Bufflehead

How many calories and carbs are you eating each day? Are you hitting your protein goals?

I can eat 3 oz. of dense protein (chicken, beef) + an ounce or two of veggies. I can eat 4 oz of fish + an ounce or two of veggies. 3 oz. of dense protein is actually enough to make me quite satisfied though. However, carb-based foods and sweets are deadly. I have almost no restriction with them. So for the most part I stay away.

Get a burger (preferably a grilled chicken burger) and throw away the bun, or ask them to wrap it in lettuce instead of a bun. No high calorie add-ons like cheese, mayo, "special sauce" etc. though!

Honestly, this isn't something a message board can help you with. You need to be in touch with your surgical team (or PCP if you went out of country) and be very assertive in describing what is happening and asking for help. They need to help you. If what you are going through is normal, they can at least help you find ways to deal with it, but IMO lots of vomiting and not being able to keep anything down is not normal. If it is caused by the tablets (they can tell you that, not us), they may be able to prescribe a liquid version of the medication that would be easier to tolerate. Good luck!

Just divide your serving -- I usually cut it in half, then cut one of the halves into quarters. Eat one quarter (max) and eat very slowly. Just kind of push the rest of the food around on your plate. You definitely want to under-eat rather than over-eat. It's better to walk away from the table a little hungry than to get sick at the table! So just eat a little bit and leave it at that.

@@BigInBoston not necessarily a red flag at all. I would ask the office manager or patient advocate for stats -- maybe call in advance and just let them know this is something you are interested in. If they can't or won't provide stats, that would be a red flag to me. Now, they may not be able to rattle them off right when you call, but they should be able to tell you something like, "let me get those numbers together and call you back in a couple of days."

I set up an initial consultation with the surgeon that was recommended to me and asked him for stats when we met.

@@lat72 if you haven't heard anything after 5 days, I would start by calling your surgeon to see if they have heard anything. If not, wait a couple more days, try your surgeon again, if still no response, then call Cigna. You want to be active and involved without making the people at the insurance company consider you a nuisance . . . it can be a fine line to walk!

Normally within 10 working days but it really depends on your luck in which claims reviewer gets assigned your file, how busy they are, how fast they work, etc. Mine was approved in under 24 hours but I don't think that is typical. ETA you may want to check in with your surgeon's office once your paperwork has been submitted -- they will often hear back by fax or phone, while the insurance company sends you something by snail mail. So they tend to get word well before the patient does.

@@malvarez1210 The World According to Eggface has tons of great recipes for post-wls eating, organized by stage, type of food, etc.: http://theworldaccordingtoeggface.blogspot.com/ She does include some foods that were not permitted at all on my plan (such as potatoes) so you want to pick and choose your recipes carefully to make sure they are in compliance with your plan.

There really is no "we" in the world of post-wls, unless you are talking to someone who had the same surgery with the same surgeon and the same bariatric team. When I was at your stage my limits were 800 calories and 60 carbs per day. For your limits, you probably want to contact your own bariatric team. There are some teams out there that refuse to give their patients calorie limits and tell them just to focus on protein and liquid instead -- your team may be one of them. Personally I think those teams are doing their patients a huge disservice, but I guess it's an approach that works for some people.

Two weeks off from work for me -- I have a mostly desk job. I actually probably should have taken three weeks off as I was still exhausted and kind of scattered at two weeks. Exercising -- your surgeon should give you instructions about when you can start exercising and what kind of exercising you can do. You can (and should) start walking immediately but anything involving the core is usually at least a few weeks out, and exercise involving weights is typically several weeks out. Good luck!

Clearly this is something to discuss with your surgeon and get a second opinion, if needed, from another surgeon/medical professional. However, it is my understanding that the DS will not help with reflux (you keep your sleeved stomach and the sleeved stomach is what causes some people to experience reflux). However, bypass is 95% effective in curing reflux. As far as weight loss goes, both are great surgeries but DS does, according to statistics, result in more weight loss and less likelihood of regain than bypass -- but you would want to look at actual statistics and contemplate whether the difference in stats is worth it in terms of reflux. And of course you know this but you would also want to address why you regained -- there is no surgery in the world that will prevent regain (or weight loss failure) if you are not 100% committed to healthy eating habits for life. Good luck!

