Fiddleman

Thank you for your comments on Insanity. They are really helpful. Question: if you could do it again, would you do t25 or insanity? The one negative I keep reading about on insanity is people get injured. I do not want injury, but do not mind discomfort if it is going to result in a gain. I am a fairly fit guy that does not need to lose any weight. Furthermore, I have pretty decent fat percentage (18% currently) and good muscle definition. However, I want to build an even more awesome athletic male physique. Will Shaun T help me with this? Thanks.

Op - why are you so angry? In every thread? We are just trying to help.

If you happen to like eating out, you can save a lot of money by eating during happy hour. This is true especially if there are two of you to split a meal. There are a lot of bar food type items (e.g. nachos) that end up on the menu you want to avoid, but there are other good choices like lettuce wraps, satay, meat balls, sliders sans bun, etc. These end up being between 5-10 in price and can split without worry about left overs. A lot of restaurants also have been adding " small plates" to their menus knowing most will order 2-3 ala carte style. Little do they know (or perhaps they do know...), a small plate is perfect size for WLS guests and significantly less than ordering an entree. And no left overs, depending on how much you eat and/or if you are splitting. Hope these ideas are helpful in reducing eating out costs.

I really enjoyed reading your post. Thanks! I am sure it will help many.

If it helps (it may not), my WLS center food advancement plan: 1. Clear liquid- day 1 2. liquids (protein shakes, Soups, etc)- week 1-3 3. Purée- week 4-5 4. Solids - after week 5 I did liquids (phase 2) until solid phase (skipped purée). After week 5, my solids were 2-3 ounces of soft food like salmon. It wasn't until month two that I could eat chicken and pork (still in 1-3 oz quantities). Hamburger and beef did not happen successfully until month 5 (tried a few times after month 3, but it did not work). The nut recommended we get used to eating 1/3 a cup or 3 oz of food a meal at least for 6 months. That is about how much I could eat, but I measured almost every meal. After 6 months, I started to eat more and more. Today at 19 months, I still can only manage 3-4 oz of chicken, but I can eat more of non dense food like salad, chili and the like. Yet I am not eating based on fullness, but satisfaction. It takes a few months to be able to read your body to get an intuition about satisfaction versus edge of fullness. I made a deliberate decision to not eat sliders, extra carbs, starches, etc during the first 6 months to maximize weight loss. And it worked. I lost 100% in 7 months (180 #). Today it is really easy to eat just enough to satisfy, but it took quite a few months to build these habits. These are just some thoughts for your consideration.

Actually- yes, I would say that is a lot of food for a few weeks out. Maybe you need to force yourself to go through the food stages even though your sleeve appears to be far more advanced (and healed). This is not a criticism. Just a suggestion. If you forcibly slow down in the food advancement, you will have more time to lay a foundation that may. yield faster weight loss. What do you think? It is too bad your sleeve, unfortunately, is not helping you more. It means you need to be more in control in terms of measuring, limiting now instead of later when you must do it.

it might help certain individuals to know which food to abstain from.

Scout - that is a very impressive body fat %. Do you find it hard to maintain? I certainly do even though my diet is nearly spot on and I am a very active guy. I had 13% last year, but now sit around 16-18%. What are your secrets?

It happens to everyone. Sometimes it is caffeine that increases the insulin response leading to the munchies. Sometimes it is good old fashion stress. Maybe it is a combination of the artificial sweeteners in your sugar free drinks. Or maybe your body really is looking for another nutrient like good fats in its attempt to achieve homeostasis. Regardless, try drinking water first. Next try eating some cheese. Seriously. Good fat signals the brain for satiety and your cravings will ease. When this happens to me, I go eat a baby bell lite and that usually does the trick. Be sure you are eating a proper ratio of the macros (carbs, proteins and fats) daily. Also make sure you are eating enough calories to offset the gym workouts. What do you do at the gym and how many calories do you eat a day?

For me, definitely protein bars. I have to not buy them because it is way too easy to eat 2 at a time.

