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I didn't hit Protein and calorie goals with any real consistency until about 4-6 months out. Your concern right now should be staying hydrated and eating (or shall I say, drinking) as much as you can. Your capacity will increase as you heal completely and you'll find that things get easier. Don't fret - we all worry about this in the early days when we can hardly finish a shake or eat two bites of pureed Beans. ~Cheri

Yes, you can. I'm 19 months out and eat pretty much whatever I want, just in small portions. That said, I have ridiculous restriction and one scrambled egg fills me up. So for me, drinking one Protein coffee or tea each morning is a great way to boost my protein intake to where I like to be (90+ grams a day) without eating all day long. But my situation is a bit different as I'm stranded in Central Asia. When I'm stateside and have access to hundreds of different protein options it's definitely easier to reach my nutritional goals each day. Though honestly, I just don't like to sit down to four heavy meals of meat or eggs a day and drinking a shake is an easier way for me to get there. But if you don't like them, it's not something you're going to have to do beyond the first six to nine months. I'm not going to lie, though. If I had to drink a Protein Shake every single day for the rest of my life and the trade off was being this size, I'd do it in a heartbeat. ~Cheri

Yes, do keep us posted. I'm sorry I don't have advice but I'll be watching for your update until we know you're okay. ~Cheri

Yes, congrats on your progress! Some of us just have a longer haul than other folks. It's perfectly okay. I lost in fits and starts the whole time. I'm 5'1.3" and started at 242 and am down to my goal of 135 pounds. After plastics I'll be right where I want to be in the 120s and that's fine with me. I experienced two weeks every month of no loss (and usually had a three pound gain around my cycle, too) and I had two nine weeks stalls on my journey. It took me 17 months to lose 107 pounds, but I did it nice and slow and healthy. If you average it out, I lost just over six pounds a month. You're doing the right things. eggs are impossible for some people. Do you know what Chinese steamed eggs are? It's soft but savory and might be easier on you. Tofu is soft, if you like it. If you can tolerate cottage cheese it's fantastic - until I developed lactose intolerance it was my favorite food post op. And keep pushing shakes! Some folks can give them up and eat enough to get the nutrition they need but some of us can't! I still need them. My restriction is ridiculous (19 months out and one scrambled egg has me stuffed) and I simply cannot sit down and eat four ounces of meat in one sitting. I drink a Protein coffee or tea every morning and it helps me SO much. Keep trying until you find a brand you tolerate well and can enjoy. Vitalady does samples and I found that a huge lifesaver. And as for the other part of your post - trying to conceive. I'm not trying to get too personal, but make sure that both of you are being cleared as healthy. I had half a dozen doctors tell me that the reason my husband and I couldn't conceive was my weight over the course of four years. Nobody thought he'd be the issue because he had kids with his first wife. However, it turns out he's basically clinically sterile. We had to jump into IVF w/ICSI to conceive. Just like in everything else, too many doctors look at our weight and assume it holds the answer to everything. Yes, you are going to be much healthier and yes, likely more fertile, at a healthier weight. But I'd hate for you to slug away for another two years blaming yourself only to discover that it's something else causing the issue! Make sure you get a full workup - HSG, hormone panel, etc. And if your insurance allows it get a more understanding doctor. Preferably a heavier woman! Best of luck to you on both fronts. ~Cheri

Meh. There are worse choices you could make. To me, the most important thing is logging what you eat and staying within your particular set of nutritional guidelines. We're in this for the long haul. We chose an irreversible surgery and asking ourselves to live forever on the Atkins diet is a bit unrealistic. Sure, you could make better choices. At least you're cognizant of that fact. I think knowing that we have the option of eating just about whatever we want is what makes choosing healthy food 90% of the time easy. Feeling deprived and restricted makes us angry, resentful and more likely to binge on slider foods. Good for you - five hours on one sandwich? Remember the old days? I might have eaten two sandwiches, fries and a jamocha shake back before surgery. ~Cheri

