Fluffnomore

I did a quick search for this and didn't come up with much. My question is kind of simple, I think... I've been planning and eating to come in around 900 calories per day, shooting for 60-80 g of Protein (40% of intake), fat at 40%, carbs at 20%. I'm in a bit of a holding pattern right now, although nothing alarming since the overall trend week by week is down. I have also started to exercise in the last 2-3 weeks, as I'm two months out today. Do any of you know what your tipping point is? The amount of calories at which you stop losing weight, either too high or too low? I've read on these forums that my calories/intake might be high compared to others at 2 months. However, I also want to account for the increased activity and make sure I don't inadvertently stall because I'm demanding too much of my body and it goes into starvation mode. I want to be able to take advantage of my first few months. On the other hand, I do feel hungry from time to time and try to honor that. When I take a step back I realize this is all crazy in a way. I know I will continue to lose. I have never gone over 1200 calories in a day since the surgery, even on a heavy eating day, and we have so little perspective in the middle of the first couple of months. That said, I thought it would be helpful to hear what your experience is with intake, stalls, and loss. Thanks!

I seem to remember that mine was baked whitefish first and then others, but not what order. Sorry. :-(

Can you call your NUT tomorrow for clarification?

Excellent recovery! I'm seeing this today; I'm rattling around the house and somehow my head is telling me "Eat eat eat." But fortunately, there's mostly good stuff in the house.

It's pretty normal for your weight to fluctuate around the first few weeks. You've had an overall loss, yes? If it's 11 pounds in two weeks that is nothing to sneeze at! As long as you don't have any other "bad" symptoms: fever, dizziness, lethargic-ness, etc…you might check in with the NUT. If those exist I might call the doctor. But your body is plenty confused right now, for sure.

I have a very long term goal of a pull-up…still on ring rows though. I'll cheer.

Can anything be added to this? Well, I'll try. The closest approximation I think there is to the first 4-6 weeks of WLS is the liquid diet Optifast. I was on this for about 10-12 weeks. You are basically taking in all of your nutrition through Protein shakes, no more than about 170 calories each, 5 times per day. You have to find that resolve within yourself and your stomach does shrink a little. After the first few days, it becomes a new normal. The problem is that whenever you get to the end point (either because you've lost the weight, or because your mind over matter cracks a little) you can easily get back to where you were. I lost 28 pounds in my time on Optifast. In the 8 weeks since WLS, I've lost about 40. The best way to do Optifast is to lose all of the weight, however long that takes, and then ease back into eating small meals. They don't have you concentrate on exercise at first, merely on following the plan. So sure, some people do lose massive amounts of weight this way and keep it off. But most don't. For me the big difference with the sleeve is that I simply can't say, "Forget it! I'm going to eat a whole…" and do it. I am sure that there will be different things I can eat over time that I can't now, but the physical restriction is important. So too is that mental edge. I went there. I had WLS, and I don't want to screw it up. Just my 2 cents. If someone can do it by following the plan, fine. Most can't.

Please add me as well!

I have decided I am not going to drive myself crazy with tracking today. I won't go nuts either, but I planned a menu that I can eat, and I'm going to enjoy it. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday (those of you who Celebrate it!) And the rest of you, please enjoy the movies!

Amazing! This has to be cathartic in a way.

Wow! 400-600 seems so extreme to me! I'm glad I asked the question... My doctor doesn't give caloric guidelines, only Protein grams, etc.

I don't know what others' experience is but I have had a couple of bounce ups, in the 2-3 pound range. Generally they go back down in a day or two. I know it is frustrating, but I think it's par for the course.

Turkish get ups are hard! We did the same thing, one WoD at 12 (details on the Did You Exercise Today thread.) It was great. Now I have to go get ready to sing at church.

But the difference is the people. I walked into this gym at my highest weight, ever, and not having been doing any kind of real fitness program for years. I knew I was "home" almost right away. I can't compete with the best athletes in the gym, but it's not about competition with them. My only job is to improve myself. Most things are still kind of ridiculously hard for me, but the philosophy that the coaches should have is that they could have your 90 year old grandmother doing a modification on the exercise of the day. Just got a note on FB from the coaches that they're doing a "surprise" opening at 12, free to all, for just an hour. We were supposed to be closed today and tomorrow. I bet 20 people show up, and we have a small gym to begin with. It's that kind of a place.

I broke a chair at someone's house about two years ago. I didn't weigh too much more than some of the men there, but still... I think it's a combination of things. I refused to be in pictures. When I saw myself in pictures I couldn't believe it was me. It must have been the lens, or the angle, or something. Or I was standing next to that skinny person! That said, even employing all of the "tricks" like putting your weight on one leg, being photographed from above, turning my head…it didn't disguise that I was big, and getting bigger. Especially when I knew the person next to me in a photo did in fact look just like that... Two years ago I participated in one of those "have a month free" things at a local (very nice) health club. I loved it, really wanted to do it. But (TMI warning) I had female issues…I peed when jumping rope. Then I investigated that with a local urogynocologist, and had the surgery to correct that about 6 months later. I put off going to the doctor to avoid stepping on the scale. Sometimes refused to weigh if I had to go. This year I realized that the last two surgeries I have had (gallbladder and uro-gyn)--if they were not caused by my being overweight, they were exacerbated by it. And I spent a lot of the last year getting sick in small ways and not just bouncing back. And my weight kept creeping up. I realized that it was really a matter of time before I was staring at a diabetes or heart disease diagnosis. Maybe 10 years, maybe less. And did I want to live my life that way, or take the bull by the horns now? Anyway, here I am. Happy about the choice. Working on myself and my progress.