All is definitely not lost. The sleeve will work for you as long as you work for it. As cryptic as this sounds, it boils down to eating foods that encourage restriction (eg lean protein), if you have trouble with a balanced diet, drinking plenty of water and exercising. I think the strongest "free" benefit of the sleeve, and perhaps the other surges as well, is that it gives you a good 6-12 months to build a good foundation of eating and exercise strategies before it finishes healing and you are left to fly on your own. Once the sleeve heals, you will have the ability to work around it, but the key is not to. Simple as that.

Eliminate all the fear and secrecy around WLS and loose skin by dating someone who has had WLS. There certainly a lot of fish in that pond. Just a thought.

In response to your comment about optimal Protein consumption: Men: 40 g every 2-2.5 hours Women: 30 g every 2-2.5 hours I try and optimize every day, but typically range, on average, 25-40 G protein every 3 hours. Any more than that and you are either wasting it (passed on through) or it is converted into stored fat. The exception might be casein protein when taken at night. I am not positive. My shaker typically contains: 1. Post workout: 40 g Optimal Nutrition HydroBuilder 2. Bed time: 60 g optimal nutrition Gold Standard Casein For Breakfast, I have recently been drinking the chocolate pure protein shake from costco with 1/2 cup Fiber one (not mixed!!), but might instead have 1/2 cup steel oats mixed with scoop of Hydrobuilder mixed with 1/4 cup fiber one.

I like to eat steel oats every day as it is considered a resistant starch: http://authoritynutrition.com/resistant-starch-101/ Read the article. It has so many amazing benefits from fat loss to insulin resistance to reduction in inflammation. I also eat Fiber one cereal, but do not know if it is considered a resistant starch or not. Both fuel me for my workouts.

I hope there are not any bugs in how it determines if you met goal or not. That could drain your cc if it claims you are not meeting goal when you really are. I wonder how the software makes this decision and want to research it some more first.

Size 28 pants is pretty tiny, especially after only a few months. And a small shirt?? Congrats!! Are you at goal pretty much?

For real? I enjoy exercising 5-6 days a week so look forward to earning some coin. The only issue I see is eating 1200 calories a day described above. I eat way more.

For now I am going to consider it an asset rather than a liability to be able to drink a lot of water daily.

As vets, how many of you do this? Is it frowned upon? I guzzle water quite well and can blast through 32 oz in under a few minutes. It occurred to me maybe this is not something I want to be good at, but it makes it very easy to drink and drink all day long, like a race horse.

Yes, I realized this after posting it. Do not know how to move it though. Maybe a host can help me out with that.

By "vets", I mean post 1 year and later. The post op newbies should definitely drink according to advice from wls team. Usually this starts out as sipping until the sleeve allows a better velocity. After 1 year, everyone should not have water restriction that they had 1st few months. I know that I have to drink more than average because of high intensity workouts, high protein consumption and use of supplementation. Need to keep system clean. I also have a desire to drink water often because of thirst and water is very satisfying. So my questions remains: is it a good thing to chug? Is it a bad thing? Does it matter?

My wife and I are considering going on an all-inclusive vacation to Mexico where basically eating is buffet style. I am a little hesitant to take this vacation because I know my eating patterns now don't jive very well with this type of eating. I feel like I would be wasting money by going because my eating would be fairly limited. Also remembering the last time I took a similar trip on my honeymoon about 12 years ago when my weight issues really started to climb and get out of control. Basically, we need to use it soon because it is a promotional trip we bought a year or two ago, before I even considered this surgery. If we don't use it soon we will be out a good chunk of change. I want to go primarily for relaxation and force myself to recharge. I know I can count on my VST friends for some advice. Thanks!

The skinny pack sounds interesting. Hope it works for you.

Agree: I eat just like you (clean) and do not usually count calories. Thought I would put it out there about potential hidden calories there.

Not sure it matters, but bcaas do seem to have calories despite the label not listing them (some FDA rule allows it to be omitted). So my current reading says 1 g bcaa is 6 calories from a couple body building threads. Not a big deal if you take between 5-15 g of it. I take way more then that daily and I suspect you do too. Another argument states bcaas do not participate in the normal digestion process and, hence, may not fully be converted into glucose. Ergo, no calories. However, bcaas are just a molecularized form of Protein and by that argument, each gram should have 4 calories. I wish the answer on whether bcaas have calories or not had a clear answer. It might not really matter for us that burn a lot of calories from gym work, but it is still something to think about...