VSGAnn2014

Scour some more. I never limited my carbs. My carbs pretty much matched my Protein grams during my weight losing phases.

I can tell you my experience: My highest weight was 235. I lost almost 20 pounds pre-op (on my own diet and my surgeon's pre-op diet). Surgery day I weighed 216. Month 1 I got up (finally) to almost 800 calories (was hitting closer to 500 most of that month). Months 2-4 I ate 800 cals/day on average. Months 5-6 (thanks to my bariatric PA's advice - who knows TONS of stuff about bariatric nutrition, more than my NUT, frankly) I gradually bumped up my cals to 1,000 cals/day. Months 7-8 I gradually raised my daily cals to 1,200. I hit my weight goal (150 pounds) 8.3 months post-op. In the last 2.7 months I've been trying to hit 1,750 calories/day -- the calorie budget that my PA, my NUT, my exercise consultant and I all independently determined would be a good maintenance diet for me. That's pretty hard to do, and as a result I've lost another 6 pounds. However, I think that finally at 144 pounds the 1,750 cals/day thing is working for me. I am sooo glad I didn't eat 800 calories for 8 months. There's no way to know for sure, but my feeling is that if I had eaten less during that time that my maintenance calorie budget would be lower than it is. I don't want to lose anymore. I am older (69 years old now) and look just fine. I also want to be able to bounce if I fall down. And I don't want to eat like a bird to maintain some fantasy 125 pound weight that's too light for me at my age. This has worked out really well for me. Everyone's mileage may differ considerably from mine, but that's my story.

A little P.S. to this ... One of the biggest contributors to my obesity was my inactive lifestyle. By inactive, I mean my resistance to standing up and walking across the room to do something, to walking for exercise, to moving for pretty much any reason at all. But here's the deal ... when you're obese, you hurt. Your knees, back, entire body hurts. You're not insane for not wanting to move, you're just trying not to hurt. One of the biggest shocks about having lost over 90 pounds is that now I move it, move it, move it. I want to walk, I want to clean house, I want to walk around the living room while the microwave is heating up Water for my tea, I want to make the bed, I want to walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth, I want to mow the lawn, I want to do the grocery shopping. I want to go on business trips and go shopping at the mall and take the garbage out to the garbage can and take the stairs. I even move my ankles in circles when I'm sitting down. And that makes all the difference in the world in terms of the calories I'm burning up and the new metabolism I'm buildling. I can now eat 1,750 calories a day at 144 pounds and not gain weight. I'm not sure but what I wasn't gaining weight at 235 pounds while eating 1,750 calories a day. There's a point you cross as you get fatter and fatter where things get really rough. You simply can't move enough to keep your metabolism high enough to lose weight even if you're not eating all that much. I honestly don't know how else I could have lost all this weight if I hadn't had WLS. And I didn't truly appreciate the interaction of all these factors until I'd gone through the weight loss phases and nearly 3 months of maintenance. I also know there's a lot more for me to learn. It's time now with 70% of American adults being overweight or obese that we start having grown-up conversations about the complexity of obesity and the elements required for its solution. "Just say no" is about the stupidest approach to reducing obesity that I could imagine. If fixing it were simple, I'd be all for that. However, after you've crossed the obesity bridge it ain't all that simple to get back across it. The guilt associated with WLS would evaporate if, as a society, we understood the actual causes that made us obese and kept us obese from a scientific/medical perspective, instead of from a moral perspective. Shame and guilt not only don't help us -- they just damage us more.

Yeah ... no. That's not true: "You won't crave anything after surgery...." You're six weeks post-op. You have a lot of territory to cover before predicting accurately what you (or anyone else) will or won't crave. I do agree with you that WLS was a great decision.

Guilty about choosing WLS? No way. Guilty about not being able to control my weight prior to WLS? Yes. But mostly I felt frustrated about not being able to solve that problem. So when I learned about the sleeve -- and the benefits it could offer (reduction of ghrelin, restriction of food volume, greater odds of long-term weight maintenance) -- the decision to choose VSG surgery was easy.

Nope. That's not normal. Or at least it wasn't for me.

Hasn't your surgeon given you a liver-shrinking diet to follow? I would think in this situation, she/he would be advising you to follow a very strict diet of her/his own choosing. Good luck to you.

Here are some things I eat at least 5 days a week: Breakfast - GNC Lean 25 Protein shake (Swiss Chocolate) and skinny latte (half coffee, half skim milk) Snack - Dannon Oikos Greek non-fat vanilla yogurt (5.3 ounce container) Snack - Red Delicious apple Snack - 1 glass skim milk I also eat a lot of grilled chicken, grilled salmon, grilled zucchini (getting the theme?).

Babbs, the last 10 pounds, I swear, came off my midsection. Good luck on that! A.

Some sweet posts here. Y'all are not gonna believe how fast you're going to be feeling so much better. Your hope is not misplaced. Promise!

Crackers are such evil critters. So few of them have ANY food value at all. They're extremely processed (requiring little digestive effort on the part of our stomachs or intestines), slide on right through our stomachs, and don't curb our hunger at all.

The big prohibition is against "grazing." That means nibbling pretty much all day long, whenever slider foods sing your name from the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinet or the candy jar on Suzie's desk. Grazing isn't even close to a mid-afternoon snack of Greek yogurt (with 12 grams of protein) when dinner is still four hours away.

"You people"?

Good rant. Truth.

LOL! You're not losing slowly. Your weight loss is great. And it sounds like you're eating right for the early phases. I assume you're also drinking lots of Water. But your expectations of week after week of 3, 4, 5 pound weight losses until you hit goal are completely unrealistic. You will not lose as fast in the coming months as you did during the first 6 weeks post-op. That's not how this works. At my heaviest I weighed 235 pounds, then lost 19 pounds pre-op. My surgery weight was 216. During the next two months (just under 9 weeks) I lost 22 pounds. You're doing great. You're simply in a stall. It'll break any day now.

