get your plan documents and make an appointment with a bariatric surgery center of excellence for an initial consult. They should have an insurance coordinator on staff who will be knowledgeable about requirements. This is all on the assumption that you are planning to use an insurance policy to pay rather than self-pay. If you are paying for this out of your own pocket, you will have no trouble finding a great surgeon to work with you. Good luck!

I was served decaf the day after surgery in the hospital. I had to give up coffee for three months after surgery. It was hard! But worth it. I'm back to my regular 4-6 cups per day and it doesn't seem to be hurting me a bit. I'm over 200 lbs down, 3+ years out of surgery, and I'm perfectly hydrated even though I rarely drink water and get most of my fluid intake from black coffee. *gasp* People who tell you that coffee is dehydrating are either misinformed or actively lying to try to scare you into compliance. That's an old myth. There are good reasons to give up coffee for a short period of time after surgery, or even for the long term if it turns out that your new system can't handle it. For example, coffee is acidic and hard on healing wounds! So bathing your newly chopped up stomach in it is not such a great idea. But put aside the "it's dehydrating" reason because it really just isn't. If anyone tells you otherwise, ask them to show you the published, peer reviewed scientific studies backing up their claims. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/milk-and-other-surprising-ways-to-stay-hydrated/?_r=0 ("In other words, coffee and beer are not dehydrating, despite common beliefs to the contrary." -- from an article about a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)