catwoman7

a pound is likely just a normal fluctuation. People's weight goes up and down all the time. Have something salty the night before? Weight is up the next morning. Haven't defecated in a couple of days? Weight is up. That time of the month? Weight up a couple of pounds. If it's just a pound and you only started your new routine a week ago, it could just be that - a normal fluctuation. Check again in a couple of days and see where you're at.

I was always able to drink faster than what my binder said. The PA at my clinic told me not to worry about it - some people ARE able to drink faster. He said my stomach would let me know if I was drinking too quickly. Liquids go right through you, so it's not a problem unless your stomach starts hurting - then you'll need to slow down a bit.

you might have to decrease your calories or increase your exercise to get the scale moving again. Caloric intake can vary widely among people depending on so many factors. There are people on here who have to eat 1200 kcal to maintain, and others who can eat 2000. To lose weight, they'd have to eat fewer than their maintenance level (or bump up their activity). My maintenance level is around 1600, but I can go up to 1800 or so if I'm exercising most days of the week. BTW - the lower your weight, the fewer calories you have to take it to maintain the lower weight. So your calorie limit at 19 stone would be lower than what you'd need to maintain at 21.9 stone.

for clothes in general, I'd shop thrift stores since you're going to blow through sizes pretty quickly. Although leggings are cheap (and hard to find in thrift stores, too...)- so maybe I'd buy a new pair or two of those every couple of months. But more expensive clothes, no. In two months they're going to be too big for you.

so many of my never-been-obese female friends only eat 1/2 an entree (or a bowl of soup - or a salad - or half a sandwich) that I don't even notice (and actually, that's about how much I eat when I go out, too). So I'm a little surprised he noticed that unless you're eating less than most people at 3+ years out. The water thing someone might notice - although I'm not sure I would. I'm not sure what to tell you since I'd been married for many years when I had my surgery. Part of me has put all of that behind me since I had my surgery nine years ago and very few people I know now knew me when I was fat, and I'd rather they not know - but then romantic relationships are different. Boy - I don't know what I'd do in that situation.

I lost 57 lbs before surgery. I went on to lose about 180 more lbs after surgery. So no, losing weight before surgery won't keep you from losing after surgery. You may not see as big of a drop the first month as some people do, but that's because much of that is water weight, and you've already lost that (you'll still lose weight that first month, though) Stalls are normal and you're likely to experience several of them along the way. Most of us experience the first major one about the third week post-op - so don't freak if your weight loss stops for a couple of weeks around that time.

the only chewable I was required to take for the first several months were my multis. I took chewable calcium mostly because I liked them, and those big horse pills (i.e., calcium tablets) were hard to get down the first few weeks. I took Vitamin B complex in capsule form starting about week 2 or 3 post-surgery, because I couldn't stand the taste of the tablets (thiamin (B1) is the worst culprit - I could taste it in the tablets...but not in the capsules). P.S. I think it was at my six-month follow up that I was told I could start using the tablet form of multis if I wanted to.

you need to temper your expectations a bit. At a starting weight of 230 lbs, you were lighter than many of us, and starting BMI is a big factor in how fast the weight comes off - at least initially. I'd lost 52 lbs by month 4 (where you are), but I also started off at almost 400 lbs. You are doing absolutely fine! and the majority of us DO have occasional stalls. It's a normal part of the weight loss process. Your body has to stop once in a while to recalibrate before heading down again. As long as you stick to your eating plan, the stalls WILL break, but they usually last 1-3 weeks (mine were sometimes longer once I got past the one-year mark...but that's true of anyone once you get close to a normal BMI). as long as the stalls and occasional fluctuations (which are also normal) aren't playing with your head, the daily weighing is fine. But it sounds like they were bothering you, which is why I suggested staying off the scale for a while. But it's fine to continue to weigh daily, of course. But remember there WILL be stalls and fluctuations, but as long as the overall trend is down, then you're doing fine.

I was cleared for everything except weights at four weeks out. I was cleared for weights at eight weeks out. So you're fine as far as timing goes. your weight loss likely stopped for one or both of these reasons: 1) you're in a stall. If so, make sure you're sticking to your program and stay off the scale for a while. You're going to lose weight if you're in a calorie deficit, so as long as you're compliant, the stall WILL break and you'll be on your way again. 2). you're building muscle. Muscle is much denser and heavier than fat. When you gain muscle, your weight can stay the same (or even increase), while at the same time, your body looks leaner. I wouldn't stop with the Body Pump classes, though. Your weight will eventually start heading down again if you stick to your eating plan.

as long as you're sticking to your plan, then it's likely fluid retention (have you been eating more salty things lately?) - or hormonal stuff - or full intestines. A 5.5 lb true gain would mean you've eaten 19,200 extra calories this past week above and beyond what your body needs. So that means an extra 2700-ish calories a day - on top of whatever calories your body needs. If your normal intake is about 1200 kcal, that would mean you're averaging 3900 kcal/day. I'm betting not. I'd say it's likely fluid - or poop.