I started around 3-4 months and it was done by about 6 months. However, any time I drop low on my Protein for a long stretch I'll experience a bit more loss than usual, so if you're not diligent about your intake I think it could remain an issue. It's just one more way I'm forced to be accountable for my eating habits. I took Biotin from pre-op and never noticed any difference. I did use Nioxin (since my husband already uses it) but I'm not really sure if it helped me or not, at least as far as stopping the loss. However, I did have very fast regrowth and am pretty sure it's due to the Nioxin. And unlike my husband, who cannot stop using the Nioxin for fear of losing more hair, I was able to stop using it without any adverse effects. Honestly, I think this is just something our bodies go through and I'm not sure than any of the things we try really change the outcome. The shock of surgery followed by a drastically reduced intake and big losses on the scale is just too much for our poor bodies. Luckily it only happens for a short while. But yes, when you're losing huge clumps of hair for weeks on end it can definitely get frightening! ~Cheri

Say what?! Is this now a twin momma thread?! I went 37 weeks with my two but wasn't surprised when they were only 5 pounds each. Now they're four. It's fantastic and fun and so much easier than it was two years ago! AllForMy4, you sound like my friend - she has a son that's four, 2.5 year old twins and a one year old son. Whenever I think life in my house is crazy I give her a ring! Actually, I only gained 65 pounds with the twins so it was just the serious stretching that got me. I'm short and didn't have a whole lot of room for two babies, even small ones. I gained 97 pounds with my first pregnancy so I figure I did pretty well. Maybe we need to start a twin mommy thread in the women's forum or something... ~Cheri

Huge milestone - enjoy it! Great work so far, you're more than halfway there! ~Cheri

No plastics yet, but I can't wait for them! What you don't see is the heavy duty girdle I'm wearing under everything. I have a lot of loose skin. Not only did I lose a bit of weight but I had twins four years ago. They did a number on me and everything has gone south (literally) since I lost the weight. But thank you, compliments are lovely. I am very careful about what I wear and while I'm not exactly hard on myself it's very important to me that I look shapely in my clothes. It's bad enough that I feel uncomfortable naked so there's no way I'm going to feel self-conscious dressed, too! ~Cheri

I can't believe I never posted any pictures! Here's a few...keep in mind that my "before" photos were few and far between because I avoided the camera whenever possible. I'm 5'1.3" (gotta count that extra bit) and was 242 pounds on surgery day. I wore a snug 18/20 and XXL shirt. I'm now easily maintaining between 134-138 and wear 4-6/small. Before Surgery: Fifteen months (down 101 pounds): Sixteen months (feeling like a princess): With my stepdaughter - I'm at goal, in a size six/small: With my husband, loving life at goal:

In the long term losing 2 pounds a week would be 104 pounds this year. That's not an insignificant amount. You are not going to see a huge drop on the scale every time you step on it. Not everyone loses all of their weight in nine months - many more people take more than a year to get to goal. In fact, with less than 100 pounds to lose, I'd expect your journey to be slower, anyway. That said, your body is still in shock. Put that scale away! You're already nearly 20% down. You're being too hard on yourself. You've just lost 17 pounds in two weeks! That's something you will not repeat the rest of your journey, so pat yourself on the back and be proud of your accomplishment. I took 17 months to lose 107 pounds. On average, I lost just over six pounds a month. In reality, I had two weeks every month where I didn't lose (and usually gained three pounds for my period!) and even hit two nine week stalls along the way. Weight loss happens in fits and starts. Be happy for the losses and try to stay positive during the slow Patches. You just had 85% of your stomach removed and would be crazy to think that you're somehow NOT going to lose weight with this major life change. Chin up. In six months you'll be sitting back reading posts by people recently sleeved and wondering why they expect it all to happen so quickly - and at that point you'll be more than halfway to goal and feeling great about yourself. ~Cheri

