FrankyG

Most results I've seen are that you have no effect at all on recovery since they're doing very little to actually correct a hernia compared to the major surgery for the sleeve. At most, you'll experience a bit of reflux or GERD that may or may not resolve within the year. And I was off work for two weeks because that's how long I wanted to take off. I technically could have gone back to work within 4-5 days, but would have been exhausted. I had no pain really at all, and other than some swelling issues that made it difficult to get fluids in for the first 3 days, all I felt was tired and I slept most of that time off.

My vision was much worse; had to get new everything and it hasn't improved at all. My optometrist did say that significant weight loss can change your vision, and what I was told is it is because of both blood sugars (average differentials can change significantly - it is one of the main reasons diabetics end up having vision issues) and overall shape/pressure, and asked me to get tested to make sure I didn't have a Vitamin A deficiency. No idea if it's permanent, but I'm over a year out and it's not gotten any better. She said she usually saw vision improve, but lucky me got the other direction. Googling "weight loss and vision changes" there are significant amounts of data to back this phenomenon up. Medical doctors are fallible, and if they don't keep up with the medical journals or pursue further research in their field they can end up out of the loop.

Ohhh yeah, this bugs me too. My doctor specifically discussed this with me when I brought up something similar (friend of a friend has had the sleeve, and was already asking about being cleared to eat crap again). He told me that ANYONE will lose weight in the first year or so - even those that eat total crap like fast food, high carb/fat. The sleeve will be controlling the portion sizing for quite some time, and unless you're bedridden, you'll lose due to the small amount of food you actually consume. The goal is to use this time (roughly 12-18 months) to reteach yourself how to eat HEALTHY. Protein first, then healthy veggies, then complex carbs and rarely eating the crap foods. The real purpose of this surgery is to give you the restriction to help you drop weight NOW, along with reducing or even eliminating the overwhelming hunger most of us feel (due to the hunger hormone ghrelin, which is produced in the stomach... that is almost completely removed when they take most of the stomach out). This allows you to make smarter food choices since you should not be driven with uncontrollable cravings and better able to make smart choices. I've also learned healthy versions of dishes I used to love that weren't all that good - so I can still have things I used to love, but they're not nearly as bad for me. It only takes a few months for the new eating style becomes habit. That is the ultimate goal - learn to eat good, healthy foods for the majority of the time, and still be able to have occasional indulgences. If a person has this surgery thinking they'll be able to eat everything they had eaten before - fast food, fried everything, drink and eat total crap - sure, they'll lose for a bit just because they can't physically get that much in their sleeve, but then as they get further out and it gets a bit easier to eat, they'll regain and gripe about how the sleeve "failed" to work for them. They are the ones that failed however. No one can do well on a diet consisting of high fat, carb and sodium for any length of time. Most crap foods have very little nutritional value as it is, so eating those regularly is just asking for failure. You can eat anything after 6-12 months. Cake, doughnuts, Cookies, bread, Pasta, fried foods, deep dish greasy pizza... Should you? NO. You should make those types of foods a very rare event.

Fruit is one of the things I don't eat hardly at all any more. Just can't take the high sugar. Be careful tho, as it could cause a sugar dumping episode (sick/throwing up and shaking). Look for lower carb (low sugar) fruits like strawberries, watermelon, cantaloupe. And eat VERY little of them until you see how you feel after.

Fairlife milk or if you're in Texas, check out Mootopia. Both are much lower sugar (lactose) and double the protein. My NUT specifically recommended it, and it is the best. The Mootopia is super good (comes in 2%) and it tastes wonderful (better than regular 2% milk).

Stalls totally suck. They mess with your mind for sure. I waver up and down in a 2 pound range for several weeks at a time and just want to scream sometimes. Take your measurements (simple ones like waist, upper arms, chest, neck) as you might see more results when the scale doesn't move. A pound of fat is way bigger than a pound of muscle, and with your exercise and calorie intake, you are probably dropping fat and building muscle. I'd avoid eating bread and Pasta if at all possible even if they do officially clear you to eat all food. My doc highly discouraged eating both of those ever again. One you start adding bread/pasta back in, you start craving them more too. I very rarely have either any more. We get a double fiber whole wheat bread if I'm dying for a sandwich, but mostly I do low carb tortilla wraps to get the bread experience. Pasta is also rare, and whole wheat as well when it does happen, but I have a more difficult time with it (craving more) so I pretty much don't eat pasta at all much at this point.