this is the main reason I didn't tell very many people about my surgery until I was several months post-op - and even then, it was usually just to other obese people who wondered how I lost so much weight (because all of us who've been there know that "diet and exercise" just isn't a permanent solution for most of us). Sorry you have to deal with her insensitive comment. People can be so rude!!

sounds like the infamous "three-week stall" that most of us experience (our first major stall - and the first of what could be many). Best way to deal with it is to stick to your clinic's eating plan and stay off the scale. Stalls usually last 1-3 weeks. They're aggravating, but they're a normal part of weight loss. It's just your body stopping to recalibrate once in awhile. 1200 calories seems like a lot for being so early out - I didn't hit that until I was more like a year out - but your surgeon may have his reasons for that, and I'm no medical professional. if you want to learn more about the stall, there are literally over 17,000 posts on it on this site. Just do a search on "three week stall". I am NOT kidding about the 17,000+ posts. It happens to almost everyone.

1). there are a lot more people who don't reach goal than there are who lose too much weight. Plus if you feel like you're losing too much weight, you can always increase your calories to put the brakes on it - or to start gaining. So I wouldn't worry about this one AT ALL. 2). fewer than 5% of people are able to lose weight and keep it off. You may be one of the lucky ones who can do that - and if so, and you're afraid of the surgery, it's not too late to pull out and try it on your own. I wasn't one of the lucky ones. I spent my first 55 years as overweight or obese. I gained and lost weight a million times and could never keep it off until I had weight loss surgery. 3). hair loss, if you experience it (and not everyone does), is temporary. I lost hair during months 5-8 post-surgery (so...for three months). It wasn't much, though. I could tell because there were more hairs in my combs and brushes, but I really didn't notice it at all when looking in the mirror, so I'm sure no one else noticed it. Plus hair loss after surgery is more like shedding - not huge clumps of loss like one might have after chemo. For a lot of people, they're the only ones who notice it. It's usually more loss of volume than noticeable "bald spots" - and it does grow back. to me, the risk of losing some hair temporarily vs. being morbidly obese for the rest of my life was a no-brainer. But you may think and decide differently for yourself - and there's nothing wrong with that. If you're not mentally ready for this yet, or want to try on your own to lose weight, then there's nothing wrong with canceling or postponing your surgery. You wouldn't be the first..or last.

some people are sensitive to certain temperatures (either cold OR hot) after surgery, but this is usually temporary. As far as fizzy drinks go, it seems like most surgeons restrict them the first few months after surgery, but after that, opinions vary. Some say never again, others say they're OK as long as you can tolerate them (some of us can tolerate them, other can't). I drink carbonated drinks again (in my case, flavored sparkling water), although they can't be TOO fizzy, or they bother my stomach (although in that case, if I give them time to go flatter, then my stomach can handle them).

I felt the same about most of the shakes at first (although I liked them BEFORE surgery). I pretty much lived on Unjury's chicken broth-flavored protein powders (and they are whey protein isolate). They were savory and thinner than the standard shakes (although you can always add more water to a too-thick shake)

I, too, was mostly eating things like soup and yogurt then...and other soft-ish things. I was "allowed" to eat most solid foods by then (except for raw vegetables - that took a few more months), but I still found some solid things difficult to eat. I also wasn't eating very much by then - maybe 600-800 kcal/day. I ate mostly protein and (cooked or soft) produce. I didn't eat breads, rice, pasta, or treats like cake until I was over a year out. I probably COULD have, but I didn't - some of it just bothered me. Others I just didn't want to eat at the time because I didn't want to go down that road that early.

this is me before I had plastic surgery - with my tons of excess skin. See what I mean about it being easy to hide in clothes? No one knew it was there but me (well, besides my husband and doctor). (I tried to insert this into my above posting, but it kept wanting to drop it in the middle of my text. ARGGH! Must be something with Mac (I just switched from PC). Anyway, here I am - excess skin and all:

I started at 373 lbs. Two years later, I was down to 138. I had the expected "bounce back" regain in year 3 (unfortunately, I went over the expected "bounce back" weight of 10-20 lbs - but then, I'd lost a crap ton of weight - more than a lot of people) as GreaterFood said, 65% loss of excess weight is average, but as with any average, there are lots of people who fall above or below that. It all depends on how compliant you are with your plan, and your motivation. I was more than ready to get rid of that weight once and for all. I didn't originally set a goal of a normal BMI; I told my surgeon that I wanted to get to 200 lbs, which at the time seemed like a pipe dream - but I blew through that. I switched goals a couple more times, the last one being a normal BMI. I was told that was a bit unrealistic as only about 10-15% of their patients manage to get there, but I made it (and btw, that 10-15% stat is backed up by some of the research articles I read, too). but even if I'd only made it 200 lbs, I would have been overjoyed. I looked 100% better at that weight than I did at 373, of course - my health was much better, and I could finally do all the things I wanted to do but couldn't while I was super morbidly obese. life is absolutely terrific. I wish I had done this YEARS ago - and I would go back and have it done every year if I had to. I never dreamed I could be at this weight and I am really enjoying my life as a "normal" person again!! excess skin - I had a ton of it, but it was easy to hide in clothes. However, I eventually had it removed because I hated looking at it. But I'll attach a picture of me from BEFORE I had plastic surgery. You'd never know by looking at the pictures that my torso, especially, looked like a Sharpei puppy, but it did. Other than the scars, I have a normal-looking body now.

