James Marusek

Good luck on your upcoming surgery. As far as advice, I recommend you do three things. 1. Take a good before photograph of yourself, so that you have something to compare to after surgery. Many times we are blind to our obesity. We do not see ourselves. Therefore when the weight begins to drop off rather dramatically, we question if this is really happening. Photographs are a good visualization of our success. Many people carry a before and after photo with them, just to remind themselves of their success. 2. Walk 30 minutes each day, every day until surgery (or equivalent exercise). Walking helps the recovery process go smoothly and minimized the pain levels from surgery. 3. Wean yourself from caffeine and carbonated beverages now. After I gave up my 6 diet coke a day habit, I suffered from a week of severe withdrawal syndrome consisting of severe headaches and body aches. I was miserable. You don't want to combine the effects of caffeine withdrawal with the effects of surgery.

I had RNY gastric bypass surgery 3 years ago and this is my approach in the Maintenance phase. http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Surgery2.pdf

I am from Indiana but good luck on your upcoming surgery and let us know if you need any help.

The three most important elements after RNY gastric bypass surgery are to meet your daily Protein, Fluid and Vitamin requirements. food is secondary because your body is converting your stored fat into the energy that drives your body. Thus you lose weight. Weight loss is achieved after surgery through meal volume control. You begin at 2 ounces (1/4 cup) per meal and gradually over the next year and a half increase the volume to 1 cup per meal. With this minuscule amount of food, it is next to impossible to meet your protein daily requirements by food alone, so therefore you need to rely on supplements such as Protein shakes. So in general calories are not tracked after RNY gastric bypass surgery. Sometimes individuals hit stalls during the weight loss phase. I did. Your daily protein requirement is met by a combination of the amount of protein you obtain from food combined with the amount of protein from protein supplements (protein shakes, protein bars). Right after gastric bypass surgery, the volume of food you are restricted to is minuscule (2 ounces) per meal. But as you get further along, the meal volume increases. Therefore if you concentrate on consuming high protein meals, you have a very important option available to you. You can start to reduce your reliance on protein supplements. I went from 3 protein shakes per day in the beginning, down to 2, down to 1, and then when my meal volume increased to 1 cup per meal at a year and a half, I was able to completely offload my use of protein shakes. This is important because protein shakes contain calories. If you can reduce your caloric intake, then you can end a stall. At least that was the approach that I used and it worked for me.

It is a little difficult to answer your question because I do not know what you mean by regular. I assume you are talking about solid foods. I had RNY gastric bypass and my directions were to transition to solid foods at week 9. But even then some solids were not on my approved list for months later. For example a baked potato wasn't approved until month 12.

I am not from the Cleveland area. Since you are planning for surgery in 2 days from now, I would recommend a few things. 1. Take a good before photograph of yourself, so that you have something to compare to after surgery. Many times we are blind to our obesity. We do not see ourselves. Therefore when the weight begins to drop off rather dramatically, we question if this is really happening. Photographs are a good visualization of our success. Many people carry a before and after photo with them, just to remind themselves of their success. 2. Walk 30 minutes each day, every day until surgery (or equivalent exercise). Walking helps the recovery process go smoothly and minimized the pain levels from surgery. Make sure you walk every couple hours in the hospital. It helps to ease the gas pain and also stops blood clots from forming. 3. When you go to the hospital make sure they install a trapeze bar above your hospital bed. When you get up out of bed it will make getting up less painful. I was in the hospital for 2 days. My wife stayed with me. After surgery when I tried to walk, it was good to have someone to make sure I was walking steady the first few times. I was probably ready to leave the hospital after the first day but I had my operation on Friday and the hospital staff changed over the weekend so it was hard to get someone to release me. So since you are having surgery on Monday, this should not be your experience.

Stalls are fairly common. Just stick to the program guidelines (fluids, Protein, Vitamins, meal volume, exercise) and you should be back on the track soon. Someone on this website used the slogan "Embrace the Stall" to describe the experience.

The three most important elements after RNY gastric bypass surgery are to meet your daily Protein, Fluid and Vitamin requirements. food is secondary because your body is converting your stored fat into the energy that drives your body. Thus you lose weight. Weight loss is achieved after surgery through meal volume control. You begin at 2 ounces (1/4 cup) per meal and gradually over the next year and a half increase the volume to 1 cup per meal. With this minuscule amount of food, it is next to impossible to meet your protein daily requirements by food alone, so therefore you need to rely on supplements such as Protein shakes. Sometimes we are just use to placing food at the top of our list for survival. But after RNY surgery this is not the case. It is important to follow your program guidelines if you want to maximize your weight loss during the weight loss phase. This phase is short and soon you will slide into the maintenance phase. So take the most out of this phase. If you are at 2 1/2 weeks post-op, your body is still in a major heal mode.

12.4 Kg (27 pounds) is a good weight loss for the first 4 weeks. Follow the program requirements. A lack of energy could be caused my not following the Vitamin or Fluid requirements. I had RNY gastric bypass surgery and the program did not have me transition to solid foods until week 9. So there is no need to push into solids because it can be hard on the stomach (and can cause nausea). Walking at least 30 minutes each day can help ease the pain quite a bit.

Congratulations and good luck on your upcoming surgery.

