Bufflehead

@@Edavidson at five weeks out I was still on purees. I ate a lot of Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, refried beans, poached eggs, and protein shakes! I would also puree meat with a flavorful sauce, then heat it up in the microwave with a little cheese on top. It was like a little casserole - delicious! For example, I would puree roast chicken breast with low carb BBQ sauce, then melt some cheddar cheese on top. Have you tried anything along these lines? Or maybe Eggface's Ricotta Bake recipe?

The post-op gas pains are from the CO2 they pump into your body cavity to make laparoscopic surgery possible. Gas-X strips work on a different kind of gas in your digestive system, not on CO2 surgical gas, at least per my surgeon. He said that walking and rocking (when seated) are the only things that will help gas to escape. A heating pad placed where the gas is hurting you (usually in the shoulder area) can help reduce the pain. Usually the gas pains are gone within a couple of days. Mine were gone in under 24 hours. Good luck!

Yep, definitely work on training! Find a trainer (or dvd, book, etc.) who uses positive reinforcement such as a clicker and treats. I have a dog and three cats -- the dog was no problem. She is relatively large, but she doesn't pull or jump up or think she's a lap dog. The cats on the other hand . . . I was pretty good at keeping them gentle when I was awake, but dang it hurt that day the first week out of surgery when I was napping in bed on my back and my largest cat did a kamikaze dive from the top of the very tall headboard smack onto my tummy!

I wasn't allowed nuts for six months. Trail mix is too high carb for my plan period. I experimented with nuts but stopped because they are slider foods for me and I couldn't stop eating them. So, they are not allowed in my house!

I mix my cold protein shakes with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and hot protein shakes with 50/50 unsweetened vanilla almond milk and water. When I was using milk, I used Kroger Carbmaster milk. If you have Kroger grocery stores where you live, you might want to look for it. It has lower calories and carbs, but much higher protein, than regular skim milk, and comes in plain, vanilla, and chocolate. For shakes mixed with water, I found that the Unjury chicken soup protein powder was good for savory, and the Syntrax Nectar flavors such as Roadside Lemonade and Twisted Cherry were good for sweet.

I have several medical conditions that should get better with the surgery, arthritis in every major joint, weight loss can help with arthritis but it can't completely cure it - be sure to be realistic about your expectations! I have arthritis in my hips and knees. Things are *much* better since losing almost 200 lbs but I still need to take a couple Ibuprofen before strenuous, high-impact exercise. scoliosis of lower back, see above - weight loss will help but it won't cure you high cholesterol , high blood pressure, and acid reflux. cholesterol may or may not get better after surgery. It will depend in large part on your diet and exercise. Mine is a little better, not much - though it was never terrible to start with. High blood pressure often resolves immediately after surgery -- mine did! Acid reflux can actually be made worse by the sleeve, depending on the underlying cause of your reflux. If it is caused by a hiatal hernia, often that will be fixed by your surgeon and it will be better. That is what happened to me. But reflux from other causes can be exacerbated by the sleeve, so if you have bad reflux now and it isn't caused by a hernia, your surgeon may recommend bypass for you instead. Bypass is a great surgery to resolve acid reflux. In any event, you definitely want to discuss it with your surgeon. I have questions about liquid diet before operation and then liquid diet after operation, as well as how hard it is to adapt to your new stomach, such as throwing up/bowel problems when you eat wrong. I didn't have a liquid diet prior to surgery. Not every surgeon goes that route. I just had to eat high Protein, low carb, low calorie for a couple weeks. I was on four weeks of full liquids after the surgery. It really wasn't a big deal. I didn't throw up or have bowel problems! For starters, I really didn't eat wrong -- that's pretty much a choice that you make. I did get the slimies a couple of times. Once when my mineral supplement didn't agree with me and once when I accidentally ate too much when I was just starting out on purees -- I used the wrong size measuring spoon. Anyway, the slimies were certainly unpleasant but not the end of the world. Adaptation to my new stomach was guided by the strict and conservative regimen of my surgeon, my desire to follow that regimen, and my instinct to avoid eating the wrong foods or eating too much. Honestly it has not been hard or painful. Good luck to you!

No http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/05/detox-myth-health-diet-science-ignorance

A moderate amount of coffee (3-4 cups per day) is not dehydrating. It will help your hydration levels. Don't believe the old wives' tales that demonize coffee without any scientific evidence to back them up. http://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghealth/factbuster/stories/2014/02/27/3951831.htm http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/13/262175623/coffee-myth-busting-cup-of-joe-may-help-hydration-and-memory http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/does-coffee-dehydrate-you-new-study-debunks-myth http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084154

Whenever your surgeon says it is okay . . .

Two weeks for me.

Get an insulated lunch bag and an ice pack and take Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. Mashed potatoes are loaded up with carbs and have almost no protein - it's not what I would recommend.

When I was on liquids I drank hot beef broth with steak seasoning added in because I was so sick of the sweet stuff! And the Unjury chicken soup protein mentioned above.

You definitely need to check with your insurance to get their rules -- preferably in writing. If you have a member handbook, it may be in there. You need to know whether they consider the weight at your initial meeting with your surgeon or other weights along the way. You also need to know whether losing weight successfully as part of your pre-op diet is a required criterion for approval. That really varies, not just by insurance company but even from one company's policy to the next. For example, my insurance policy required me to prove I needed the surgery by *failing* to lose weight on the pre-op supervised diet. That was easy enough for me to do, I've been failing at losing weight my whole life. Anyway, I wish I could offer you some definite answers to your questions but really the only ones who can do that are at your insurance company. Your surgeon's insurance coordinator may also be able to help -- particularly if you work for a large employer, chances are the coordinator has worked with that policy before and knows exactly what it calls for. Good luck!