I swear, it's amazing that we get ostracized from the usual weight loss boards because we have surgery, but then people bring that same narrow-minded, "There's only one way to do this" mentality over here to these boards, too. Carbs are not evil. They do not instantly make you a fat person or an unhealthy one. Oh yeah, acting like a carb Nazi is going to get you to goal, just like Atkins can get you to goal without surgery. And then you get to live at goal and try to learn how to eat a normal, healthy diet in maintenance after restricting yourself to forty grams of carbs or less a day. Because the reality is it doesn't matter if you call it a "lifestyle change" while your aim is to lose 10 pounds a month - you can't live your entire life that way if you want to settle into maintenance and a steady weight for the rest of you life. Even some of the very strictest at controlling their carbs on these boards have had to learn this the hard way as they continue to lose beyond their goal weight - they end up having to eat a more normal diet to maintain. Since they waited until maintenance to start this they usually face challenges while they figure it out. So if anyone here tries to tell me that I have to live on Atkins-level carb intake for the rest of my life or I'll be unhealthy or not lose, I'm going to call them on it, because that simply isn't the case. On to the topic at hand, I do not believe Crosswind needs a strict diet to lose the rest of the weight. You're not even a year out, and you're in your final stretch. You are going to lose this weight if you continue on your current path, even if you don't lose as quickly as you'd like. Medifast is wretched, in my opinion. I did a long stint on it myself prior to surgery. I question why you'd want to subject yourself to that when you have a perfectly healthy outlook on food and diet already. Why the rush? I think that simply scaling back your dietary intake (say, by dropping calories/carbs by 20% or so daily) will shock your body into losing again. At 11 months out I was down about 90 pounds or so. I was very frustrated and thought I'd never get to goal. All of the little tricks I tried didn't make me lose any faster. The only thing I really needed was more time. The last forty pounds were very hard to lose and the last twenty took me six whole months. If your impetus to try to shake things up so drastically is a fear of not reaching your goal within a year, I'd like to point out that a large number of people (most of us!) don't reach goal within one year. There isn't a honeymoon phase or a time limit. You sleeve is likely as big as it's getting, and if you think about it you'll realize that while having a capacity of 4 ounces over the 1 ounce you had a year ago is a lot more, it's still plenty small enough to lose weight using restriction alone. At the very least, I think that if you insist on going with Medifast that doing it for short bursts is better than doing it full time to get to goal. But I still think that with regular old persistence and patience you can get there on your own. ~Cheri

I think our tastes change dramatically, especially when we go an entire month drinking liquids and then spend another couple weeks on bland foods like cottage cheese and scrambled eggs! I was really sensitive to everything that had a strong smell post op, particularly when I couldn't eat that food. Now I'm more normal about those things - very little bothers me these days. Fried foods used to be my downfall. Nothing made me happier than hot, fresh french fries. You could bread and fry just about anything and I'd eat it by the bucket. Nowadays I can take it or leave it. I'm happy eating five or six fries and the only fried food I really eat these days is sweet and sour chicken (that I make myself). So I would say it probably won't make you feel sick later on but you may never recover that love for foods you enjoyed before surgery. ~Cheri

A lot of us did this prior to surgery, so you're not alone. Diva is right - you're only going to overdo it a handful of times before you get the message. I had a period of time where I would keep pushing my limit to try and eat more. Not because I wanted to overindulge but because I really needed to eat more food and wasn't able to do it! Trust me, you'll learn those signs that you've overdone it quickly and you'll learn to stop. I get a runny nose and hiccups and if I go further than that, I'll be uncomfortable until I finally have to vomit. Learning to leave the clean plate club is a real struggle but you can get there. It took me a long time but I finally got to the point where I'm okay not finishing my food. I expect to get a takeout box when I leave a restaurant and I expect to eat only a few bites of each thing at the table. I've learned to love sharing meals with all of my friends and family. I think I have the better end of the deal, too. I get to sample several wonderful dishes that are all different but I never leave the table as overfull and bloated (and uncomfortable!) as the other folks at the table. I'm 19 months post op and only in the last six months do I really get "hungry." By that, I mean that my stomach rumbles at fairly regular intervals throughout the day and signals me to eat something. Before that, I had to eat on a schedule. What's crazy is that eating became a CHORE. I mean, I hated it! I started my day by logging into myfitnesspal and making menu for my day that would hit my nutritional goals. It took me about 4-6 months to start hitting them with any level of consistency, and eating remained a hated chore for about the ten months post op. That doesn't sound great or enjoyable but the reality is that this period of having to eat but not enjoying it allowed me the space to work out a lot of the issues that were causing me to gain weight in the past. I got to drop a lot of those bad habits, like overindulging, stress eating or eating out of boredom. I wouldn't worry that you're going to struggle with overeating post op. You won't really understand how close to impossible it is until that first day you're eating soup in the hospital and realize that you're full after six sips! ~Cheri