That is so great your legs are responding so well to treatment. Hope you won't still be doing this by Halloween tho!

https://www.bariatricpal.com/forms/1-contact-us-form/

I'm almost 14 months out and still feel full (restriction) after about 4 ounces of solid, or 5-6 of more liquid/soft foods. Your stomach will eventually relax a bit more and you'll be able to eat more than in the early months, but you should always have the feeling of restriction/fullness when eating solid foods. The issues happen when you consume liquids or super soft stuff like ice cream or cake, or crackers with liquid - things that will turn to mush easily will slider right through your stomach and can cause you to feel like you still can eat more. That's why they call those types of foods "sliders."

For that activity level, yes you sound like you're eating too little food. Should add in some healthy veggies and complex carbs in moderation (like Beans, lentils?). I'd shoot for at least 1200-1400 calories for a few weeks and see what happens. You also should be aware that you might be dropping fat and building muscle - and you won't see that register on a scale. If you're not measuring, how are your clothes fitting? One pound of fat is much larger/bulkier than one pound of muscle...

Phenomenal progress!

Yup, and yes it does work. You are going back to basics, and reminding yourself and your sleeve of what you should be eating. I did it for a carb detox. Once I had the carbs out of my system, it was much easier to get back to Protein first and then healthy veggies and stopped the hunger/carb cravings that had creeped in. (I know now that I can't eat high carb sugary stuff without it making me crave more of the same - so I am not eating any of that type of food except for very rare occasions). http://5daypouchtest.com/plan/theplan.html is the one I used. @@Dub - a pouch is just another term for your sleeve.

Also a slow loser and totally agree with the others. It does suck to be a slow loser sometimes. I get sad seeing folks posting how they reached goal in 6 or 10 or 12 months, and I'm still plodding along with my goal way down the road. But I know without a doubt that I will get there because the one thing I have plenty of is time - time to adjust to eating healthy portions, time to do the meal planning and shopping for better food choices, time to get active and learn how to have fun exercising. Being a slow loser is a good thing because we are working our butts off to lose every pound; I know if I spend a year or two concentrating on how to eat, what to eat and ramping up my exercise to finally make my goal, I'll definitely feel more committed to keeping this up for the rest of my life! And slow losers generally have a bit less loose skin to deal with too. It isn't important how fast you lose the weight. What is important is that you are still working hard at losing weight and still sticking with your dietary/water goals, improving your fitness and reteaching yourself how to be healthy. But you're still really early in the whole process, and you might not be a slow loser in the end. You really need to work on your Water and getting your Protein in and see if that doesn't increase your weight loss... but if it doesn't, it's still going to be okay - just keep at it!

Your doctor is just being silly. 77 pounds in 5 months is super. You're just a slower loser. As long as you're following the basics - getting in your Water, Protein and working on becoming more active, you're doing well. I'm also a slow loser, and my doctor was disappointed in me at first, but when I showed them what I eat, how much I exercise and what I'm doing day to day, they really just had nothing to criticize me about. At most, they told me with my activity level I might need to eat MORE food. And yet I'm still losing weight, reducing in inches and doing well. I'm healthier than I've ever been. And I have every confidence that I'll make my goal and be even better than anyone could have imagined. Just might not be on my doctor's timeline. Are you also measuring? I know I'm working hard at building muscle and cardio, so even though it looks like I'm not budging on the scale some months, I'll drop an inch or two off my hips or waist... because a pound of fat is MUCH bigger/bulkier than a pound of muscle. So do start measuring if you haven't been! And slower losers tend to do better in the loose skin department too. So there's a plus! Do not let someone else - even your doctor - make you feel bad about your progress. As long as you are losing and working at getting healthy, you're on track. It is not a race. You will get to your goal if you keep working at it. Keep your head up, tell yourself you're worth every bit of effort and you're doing super, and don't let anyone tell you differently. Good luck!!

Yes, there are tons of threads discussing this type of thing. Fat stores hormones. As you lose weight (especially if you're losing at a good pace) those hormones are flushed out into your blood and will make you crazy feeling - angry, sad, weepy, super happy, irritable - and sometimes all within a short period of time! This is just another side effect of dropping that fat, and warn your friends/family that you might sometimes need to take a step back and collect yourself and apologize for any outburst weirdness. And when you're in the middle of feeling rage or weepy - remind yourself that this isn't really you - it's those nasty hormones that are getting in the way!