For the first few weeks after surgery your body is in a major heal mode. It is common for patients not to meet their daily Fluid and Protein requirement in the beginning. Just keep trying every day and you should be able to get there.

Sorry to hear about your added stress. I can sympathize with you because I also took care of my mother for many years through her bout of problems.

Don't fix it, just stay with the program requirements. The weight loss phase is relatively short and you will soon enter the maintenance phase. So you want to capture as much weight loss as possible during the initial phase. Once you reach maintenance, this generation of ketones should ease up.

Congratulations on your surgery. Let us know if we can be of any help.

I had a RNY gastric bypass surgery 3 years ago. It took me 6 months before I reached my happy state when all the problems seemed to melt away. This article may be of help to you. It describes my experience with weight loss surgery. It can be quite overwhelming during the beginning. http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Surgery.pdf

There are two phases to weight loss surgery. The Weight Loss phase and the Maintenance phase. I had RNY gastric bypass surgery over 3 years ago and this is my approach to the Maintenance phase. http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Surgery2.pdf

First off, this has nothing even remotely related to weight loss surgery. I found this research interesting so I thought I would post a link. Two groups of Native Americans, the Flatheads of Montana and the Blackfoot of Alberta, used sweetgrass as an insect repellent. They did so by burning the grass and allowing the smoke to saturate their clothing or by placing sachets (scented bags) of sweetgrass in their clothing. A group of scientist tested the effectiveness of essential oils of sweetgrass in a side by side comparison with DEET in the effectiveness to repel mosquitoes. They found that they were equally effective. The results were published recently in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. http://acsh.org/news/2016/11/01/sweetgrass-deet-traditional-native-american-herbal-remedy-acts-mosquito-repellent So why might this be of importance. The answer is Zika virus which is spread by bites from mosquito, the type that is found in warm climates such as Florida along with other pathways (such as sexual transmission with infected individuals). Sweetgrass may provide an alternate to DEET in repelling mosquitos.

My time period was 8 months. I had to pay deductibles over two years because there are costs spread out over the two years. The initial cost were primarily for meeting the 6 month medically supervised weight loss program where I met with a physician every month for 6 months. There was also the cost of the psychologist visit, which was not covered by the insurance. The later costs which included an extensive array of pre-op tests, a second round of pre-op tests with specialist in their fields, hospital and surgeon costs, post-op medicine were the greatest.

I really just want to know what it's like in reality living after bypass surgery. Is it worth it ? Do any of you regret it ? Is it painful ? Anything you can tell me to give me would be much appreciated. I had RNY gastric bypass surgery over 3 years ago. To answer your questions from my perspective. It is worth it. I do not regret it, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. For me it was not painful. As a matter of fact, I took no pain medicine after I left the operating room. I walked for 30 minutes every day for the year prior to surgery and for the first year after surgery. That dramatically improved my recovery time and deceased my pain level from surgery. I put my initial experience with the surgery in the following article. http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Surgery.pdf

The three most important elements after RNY gastric bypass surgery are to meet your daily Protein, Fluid and Vitamin requirements. food is secondary because your body is converting your stored fat into the energy that drives your body. Thus you lose weight. Weight loss is achieved after surgery through meal volume control. You begin at 2 ounces (1/4 cup) per meal and gradually over the next year and a half increase the volume to 1 cup per meal. With this minuscule amount of food, it is next to impossible to meet your protein daily requirements by food alone, so therefore you need to rely on supplements such as protein shakes. You don't have to like protein shakes, just tolerate them. The key is experimentation. There are so many formulations out there, that there should be one you can tolerate. As a last resort you might try fortified milk. 32 ounces of 1% milk plus 1 cup of dry milk provides 56 grams of protein. As your meal volume increases, if you concentrate on consuming high protein meals, you can begin to reduce your reliance on Protein shake. But you are not there yet.

Sometimes dealing with the insurance companies is the most stressful part of the process. The process took me 8 months before I got the green light for surgery. But stay with it, it is worth the pain.

This link describes the reasons why feet swell. http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/swollen-ankles-and-feet#1

Congratulations.

It may somewhat depend on they type of surgery that you had, such as RNY gastric bypass, sleeve or duodenal switch. I had RNY gastric bypass. My directions at 6 weeks were to consume pureed foods. It wasn't until week 9 that I was allowed to transition to solids. Lettuce showed up on my options at week 9. At week 6 you can eat many types of fruits but they must be pureed. At week 6 many soft vegetable were allowed but they must be pureed. These included green Beans, beets, squash, asparagus, zucchini, cucumbers, mushrooms, Water chestnuts, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli. Also mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and peas were allowed at week 6.

I am 3 years post-op and I still experience this sometimes. It is caused by eating too much. I call it a form of dumping. There are generally pre-triggers that happen prior to the episode, such as hiccups, sneezing, excessive mucos etc. When you hit a pre trigger, just stop eating. NOT ONE MORE BITE. These episodes can last for several hours, so once you reach a pre trigger, eating more food several hours later can also set you off. Some other rules to follow. If you need to vomit, go to the restroom and vomit. This will somewhat relieve the experience. Also maintain a vertical position. In other words do not lay down or try and sleep in a bed. Your body processes food differently in a horizontal position than in a vertical position. So I try and not eat prior to bedtime. And if I experience an episode, I will get up and watch TV for a couple hours. It is also possible that you have developed a stricture.