I swear it happens. I got stuck for six weeks in the 190s (a weight I'd maintained for years previously) and the 160s (a point I'd never been able to get past, even as a teen) but if you hang in there and keep pushing you will get past those rough spots. It's hard not to freak out but you can get through it. And my opinion? STOP being scared of carbs! You'll be on a diet forever if you don't learn to incorporate them slowly. It's healthy to eat a variety of foods and learning to overcome your food demons now will help you be successful in the long term. I was much happier and healthier (inside and out) when I stopped being a carb Nazi and started eating a more normal diet. It satisfied my body and my mind...and I still got to goal. Now that I'm here the food demons are vanquished and I feel like a normal person, something I never thought was possible before. Hang in there. You'll get over this hump eventually. ~Cheri

I think it depends on if we stop restricting ourselves, honestly. My body is very happy here in the 134-138 range and doesn't want to lose any more weight. I reached that point 17 months post op. However, if I really got serious and restricted my calories back to where I was in the first six months post op, I'd continue to lose. I'm just not willing to do that. The last 40 pounds fell off slowly and the last 20 took six months. However, there's nothing to say any of us *couldn't* continue to lose at any point. After all, our stomachs are bigger but they'll still only hold 3-5 ounces at a time. So my opinion: we stop FOR GOOD when we stop trying to lose weight. ~Cheri

It's normal. Your body will slowly realize it doesn't need so much acid and slow production. In the meantime, you should be on a PPI, such as Nexium. I had to switch what I used twice until I found what worked best for me (Prilosec - I bought the generic). By 4-6 months out the issue resolved itself. Since 6 months out I haven't needed anything but the occasional Tums for immediate relief. ~Cheri

My BMI was higher than yours but my diabetes resolved itself almost immediately post op. Do a search for diabetes and you should find several threads about this. At the very least you should expect lower doses of your medications but I think most people are able to stop their meds completely and control with diet and/or exercise. Mine is gone, though the doctor did tell me that it would likely return with old age, and that the insulin-resistance will always remain. I'm not really sure what causes the change in our bodies, because before I even lost a single pound my blood sugars dropped to the high-normal range. As I lost the weight I found that I don't even need to test and I no longer have spikes - I remain constant around 90-100 all day long, even in my postprandial measurements. I hope you have similar results! ~Cheri ETA: And I almost wish dropping to a seriously low weight was a real concern but I find it unlikely! Losing was slow for me and my body absolutely refuses to budge out of the 134-138 range even though I'd love to see the 120s (I'm only 5'1" after all) but it's simply not going to happen. I wouldn't worry about getting too small - I'd worry about getting to a healthier weight! Maintenance is actually very easy if you do the "head work" on your eating and food issues as you're losing.

I did the same thing more than two years ago. I was researching the band and started seeing a trend of unhappy patients and surgery for complications. Too many people weren't getting to goal and a lot of folks experienced a swift regain if they had an unfill. I noticed a lot of people doing revisions to sleeves and I opted to research this option. I researched for better than a year before finally having my surgery and I am incredibly thankful I opted for the VSG over any of the other surgeries. Some advice while researching: be realistic. Don't only read the perfect tales of folks that get to goal in nine months and have zero complications. I think most of us tend to do that when researching surgery. We want to be in the minority that reaches goal with no problems within the first year. Be realistic with your expectations before surgery. Stalls are normal. You will not lose your weight overnight. You will not have surgery and wake up a size two tomorrow. You might not reach goal in your first year. You might lose your hunger but some people do not. Read the complications and struggling sleevers boards and know the whole story before making this choice. With the sleeve you can reach your goal. You can maintain your loss for life. You can and will lose weight with this surgery, and it will most likely be easier than anything you've ever done before to shed the weight. You can eat like a normal person and finally put whatever food issues you have to rest if you're willing to focus on yourself and be a healthier person. I do not regret my surgery. The sleeve finally got me to goal and life is fantastic here. It's a long journey, so be prepared before starting out. Best of luck, ~Cheri

