JamieLogical

What are you defining as "hunger"? Is your stomach rumbling? That's likely due to acid and gas. Are you on a PPI for acid? Have you tried GasX? Or is it "head hunger"? Like, do you see a commercial for food on TV and think "OMG, I NEED TO EAT THAT RIGHT NOW!" Even though you know that if you actually did eat that thing you'd end up back in the hospital? If it's head hunger, then there really isn't much you can do but fight through it. Try to eat the foods you are actually allowed for the food stage your in. Sometimes you can get kind of close to satisfying a craving that way. If you are in the pureed stage and craving pizza or italian food, try Shelly's Baked Ricotta. If you are craving Mexican, try some refried Beans and a little taco sauce and cheese.

Yay! Hopefully you will feel a lot better.

It's very normal. Your weight is going to fluctuate day to day and even throughout a single day. Think of this. We are supposed to be drinking 64 oz. of water a day. That's 4 POUNDS of water. If retain any portion of that due to high sodium, hormones, bloating, whatever... that can have a pretty big impact on the scale. But it's only temporary. It's not "real" weight in the sense that it's not fat being stored on your body. If you are going to weigh every day, you are going to have to accept these fluctuations that are about water retention and not actual fat loss/gain.

That seems pretty far along to be experiencing any new pains. I would call my surgeon to be safe.

Ah, if I had a dollar for every time i asked that question in my early days post-op. You really start to question if you will EVER feel normal again. The truth is, it gets better day-by-day, but I would say I wasn't really settled into my new normal until I was about 3-4 months post-op. By then I'd been back on solid foods and healed up enough to really have a handle on how much food I could safely eat without the "one bite too many" feeling and I had come to terms with not being able to turn to food for comfort anymore.

Immediately post-op, you really can't rely on signals from your stomach to tell you when you are "full", because your nerves were damaged in the surgery. That's why it's very important to measure your food and eat on a schedule. Later on, you will definitely have some signs that you are "full", but they may not be the same was when you felt full pre-op. So it is important to eat slowly and assess whether the previous bite needs to be the LAST bite before taking the next bite.

Ouch!

I like how @@MrsSugarbabe included some specific examples of servings people would be familiar with, so I thought I should do the same. Wendy's Chili: 2/3 of a small w/ cheese McDonald's chicken Nuggets: 4-5 w/ dipping sauce Denny's Breakfast: 1 egg over easy, one sausage link, 1/2 a piece of french toast TGIFridays: 2/3 Jack Daniels Chicken Sandwich without the bun or bacon, 4-5 small french fries Red Robin: about 2/3 of a burger with cheese without the bun, 1-2 onion rings I definitely don't encourage people to eat out at fast food and chain restaurants all the time. I am just wanting to give some examples of things people might be familiar with so it's easier to conceptualize how much I can eat now. I eat very quickly. Probably not more than 15 minutes per meal. If I ate slowly, I might be able to eat more.

The first few days post-op are rough for everyone. Even though they may be a little more rough for you, it's still only temporary. Hang in there! It's definitely better to be safe than sorry and make sure are your tests are good before sending you home. Do you have friends or family visiting you in the hospital to make it a little more bearable?

You mentioned wanting to have your surgery reversed, which isn't actually an option for sleeve. But do you think that if your surgery were reversed you'd somehow do a better job of getting in your Vitamins and Protein? What are your barriers to getting in your vitamins and protein with your sleeve?

If it's just a cold, they probably won't reschedule. If you are running a fever, they might reschedule.

I still don't think I could eat a full burger patty. I mean, I guess it depends on the burger. Like a McDonald's single hamburger? I could probably eat that whole thing. But if I go to Red Robin, or TGIFriday's or something and get a burger, I can still only eat about 2/3 of it. (Patty only of course!) I was 2 years post-op in September. I can usually eat maybe 5-6 ounces per meal, depending on what I'm eating? Sliders like popcorn and potato chips, it seems like I could just eat an unlimited amount of! So I try to really limit those.

I did the EAS AdvantEDGE ready-to-drink shakes from Target & Walmart. They have milk, but no whey.