You should check out some of your local thrift stores (goodwill/salvation army/others) as I've found some amazing deals on beautiful clothes there. Try looking in areas where the neighborhoods are ritzy and you could even find some fancy label stuff.

It is supposed to tell you how much your stomach can hold. You can get a container of cottage cheese (usually they're clearly marked with how many ounce it contains) mark the level of the full container, and then start eating at a good pace until you are full and stop. Then you take a measuring cup filled with Water, and start pouring the water into the cottage cheese to measure how many ounces you were able to eat. I did a form of the test, but I preferred to do it in a less messy/wasteful way: I measured out 1 full cup (8 ounces) of cottage cheese into a measuring cup, and ate from there. Once full, I tamped down what was left lightly to see how much I'd eaten. My results were my stomach could hold 6 ounces. I discussed this test with my doctor, however, and he said it's complete BS. He said that cottage cheese is too liquid to really fill up a pouch without immediately flowing out, so while you could conceivably eat fast enough to feel full, at least some of it had likely already left the pouch since you started eating and would give you a false sense of how much the pouch could actually hold. He said he would be surprised if I could hold much more than 3-4 ounces of solid food. Liquid foods like cottage cheese or yogurt are not a good measure. The only true test is to use dense Protein - meat. He suggested cooked chicken breasts (not canned chicken either - too moist). Anything with a high moisture content will slide through the sleeve faster than you think. Weigh a few cooked chicken breasts, then eat until full. Measure what is left. That would be a much more accurate measure.

I will eat things like pork rinds and very rarely some crackers in small amounts now. But my favorite thing to eat for crunch currently is red pepper strips. My go-to lunch is chicken salad (made with canned chicken, green onions, light mayo, celery, red grapes and a touch of curry powder - it is AMAZING) and I used to eat that with crackers... but sweet red pepper strips are so good with this, it's all I want to eat now. Very satisfying crunch too! Husband even switched from crackers to the red pepper strips after trying. Carrots are also a great snack when I'm craving crunchy.

Yes it is completely normal. Search for three week stall and you'll get lots of hits.

I have always loved liver - beef or chicken versions. I've converted the husband too, as I soak beef liver overnight in milk to remove the bitter taste, and I add a bit of hot pepper and garlic to my chicken liver recipe - they are awesome!

I've lost right below 100 pounds and still can't see it most of the time. I think it's because I see myself every day and I still see the really fat girl when I look in the mirror. I'm hoping that perception changes soon. But if you mean how long to notice my clothes were fitting differently, about 2 months and at least 30-40 pounds. I didn't wear much that was super tight anyway, and I lose weight proportionally (all over shrank; not just one area) so it wasn't obvious to me until I realized that a favorite pair of jeans were looser at the waist, and then started trying on a size smaller and they fit easily.

She doesn't sound like much of a friend. She is a taker and doesn't give anything back to you in return. When she knew you needed help after surgery, she refused even though it would not have caused her any real hardship. I don't buy the worry about the goats and horse interaction; she was familiar with the horse and if you have a good idea of its personality, you know how it would act/react around other animals. She just didn't want to put herself out or inconvenience herself. The fact that she bought an untried horse rescue speaks to her own self-centered thinking. She wanted it, so she bought it. She wasn't worrying about the goats then. You sound like a really cool person, and one that deserves to have friends that appreciate them and want to help out because they care about you. Not ones that just use you for what they can get out of you. (and if it was me in the same situation - I'd have offered to come take care of the horses in their own stable/home for free because I would be so grateful for the chance to even ride around in a paddock, let alone you hauling them out to ride on trails and letting friend ride any time for free! I miss having horses so much...)

Some foods are just not going to sit right in the early days, and there doesn't seem to be any real way to tell until you eat them. It might be the dense Protein of the meatball that caused it, or it might be the greens or it might have been eating too fast just hit your sleeve funny. Or even a combo of all three of those things was just too much for your sleeve to handle right then. I had that issue with eggs of all things. Couldn't eat them without throwing up until I was something like 4-5 months out. No real explanation I could come up with either. Good thing is, it is all temporary. There is nothing I can't eat now, and I'm sure you'll eventually be able to eat anything once you're far enough out (just not nearly as much of course).

I burp. Once that starts, I know it is time to stop eating. If I tried to eat more, I'd regret it (early days, I'd throw up, now I'd just feel gross and really uncomfortable).