I was super morbidly obese, extreme sounded like the way I needed to go. If you hope to be around for the next 30-40 years, the best thing you can do for your health is to be a normal weight. Your odds of getting there as an obese person are pretty small. My stomach functions just like it used to, there's just less room down there. I need to be careful to get adequate nutrition and vitamins in, but there is no reason I shouldn't live a long and healthy life.

I love them! I use a half serving to make my protein shakes because otherwise the calories and carbs are too high for my plan. Then I add in some additional flavorings to make up for half the protein powder being missing. For example, I use their coffee protein powder just about every morning -- I make it with one scoop (their standard serving is two scoops), add in a couple teaspoons of instant coffee granules, and mix with unsweetened vanilla almond milk. If you have a Kroger near you, you may want to look into their CarbMaster milks - also really good to mix with shakes, fewer calories and carbs and a lot more protein than regular skim milk.

I was given decaf in the hospital the day after surgery -- make sure you follow your surgeon's/RD's plan though.

probably constipation and leftover retained fluids from surgery. Don't panic, it happens a lot. Stay off the scale for a while and keep following your program, you'll do great!

No, my entire bariatric team would have come down on me like a load of bricks if I tried anything like that. I don't think I could have anyway.

Getting in a good amount of healthy fat every day will help your dry hair. So that's a place to start. I think the most important thing you can do right now is to stop comparing yourself to other people. It's making you frustrated and unhappy. To quote Teddy Roosevelt, comparison is the thief of joy. Our bodies don't always behave like we think they should -- they are not computers where we put in the numbers, run an equation, and always get the exact and desired answer. And they certainly don't all behave the same way! If you are not tracking your intake, I would suggest you give that a shot for at least a few weeks. Set yourself guidelines in terms of calories, carbs, protein, and fat, and work on those carefully. Measure/weigh what you eat. This will give you a picture of what you are actually taking in and what can be tweaked, either higher or lower. All that said, it may be that your body is just doing what it wants, at its own pace, and tweaking isn't really called for. That's where the "stop comparing yourself" bit gets important IMO - it's hard to focus on your success and how well things are going when there is *always* someone losing faster, finding it easier, etc. You may even want to walk away from this forum and others if it is just making you unhappy (not that I want to see you or anyone else actually leave - but do what you need to in order to preserve your happiness and spirit). Finally, I'll say I'm really angry at your surgeon and his assistant for telling you that you will achieve a set amount of weight loss in a specified time. I think that's incredibly irresponsible. I will tell you that I lost a lot less than 40 lbs in the first two months after surgery (yes I was following all the rules) and my bariatric team was thrilled with my progress and said I was doing great. So I think that you should silently tell your surgeon and his PA to stuff it

For the first few weeks out of surgery, I would fill up a 32 oz. Bubba Keg with ice and cold water and just work on sipping it regularly. I didn't need a spreadsheet and a timer, but I kept track of how much fluid I got each day. I have used MyFitnessPal religiously since surgery. Just be sure to change your daily nutritional goals using the "custom" settings and set them so they match your program. Don't set yourself out to do an hour of cardio until you can drink more than a few sips per 10 minutes. You'll get there eventually, I promise, but at the outset just focus on sipping and walking.

ha ha, my surgeon's was even more conservative - four weeks of liquids, four weeks of purees, then four MONTHS of soft foods. And the types of food permitted on each phase were also very strictly limited. No high carb foods etc., as well as amounts, how often to eat. It wasn't easy - but I made up my mind when I chose my surgeon that I would follow his rules whether I liked them, agreed with them, or even understood them. Doing it my way wasn't working, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have been 300+ lbs and seeking bariatric surgery. You'll get through it before you know it - it seems long at the time, but it's really just a blip!

I had to have someone change the kitty litter for me (well, for my cats, I don't PERSONALLY make use of kitty litter because I was on a lifting restriction for the first four weeks. Other than that, nothing at all.

Sure caffeine is a diuretic . . . so is water . . . "diuretic" just means it makes you pee. And caffeine is barely more diuretic than water so if you are going to stop having caffeine because it's "diuretic" you should probably stop drinking water too. Coffee won't have any dehydrating effect on you unless you are unused to drinking coffee and drinking tons of it. There may be plenty of other good reasons to avoid or limit coffee/caffeine, but potential dehydration isn't one of them, at least not for most of us. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/13/262175623/coffee-myth-busting-cup-of-joe-may-help-hydration-and-memory http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/caffeinated-drinks/faq-20057965 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140402-are-coffee-and-tea-dehydrating http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/does-coffee-dehydrate-you-new-study-debunks-myth http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0084154

I added small amounts of syntrax nectar unflavored to soups and tea (make sure it isn't too hot), as well as to things like yogurt and cottage cheese to up the protein a bit. It is relatively low calorie and carb as far as protein powders go. Keep in mind that "unflavored" doesn't mean it is tasteless, just that it hasn't had an extra flavor added to it like chocolate or vanilla. Unflavored protein powder tastes like whey, which is not the best in the world but you can hide the taste as long as you don't add too much. Other companies such as Unjury also make unflavored protein powder. GNC has their own in-house brand of unflavored protein powder called Pro Performance. You can buy samples of Syntrax and some other brands (Bariatric Advantage, Next) of unflavored protein powder here: http://www.nashuanutrition.com/store/protein-powders/protein-powder-samples-1-serving.html That way you don't have to spend $42 to figure out whether you can use it or not. Good luck!

It may depend on your insurance but I met with my surgeon and team before I went to my PCP for approval.