Sounds like you had an amazing trip and learned a lot. I think all of us experience some level of terror about not being able to find foods to eat in strange situations, but the fact of the matter is, protein is available everywhere! As you figured out, you just have to find anything with protein in it and just eat the protein bits and you can manage. Good for you for making it work!

So you were hospitalized for a Vitamin deficiency? How far post-op are you?

TJ is kind of the center of "medical tourism" in Mexico. It's a popular destination for not only WLS, but plastic surgery, dental surgery, and lasik. There are MANY world class surgeons there, working in various fields. And the prices are usually about 1/3-1/2 what they would be in the US. The level of competition there keeps prices lower and seems to really increase the level of care, because all of their business is generated by word of mouth, reviews, and personal experiences. There are definitely some hacks performing surgeries in less-than-ideal conditions for really cut-rate prices, so you have to do some due diligence in your research. But as long as you do that, you can be pretty confident in the surgeon, facility, and level of care for a reasonable price.

Welcome to the "Dreaded Week 3 Stall". I would estimate at least 95% of WLS patients experience a stall right around three weeks post op. If you do a search on these forums, you will see HUNDREDS of posts complaining about the same thing. You are not doing anything wrong. Get your Water in. Get your Protein in. Take your Vitamins. Walk several times a day. The weight will start coming off again when it's good and ready. In the mean time, your body is just adjusting and adapting to the major shock it's been through with the surgery, healing, and drastically reduced calorie intake.

That is terrible! I hope you recovery fully and don't have any long term effects from this. But I agree about hiring a lawyer! Jeez! As for your question, fatigue is pretty common with sleeve. I was exhausted for the first 3-4 weeks at least. Once you progress to more solid foods and can get more calories in, that should help give you a bit more energy.

RNY can be reversed. It's one of the "pros" of choosing that surgery over sleeve, although it is almost never actually done. To the OP: It's not really clear from your post what happened. Are you doing better now?

Definitely elastic pants and sports bras. One of the incisions is right where my bra band goes across and you wouldn't want anything hard or stiff there. I wore yoga pants most of the time that I was there.

Why haven't you had anything to drink yet? Are they still waiting on your leak test?

@@karen091866 Ask for free samples. My local GNC had some tiny little sample-sized bars of a couple FitJoy flavors. They were good, but still not as good as my beloved Combat Crunch bars.

Something struck me watching My 600 Pound Life with my BF last night. He and I have been dating a little over 6 months. He never knew me pre-op. He never saw me fat. He has only seen me at my goal weight. He watched me complete a marathon back in September. This is the only me he knows. He knows I had WLS and he sees the way I have to eat now. He teases me about it, jokes about it, and is sometimes just genuinely baffled by it. He also sees how much exercise I do to maintain my weight. Anyway, watching the show last night, he was still sooooo full of contempt for the featured patient. He made several negative comments that were pretty offensive to me about the way she looked and what she was eating pre-op. Then post-op, when she was struggling to eat 4 teaspoons of Soup, he was shocked about how difficult her recovery was. It occurred to me that I have seen this kind of reaction and thought process from a LOT of people who think WLS is the "easy way out". They say it's cheating and it's easy, but when confronted with how difficult the recovery is and how little food people can eat post-op, they have this "how/why would you do that to yourself" kind of response. It seems rather hypocritical, but very common.

If you can't exercise at all, you are probably going to lose some muscle. Can you at least walk? What about any form of strength training? Definitely keeping your protein up will help at least.

I think 1-2 nights in the clinic/hospital, then another 1-2 nights in the hotel is pretty standard. So a total of 3-4 nights in TJ post-op. I stayed the night in the hotel the night before my surgery. I was the first operation of the day in the morning, so only spent one night in the clinic, since I was there all day post op. I was discharged back to the hotel in the afternoon the day after my surgery. Two nights in the hotel after that. Then I actually stayed a night in a hotel in San Diego before flying home, because of the times that flights were available. The only flights that would get me back to my home town with only one layover all left around 9:00 and the shuttle couldn't get me to the airport before 11:00-ish. So I stayed a night in San Diego right next to the airport and that hotel's shuttle service took me to the airport the morning of my flight. In all it was 1 night pre-op in TJ, 3 nights post-op in TJ (1 in clinic, 2 in hotel), and 1 night in San Diego.