joatsaint

At one month out, I was eating a lot of ground chicken and refried beans with salsa.

I didn't have a food funeral. I was at my lowest point when I decided to have surgery and I hated everything about food and the control it had over my life. But I've read many accounts of people having food funerals. Some think that they need one last pig out to say goodbye to the foods they'll never be able to eat again, but the truth is most people can eat whatever they want once their new stomachs heal.It's just the quantity that's reduced.

I know I'm close to full when I start feeling pressure in my stomach and I feel the gas bubbles manouvering their way arond the food in my stomach - trying to get out. When I get overly full I feel a poking sensation at the bottom of my throat - have that sensation a few times and you'll quickly teach yourself how much you can eat before you're full! :-P

I think you're just going through the same phase we all go through.

I think I started vitamins about 1 month out - after I was back on full foods. To test my stomach's reaction, I broke the tablet in half and swallowed it. After 5 minutes, I didn't feel any stomach distress, so I took the other half. I've been taking the whole tablet since then.

Congrats! I made the same mistake. I woke up and felt a hard lump on my side. When I pressed on it, I realized it was my ribs! When you start feeling the car seat press on your butt bone, let us know! :-P I started feeling that new sensation about a month ago.

I have found that massage works pretty good to tighten up loose skin, especially around the mid section. After showering, I knead and roll my gut like a ball of dough to stimulate circulation and move the fat cells around. I noticed that doing pushups started to tighten the loss skin on the back of my arms and figured getting more circulation around my gut would help do the same.

My gas pains went away by day 7. I walked A LOT and just moving around seemed to ease the pressure. My 1st couple of days, I felt like I had one of those Alien "chest burster" critters sitting under my ribcage. :-)

At 6 weeks post-op, I was still on an 800 cal/day diet. I would have broken the quest bar into 2 and eaten half in the morning and half in the afternoon rather than the whole thing at once.

I would consider it a puree, but I wouldn't want to eat it. When I was at the puree stage, my stomach could not tolerate something as fiberous as oatmeal. My stomach was limited to cream of mushroom soup or egg salad, along with my sugar free Jell-O and sugar free popsicles. Anything tougher than those made my stomach behave like one of those tree branch grinders the road crews use. :-)

I went through the same thing. I just acclimated myself to eating cold food. Now, it's just a way of life to eat stuff that is room temp or straight out of the fridge. The benefit is that now I don't have to wait on the microwave to heat things up! :-)

To keep my diet under control, I stick with eating a lot of protein and high fiber vegetables like green beans. Only after I've eaten my fill on those types of foods do I allow myself a very small portion of dessert. I usually measure it out in a normal coffee cup. 1/2 a cup is my normal serving size for desserts.

I believe in everything in moderation. If I get caught up in a "forbidden food list", I'll just obsess about the things I can't have. So if I want a piece of chocolate, I eat a Hershey's sugar free chocolate - it's about 30 calories, and tastes almost the same as regular chocolate. I just pay special attention to my total caloric intake for the day and don't allow myslef to over indulge on foods that don't have any real nutritional value.

I really like Premier Protien chocolate out of the 3 brands I"ve tried. It's really smooth and silky - like chocolate milk.

Thanks for the update. I didn't realize Slim Fast had a low carb option. Have you tried Premier Protein chocolate, I love those things!

Congrats on having a successful surgery. Keep walking and sipping on your water!

I go to Golden Corral about twice a month. I eat about 1 small platefull. I know I'm not getting my money's worth, but I go there with my friends to socialize - it's not about the food. I get a wicked thrill about not being able to eat as much as my friends. While they're going back for their third plate, I'm still working on my first piece of steak and Brussell sprouts. I consider it the best $12 I spend all week!

My psych eval seemed to be all about me having realistic expectations of life after surgery - how much weight I expected to lose, how fast, knowing that it would take work and dedication to be successful and the dietary changes I would have to live with. There was also a 500 multiple choice questiannaire that seemed to be mainly focused on determining if you were a balanced person. You might watch my video and I tell about my psy eval.

I wasn't eating much of anything for the 1st few months, but somewhere around 6 months I tried some popcorn and had no troubles with it. And it easily filled me up. 1 of the Orville Riddenbocker single serving bags was 2 meals for me. Now at 11 months, I can eat a whole bag. It's not a slider food for me. I believe the reasons to stay away from popcorn during the 1st few months is: 1. It is possible to get pieces of the kernal in your stomach's staple line. 2. It has very little nutrition and you need to get as much nutrition in every bite you can.

I know where your coming from. It really got me down when I felt I was too far gone to lose the weight - the thought of the depravation, food cravings, and years it would take to get down to a "normal" weight level. It can get overwhelming and I figured why fight it. After years of failing to control my weight and gaining more and more weight, I was, as Ralphie May said, "Way past a diet Coke fix!" You have to hang in there and keep trying to get approved.

Every step you take towards your goal is important and it is a huge deal. I chickened out on my first attempt to do the surgery. It took me another month before I realized I needed it and committed.

If could have stayed on a diet, then I wouldn't have needed the surgery. Don't beat yourself up about it. I had a very hard time with the pre-op diet too. After surgery, my entire mind set changed about food and it's like night and day. No more cravings, I don't obsess about certain flavors. Post-op, I could do the pre-op diet all over again and not think twice about it, whereas before, I was always focused on how hard it was to stay on the liquid diet, missing solid food, and certain flavors. I don't know what changed in my brain after surgery, maybe it was the reduction of the ghrelin homorne, not having sugar and high carb foods for months post-op, or if surgery was the kick in the pants I needed. I just know it worked for me and I'd do it all over again in a minute!

I had the same feeling post-op for about 5 days. I knew exactly how that guy in Aliens felt as that critter burst out of his chest! The only real cure is time and walking. I wasn't in any kind of shape to walk oustside in the cold last December when I was sleeved, but I did get up and walk around the house. I tried to get in about 20 minutes of total walking time per day and just kept on imporving on that.

I stocked up on chicken broth, cream of chicken Soup, cream of mushroom soup, EAS low carb shakes (but I have switched to Premier Protein chocolate shakes), Crysatal Light lemonade, sugar free popsicles and sugar free Jell-O. But don't buy a whole lot of anything. You won't be eating that much the first 2 weeks or longer. And I found that my taste buds changed after surgery. I gave away a case of chicken soup that I couldn't stand (before surgery I loved it).