butterfyeffect

I'm nine weeks out, and my diet is pretty varied. I haven't tried fresh veggies or fruit yet (my surgeon says 3 months for those) but I eat pretty much everything else in moderation. Typical day is three meals, and two Snacks, for instance, here is today's plan (I work nights, so keep that in mind: 5pm: Boca burger, on a Joseph's flax, wheat bran pita (I'll probably eat about 3/4) 10pm: Premier Protein shake 2am: homemade quiche with ham, cheese, broccoli 5am: string cheese 8am: 1/2 of a Thomas's bagel thin, with Peanut Butter That's about 750 calories, 75 grams protein, 30 grams net carbs according to MFP I average 600-800 calories per day, get at least 60 grams of protein, and try and keep the net carbs (carbs minus fiber) under 50. Hope this helps!

I can remember after my Mom's WLS, when she first got down to a size 14, she said she wanted to wear the pants inside out so that everyone could see the tag! Now she's a size 10! Congrats on the NSV, lot's more to come!

@@slimmindown I'm actually really happy to see that you don't track anymore. My mom had WLS and has been very successful, and she has never tracked anything. She just adds Protein powder to her morning coffee, and figures that covers her protein-wise. I have been tracking, mostly just to see that my Protein grams are at or above 60 per day. Once I can eat enough food that I can be reasonably sure I'm getting enough protein, I plan on stopping as well. I am of the mindset that I didn't have this surgery in order to be dieting for the rest of my life, I did it so that I'd be able to control my weight like a normal person does - by just eating enough to satisfy me, and making smart choices most of the time.

I'm in Sarasota, Florida. I was sleeved in Boca Raton, though so I don't go to any support meetings that my surgeon's office sponsors, it's just too far. So I would love to have an online support group!

I was sleeved on May 6th, and am down a total of 37 pounds. Am definitely seeing changes to my body shape, and love seeing my clothes get looser! @boccob81- I have just started feeling hunger in the last week or two. Usually starts 4-5 hours after my last meal, and more often than not, feels like heartburn. I have also noticed that I can eat much more than I used to - still way less than a pre-op meal, however, so I'm good with it... for instance, I just ate a "normal" portion of canned chili, whereas before I would have eaten the whole can, and probably half a dozen saltines, now I am satisfied, and even full on just the 1 cup portion (no crackers).

I was having the same problem a few weeks ago. I started eating softer, wetter foods like Soups, stews, curries, rather than say grilled fish. That seemed to solve it, and I just this past week or so have started adding back in some whole Proteins, like small bites of grilled chicken. Hope this helps... I was pretty miserable there for a couple of weeks though, so I know what you're going through.

Just wanted to add this thought: 14 pounds in one week is a lot. Your body is trying to figure out what's going on, it thinks you're starving, and it's holding onto every calorie that it can. Just stick with the plan, focus on eating plenty of Protein, and drinking lots of Water, and eventually your body will figure out that it is not starving, and you will start losing weight again. And remember that you have lost 14 pounds, which is probably way more than you would have lost in less than a month without having the surgery.

I was out for four weeks, due to the physical demands of my job. Honestly, I felt fine after 1 1/2-2 weeks, and would have gone back if my surgeon would have okayed it. But, that said, I enjoyed my four week vacation immensely!

1) The only time I've gotten the "stuck" feeling is when trying to swallow pills. I've just in the last couple of weeks been able to start taking most of my pre-op Vitamins again. 2) I've experienced rapid heart rate twice: both times were after drinking a higher calorie Protein shake than I am used to. Once I drank my husband's just to try it, once we were on the road, so I bought an ensure. Needless to say, I have never drank either again. 3) I think the energy thing may be all relative. If you're pretty sedentary, then you lose some weight during your pre-op/post-op diet, and start exercising you will likely feel more energetic just from that. If, on the other hand you've always been a high-energy person, the immediate post operative period where you need to rest once in awhile may seem like the end of the world. Again, all I have to compare is my own experience.

I am seven weeks out today, and I was definitely right where you are a few weeks ago. It's hard to explain to people who have never experienced it, but because I never felt hungry it was really hard to tell when I was full. I went through days where I threw up almost everything I ate, because I was measuring out what I thought would be an appropriate portion (say 1/4 cup of something like refried Beans, or a tablespoon of something firmer, like scrambled egg), eating it really slowly, but not being able to tell when to stop. There were literally no signals of fullness until I started sliming. Once that happened, I had about a 1 in 3 shot of keeping it down. Anyway, just in the past week or so, I have started to feel little signals like hunger coming from my stomach three or four hours after a meal. Along with those little hunger signals have come little full signals that happen several bites into my meal. If I really pay attention for them, and put my fork down when I get the first of the "full" signals, 9 times out of 10 now, I can keep a sliming episode from starting. Now I can eat almost 1/2 cup of wetter foods like Soup or chili, and maybe 1-2oz of denser Protein foods like fish. But I'm way more likely to end up sliming, and possibly vomiting after eating a denser food, even if I listen to the "full" signals. I hope this helps you realize there is a light at the end of the tunnel... it does get easier!

