Bufflehead

About an hour after I was transferred from the surgery recover room to my own hospital room, the staff brought me a tray with all sorts of drinks, most with straws, and told me to start sipping. I followed orders, drinking with straws -- never had any problems with them. I stopped using straws once I went home from the hospital, because I've never liked them (I think my mother convinced me that straws, like chewing gum and birthday parties, were things that were fine for small children but should be stopped after elementary school). But when I was using them in the hospital they gave me no issues whatsoever.

1. Take any anti-nausea meds you have been prescribed such as zofran 2. Call your doctor.

Some people go through this after surgery. Eventually your digestive tract will settle down and go back to normal. In the meantime, the hospital gave you very good advice -- lots of liquids, no immodium. Good luck!

A tablespoon of guacamole, if you are on purees, would usually be okay. Chips? NO. For a lot of reasons.

@@jess9395 the plan from my bariatric team was: 3 small meals per day plus supplemental protein shakes ("no snacks other than protein shakes" was the exact wording) to make up any protein differential. Other than the 3 small meals + protein shakes, no caloric intake for the day. Everything was logged of course, and we had calorie limits, carb limits, and protein targets to comply with in addition to the general format of 3 small meals + protein shakes. Plus a whole bunch of other rules about the kinds of food to eat -- no grains, no starchy veggies, no sweets, no tropical fruits -- stuff like that.

It's not a weird food but I used to absolutely loathe eggs -- just the smell of them made me nauseated -- and now I love eggs. Other than that, my tastes have stayed pretty much the same. I guess one other thing isn't so much taste changing but a different focus -- I always liked sardines, but didn't eat them terribly often. Now I consider them a verging-on-perfect food (calcium, iron, protein, healthy omega acids, plus low calorie!) and eat them almost every day. ETA my favorite dinner combines sardines & eggs, which I guess some people would think is weird! I basically mash up sardines with some avocado or kale, mix in some sauce (like curry sauce or bbq sauce) and bake in the oven with an egg on top. People do tend to look at me strangely when I start raving about my sardine kale egg bake.

I didn't even get on the scale for the first several weeks after surgery because I knew the results (or lack thereof) would make me crazy.

I started on my pre-op diet and continued doing it basically as soon as I woke up from surgery. No reason not to, and it is incredibly helpful.

as per @@James Marusek 's horror story about the pharmacy wait -- see if you can get your prescriptions written and filled before the surgery, not after.

Eggs, lentils, quinoa, tempeh.

If you don't want to talk about surgery, you can just say "I'm working with my doctor on weight loss and am under strict orders to eat very small portions and a low carb diet." If they say, "come on, it's Thanksgiving, take the day off!" you say, "no thank you, my doctor and I agreed that taking the day off is one of the things that has led me to repeated negative food patterns in the past, so I won't be taking any days off until I've reached my goal weight and maintained successfully for several months." If they say, just take a bite of pie, it won't kill you! You can say, "no thank you, I don't eat that kind of food right now." (Note - don't say you can't eat it, say you don't eat it -- in my experience saying you don't eat that food is much less likely to lead people into arguing with you that yes you can eat it. Same with "I shouldn't eat it" -- don't say that, it just makes people argue with you. "I don't eat that" tends to be very effective). If they say, "Gosh, you are wasting away, you are too thin" you can reply "thanks for noticing my weight loss, I've been working hard at it." If they want to keep going with their rude comments, keep repeating the exact same thing. They'll eventually get the point that they are being rude. Good luck!

All grains were completely off limits during weight loss phase on my plan. As you can see, plans vary a lot. You should check with your team to see what yours allows.

Follow your team's instructions. Eat three small meals a day and supplement with protein shakes to get your protein in. Do not overeat. These are exactly the instructions I received -- I followed them and lost over 200 lbs and hit my goal weight.

Bring a pillow to tuck between yourself and the seat belt and ask whoever is driving to take it easy on curves and bumpy patches and you'll be fine.

The best season is whatever season comes up when you can afford it or get approved. It's great to think ahead and be prepared for whatever particular challenges might come your way from the weather or whatever else, but don't schedule your surgery based on the season unless you absolutely must (for example, a teacher who only gets summers off). Good luck!

https://epicbar.com/wild-game-detail/34 80 calories, 12 grams protein, 2 grams carbs, 0 grams sugar.

You will end up eating the portions that most people should be eating anyway. Smaller than the gigantic heaps and platters of food served at an American restaurant -- but normal in many parts of the world! 3 ounces is considered a standard serving size of chicken, what people *should* be eating by nutritional experts. 3 ounces of chicken is right around what you will end up eating -- not immediately post-op, but eventually. This is just an example of course. Most people in the US (your profile doesn't say where you are from) are either overweight or obese. Most people eat too much food. You will eat healthy amounts of food, not giant platters or chowing down on endless refills at a buffet -- and that is a good thing. I do not find it challenging in the least to meet my nutritional needs 3.5 years post op. I try to focus on healthy foods and not fill up on crap with no nutritional value. As long as you focus on healthy foods, you will be fine.

The only thing I added post-op was a high potency multi-vitamin. I was already taking D3, B12, and iron due to documented deficiencies pre-op, and I kept up with those. I don't take calcium supplements post-op (I'm an outlier in that regard though) and didn't take them pre-op either.

On my plan I was to stay under 800 calories per day for the first six months.

You may have eaten too much -- how much did you eat? Be sure to weigh your portions before eating and keep them small. Don't depend on your healing, traumatized stomach to give you appropriate signals about when to stop eating. Another possibility is that the texture wasn't right. Many people as far along as you are are eating pureed food right now, not just "mashed with a fork." Try taking the fish, adding a little sauce of some kind that you like (tartar sauce, curry sauce, mayo, whatever works well for you with fish) and running it in the food processor for a bit to smooth it out and make it easier to digest and see if that might help. If neither of these approaches work, definitely get in touch with your bariatric team and ask for guidance. Good luck!

I don't think that is common. I would be insistent with your bariatric team about follow up to determine what might be going on. Good luck!

Every program varies a lot in how they run their pre-op diet. The best thing you can do if your team has not given you clear instructions is to call them up and pester them for more information. Good luck!

My idea is to ratchet down your expectations about the speed of your weight loss. You are putting a lot of unnecessary stress on yourself and your wishes for how fast weight loss will proceed may not be entirely realistic. I lost a total of 40 lbs in the first three months (I started at a higher BMI than most btw) and I was pleased and my bariatric team told me I was doing fantastic. In my book you should be thrilled about your weight loss. Occasionally stalls and pauses along the way are completely normal. Don't worry about them unless you think you are not following your program correctly to the tune of eating several hundred/thousand calories per day more than you should be, which I would guess you are not!

If you are losing weight and are content with how the weight loss is going, I wouldn't worry about eating too much (assuming you are not eating to the point of physical discomfort or pain, which you should never do). If your weight loss slows down significantly or stops, you would want to reduce the amount you are eating. (Don't fall for the completely unscientific stuff about "starvation mode" or you need to eat more in order to lose weight -- if any of that were true, anorexics would be fat and people in concentration camps would be chubby).

The only comments I have gotten about either my weight or looks or personality have been 100% positive, and I certainly feel great. Honestly I think whoever was rude enough to say you looked better when fatter was being a passive aggressive jerk.