OutsideMatchInside

Ask your Dr. Crossfit is going to be at least 6 weeks, because of hernia risk. I have done Crossfit and honestly you won't be able to drink water fast enough or eat enough calories for it until at least 6 months.

I eat every 2 to 3 hours, In the beginning you are definately going to have to eat every 2 hours to try and meet your protein goals.

What a great question. I noticed more capacity at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. My capacity at almost 20 months is about the same as 12 months. What I had to do was at mainly dense protein. I had to switch to steak, chicken breasts, pork chops. I increased my fat and increased my calories per day. Even with increased capacity, dense protein is going to sit in your sleeve, so things like steak are your friend. I had to give up things like chicken salad, too moist, no restriction, no satisfaction, still "hungry" afterwards. I learned that salad was a slider at that point so I would eat a lot of baby spinach in the afternoons, like a whole bag.

Day 4, Rolled over in my sleep and it felt so good. It helped so much with the gas. If you have something tight on to support your stomach, it should't be an issue

I know it seems crazy to some people but there are lots of us that have never liked carbs to begin with so not eating them is not a sacrifice. I have never liked pasta, or rice. I only ate bread with sandwiches so that is easy to give up if I can have the meat inside. Not eating carbs for me isn't a sacrifice, it is a pleasure.

8-12 pounds a month isn't slow weight loss. I have lost 178/180 pounds ish, and most of it was in small amounts monthly. I would stall for a week or 2 and then in a week lose like 10 pounds. It was stall, loss in chunks This is my whole first year. Month 1 21 Month 2 11.5 Month 3 13.6 Month 4 20 Month 5 8.7 Month 6 6.7 Month 7 16 Month 8 7.1 Month 9 7.7 Month 10 4.6 Month 11 4 Month 12 7 Total 127.9 I do not consider myself a slower loser. I think people have unrealistic expectations about what weight loss is like after WLS. Most people are not losing massive chunks of weight each month, the body just can't support that. I have lost another 50 ish pounds so far in my 2nd year, and I still have 4 months to go to hit 2 years. I'm hoping to lose another 20 pounds before the 2 year mark but my weight loss is pretty slow right now. I went form a US size 28/30 to an 8/10 currently.

Nope you are doing awesome. Having the sleeve is kind of like having strep throat. If you keep things going through it, it stops it from being so inflamed. So you can keep eating/drinking. It is really important in the beginning because it helps keep the swelling down. Keep doing what you are doing, you are rocking it. Also fluids go right through your sleeve. I had a live swallow test, and the valve at the bottom of your stomach works like sand going through and hourglass. As soon as you take a sip, it opens and things slide though. So as you are just sipping, it is passing right through. Now later when you can gulp, you have to be careful you don't drink too much at once. All it takes is one time and you will learn your lesson

Do yourself a favor and stop thinking about eating off plan as cheating. This is a life going forward of healthy eating, not a diet. There is no cheating, you make a mistake, you get back on track next meal. I live alone, and did when I did my pre-op diet. If I had been stuck on liquids but surrounded by food I would have ate some food too. Days without chewing is maddening. So I'm not going to judge you. If you have to eat something just let it be carb free. The only day you really can't have anything is the day before surgery and that is to make sure your surgery is entirely safe. Good luck.

I'm going to be honest. I never chewed slowly, I still don't. I don't chew a ton of times, my chewing is basically the same as it ever was. I could never master the slow chewing and I hate cold food, so I never ate super slow either. I sometimes drink with my meals because I would rather take a sip than choke to death, I know crazy. there are something I have that I drink with, like I will drink water and eat a protein bar. Mainly because a protein bar is a lot of calories that can be consumed in a few bites and drinking water with it stretches it out. I didn't do this until past the one year mark but I do it. As long as your portions are measured and you know your capacity, eating and drinking isn't a big deal. You won't do it much just out of habit because it can cause you to be overly full very fast or push your food though. This is learned behavior by following your food progression post-op. It won't seem weird or like a punishment, it will seem normal. After the one year mark I sometimes eat and drink when I am in public eating situations but it is pretty rare. I grew up not eating and drinking so this doesn't seem like odd behavior to me. It really isn't something worth getting hung up on. You are only going to need to follow it rigorously for the first 6 months, and that is just to prevent being overly full. Long term you can eat anything with the sleeve unless you have complications. The question is will you want to eat these things. You probably won't long term, but you might short term. I love orange juice, I mean love it. I have had it twicee in the past 2 years at special occasion brunches. It was amazing, but I don't crave it because it isn't a part of my normal diet. That is what following your food steps and retraining yourself on how you feel and think about food does. I can have orange juice if I want, it doesn't make me dump or anything. I just don't want it. Lastly a lot of people are going to those groups just to lord things over people. I have been very successful in my opinion and I have never been to a group. When I was in orientation and I saw how people were asking about having toast and oatmeal post-op, I already knew those groups wouldn't be for me. WLS is like being a parent. Everyone tells you how hard babies are and that they cry etc. No one warns you about teenagers, college age kids, and being a parent to an adult child. Those are the really hard parts, People just focus on the beginning. The beginning of WLS is tough because you are healing, long term, as long as you don't have complications, you are not every different from anyone else. You just have a smaller stomach. The end game, maintenance and almost being at goal is way harder than the beginning.

