JamieLogical

Good luck! Hope everything goes super smoothly!

Sip, sip, sip. Tiny sips ALL DAY LONG. Aim for 1 oz. every 15 minutes. Two hours is actually about right for an 8 oz. protein shake. If you can get in 4 oz. per hour and you are awake 16 hours a day, then you get in your 64 oz. for the day.

Are you cleared for that much activity at less than a month out? That seems like a lot to be doing so soon. I wasn't cleared for anything more than 60 total minutes of "brisk walking" per day until I was 60 days post-op. You mentioned your surgeon has you back on primarily Protein shakes. What were you eating before that?

This site has some great recipes for all of the food stages. I HIGHLY recommend the baked ricotta in the puree stage: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=the+world+according+to+eggface

Has your surgical team expressed any concern over the severity of your restriction? At 3 months out, you will definitely still experience some "relaxing" of the sleeve. So you will be able to eat more probably sometime between 9 and 12 months post-op. It is concerning that you are still struggling to get water and protein in, though. Have you experimented with different temperatures and different flavorings for your water? You should definitely not be having severe restriction with liquids this far out. Usually restriction with water is due to internal swelling, but that should be long gone by now.

Weighing is definitely more accurate. Measuring cups measure VOLUME, but most serving sizes are in grams or ounces, which are units of WEIGHT.

Let us know how it goes!

Good luck! I think you are right to take charge and be pushy if necessary.

You will still be able to eat in social settings. Once you are through the post-op food stages and all healed up, you will be able to eat anything. Just in smaller quantities. The main requirement will simply be protein. Every party/function/dinner/gathering I have been to post-op has had SOME sort of protein choice available. I've been to Holiday parties, Super Bowl parties, cookouts, happy hours.... I have managed to find something to eat at every single one of those.

The sooner the better. The last thing you want to be trying to do is kick a soda addiction the same time you are trying to recover from surgery.

Just posted this in another thread this morning: It's important to remind yourself that you made the decision to have surgery when you were in a logical/rational state of mind. Last-minute jitters are common, but they are emotional and irrational. Don't let them deter you from following through on a decision that you made after a LONG period of research and reflection.

Get a food scale. It will be the only way to accurately track what you are eating. Then, if you are cooking at home, you can enter everything into a recipe calculator on MyFitnessPal or SparkPeople to figure out the nutrition for the meal you've made.

The gas pain is the number one complaint of most WLS patients in the early days. As much as you don't want to, walking really will help get rid of it faster. So get up and walk around as much as you can stand to.

It's highly unlikely that you are taking in too many calories as long as you are eating protein first and not grazing all day long. If you put protein first three meals a day and have two protein-only Snacks, you probably can't get much above 1500 calories a day. 300 to 400 calories per meal and 100-200 calories per snack would put you at 1100-1600 calories.

Which doctor did you talk to? Your surgeon or your OB/GYN? I would suggest talking to your OB/GYN and looking into changing your birth control.

I can't help at all, but I wanted to wish you good health and good luck!

I was only allowed clear liquids the day before and NOTHING after midnight the night before. That was actually really tough because I couldn't sleep at all, since I was so anxious and I wasn't even allowed water for the entire 6-ish hours I was tossing and turning before heading to the clinic.

Rapid weight loss wreaks havoc on your hormones. Hormones are stored in fat and as the fat breaks down, those hormones are released back into your blood. So it is common to experience irregular and heavier periods as well as increased fertility. I think you should call your surgeon and your OB/GYN. It may be that you need to get on some form of birth control that will lessen the severity of your periods or eliminate them altogether.

Lap-band is becoming a less and less popular option. The rate of late complications and revisions is very high and getting higher as more people are further out and experiencing slippage, erosion, and other late complications requiring revision. For me the choice was between bypass and sleeve and it was an easy one. Here are my reasons for not choosing bypass: I had a low enough BMI that I didn't feel such a "drastic" option was necessary. I hated the idea of my intestines being rerouted. The more joins in the intestines, the more opportunity for leaks. I really hated the idea of the "old" part of my stomach being left in my body where it might develop ulcers or cancer and be unaccessible with a normal endoscopy. I didn't like the idea of malabsorption. While it makes the weight loss go more quickly, weight LOSS is a tiny fraction of the journey. A WLS patient spends the VAST majority of their journey in maintenance. Why should I risk Vitamin deficiencies for the rest of my life just to reach goal a couple months quicker? I didn't like the idea of dumping. Yes, it might act as a deterrent for eating sweets, but I wanted to be able to eat sweets once in a while still. Plus, it would be silly to RELY on it, since not every bypass patient experiences it. I wanted to retain the use of my pyloric valve. It helps hold food in the stomach longer and the idea of my pyloric valve still being inside me, attached to my "old" stomach and opening and closing based on signals from my "new" stomach honestly weirded me out. I was self-pay and sleeve was simply cheaper.

It's important to remind yourself that you made the decision to have surgery when you were in a logical/rational state of mind. Last-minute jitters are common, but they are emotional and irrational. Don't let them deter you from following through on a decision that you made after a LONG period of research and reflection. I found it helped to think of weight loss surgery as weight MAINTENANCE surgery instead. I was always great at losing weight. I lost 20-90 pounds many times over. What I was terrible at was keeping it off. WLS has allowed me to do that. The weight LOSS is only a tiny fraction of your journey. Most people lose all of their excess weight within a year or two. Weight MAINTENANCE is the true test. That's for the rest of your life! And WLS is a tool to make that happen.

To be successful at WLS still requires a tremendous amount of discipline and dedication. All gastric sleeve does is reduce the amount of food you can eat at one time. It doesn't stop you from eating all day long. It doesn't stop you from drinking you calories. It doesn't stop you from eating slider foods. It doesn't stop you from eating high calorie/high fat foods. It doesn't force you to be more active and exercise more. It is simply a tool that addresses ONE aspect of overeating. I don't say that to discourage you. I say that so you understand the reality of the situation. You will still have to do ALL of the work to lose weight. You will still have to eat the right things, stick to the guidelines, and exercise. For me it was the perfect tool, because I was a binge eater. I can't binge anymore. I had to find other ways to deal with my emotions. But every day I still have to put Protein first at every meal/snack, avoid drinking my calories, avoid nibbling on chips and candy between my scheduled meals/snack, avoid eating and drinking at the same time, and make a conscious effort to exercise regularly.

Yay! Good luck!

That's great news! Hopefully it was the "reset" you needed and you can stick to the plan moving forward.

@@Ssze1109 Muscle does weigh more than fat. When people say that, they are referring to volume. Fat is denser. I don't think anyone is implying that 5 lbs doesn't equal 5 lbs.....

You should definitely listen to him and all of his reasoning. Hopefully it will be a non-issue and you are worrying needlessly. But if he does think, for whatever reason, that bypass is a better option for you, then hopefully you can weigh his reasoning carefully against your own thoughts and reservations and make the best decision for yourself.