Sleeve2bypass has been through a similar situation. Hopefully she'll see this and respond to you.

it's actually very common to have a rebound gain of 10-20 lbs during year 3. There was a dietitian once on Unjury's online support group who said in her clinic, they don't even consider anything less that 15% of the person's lowest weight to be a regain (so in your case, they wouldn't consider anything under a 21.6 lb gain as "regain" - it's just more-or-less expected). Granted, you're up more than that, but only by about 10 lbs. You can always lose weight again by getting back on track. If it's really tough to do that (and it can be..), maybe just make one or two small changes at a time until they become a habit. Start with something not super challenging - like logging your food intake - or taking a walk 3x a week. Or whatever...just anything that seems achievable. It all adds up in the end... A lot of people have dealt with this, so you're definitely not alone.

only about 30% of bypass patients dump, and it can be prevented by not eating a ton of sugar or fat at one sitting. I've never dumped and I know lots of other bypass patients who've never dumped, either. I had some food intolerances the first few months but now the only thing my stomach doesn't seem to handle well is a really fatty meal. Something like a fish fry with fried fish, tartar sauce, French fries, a roll with butter, and coleslaw (as is a popular Friday night meal here in Wisconsin) would not sit well with me and might even send me into the bathroom. I could handle one or two of those things, but not all (like I could pre-surgery). I also can't eat tons of pasta or rice since it sits in my stomach like a brick, but I can eat SOME of it. I had some vomiting episodes the first couple of months after surgery if I ate too much or too fast or something that didn't agree with me, but since then, I don't think I vomit much more often than I did pre-surgery. Diarrhea isn't that common with bypass - and the adult diaper thing would be really rare - I almost never hear of that, and I've been on this site for about nine years. The opposite, constipation, is really common, though. A lot of us have to take daily Miralax or stool softeners to keep on top of it. yes I suppose constant vomiting could rot your teeth, but I'm not sure where you got that idea that bypass patients experience daily vomiting. I probably vomit 2 or 3 times a year. Plus vomiting now is much easier than it was pre-surgery. Your stomach is really small, so not much comes up. And besides that, you don't have nearly as much acid in your stomach (you can tell because what comes up tastes just like it did going down - you don't get that awful "vomit-y" taste any more after you vomit). Also, GERD is what can lead to Barrett's esphagus an/or esophagus cancer, and bypass usually improves if not outright cures GERD. That's why it's usually recommended over VSG for patients who have GERD. I should add that I'm not a revision patient, but I know of a lot of people who are from this site and similar sites. Most of them are very happy with their bypasses and aren't experiencing the complications that you're worried about (in fact, most don't have any complications at all). I hope you don't take this wrong, but you might want to do more research on the bypass because I think your views on it aren't that realistic. I wouldn't go so far as to say that no one has every experienced any of that stuff because I don't know for sure - maybe someone or a few people have - but we just don't hear about those things on here. If they happen, they're very rare, otherwise we'd hear about them given all the thousands of people who've been on this site over the years.

if you're following your diet, then it's either hormones, water retention, and/or full intestines. With any of those, your weight will go back down within a couple of days. Those are all very normal fluctuations. If they're playing with your head, just cut back on how often you're weighing yourself - maybe just do it once a week.

I've been hanging out here for probably nine years. I would say most of us lose somewhere in the 15-25 lb range the first MONTH, so your loss seems pretty normal to me. Of course you will find people who lose more or less than that, but they tend to be outliers - or start off at very high BMI's (like the people on "My 600 lb Life"). there are so many factors that influence your rate of weight loss that you really have little to no control over - like age, gender, metabolic rate, what percentage of your body weight is muscle, starting BMI, whether or not you lost a lot of weight before surgery, genetics, etc, that it's sort of pointless to worry about it. The two factors you definitely have a lot of control over are how closely you stick to your clinic's plan and how active you are, so if you're good with those, the weight will come off, whether fast or slow. as you can see on my profile, I started off at 373 lbs, and I lost 16 lbs the first month - yet I ended up losing over 200 lbs. I was a "slow loser" the whole time, but I really stuck to my plan. so long way of saying, just follow your plan and don't worry about your rate of weight loss, since you don't have a whole lot of control over that. If you do what you're supposed to be doing, the weight WILL come off.

there really isn't much - if anything - you can do about hair loss. It's due to your body's shock reaction to major surgery, and that's already happened (well it's the shock - plus the fact we're taking in a very limited amount of calories those first few months).. The shock speeds up the normal shedding/regrowth cycle. Some things can help with regrowth, but there's not much you can do about the shedding. Although not everyone loses hair, and some lose so little that others don't notice it - so you may luck out. (I lost very little - I'm sure no one noticed - I barely noticed - I just knew about it since there were more hairs than usual in my combs and brushes)

yea - doesn't sound like dumping. I'd never heard of roux limb syndrome, so I just googled it. It might be that - it's hard to say. I hope they can figure it out soon!! Cramping is awful!