Good luck!!! I was where you are 7 weeks ago! I've had some tough moments since then, but overall, very happy with my decision.

I think it's just the surgeon's preference.

My doc cleared me at four weeks for anything. Prior to that I'd been lifting with just 5# weights (under my 10# weight restriction).

I can't wait to go shopping in a regular size clothing store and know that anything I see and like, I can try on. I don't have to go searching for the largest size on the rack, and hoping they have it.

I think everyone's doctor has a different opinion on this. I had my 6 week follow-up with my surgeon yesterday, and specifically asked about diet soda, as it's the one thing I truly miss. He said that the carbonation will make me belch more (and I already burp a lot) but if I didn't mind that, to go for it. Just as a once in awhile treat though, not everyday. He then went on to say the same thing about wine (Yay!)

You're still pretty early out. Your stomach is probably still quite swollen. Had my 6 week follow-up with my surgeon yesterday, and he said that I'll probably be another 2 weeks before the swelling is completely gone. Hang in there.

I am 6 weeks out, and I am wondering the same thing. Some meals I can eat almost 1/2 cup of food, others just a couple of tablespoons. I couldn't imagine eating 3oz of straight Protein. 1oz chicken or fish by itself, and I throw up. I have to have it in something, like I've done really well with chicken in curry sauce. But still, only probably an ounce of chicken in 1/4 cup of sauce. I'm still relying heavily on protein supplements to get me up to 60 grams per day. Fortunately, fluids haven't been a problem at all, getting at least 50oz in per day, not including my Protein shakes.

Well, it's been a few weeks since I've posted, due to me being out of town, and then adjusting back to work... but here I am, almost 6 weeks since my surgery, and feeling way more normal than I did last time I posted. Not to say that I am not still having challenges, but I'm definitely well on my way to recovery. About three weeks ago, my husband Dan and I headed up north to visit relatives. For this we flew. Now I have to give kudos to those of you who were sleeved (or banded, or had RNY) in Mexico, and flew home a few days after surgery, because my flight north was not a fun experience. My tiny tummy definitely did not like the changes in altitude. So, first lesson of my trip: Sit in an aisle seat on the plane. I did, in fact have an aisle seat, but even so, I still got to use my barf-bag on a plane for the first time ever! I never threw up, but I was doing a ton of spitting up into it, just praying for the fasten seat belts light to go out so I could run into the bathroom and upchuck my protein shake. Of course by the time that we were free to move about the cabin, I felt way better, and never actually had to vomit. Still, not my finest moment. So, after a three hour flight, we arrived at my in-law's home where, while my husband's immediate family knew that I had just had surgery, his visiting cousins didn't. That made for some weird mealtimes... I actually sat in a separate room from everyone else during dinner, claiming it was too crowded in the main room. Fortunately, Dan's cousins are vegans, so they really weren't eating the same foods as the rest of us, so maybe didn't notice that neither was I... I was on soft foods at this point, and had told my mother in-law that I could eat eggs... so she made me a quiche. Yeah, I threw that up into her hedge. It was a super-awkward time for me. Basically at this point, I hadn't really kept anything other than protein shakes down in days, so I was pretty much destined to vomit up almost anything else that I ate. Yet at the same time, I don't want to offend anyone, since they were going out of their way to make foods that I'd be able to eat. So, yeah, I took a lot of long walks around in Dan's parent's back yard, and in the woods behind my brother in-law's house while I was there. Next, Dan, myself, and my in-laws made the four hour road trip to where my parents live. Second lesson I learned on my trip: Riding in the back seat of a car may cause motion sickness. Now, I'm not going to say that my in-laws are not good drivers... but riding in the back of their van for four hours was torture for me. I have literally never gotten carsick in my entire life, but there I was, fighting off waves of nausea. I again, had only had a protein shake in the morning before we left, and spent almost the entire trip spitting up into a water bottle. Finally, about 3 hours in, Dan asked me if it would help if we cracked a window. After about 10 minutes of fumbling around in the front seat to figure out how to turn off the child-protective locks on the windows, my window was opened about two inches. Those two inches felt like freedom to me. They felt like life pouring back into my lungs. I spent the rest of the trip with my nose stuck out the window like a dog... but I got there in one piece, and perhaps more importantly, with my protein shake still in my stomach! So, we arrived in New York just in time for my mother's Memorial Day picnic. I think I've mentioned before that my family likes to eat. Here, it was a little different because everyone at the picnic knew that I'd had this surgery. Just nobody cared. Although my mom has had weight loss surgery, and knows what a soft diet looks like, I was presented with grilled chicken, pasta salad, watermelon, chips, buffalo chicken dip, and chocolate chip cookies. I ate about four bites of grilled chicken. I tried to wet it with BBQ sauce. I threw it up in my mother's bathroom. When I got back to the table, my mom said "Is your stomach empty now?" I lied and said no, just to not give her the satisfaction. I then ate about two bites of the pasta salad, which thankfully did stay down. When we left her house for my dad's, where we were staying, my mother presented me with a plastic baggy with three hard boiled eggs in it. "I thought you could eat these." "Uh, yeah. Why didn't you give them to me before I barfed up your chicken." (That's what I wanted to say. I didn't though.) Now, while I preferred staying at my Dad's house because the bed is comfier, and I love his dog, this presented it's own challenges, in that he does not cook. Not unless you count hot dogs or toast. He literally eats out seven days a week. And he lives at least a half hour from anywhere. So we spent a lot of time in the car. Here's my next lesson for when you're traveling with your sleeve: Full tummy and riding in a car do not mix. The first day I spent with my dad, I literally threw up everything that I attempted to eat. Threw up my protein shake at the restaurant where he, Dan, and the in-laws were eating breakfast. Threw up the quiche that I ordered for lunch (in a super-fancy hotel, I might add). Threw up the two bites of a chicken dumpling I tried to eat for dinner in my dad's truck! It did get better after Dan's parents went home to Massachusetts, and we picked up our rental car. Next Lesson: If you must ride in a car, better to be the driver. Not always a perfect solution, but it did cut back on the throwing up in the car episodes. The problems that I had for the rest of the trip were mainly just from me trying to be accommodating to everyone else, instead of the other way around. So, my final lesson is this: If you can, try and eat what you know you can tolerate, and on your own schedule, not everyone else's. Not always easy to do, especially when you're a guest in someone else's home, but when I look back on the ten days that I spent traveling, I know I would have been a lot more comfortable if I'd just said "You know what, I need fifteen or twenty minutes to just sit here and digest before we can go anywhere." more often.

