NikkiDoc

I don't know your set up at work but Mio has drops that are sweet tea flavored. Small enough to carry in your purse. As long as you have access to Water you could have tea. For the shakes I prefer Matrix made with milk. I don't think they are as sweet as Premier and don't seem as thick. I tend to use the vanilla most and add DaVinci SF syrup. I have gingerbread, cinnamon/brown sugar, caramel, Peanut Butter. SF DaVinci comes in a bunch of flavors. You can also add real peanut butter, frozen no sugar added strawberries, mangos or peaches or SF Hershey's syrup. I have added fresh fruit. I did not like it with kiwi. The Matrix is not as convenient compared to the pre-made but I will frequently make it the night before. Some people become lactose intolerant after surgery and whey can be an issue so you may need a different Protein drink not based on whey. This is not ideal but I find that if I eat while I clean I really slow down how fast I eat. I take a bite. Clean a counter, take another bite, unload the dishwasher, bite, wipe down microwave etc... It is hard to mindlessly eat when you walk away from the food. I wonder if at work you could take a bite, take a walk while you chew, take a bite, take a walk. The walk doesn't need to be far- maybe to the lunchroom or bathroom and back. Bonus is you get extra exercise in too.

Are you on a PPI? Maybe you have some reflux that is presenting as feeling yucky. How are the shakes making you feel? You may want to go back to shakes and purees. That may be what your stomach is ready for right now. For liquids play with temperature. Some people do better with hot, some with cold and some warm. Early on I preferred hot decaf or herbal tea. Now I prefer very cold. I don't like plain Water and drink much more if it is flavored with Mio or Crystal Lite. I sometimes water down Chick fil A diet lemonade. I will drink watered down iced tea when out. I make decaf at home. Don't tell my doctor or NUT but drinking with a straw has also helped my liquid consumption.

I sit at a desk all day. I was back to work 15 days after surgery. I had a better than text book recovery. I had a 20 pound weight lifting restriction at that point. I was at 40 pounds by 4 weeks and unrestricted if it felt comfortable at 6 weeks. At 6 weeks I was pretty comfortable carrying 50 pound horse feed bags. I don't routinely carry more than that. I did have a hiatal hernia repair at the same time but I don't think that would have changed the weight limits.

I travel some for business. I normally fly in the night before and I try to stay at a Residence Inn. This way for Breakfast I can have eggs. I have a small fridge for either left overs or for things like lunch meat & yogurt. I will pick up a couple of yogurts or lunch meat once I land. I carry a few Protein bars even though I don't eat them much at home. I buy Water when I land and carry my Mio to flavor it. Most of my clients have a fridge I can throw food into for during the day. I spent a few hours in the Detroit airport on layover and got sashimi and salad for lunch. For eating out I will try to just get an appetizer and side salad, or get a salad with protein. Many menus have a lighter portion part. If I know where I am going ahead of time I will scope out the kids menu. If that has something suitable I will get something off that. I have never had a restaurant say no to me eating off the kid's menu. I will get a watered down iced tea to sip at before the meal. However, I have been very open about my WLS. Everybody has been supportive and ask questions about what I can eat and how often etc.... If you don't want to let people know you had WLS you could just say your are recovering from abdominal surgery and don't have much of an appetite yet. Most people won't push for specifics. I also had hiatal hernia surgery at the same time and that is fairly common with WLS so you could say hernia surgery if pressed for details. My clients also are long term vendors that I audit every year or every other year. I deal with them regularly in between audits. Therefore I have a long term relationship with them.

My husband went to 2 information sessions with me at the 2 local hospitals. The first one I did not qualify for the surgery at the time due to low BMI and no co-morbidities. That hospital eventually stopped doing bariatric. I eventually went to Barix Clinic which is over an hour from my house. My doctor was the same one that who did the information session at the hospital that discontinued it. However, my husband did not come up to Barix Clinic until until the day of surgery. He did drive me to my first post-op visit due to the distance. He is still very supportive and reminds me to chew. He has cruised around this board some. He has asked lots of questions when I come back from appointment.

I had GERD prior to surgery and was already on Nexium. I had my hiatal hernia repaired at the same time as I was sleeved. My surgeon normally has his sleeve patients on Protonix for a few months post surgery. He kept me on the Nexium since I was already on it and we knew it worked. My 3 month visit was on 4/30/2015 and he told me to stop the Nexium. No reflux since then. My surgeon told me with the sleeve I can take pills that are smaller than an M&M. For the capsules the end needs to be smaller than that M&M. Also with capsules he prefers that I take it with warm Water to soften the capsule and with dairy such as cottage cheese or yogurt so it stays in the stomach a little longer to start to digest. Bufflehead is correct that certain medicines should not be crushed or dissolved and then taken. The ones with the most problems are extended release (XR) or timed release. My metformin was XR and some narcotics are XR. Dissolving or crushing them can cause the medicine to hit the blood stream all at once instead of over a period of time like they are designed.