Honestly, probably never. Being overweight and losing the weight ravishes your body. Also my left side has always been smaller than right side, and that continues now. I barely have a love handle on the left side, but I have one on the right side.

@LittleLizzieLilliput Where did I say one unkind thing? I'm taking my time that could be spent doing anything else in an attempt to help a stranger on the internet. If that isn't kindness, I'm not sure what is. Refuting bad advice is not being unkind. This is a discussion board not an echo chamber, people are going to disagree.

And it is a fad diet. I have and will continue to advise people against fad dieting. It just creates and continues unhealthy relationships with food. People need to find life long ways to eat that are sustainable and healthy. I lost my first 100 pounds eating real food every day. I didn't need a liquid diet to lose weight. Doctors prescribed Fen-Phen too, doesn't mean it was healthy or sustainable. Also, no offense but you aren't even 6 months from surgery. You have no idea what life is like at this point. OP should have posted in the Vets forum.

There is an entire forum dedicated to it. http://www.bariatricpal.com/forum/427-pregnancy-with-gastric-sleeve-surgery/

You can't live forever on a liquid diet. That is just fad dieting. The best thing about having WLS is you never have to fad diet again. A liquid diet works against your tool. A protein shake would be like drinking water to me and I would still be hungry. Dense protein is our friend post op. If you had 4 ounces or so of steak would be full for hours with no desire to snack.

You might be losing really fast and the hormone release is triggering depression. See someone though, don't suffer alone.

Comparing yourself to other people doesn't help. Everyone has different start weights and biology that is going to affect how they are losing. It is better to look at how you are eating. Are you tracking all of your food? Are you weighing/measuring all your portions? What are your macros? Protein grams? Carb grams? That is the stuff that is going to determine how fast you are losing weight. I lost 66 pounds in my first 4 months. I also started with a BMI of 60. If you start with a lower BMI you are going to lose less. No one in the world is going to think 10 pounds a month is slow weight loss. People are grossly unrealistic about how fast you lose weight post op with WLS.

Is your depression under control? Losing weight is going to make it worse for a while.

No one knows but your surgeon ask them, you paid them enough.

You are lucky you can have salad. I was stuck with just liquids, so be grateful you get to chew. The amount of time your diet is limited is very short, about 6 months. Once you are healed you can eat just about anything. Hopefully at that point you won't want to. I'm almost 2 years out, I can eat anything I want. I just choose not to.

My Dr said because it is an appetite stimulant. I told him it had the exact opposite effect on me. I have had caffeine since week one. No issues at all. And I have had coffee the whole time. I drink probably 6-10 cups of coffee a day. You can't dehydrate yourself with coffee. Science has debunked that so many times. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/01/13/262175623/coffee-myth-busting-cup-of-joe-may-help-hydration-and-memory There is a NY times article that I don't have the time to find but there are like 10 scientific notations in it. Anyway fluids are fluids, You would have to drink gallons of coffee to get enough caffeine to dehydrate you.

There are a few really long threads about this that you can search for. I didn't tell anyone, just a couple friends know. I have found it to be very beneficial that people don't know. A lot of people say that people will question you or how you are losing weight but honestly even though you lose a lot of weight it doesn't come off overnight and people are not that curious. Most of the population think that diet and exercise work so if you tell them you are low carb and being active they will readily accept that. I am literally 1/2 my size I was before and no one questions how I lost weight. They know I am active and when they spend time around me, they see how I eat. All day, lol but small portions. Most people are not willing to give up carbs on the level I have, so when people see how I eat, even at restaurants they don't question. You can't un-tell, so it is best not to tell. At almost 2 years I am finally to the point that I would feel comfortable talking about my surgery with people because I feel it could be so beneficial for some people. The only thing is, I don't want the fact I had surgery to be my identity and have people ask me about it all the time. I don't even feel like a WLS patient at this point and surgery seems like a distant memory. Being a poster child for surgery would be like a dark cloud that followed me around robbing me of my identity.

Exercising probably won't make the weight fall off, especially since exercise inflames your muscles and makes you retain water. I'm at the same weight as you, the only different is I have lost a lot of weight to get here. The lower your weight, the slower the weight comes off. You are not going to see the huge losses you see most people posting about because they started so much higher tan you. Not just that but your body naturally stalls, adjusts then starts losing again. That is part of the process.

Soup is just going to be a slider. Adding meat to it is going to moisten the meat to the point it won't sit in your stomach that long. At 2 months you still have a lot of restriction so it won't be an issue. Long term you will be able to eat endless amounts of soup and most soups are high in calories and carbs depending on the soup base. Soup is a waste of time and calories imo. You'll be hungry again in an hour.

If you use measuring cups all your portions will be off. Weight and volume are not the same thing, not even in your sleeve. You can overfill a measuring cup and you are overfilling your sleeve. Anytime accurate measurements are needed, weight is used. This applies to baking and science to name a couple things. Weight is more accurate than measurements, this is a scientific fact, not a matter of preference.

I found chewables nasty. Just find a high quality regular vitamin.