Yes, clearly your NUT is right and everyone here that opted for surgery is simply lazy and lacking in the willpower department. Either that, or she's an opinionated idiot that acted totally unprofessionally. I'm going with this one. First and foremost, report her. It is not her job to talk you out of surgery using scaremongering tactics and negativity. The surgeon that referred you to that NUT office has a right to know how his/her patients are treated by this supposed professional. Secondly, relax. We all run into at least one person that feels that we're using a magic bullet or taking the easy way out without thinking. These people are sometimes medical professionals, and sometimes they're our overweight "friends." If you didn't have doubts before the appointment, you shouldn't have them now. You'll be fine. Too many in the healthcare profession simply parrot what they've been taught: that weight loss is a simple matter of willpower, diet and exercise and that a 1200 calorie diet is one-size-fits-all. If you aren't losing weight, a lot of them assume you simply aren't trying. If you know that you've tried in the past and haven't seen results do not let the opinion of one person, medical professional or not, dissuade you from your choice. Your life will change post sleeve and sometimes you'll be frustrated and you might even have buyers remorse if you hit some rough Patches. But overall you are going to be thrilled with finally achieving your goals and the sleeve is going to help you do that - AND keep the weight off as well. Best of luck to you. ~Cheri

Thanks for sharing - people always have questions about Dr. Aceves and the procedure and your post is sure to help answer their questions. You've only just begun - just wait a few months and you'll be amazed at your progress! ~Cheri

Why does everyone have this one year time limit in their brains? Honestly, it takes a lot of us longer than a year to get to goal and that's perfectly OK. It's not a race and it's not a freaking contest. Besides that, your sleeve stays at about the size it is one year out so you've still got awesome restriction if you're eating properly. I refer more to your eating order than what you're putting in your mouth, BTW. Protein first, always. Otherwise you can fill up on junk. As for your nutritional guidelines I'd say that for me, those are very close to my daily nutritional guidelines in maintenance, but not what I ate while losing. You're the only one that really knows what works for you to lose the weight. I stalled out twice for nine weeks. My body didn't want to move out of the 190s or the 160s. I hung in there and keep going (okay, I stumbled a bit, too) and eventually shed the extra pounds. I'm the oddball that doesn't believe that we need to be carb Nazis to lose weight but there is no denying that the folks that follow the drastic diets do get results. If you track your food, look back to when you were losing best and see what's changed. The answer might be, "nothing much." If that's the case, just keep going and it will come off. If it's changed a lot, do some backtracking in your diet and see if you get results again. You're not done losing weight until you quit trying, regardless of how long it's been since your surgery. Good luck! ~Cheri

THERE IS NO HONEYMOON!! Sorry, had to get that out. The first thing you need to do is shake the idea that you have a time limit or you're a failure. The reality is that even at six months out you still can't eat but a fraction of what you ate pre-op. Your sleeve is there and it's in perfect working order. Once you're about a year out your sleeve is going to be as big as it gets. I'm 19 months out and can only eat a few ounces in a sitting. I get stuffed on one egg scrambled with cheese or two ounces of steak. Prior to surgery I was certain I would hit goal in nine months. After all, I only had 107 pounds to lose. I didn't realize it at the time but I was intentionally ignoring all of the posts about people that lost weight more slowly, had months long stalls or felt discouraged about surgery. I hit goal in 17 months. The reality is that we all love the folks that make it to goal in 9-10 months but many more people actually reach goal sometime in their second year post op. I lost an average of just over 6 pounds per month. Is that discouraging? Maybe. The difference is that I GOT TO GOAL with the sleeve and never, ever got even remotely close on any diet. I never lost even close to 6 pounds a month on any diet I tried, and even if I had maintaining said diet for the 17 months it took to shed the weight would have been an impossibility prior to my sleeve. Yes, it's discouraging. We want goal weight now. We had a drastic surgery and we want drastic results. We want to be skinny. Yes, we know in our heads that we didn't gain the weight overnight but darn it, we really want to lose it more quickly than we do. The reality is that you just have to accept that your body is going to lose at it's own pace, no matter what you do. The good news is that your sleeve is going to stay restrictive and it's going to help you get to goal, even if it takes you 17 months like it did me. Goal is just as sweet when you reach it after nearly a year and a half, I promise. As for your eating and exercise habits only you know what works for you, but I've posted a number of times about diets today and I think that if it's stressing you out you need to reconsider what you're doing. We want to be happy about ourselves and just being skinny isn't going to do that - we have to be healthy mentally and physically. Best of luck. It's tough, I know. I had a journey twice as long as I wanted but I am thankful for every minute of it. ~Cheri