No more travel in the immediate future! My next trip I have planned isn't until November, I should be good and healed by then!

Hi there! It's been over a week since I've last posted, and I've spent that time transitioning from liquids, to pureed food, and am now eating soft solids... but it hasn't been without it's trials... The first three days home from the hospital, my surgeon's plan calls for a pureed diet. For me, this consisted of mostly Greek yogurt, protein drinks, and some delicious pureed mushroom soup that my husband made for me. I'm sorry, but the idea of pureeing meat or fish or something just turned me off, so I didn't go there, but I feel like for those few days, I actually was doing well at getting in my protein in. Managed to get about 50 grams most days. And I have never had an issue getting my fluids in. I always get 50-64 ounces of straight fluid, not including my protein shakes. No, my big issue those first few days was with swallowing my pills. I was still having a fair amount of pain, so I was taking the Vicodin my surgeon prescribed probably twice a day, plus trying to take all of my vitamins, and the Pepcid. No matter what time I tried to take them, or what I took them with, I would inevitably get something "stuck" and end up "sliming" until I eventually vomited. More times than not, the pill itself stayed down and just water came out.... weird. This is a huge change from the pre-op me, who could swallow all 6 of my vitamins at once, and not flinch. Needless to say, I've stopped taking my vitamins in pill form, instead I got some calcium chews, and some Biotin chews (I'm very worried about losing hair), and I found these cool things at Costco that are like a Crystal Light powder that you put in your water, but they are chock-full of vitamins! I drink two of them a day in my water. So the only thing I'm still a little worried about is my Iron, but I just can't tolerate plain Iron pills, it makes me nauseous... and I've been doing enough vomiting lately without adding in anything that may upset my little tummy more! So on Post-op day 4, my surgeon's plan called for me to start trying some soft foods. On the list of soft foods allowed was soft baked fish. So my husband decided to cook dinner for us on Sunday, and made me a beautiful, tiny piece of tilapia, which he served over some soft polenta. It looked and smelled so delicious that I dug right in, and ate more than half of it without any regard to how my tiny tummy was handling it! With about one bite of food left on the plate, I realized what I had done, and knew I was in trouble. I spent the next two hours running into the bathroom. Every time I thought I was through, more would come out! It was awful, but not unexpected. I knew what I had done, and vowed to eat more slowly next time. Well, the next time turned out to be the following night, when I made what sounded like a wonderful recipe for a Ricotta cheese bake. But, yet again, it smelled and looked so good, I ate about half of the 1/4 cup portion that I had served myself way too fast, then got sick again... So, long story short, I am becoming a professional vomiter. I keep a pillow next to the sink to splint my incisions while I puke out whatever it is that I took one too many bites of. It's gotten better over the past day or two, as I've kind of learned to take one bite of something, and then wait about ten minutes to see how it will sit. If it seems to be settling well, I'll eat another two bites. But three bites of any soft or pureed texture food seems to be my limit. I've also become more severely lactose intolerant than I ever was pre-operatively. During my two week protein shake diet, I was able to enjoy at least one of the Premier chocolate shakes per day, as long as I took a lactaid pill with it. And I never had any issues with yogurt. Not the case post-operatively... I've sworn off of the Premier shakes entirely (too bad, because they pack 30 grams of protein in each one!), and as of yesterday, decided that the yogurt wasn't working either. So there went two big sources of protein. Between the vomiting, and the lactose intolerance, I've been really struggling to hit the protein goals set by my surgeon. I'm probably averaging about 40 grams/day, with a goal of 60 grams. So with all this talk about what's not working, this probably sounds like a pretty discouraging post. So let's talk about what is working! Foods that I can eat in small amounts with no issues: Eggs, refried beans, powdered protein shakes