1) yes, against my surgeon's advice ("it's a scam, it won't prevent hair loss") 2) it didn't, unless you count growing unwanted facial hair and body hair as "working"

When I was at your stage, my limits were: --no more than 1000 calories per day --no more than 60 grams of carbs per day --no liquid calories or snacks other than protein shakes --no grains, no starchy veggies, no sweets Good luck to you!

I was allowed peanut butter in weight loss, but only 1 T. (16 grams) per day max and I had to weigh it by the gram, not measure by the spoonful. Early on it was fine when I couldn't eat much, but eventually I gave it up because it was just too calorically dense to be able to keep eating it and keep losing weight.

Oh yes, I've posted here several times about this issue with biotin. It doesn't stop hair loss, but it promotes hair growth -- the issue is, you can't tell it where to work and where not to work! I ended up with massive quantities of facial hair plus new blooms of heavy growth basically everywhere south of my navel. Total waste of money!

I have to agree -- normally I am all about following your surgeon's orders, but that's with the basic underlying assumption that your surgeon isn't following some crackpot theory that no one else in the world follows. Get protein. I will say, you don't need extra calories -- your body is perfectly capable of getting the fuel it needs from your fat cells. Having an abundance of caloric energy stored in massive quantities of fat cells is why we all ended up needing bariatric surgery. Protein is a different matter -- the only place your body "stores" protein, which it needs, is in your muscles. I think refraining from protein supplements is a terrible idea. I think this may be the second time in 3+ years I have ever just said here that someone should go against what their surgeon said, but I can't help myself here. Good luck!

I didn't experience any stalls for the first six months because as my surgical team encouraged me, I did not weigh myself outside of my scheduled office visits with them. They told me that stalls are normal and natural but that people find them hard to accept, even when they know, intellectually, that's the truth. So they said that I would be much happier if I focused on how well I was complying with my eating program and exercise plans rather than how fast the weight was coming off. I have to say, they were right. I would really encourage you, if you absolutely cannot bear to put the scale away, to start using a program like trendweight.com which will help you focus on the big picture rather than day to day blips and weirdness, which I promise you is what you are seeing right now. Good luck!

First of all, coffee/caffeine is not dehydrating, that is a myth. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/01/13/262175623/coffee-myth-busting-cup-of-joe-may-help-hydration-and-memory You have lots of options -- you can add a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee to your protein shake of choice for an iced protein vanilla latte or iced protein mocha. You can use coffee-flavored protein powders such as Chike Iced Coffee or Syntrax Nectar Cappuccino (I recommend adding instant coffee to them as well as the coffee flavor might not be strong enough otherwise). For hot coffee protein drinks, my understanding is that you need to slowly mix the protein powder with lukewarm coffee until it forms a slurry, then gradually stir it into hotter coffee. This is supposed to prevent clumping. There are also specially-formulated cappuccino protein powders that are meant to be mixed with hot water or milk without clumping -- I think the Bariatric Pal store sells them. They use the same generic brand that you can find under different names at other online wls/protein/health supplies, so you might want to shop around for the best price. I usually found the best price at Nashua Nutrition: http://www.nashuanutrition.com/store/hot-drinks/ At Nashua Nutrition it's sold under the brand name HealthSmart. When I used this protein powder, I also added instant coffee to bump up the coffee flavor.

Keep drinking protein shakes to supplement what you can eat on puree. Don't try to force in more pureed type food.

I used the Eat Slower app when I was learning how to do this.

I'm assuming you have already tried Milk of Magnesia. If you haven't, use that and Dulcolax. If you have already tried standard remedies such as Milk of Magnesia and Miralax, go to a pharmacy and get a bottle of Magnesium Citrate. This *will* clear you out, but it is no fun at all. Basically, you'll need to be within easy range of a toilet (like no more than 15 feet away) for 8 - 12 hours and stock up on baby wipes beforehand. Don't take this any later than Monday or you may still be feeling the effects of it when surgery time rolls around.

@@ssflbelle my surgeon recommends Milk of Magnesia + Dulcolax for constipation. I have only needed it a couple of times post op, but when I did need it, it worked like a charm. Other people use Miralax with good results.

Sorry to be indelicate but is there any chance you are constipated? People can hold onto 5 -10 lbs of poop easily, and if you aren't going regularly, it will show up on the scale as a gain.