You guys who aren't eating your Protein post-op -- it's not just food ... it's medicine for your body. It is not optional. Seriously, getting up to 60+ grams of protein as soon as you can is critical to your recovery from surgery (the body needs that protein to heal) and to your weight loss and, eventually, your long-term maintenance. Also, eating too little post-op, especially too little protein, won't help you lose more weight. It will just delay your recovery and make you crave and eat carbs to try to give yourself some energy. And if you go that route, you will risk the benefits you can reap from weight loss surgery. Best wishes to all the newbies. And please follow your surgeon's instructions.

I shouldn't belabor this point, because it wasn't the point of the OP, but I'm surprised so many people here seem so unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the breadth of perspectives and aesthetics available on the Internet.

AWESOME POST! Beautifully thought and said.

Nope, never had a psychic call me and say, "I know you need me." But if they did I'm pretty sure I'd hang up the phone.

I agree: Find a good therapist, Clean out the house of all slider foods and don't buy anymore. Focus on why you want to lose more weight (make lists of what the rewards for you will be -- and the downsides of continuing to eat more slider foods). Find ways to become more accountable -- to yourself and, if need be, to others. You may just need some more education / practice at cooking and eating cleaner than you are now. You may need to identify and avoid the triggers (environmental, emotional, nutritional) that are enticing you to eat wrong. The deal is that we can't starve ourselves forever. We have to nourish ourselves so we aren't hungry for good foods, but wind up eating crap. Not saying this is true of you, but consider the possibility that it's not all about what you ARE eating -- but what you are NOT eating (that your body desperately needs). Good luck!

Shallow? Nope. I don't see it that way. We like what we like, and we need what we need. Nobody should have to apologize for that. You certainly can't negotiate sexual or interpersonal interest. And entering a significant relationship or choosing a marriage partner (or even just hooking up with someone) requires us to evaluate a lot of factors about the candidates available to us and how easy those factors would be to accommodate ourselves to. A lot of forces and factors are at play that control our likes, dislikes and just plain reactions to people. First of all, obesity in a long-term partner brings introduces a pack of potential issues: short- and long-term health, mobility, socializing, child-bearing, child-rearing, financial stability, and a host of other things. For example, at my age (69) I see people of middle- and older age who are single (widowed, divorced) making mating choices based on candidates' health behaviors. Does he/she smoke? If they have stopped smoking, for how long (and how much) did they smoke? Do they drink? Do they drink too much? Do they have a cancer history? Do they come from a family with a cancer history? Then there are other issues: What's their financial situation? If they're divorced, what's their relationship with their ex? If they have children, how old are they, what are the person's financial and time obligations to and relationships with their children? Do any of their children have serious problems or "failure to launch" issues? Are they neatniks? Are they slobs? Are they tightwads? Are they spendthrifts? Do they like to party? To read? To eat out? To socialize? To go hear live music? Are they religious? Are they tolerant on social issues? What are their politics? Do they enjoy traveling abroad? Do they cruise? Are they outdoors people or campers? Do they prefer hotel staycations? Are they fashion-conscious? And those are just a few of the issues that grown-ups think about. Younger people may not focus on so many issues, but they'd probably be better off if they did. Partnering compatibility is a very complex calculation. So if someone doesn't want you when you're obese, that doesn't equate to me that they're shallow. I think it simply means you two aren't compatible and might not ever be compatible, no matter what you weighed.

Re the embarrassment you feel upon viewing your old, fat pix ... yes, I recognize that response -- if you double or triple it and call it a combination of astonishment, disbelief and humiliation. I don't actually have a photograph of me at my highest weight (235 pounds). No way was I going to record that condition for eternity. I just couldn't bear to confront my largest ever profile in two dimensions. Now that I'm comfortably below goal, I am much more interested in getting accustomed to what I look like now. That takes more effort than it seems like it should. But I'm getting there.

Wow, Babbs! You really are almost at goal. Somehow you slid on through the 160s without my realizing you were moving so fast. Go, girl!

Your limitations will change a lot after WLS and will continue to change a lot. What you can eat / tolerate at 1 month post-op is completely different than what your limitations will be at 3 months or 6 months or 12 months post-op. I'm 11 months post-op, am now slightly below goal, and have been working at maintaining for the last 2.5 months. Just like the various weight loss phases, maintenance has its own new phases, which you'll have to explore and learn from when you get there. Some people a few years out still have a lot of stomach restriction, others don't. Likewise, several years out different patients' hunger levels vary considerably -- from person to person and even day to day, they report. But the first year (and probably longer) is certainly a time when most patients' hunger levels and stomach capacities are much more conducive to weight loss than they were pre-op or will be several years down the line. I hear from so many people here that our long-term weight maintenance and success depends on our having learned and practiced new eating / exercise behaviors so that they become automatic and our new lifestyle. Eventually, we have to learn to LIVE and EAT and EXERCISE like "skinny people." And that is so much easier to do when you're already skinny. A helluva lot easier!

My surgeon didn't set ANY specific goals for me. He asked me what MY goals were. And he just said, "You'll do great!" For the record, at 6 months post-op, I had lost 53.6 pounds since my VSG surgery. And I'd lost 73.2 pounds from my highest weight (thanks to the 11 pounds I lost on a 2+ month diet I put myself on pre-op and the 8 pounds I lost on my surgeon's 2-week pre-op diet). My weight loss goal was 150 pounds (I'm 5'5" tall and 69 years old). I've lost an additional 5-6 pounds in the 2.5 months since I reached goal, and I'm pretty much done losing. You can do all the % math if you wish.