made with almond milk, and bananas. Sounds like a pretty short list, but here's the thing: I'm never hungry. Like, never. If I wasn't worried about my hair falling out, I would happily just drink my vitamin water all day and not eat at all. Once in awhile I get a craving for something, like yesterday I kept thinking about bagels, but it's never accompanied by actual hunger. It's just a craving, and it passes. Pain-wise, I haven't taken a Vicodin in three days, and prior to that I was only taking them at bedtime, and taking Tylenol during the day. Now I don't take either. I get an occasional twinge of pain under the incision on my left side (where they took the stomach out), but it goes away in a few seconds. As far as my surgical incisions go, all of my steri-strips (the little tape like things over my incisions) have fallen off, and I have to say, they look good! Three of them are completely healed over, and the last two just have tiny scabs on them. I've been putting vitamin E on them. And now... the big scale question. I have lost (drumroll please) 24 pounds since I started the pre-op diet, with 11 of those pounds having come off since surgery. So that's 11 pounds in less than two weeks, 24 pounds in less than a month. I am pretty pleased with that. And, hey, I just realized that 24 pounds is more than 10% of my starting weight, which is something I never managed to accomplish in months of sitting through meetings at Weight Watchers! The pictures below were taken yesterday. I decided after looking at someone else's before and after pictures to wear the same clothes in all of my progress pictures... I can really see a difference in how the shorts fit around my butt and thighs. My husband can't get over how much thinner my face is already. So overall, very pleased, despite all of the challenges! I have my first follow-up appointment coming up this Wednesday, and then I go out of town for 10 days, so I'll have some info to put in another update pretty soon!

It was definitely swelling. I didn't weigh myself for more than a week after I got home, because I didn't want to get discouraged!

I had VSG surgery on May 6th, and according to my surgeon's plan, I have been on soft foods since Day 3... but for the past couple of days, I haven't kept anything down, even things that I previously tolerated well, like eggs. Part of the problem might be that I'm having a really hard time knowing when I'm full. Since I'm never hungry, I just seem to go right from being not hungry, to being stuffed. So I try to just portion out a tablespoon or so of food and eat that. I use the eat slower app, set to three full minutes between bites, and I never eat more than 3-4 bites. What's really weird is that usually I feel okay right after eating, and then 45 minutes to an hour later, start sliming, and then eventually throw up. Today I had 4 bites of chicken for dinner, felt great for 20 minutes, so decided to go for a walk. Halfway through the walk, I started sliming, and eventually ended up throwing up on a neighbor's front lawn because I couldn't get home in time. (I don't think they were home, but a car drove by while I was vomiting, so I may get ratted out) I guess I just want to hear that someone else went through this too, and that it gets better...

I use the Eat Slower app. I have it set to 3 minutes per bite. That's not it.

@@LaurieC My doc prescribed Pepcid twice a day, but I started taking OTC omeprazole in the mornings as well. It's a proton pump inhibitor, and works a little differently from the Pepcid. I found that the stomach gurgling, and burping is much better with it. Just my 2cents.

I was two weeks out on Tuesday! Down 24 pounds total, 11 since surgery. Had my first follow-up appt. today, my surgeon says I'm doing great. No pain to speak of anymore... I was off of the pain meds after a few days at home. I'm already on soft foods, and am having a little trouble figuring out when I'm full. I think it's because I'm literally never hungry, so when I do eat it's like I go from being not hungry, to being stuffed... I downloaded the "Eat slower" app, and set it for three minutes between bites. That helps, but still, three or four bites is my limit. According to my surgeon after four weeks, I should be able to eat 1/2 cup, or 4 oz per meal, but right now I can't even imagine eating that much. A tablespoon or so is my limit, and I usually feel like I'm going to throw up after that. Anyway, glad to hear others are doing well, let's keep each other updated!