You can also look into whether or not your gym offers punchcards. Mine does; 10 sessions for $120. This is nice because if I have a really busy week and can only make it twice, I pay $20. Like Fiddleman, my box (gym) offers unlimited sessions for $150 a month. My goal is to get to the point where that would be cost effective. Really, that is once you're going 3 times per week regularly. There are three or four trained coaches at our gym, and usually at least two of them are there at any given time. For someone like me who is still a relative newbie, I get plenty of one-on-one attention and correction. My coaches know about the WLS, and have been working with me since I went back three weeks ago to make sure I'm not lifting too much too soon, but that I'm still challenging myself. I didn't go yesterday because I knew I'd be completely modifying the workout into something else. I went to the Y and swam instead. In the past, I have run a marathon, worked with a personal trainer, and done a number of different high school/college type sports. (College= clubs, not varsity at all) I can honestly say these are the most thorough workouts I have ever experienced. I started going at basically the same time I started the WLS process, and had about 8 weeks under my belt before surgery. It just occurred to me that I am wearing a size now that I last wore when I weighed 10 pounds less, so there must have been some other body changes that I don't have perspective on just yet. I know that even at my high weight over the summer I began to have some muscle definition in my upper arms, and that my abs were in pretty good shape around the time of surgery. I had no difficulty moving around, even in the few days after surgery, because those muscles were helping me. I'm not the right person to ask about body transformation otherwise, but I'm still new to the whole thing, relatively speaking. I do believe that in 6 months CrossFit + WLS + swimming will give me a different body than I ever had, even when I weighed a lot less.

I started doing CrossFit at right around the same time I started my approval process. I have to say, that 7 or 8 weeks exercising seemed to make a huge difference for me in terms of recovery. (My abs were in shape, more or less!) But most importantly it set me up for thinking of myself in terms of when I could go back to the gym after surgery, as opposed to "Oh my God, I have to find a gym." My exercise support people were already in place, and while I know they wanted me to be able to do this without surgery, they remained positive and helpful throughout my recovery until I could come back. And they are so proud of my 40 pounds lost!

Very well said, PDX.

I'm doing a roast tenderloin of beef with horseradish sauce, creamed spinach, and twice baked potatoes for dinner. Apps (during the day) are sausage-stuffed and garlic cheese-stuffed mushrooms and bacon wrapped dates. I'm going to probably pick up a pumpkin pie for dessert. I won't eat the potatoes. It's actually a much more carb friendly version of what we would normally have…we'll see how the kids and hub rally around.

I keep saying this, but if you are bringing electronics (even a phone) bring an extension cord for your charger. A lot of hospitals don't have plugs that are close to the bed.

I'm one of the unlucky ones who can (so far) eat anything. Oh well. Willpower, you saucy minx...

Yes. Completely normal. Despite the very sound advice of some people here, I weigh every day. But I really try to take it as no more than an observation or snapshot. For example, today I'm about 1.4 pounds higher than yesterday, and yesterday I was 2 pounds lower than the day before. I have found that my body tends to do this when it is stabilizing around a lower number. Also, my dinner was a little salty last night. (Big whoop.) But in a couple of weeks I will look around and see that I'm 4 or 5 pounds lower than I started before the stabilization pattern. People say their charts look like stair steps; mine looks more like a nondramatic EKG line. But the trend overall (if you plotted it and drew a line) is a downward slope. Therefore, these day to day fluctuations are no more meaningful than if I woke up with a little zit on the side of my nose, or if my hair didn't quite work. It just is what it is for the day. Because I prefer the consistency of it, I like to record it and then forget it. Some people can't, so if you are one of those, go to weekly weighing. Hope this helps.

Oh my God, hypnosis. I've done both the tapes and the office visits. The tapes wanted you to visualize whatever food you were eating as a ball of hair. The hypnotist wanted to know about my sex life. He didn't last long.

If you can get to a place like Intimacy, you take off your shirt and bra, they look, and they bring a bunch of stuff for you to try. I'm cheap but am happy to spend on a bra that lifts these suckers. Nordstrom also does decent fittings, but I find the specialization at Intimacy can't be beat.

The absolute BEST thing about the way my approval and surgery went down is that I was approved on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and was sleeved the following Thursday ~8 or 9 days. There was really so little time to freak out that even driving to the hospital didn't feel real. I got my 5 days pre-op liquid diet in, and that was basically that. I had a few moments while waiting for the approval that all of those thoughts ran through my head. Then I convinced myself I wouldn't be approved. So when I was? I was incredibly, totally shocked. I wasn't on the boards yet either so I didn't have that side of it, but I also didn't have the support.