arex

Soda, pasta, deep-fried foods, even in small portions.

Caffeine addiction is more of a problem than fizzy drinks. Obviously, no fizzy after surgery...you will regret it. Figure out a way to taper off of caffeine over the course of a couple of weeks...you do NOT want to go cold turkey, it's extremely miserable, and you'll be back on the Coke before you know it. Try and determine how much caffeine you're currently taking in a day, and replace your Cokes with an equivalent dose of No-Doz or something, and taper off your daily dose over 14-21 days until you're consuming no more caffeine...you might suffer some withdrawals, but nothing like you'd suffer going cold turkey. Yes, you need to think of it in terms of doses, not sweet fizzy drinks. Drink juice instead to satisfy the psychological cravings for sweetness. I used to drink quarts of Coke, literally, per day. Now I have a cup of coffee in the morning with my oatmeal, sometimes.

You're fine...a Protein shake isn't a cheat. Surprised your doctor doesn't have you on them already.

I've been stuck at 260-265 for several months now, and it's getting very discouraging. I think I know what the problem is, but I'm not sure how to address it. I eat a good Breakfast of protein-boosted oatmeal, a mid-morning snack of fruit and low-fat cheese, and a late lunch of boiled eggs and raw unsalted vegetables. By this point I'm at about 1000 calories for the day and 70g of Protein. dinner is where I run into issues. First, I'm usually dog-tired by the time I get off work and often don't feel motivated to prepare something suitable, and second, my wife will have not eaten much all day, and is ready for a "real" dinner. I cook, she does not, to clarify. I've been so discouraged that too often I just say "eff it" and get some tacos on the way home or something else equally terrible, or I cook something quick but unsatisfying and relatively unhealthy, so I wind up cruising the cupboards for Snacks later on. And, unfortunately, the longer I go without progress, the more I start saying "eff it", which has been creeping into my days at work, as well, in the form of inappropriate snacks from the cafeteria. I try to rein myself in and eat healthier for a time, but my mood yoyos and I make no real progress. I don't think that my healthy eating is lacking in any way, I can eat properly and be satisfied, it's not a hunger issue (I think). It's a motivation thing, saying "eff it", and getting that damned cinnamon roll in the cafeteria or the easy sack of tacos, because...I don't know why. I think I'm rambling at this point. Procedure was August 2015, 7 months ago.

My local restaurant makes a spicy sashimi bowl with finely-shredded cabbage dressed with a little vinegar, instead of rice. Extremely tasty.

I had five incisions, four small for tools, one large (1-1/4") for pulling out removed tissue. The small ones were glued shut, and the large one had a couple of dissolvable sutures internally and glued shut externally.

90-110 grams of Protein, typically 72+ ounces of Water, sometimes as much as a gallon. I'm guzzling water all day at work.

Black, kidney, pinto, edamame. The magical fruit that's good for the heart.

1/3-cup of steel-cut oats, uncooked, fortified with powdered milk for extra Protein, a handful of frozen blueberries and a couple teaspoons of chia seeds, and sweetened with a little honey. This yields about 1.5 cups of cooked oatmeal. The dietician says this is a good breakfast, that the whole-grain oats and unsweetened fruit are necessary, in spite of the carbs and relative low-protein. The dietician also has me shooting for about 1300-1500kcal/day, given my height and muscle mass. I'm fairly muscular under all the fat, and we're trying not to lose too much of it. Unfortunately, I find myself hitting 2000kcal/day too often. We've started doing veggie/protein smoothies for dinner about a week ago, and that seems to be keeping the calories down. It remains to be seen if we can maintain it. The smoothies are tasty, in any case, tastes similar to gazpacho. Exercise - I walk about 3-4 miles a day at work (according to Fitbit), and I ride my bike a total of 4 miles/day commuting to work. I put in about 10 miles/day riding on the weekend. I'm going to be participating in a 50km charity ride in about a month.

Dried Beans are very nutritious when cooked...a pressure cooker makes VERY short work of them. 45 minutes total, instead of hours of soaking and then more hours of cooking.

I'm not sure if this is normal after bariatric surgery or not. When I exert myself for extended periods (over 15 minutes) or very hard (moving around very, very heavy things), I crash pretty hard...weak, shaking, light-headed, and I feel very, very bad for the rest of the day. The best hypothesis I can come up with is that given my low-calorie diet, I don't have much in the way of ready energy reserves, since body fat doesn't make itself available to metabolize very readily. Is this just the way things are now post-surgery, or is there a way to alleviate it?

Blood pressure and sugar are fine. And...when I say I'm exerting myself, I mean that I'm working pretty hard getting to the point of feeling so bad. "Normal" walking and working doesn't do this.

I'm 4 months out. I'm doing okay in most other respects...sticking to the program, drinking plenty of Water, taking all my Vitamins. Nobody's mentioned strenuous exercise, one way or another. Everything's well-healed.

1000 calories/day is fine...on the low side, a little bit. Eventually you'll be shooting for 1100-1300cal/day for weight loss, while keeping your Protein up at about 70-100 grams/day.

Yeah, stick with sashimi, miso, and tofu. Your stomach really shouldn't be dealing with rice at this point.

Congrats!

Unfortunately, there's no one pill available to satisfy all of a bariatric patient's needs. I have been taking a chewable Multivitamin, two chewable Vitamin C tabs, a chewable B-complex+B12, and three chewable calcium+D per day. I won't lie, it's unpleasant, but it's vital to take them all. Even non-chewable tablets or capsules are still going to be horse pills, especially the Calcium tablets. Calcium is bulky, and doesn't compress well.

Just making sure...that's the only thing I could think of in the lower left, especially given my oxycontin-induced constipation in the last few weeks.

Yeah, they want you to be as comfortable as possible.

I'm three weeks past surgery, and things have been going pretty well, all things considered. However, in the last five days or so, I've been experiencing unusual and extreme muscle tension in my legs and back, and I don't know why. It seems to correlate to my return to work, but I can't think of anything I'm doing at work that would contribute to it. My leg muscles are very stiff, making it hard to walk any real distance, and my back muscles are in knots. What I'm wondering is, could some nutritional deficiency be causing this? It's conceivable I'm just tense from coming back to work, but I can't help but doubt it.

That's definitely not an issue for me. I'm drinking 3-4 liters a day.

Makes sense, especially since the nutritionist said I wasn't taking enough calcium pills...I thought I was supposed to chew up one a day, but apparently I'm supposed to do three a day.

When was the last time you pooped..?

It's still early. You're still healing, and your stomach is still all curled up and feeling sorry for itself. Once you start healing up and feeling better, and once you're back on real food, and you start seeing the weight dropping off...you'll feel a lot better about it all.

I've been the same, and the clinic assured me it's normal after being on the liquid diet. They said that after eating "real" food for a week or so, I should be feeling a lot better.