JamieLogical

I am allowed aspirin and ibuprofen now, but only as needed, not every day. If you have something like arthritis or chronic pain that requires daily medication, you should definitely discuss it with your surgeon and your PCP.

I try not to eat until I have that overfull feeling, because it is VERY uncomfortable. I try to measure out my portions or have a strong sense of how much I'm going to eat in advance so I can prevent myself from getting to that point. That being said, when I feel full, it's not like a vague, contented full feeling. It's a feeling like I might actually explode at any moment. It's not necessarily painful, just VERY uncomfortable. I often feel like I need to lie down when I'm experiencing it and it usually lasts for a good 45 minutes to an hour even after I've stopped eating. Like you, prior to surgery, I used to love feeling full. I was never a grazer or a snacker. I just ate HUGE amounts of food in one sitting. Like a whole pizza plus some ice cream. Or a huge entree at a restaurant plus dessert. The full feeling I experienced back then was comforting to me and I was very content when I did that. It is NOT like that now. The full feeling I get now is very unpleasant. I have not thrown up at all. I had two bouts of dry heaving the day after my surgery, but nothing like that in the 5 months since.

It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will experience dumping with the sleeve. Dumping is caused by bypassing the part of the small intestine that digests sugar with RNY. When an RNY patient eats high sugar foods, they become ill, because their bodies can no longer properly digest it. As a sleeve patient, your small intestine is fully intact. There are some people who experience dumping-like symptoms post sleeve, but that is due to other factors and is very rare.

Oh yeah. I agree with what you are saying with regards to just the calorie burn readout on equipment at the gym or whatever. If anyone thinks those are anywhere near accurate, they are foolish or stupid or both! Devices like the BodyBugg, BodyMedia Fit are more accurate with overall calorie burn throughout the day. A heart rate monitor can be pretty accurate as long as it can also be coded with stats like gender, height, weight, age, etc. Some of the devices that only count steps or whatnot a probably very inaccurate as well.

Oh, I know. Just the amount of protein they give for the amount of room they take up in my tiny sleeve doesn't make the math work yet. 1 ounce of spinach has 1 gram of protein. When I can only eat 3-4 oz. of anything MAX, having a whole ounce of something only give me one gram of protein is pretty useless.

Yeah, I don't have any room for vegetables, rice, breads/crackers, or sweet potatoes yet. I do eat a fair amount of beans, as they also have significant amounts of Protein. Every single thing I eat right now is a major protein source. Maybe once I have more room (if I ever do) I can start working on getting in more complex carbs. For now I am very reliant on my supplements to make sure I'm getting all the Vitamins and minerals I need.

Well, I hope you don't end up needing it long term, like me, but I knew going in that GERD and heartburn were potential side effects of the sleeve. My reflux is completely under control with just the over-the-counter dosage now, so it's not too bad, but I could see not wanting to be on a medication forever. I'm already taking like 15 supplements a day post-op, so what's one more pill?

My surgeon recommended Vitaleph, so that's what I've been taking. They come in bottles of 90 and I take two a day (not at the same time), so one bottle lasts me a month and a half. They are cheaper if you buy 4 bottles at a time. So, it comes out to about $100 for a 6 month supply.

At six weeks I would say count yourself lucky to be hitting your protein and water goals. Now, my protein goal was and is higher than 60.... my NUT wanted me at 85-100 as soon I was beyond full liquids. But even so, I'm five months out now, not having trouble with any foods, and still don't think I get much above 1000 calories most days.

Did you not get a prescription for an antacid from your surgeon? My surgeon had me on 40mg Omeprazole for two months post-op and I've ended up having to continue taking the 20mg over-the-counter dosage since then, as when I tried to go off it at the two month mark, I was experiencing reflux.