I have mixed feelings about your post. On one hand, yes, you're falling into old habits. You're trying to eat like you're a pre-op person and you're not. You're repeating the habits that helped you gain the weight in the first place. Knowing that and admitting it here is a big step, and I applaud that. You need to figure out your new limits. It's natural to test boundaries and see how far we can push ourselves. With the sleeve, you'll find the answer is, "Not very far!" I'd start examining what helped make you gain weight in the first place. Are you an emotional eater? Do you overeat? I think a lot of us are totally in denial about our food issues until we're forced to face them post op. I was convinced my issues were purely medical and while to some extent that was true, I discovered post op that I had a real problem using food to cope, to comfort and to hide myself. The part of your post that I don't like is the idea that you've done "BAD" or that eating certain foods is naughty or not allowed. I know I'm in the minority but I've been on this journey for nineteen months and feel I'm in a good place both mentally and physically. In my opinion, telling yourself that you're never allowed to eat those foods again, that you have to stay low-carb for the rest of your life, that there's only one acceptable way to eat - well, I think those are all more manifestations of the unhealthy relationship with food that got us fat in the first place. I respect that we want to change for good and use the sleeve as a tool to help us live those healthier lives we dreamed of. But I think that the notion that healthy eating is an all-or-nothing equation is silly AND dangerous. It makes falling off the wagon into self pity binges a bigger risk, just like yo-yo dieting does. I can only tell you what I did. I started out eating like a carb Nazi. And within three months I was unhappy, depressed, had low energy and felt like I was on...gasp! A DIET. I'd had VSG to AVOID diets and now I was subjecting myself to one for life!! I had to stop. I started eating like a normal person. You know, someone without an overeating addiction or food issues. And guess what? Normal people use smart food choices about 90% of the time, but they do indulge occasionally. They don't binge and purge. It's not all-or-nothing...it's just FOOD. It doesn't control them or make them feel guilty or disgusting or out of control. So I think that all of us need to find that middle ground. We need to teach ourselves to eat in moderation. We need to learn to be responsible, healthy eaters - and not just eating health foods but learning how to have a healthy relationship with all foods. Because one day you'll reach goal. And then you'll need to eat more than 800-900 calories a day, and you'll realize that it's not easy when you sliced 85% of your stomach out. You'll need to increase your intake without binges on junk food or giving up those healthy habits you learned in the first few months post op. You'll want to have a slice of birthday cake with your family instead of feeling left out. You'll want to be NORMAL. So pick yourself up, shake it off and keep going. You can do this. You need to do some exploration of yourself and your eating habits to figure out what's going on and fix it. ~Cheri

It's an unfortunate reality that the scale isn't going to go down every single day. Sometimes, it even goes up! Everyone experiences this. The faster you get rid of the expectation to lose weight every time you step on the scale, the happier you'll be. It's a long journey to goal and the scale is an important part of the journey, even if it's an evil contraption that can ruin our entire day within seconds! Stalls are normal - some last a week, some last months. Just keep doing the right things and you will get to goal. You aren't going to fail, you didn't waste your time or money and there's no reason to regret surgery. ~Cheri