Any of the studies I have found regarding how much Protein the body can digest at a time have all been from a weight lifter perspective. It is how much protein can the body optimize for building muscle mass at any given meal without storing any additional. If I remember correctly the additional protein is converted and stored for quick access. It is no immediately peed out. Many Protein shakes were originally developed for the body builders and many of the studies were done for those users. If I remember correctly a number of these studies were done over 20 years ago. I would assume for most of us on this board the goal is slimming not bulking. It is likely these studies do not apply to bariatric patients. I also seem to remember that newer studies have disproven the body not being able to digest more than a certain amount of protein at a time. I will need to try to dig up some of these studies to re-read and link here when I am not at work.

I am not on the maintenance phase yet. But one of my go to quick meals on the road is Chick fil-A. They have a grilled nugget kids meal. You can get fresh fruit or no sugar added cinnamon applesauce as the side. I get the diet lemonade as the drink. I think you can get plain milk. I splurge and get the Chik fil-A dipping sauce. They have a few dipping flavors. It is the perfect size. Sometimes I will just get the 8 piece grilled nuggets- entree only no sides. At this point the dogs normally get 2 of them. You can get the 12 piece and maybe get 2 meals out of it. You can also switch out the waffle fries for a side salad. If you are in maintenance you may be able to splurge on the original fried version. It is available in the kids menu, as nuggets or strips. Their breading is relatively light compared to many other places and it is real white meat chicken no chopped and formed chicken parts so less fat in the meat part. They have a good calculator http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Food/Meal I travel a lot for business so I sometimes stuck a bit more not being able to brown bag meals.

My doctor is no NSAID forever after the sleeve. However he is letting me take the lower dose of Celebrex since the COX-2 inhibitors have lower GI issues that most NSAIDS. I can also use Tyelnol. In the past I have successfully used subligual Arnica for minor aches and pains. If it is arthritis of a particular joint you may consider getting topical Voltaren. It is OTC in Canada and RX in the US. But check with your surgeon before using.

I understand some of the point of the article is to make sure to plan so that you don't find out you hae scheduled surgery shortly after your plan has changed to not covering WLS. However, I don't think that the 6 month supervised diet required by many insurance companies is "absurd". I have seen plently of posters on this forum that were self pay or their insurance company did not have that requirement and a month after deciding they wanted WLS they have it done. A high percentage of time these are the people that were not prepared mentally for the post-op restrictions. I also view the 6 month pre-op supervised diet as an opportunity to have access to a good dietician or nutritionist that understands what a weight loss surgery patient's diet will be like after surgery. This is your opportunity to have the insurance company pay for that knowledge. Most insurance will not pay for nutritional counseling or dietician unless you have diabetes. But they will pay for those visits as part of the medically supervised pre-op requirements. That 6 months is the time to start easing into your new eating and drinking habits. Many of us that have done "diets" for years have done many bad or fad diets. Low fat, cabbage Soup, LA weight loss, Medi-fast, South Beach, Atkins, Nutri-system sometimes a combo of some of these at the same time. The medically supervised diet is that opportunity to have an educated dietician, doctor or NUT help dispell many of the eating myths many of us have come to believe over time. That 6 month period is the time to go to pre-op support groups or forums like BariatricPal to do the research on what to really expect after WLS. My insurance did not require me to lose weight on the supervised diet. I just had to show that I made a real effort. I did lose weight during mine. Mine would have taken proof from the last 2 years that I had been working with my PCP or had regularly attended Weight Watchers for 6 consecutive months. Will there be people who don't take advantage of that time and the knowledge now available to them from their medical professional? Sure there will be. IMO those of the people that are likely to fail in the long run. WLS is a huge change. Having the psych eval and showing that you are serious about putting in the time it takes to make this tool work for you is not a bad thing. Having the time and knowledge to process how this surgery will permanently impact your life is not a bad thing. If you just view the supervised diet, the psych test as a pointless hoop then that is what it will be. If you view it as an additional tool then it will be beneficial. Based on what some posters have said, some surgeons require a certain amount of weight loss prior to scheduling surgery. My co-worker's band surgeon required 3 NUT visits and 3 consecutive support group visits. Those surgeons feel that it is important for their patients and they aren't paying for the surgery like your insurance company. A few months ago there was a poster on this board that decided to not have WLS since he felt that the basic pre-op testing, psych eval and supervised diet made him feel like a lab rat and it was not worth the trouble. How successful do you think he would have been with following the post-op restrictions, taking his Vitamins, having follow-up visits and follow-up blood work? Did those pre-op requirements weed out somebody that WLS would have been a mistake or at least a mistake at this time of his life? I went through my 6 month supervised diet.. I finished it up in Sept. My original plan was to have surgery in late October. Well, life got in the way and my husband neede back surgery in early Oct. My surgery had to wait until he was healthy. My co-worker had hip replacement in mid-November. We both could not be out at the same time as we are a small unit. Both of their surgeries were more medically urgent than mine. I had my surgery on 2/2/2015. Was I impatient during the 6 month diet period and during the other delays? Yes, I was. but I made the most of that time. I did a ton of research on Protein shakes, the actual procedures, my post-op diet. I read numerous 1st hand accounts of what to expect those first few days, weeks, months. I feel that that knowledge helped me get through my pre-op liquid diet, my pos op liquid diets, my puree period, that first stall from week 3 to week 6. I knew what to expect. Do yourself a favor- don't view that 3 or 6 month supervised diet as a hoop that needs to be jumped through. Take advange of those visits and use it as another tool to help you succeed after WLS.

