summerset

That's a pretty good and normal rationale. Ok, maybe this'll help you feeling better: "food for fuel only forever" is a common wet fantasy of bariatric patients that won't ever come true.

May I ask what your specific problems are? Depending on what's going on you might benefit from books/workbooks/boards that deal with the issue of "normal eating" and "emotional eating".

Idiots. Don't go there anymore. Judgement is the last thing you need. ... and delusional on top. ROTFLMAO. --- Seriously. I've heard good and bad things about these groups. What I took out from what I've heard is that it's all dependent on what kind of people go to the meetings, e. g. some groups require to be on their quite strict diet while other groups let define their members "abstinence" for themselves.

This is a highly individual process and I don't believe that anyone can really be "prepared" for post-op life/eating. There is no realistic simulation of post-op eating after all. Imagine you've read every book about swimming and learning how to swim and about correct swimming technique in the world - this doesn't really prepare you for the moment someone throws you into cold water. I never felt some kind of "grieving period" or something like this, at least not consciously. I also didn't feel like I've "lost my best friend". If I'd have to express it in terms of relationship maybe "ceasefire with my worst enemy" feels closest. So dependent on how you feel/think about food now you might feel angry, you might feel sad or you might feel relief or something entirely different. No one can say how this might affect you emotionally as people cope in very different ways with their feelings. In terms of eating after surgery: some start eating more and gain (take a look at the infamous "having fallen off the wagon because life happened" posts), some lose appetite and lose more weight during difficult times and I don't think you will ever know to what group you will belong before you're really going through the experience.

I think a big part of it is the actual chewing sensation. We have our teeth to chew something on after all, LOL. How long is your liquid/mushy phase? Mine was 4 weeks and it tremendously helped to know that after 4 weeks it would be over. Limited time periods are easier on the mind than "forever" or "never again". What I also noticed was a craving for salty things (the protein drinks are usually either sweet or neutral in taste).

The interesting thing is: people tend to compare themselves only to those that are more successful, be it in terms of weight loss, looks, salary, whatever. (I'm sure there is some fancy scientific explanation why that is.)

I've tried several of them but they tend to give me heartburn. I only use them on long bike rides or when running longer distances when the weather is hot.

Do you mind artificial sweeteners? If not you could get something like this.

IMO it's important to tweak your expectations according to age, gender,starting weight etc. - of course a tall, young, very heavy man will lose weight faster than a short woman in her late forties with a rather low starting weight. Best is not to compare yourself to others - but honestly, I think this is impossible or at least next to impossible.

There is no weight loss window that will close. Don't let that kind of pressure creep in. It makes post-op life unnecessarily harder than it has to be. As long as you're in an energy deficit you're going to continue to lose weight, no matter how far you're out of surgery.

Of course you gain weight instantly while carb loading. Glycogen contains/binds lots of water.

What do you mean by "carb sensitive"? Do you dump on too many carbohydrates?

I have no idea if your program allows fruit salad that early (many people aren't allowed to eat raw fruit before 4 weeks are over). In general fruit is good for you and you can eat quite a bit of it because it contains lots of water. However, plans vary a lot so in the end you might choose not to eat it.

I sometimes wonder what exactly treatment teams are telling their patients about the speed of weight loss.

If you believe Mr. Tanaka it's ok for the knees if you take it easy. Small steps, 180 steps per minute, landing on the mid foot, starting with low volume (e. g. you can use some kind of couch to 5k app). You transition into running by doing 180 steps per minute or more and simply having a longer stride. For maintaining 180 steps per minute one of the various free metronome apps is useful in the beginning and/or if you own one: a sports watch that is able to recognize your cadence.

Just curious.

Choose a way you can stay on even when "life happens". This might take some experiments and trust in yourself. It might also not bring you down to a BMI of 20, but obviously the approach you tried before didn't do this either. However, no calorie tracking, carb phobia, exercise program, pouch test, protein drink or back to basics will work in the long run if you can't follow through with it when the **** hits the fan - and there will always be times in life when this happens. Ultimately the choice is yours if you decide to hop on the dieting-merry-go-round again or if you ditch it for good.

A lot of eating disordered people are reacting kind of stunned after having crawled out of their deepest hole, regardless of what eating disorder it was. Compulsive eaters or binge eaters can't believe how much they ate, bulimics can't believe how much money for food they purged down the toilet, anorexics can't believe how they managed to subsist on so little food while exercising without end etc. etc. etc.

Yes, but how much did you already lose? Did you gain back something? Did you ever get to goal weight? What are your problems exactly, e. g. is it portion size or food choices or both? etc.

1) Because a revision to another method might indeed be helpful. 2) Because sometimes people need a second chance to get things right.

A little bit more information would be helpful.

Not sure if I would've been able to do this after 6 months but this is exactly what I'm doing now when there are special occasions. There are really kind of... interesting tips floating around the WLS community. So you at least kind of criticized a fellow WLS patient about the amount of food he was eating while not disclosing you had WLS as well. Wow. Doesn't sound too bad to me. Sounds like he is sick of dieting and learnt something along the way: that deprivation doesn't work for him. This guy's plan looks better to me than many of the unrealistic ones I've seen touted on this board way too often. Regarding your question what the surgeons told us: they told us nothing about diet plans because nutrition is the dietician's part of WLS.

That's why some patients go to the meetings: they want to talk about themselves and their problems (or their success) because people outside of the WLS continuum don't listen to them (anymore). Went to a meeting once and definitely had more than one WTF??-moment during this hour.

The half-truth.

Absolutely. It's normal to be able to eat more. Your treatment team should have told you this.