I don't think of carbs as "the enemy" the way some people seem to. My nutritionist never advised me to limit carbs to any specific number and carbs are the only form of fuel your brain can use, so you need some! I just focus on getting all of my Protein in and that usually means I don't get many carbs and I'm fine with that. If my protein source happens to have some carbs attached to it, then so be it. My calories are only coming from three macro-nutrients: protein, fat, and carbs. If I get the 100 gram upper range of my protein target every day, that's 400 calories from protein. That means to get 1000 calories a day, I'm getting 600 calories from fat or carbs. Why are would calories from carbs be any worse than calories from fat? That being said, the bulk of those other 600 calories are coming from fat for me, because most meat-based protein sources also include fat and fat has 9 calories per gram, versus only 4 calories per gram from carbs. In any case, even if I were overly concerned about carbs, QuestBars would still be a decent choice, because while they have 21 grams of carbs per bar, 17 of those are from "fiber". And most anyone who counts carbs actually counts "net carbs", which means subtracting out the Fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carb count. So the "net carbs" in a QuestBar are only 3 grams. Plus they only have 1 gram of sugar. Now you could make a whole case about Isomalto-Oligosaccharides not being real "fiber" in the way we tend to think about fiber. But the same could be said about the Polydextrose, Maltodextrin, Inulin, and Chicory Root Extract you see in all of the so-called "high fiber" foods on the market these days. Everything from yogurt, to cereal, to Breakfast bars, to ice cream is claiming to be "high fiber" now with those ingredients. If you are opposed to processed/packaged foods, then most Protein Bars probably aren't for you. But I don't think that has anything to do with the carb count, especially when the main carb you should be worried about (sugar) is barely even present in QuestBars at least.

I wore a BodyBugg for over a year and then I wore a BodyMedia Core for something like 7 months... I was OBSESSED with the math of calories in vs. calories out back when I was trying to lose weight "on my own". Now, post-sleeve, calories are completely meaningless to me. I exercise to be fit and healthy and I just make sure I eat enough protein to sustain me. It's very liberating to not care about the numbers anymore!

I'm partial to the chocolate Chip Cookie Dough QuestBars. I eat two a day and I never get tired of them!

I don't see how any of those commercial systems could work post-sleeve. How would you possibly get enough protein?

In my pureed stage I had a protein shake for breakfast, usually cream soup of some sort for lunch, greek yogurt as a snack, actual pureed food for dinner, and a protein shake between dinner and bed time. Once I was allowed soft foods, I started having an egg in place of soup for lunch and introduced string cheese as an afternoon snack.

Mine was EAS AdventEDGE Carb Control, Rich Dark Chocolate flavor. However, once I was able to eat solids, I moved to protein bars and dropped shakes altogether. SOOOOOOOO over liquids by that point!

I've found I don't really have room for veggies at all (5 months post-op) and just focus on getting my protein in and taking all of my vitamins and supplements religiously. I've had bloodwork done twice post-op (once at 2 months and once at 4 months) and everything has come back in normal ranges both times. My doctor was so pleased that she has said I can wait until 8 months for my next bloodwork. So despite the lack of veggies, I am apparently getting the nutrition I need.

You should talk to your nutritionist. Mine would not give any specific numbers for anything other than protein. She wants me to have 85-100 grams of protein per day.

I went through a phase where I was having two Trader Joe's turkey meatballs with a little pasta sauce for dinner almost every day.

I wasn't very worried pre-op, but those first couple of weeks post-op, I was VERY worried and depressed, thinking I would never feel "normal" again. I can assure you that, five months out, I feel normal 99% of the time now. It's a new normal in that the amount of food I'm eating now is so small and what I'm eating (Protein first! very little carbs) is quite different. But I have fully adjusted to it and it seems completely normal to me now. I do NOT feel like I am on a diet. For better or worse, I do not track all of my food like many people on these forums. I tracked in the beginning just to make sure I got a good sense of how much protein I was getting. Once I had a good feel for how much protein was in the foods I commonly eat, I saw no sense in tracking every bite of food anymore, since calories are pretty meaningless. Also, unlike on a diet, I rarely feel hungry. I eat high protein meals and Snacks throughout the day, so I am never hungry unless I get thrown off my schedule and miss a snack. I do occasionally crave my old comfort foods and sometimes I even eat them! But I can't eat much of them and find they don't really satisfy me anyway, so that is happening less and less.

I never crushed any of mine and didn't have any problems with them. I only took my birth control and the prescriptions my surgeon gave me through the first week, then I was allowed to start back on my supplements. That included giant horse pills like my calcium and Omega 3 and I never had any issues.

Shelly's Ricotta Bake! Recipe on this page: http://theworldaccordingtoeggface.blogspot.com/2007/08/pureed-foods.html

Thanks! I needed that. I was honestly pretty disappointed in how little difference there seemed to be. Especially in my work-out clothes, my back and butt still look like a hot mess. Hoping that starting to do some strength training will help out.

I didn't get any specific instructions, but I think I was only 5 or 7 days out post-op the first time?

Sounds like acid reflux to me.