I am 4 months out. I have been drinking with a straw since about 4 weeks, I won't get my Fluid without using a straw. I frequently drink right up until I eat. I will have a small sip or two during a meal if I need to due to dryness or spicyness. The other day I was way behind on both Protein and fluid. I ate a ham/provolone roll up and drank right away. I figured getting in the protein and fluid was more important. I did have most of a pralines and cream ice cream in a pretzel cone while on vacation in mid-May. I ate most of it. I will have 2 bites of hubby's ice cream about every 2 weeks. I will steal a french fry or a 1/4 of a mozzarella stick from his plate. If we go out I will get an unsweetened iced tea and have them Water it down. It is frequently the only no carb non carbonated drink and I don't like plain water even if they add lemon. I figure the amount of caffeine in a 1/4 of a watered down iced tea is pretty negligible.

I was a GERD sufferer prior to surgery and my gastroenterologist recommended raising the head of the bed like 6 inches. sleeping up on pillows apparently does not work. I would try taking meds at night. I was on Nexium prior to surgery and for the first 3 months after surgery. A different medication may work better for you or going to twice a day.

I have no gallstones prior to surgery so didn't need my gall bladder removed but happened to talk to my surgeon about it prior to my ultrsound. My surgeon will not do the GB removal at the time of the sleeve. He feels there is no way to remove the gall bladder and guarantee no bile leakage. He feels it presents a greater chance of contamination. I did have the hernia surgery at the same time as the sleeve. My surgeon puts his patient's on Actigall during their rapid weight loss period to prevent gallstones.

I had my hiatal hernia repaired when I had my sleeve done. I was on Nexium prior to surgery. At my three month visit the surgeon took me off of the Nexium. I am now 4 months out and no reflux since I came off the Nexium. I would not worry about what the gastroenterologist has to say about the sleeve. Talk to your bariatric surgeon. That is his specialty not the gastroenterolgist's specialty.

I am 4 months out and have never felt deprived. Since I generally don't have a problem getting in my Protein I don't feel bad stealing a bite or two from my husband of things that I like but are not on the diet. I will have a 1/4 of a mozzarella stick, 1 french fry, 2 bites of ice cream, a Dorito or two. (not at the same time). My husband got me 4 chocolate covered strawberries for my birthday. I had 1 a day. I have had scalped pizza. This gives me a taste of things so I don't feel deprived but I don't have enough to derail my weight loss. The only thing I have missed a little bit has been alcohol. We went on vacation in mid-May and had a hot tub. I would have been nice to have a glass of wine. I was tempted to have half a glass for my birthday at the end of May. Per my surgeon I can't have alcohol until August 2nd. I can wait until then. I put the alcohol in the sorta miss it/head hunger category but not strong enough miss to to call it feeling deprived.

I think the straw experience if different for everyone. I was using a straw 1 month out. I drive 2 hours round trip to work. If I couldn't drink in the car I would really struggle with getting in my Fluid. Drinking without a straw at 50 MPH is just not happening. I would be wearing it. When I first started drinking with a straw I would draw the Water into my mouth and hold it there for a second before swallowing. Sip, hold, swallow, sip, hold, swallow. I think that helped prevent getting too much air. A number of people on this board find that drinking from a straw helped their liquid consumption. During my first few weeks post surgery I preferred decaf and herbal hot/warm tea. More than room temp. I quickly went back to preferring cold drinks. I went through a period where I would buy a gallon of the Chick-fil A diet lemonade and water that down. It is made with Splenda. It has a few carbs from the lemons but not enough to be an issue. Currently Mio is my go to flavor.

I had a hiatal hernia repair and sleeve done at the same time. My surgeon said if he hadn't told me about the hernia repair I never would have known. I had a really uneventful recovery. I never had gas pains. I never had incision pain. My worst pain was like I had done WAY, WAY too many sit-ups. I had surgery on a Monday morning and too pain meds through Weds in the hospital. I took a pain med about 45 minutes before my husband picked me up. I had an hour 15 minute ride home and wanted to make sure I was comfortable. I took another right before bed on Weds night just to make sure I would get a good night's sleep and then never took another pain pill- even Tylenol. I don't think the hernia repair made any difference in my recovery.

FYI this thread is pretty old- 2012.

Okay my rant: Size 18s are now clown pants but size 16 are too small. Camel toe is so not the look I am going for. This morning I tried on 4 pairs of pants: two size 16, one size 16W, one size 18- all no go. I am now wearing a dress. My size 16 capris fit but other than 1 pair are all not quite dressy enough work work except Friday when we can wear jeans. I guess I am going to be wearing dresses and skirts for work for a little while.

I also had a history of auto immune hepatitis/fatty liver. A few years on prednisone (that was good for 40 pounds) and a year on Immuran. My surgeon never asked for my records from my gatroenterologist. My surgeon used to work with her in the same practice before he started to specialize in bariatric. I have no idea if I have liver damage. My liver numbers had gotten high again about 2 years before my sleeve. At my 3 month recheck post-op my numbers are on the lower end of normal. I think that the more recent high numbers were due to fatty liver not the auto immune issues. I hope that your liver is healty enough for the surgery. Losing the weight may help your liver health.

I had a few year history of GERD prior to the sleeve and my surgeon never recommended by-pass. The first time I got scoped 4 years prior to the sleeve I did not have a hiatal hernia. I was scoped again 2 months prior to sleeving and now had a hiatal hernia. My surgeon fiixed it when I sleeved. I did have a 2 year period in the middle there where I did not have GERD symtoms and was not on Nexium. I came off my Nexium at my 3 month visit. A month later with no Nexium and I have no reflux. I would not 100% rule out the sleeve due to a history of GERD. I sometimes think that even without the hernia the extra weight can cause GERD. My surgeon seemed to think that reflux immediately after the sleeve was not uncommon but that that would go away within a few months as the weight is lost. I think each surgery has their pros and cons. For me the malabsortion and dumping was too scary for me. I frequently trail ride for 4 hours at a time. It is one thing to duck behind a bush for a quick pee quite another if I suddenly have a dumping episode.

I am currently 192 pounds. I plan on getting a tatto when I get to 165 I plan to get a small horsehead on the side of my thigh just above the knee on the outside. Something that will show when I wear shorts but not show when I where skirts/dresses at work. When I get to goal weight I am buying new tall riding boots for showing my horse. I may also get fancy riding chaps. I don't really have any other interim goals and rewards.

I had GERD prior to sleeving and was on Nexium. My surgeon fixed my hiatal hernia at the time of surgery. I sleeved on 2/2/2015 and he had me stop my Nexium on my 4/30/2015 visit. I have had no issues since then.

I had a catheter and they didn't pull it until the next morning. I walked 3 or 4 times during the night with the catheter and it was no big deal. I think I preferred having the catheter while I was still groggy. Initially it took me a long time to arrange myself and get out of bed. I think that for that first night I might not have woken up in time and then be able to get up quick enough to pee without having an accident. That being said I did have issues prior to surgery with urinary urgency. When I have to go I have to go NOW. The only uncomfortable part was making sure things were lined up correctly to get back in bed, if not it would tug and be a little bit uncomfortable. Walking with it wasn't a problem. I walked 1/4 mile the second time they had me up after surgery.

I am fairly early in my VSG journey, just 4 months after surgery. But my NUTs plan and the Barix Clinic plan is 5-6 small meals per day. It can be 3 meals and 2-3 Snacks. Just eat something small and healthy every couple of hours. I tend to eat my dinner pretty late at night but it is a meal not grazing. I eat a light something around 4:30 pm, drive an hour home, change and either go to the gym or ride my horse. By the time I am done with that I am eating anywhere from 8 to 8:30 pm. Fiddle around on the computer or read for a bit and then go to bed. I am normally in bed by 10 or 10:30 pm since I get up by 5:30 am. I don't allow myself much time to graze.