PorkChopExpress

I have found while reading these boards over the past few weeks that there is a pretty wide range of people in terms of their mental preparedness, going into and coming out of surgery. Some people seem to have more difficulty letting go of their old lifestyle, and in my opinion they are likely the people who had less preparation time, paid out of pocket so weren't required to do the classes and such, and didn't have as much time to get their minds right before they went under the knife. Then there are people who really put in that work mentally, got their minds straightened out, and some of them can tend to be critical when they see someone doing something that is COMPLETELY nonsensical to them, but is the result of someone still struggling with giving up their old thought patterns and behaviors. In this case, it's a reasonable question to find out what someone might be able to order at a restaurant that would work with their program. What ISN'T reasonable, and in my opinion worthy of a certain amount of razzing, is when someone comes on and proudly displays a photo of the fried chicken wing they're about to eat, two months post-op. That's someone who DOES NOT GET IT. Yet, anyway. Let's remember that most of us have spent the better part of our lives having other people judge us about our eating. We're all here self-correcting and at various stages of the process. So when someone's screwing up, by all means they need to be called on it...but tact goes a long way Not trying to be a policeman, just a suggestion!

Chili has proven to be, for me. I really have to measure that out and be careful, because it goes down so quickly (not a lot of need for chewing) and the fullness sneaks up on me fast. I like it for mixing with the protein powder, but I just have to be even more aware of my speed when I eat it.

Just wait until you start putting some solids in your stomach, you're definitely going to feel it and that's why you want to go slow and chew thoroughly. The liquid diet stuff goes through pretty fast, it doesn't spend a lot of time in the stomach. The harder to digest stuff does, and you'll definitely start experiencing the full feeling when you start on that stuff.

It feels kind of hard to justify a salad, as small as our stomachs are now! Feels like a waste, without protein I know that the roughage is important too, but this surgery is really making me weigh my priorities when I eat! lol

Doing good so far, although to be honest it's SO hard for me to go slow. I have had such a bad habit all my life of wolfing my food down, taking tiny bites and thoroughly chewing them is a bit of a struggle. However, I have definitely learned that if I DON'T do that, I get too full too fast. My new stomach needs time to register what's in it and there isn't much room. It's good that I'm starting to get into things that I really need to chew a while, shredded meat and stuff, because it actually slows me down and that helps. Chili and things that go down easy are more of a challenge. Work has been fine. I go with a cup for my Crystal Light / Protein mixture, and I have one meal there. I got these little Ziplock 1/2 cup containers and they work perfectly for my meal portion. I weigh out 1.5oz of my meat, and a little over 1TBSP for my veggie (usually potato right now) and that container ends up being the perfect amount of food. It's still so small though, I feel self-conscious when people come into the kitchen with their full-size tupperware containers full of food, and I'm sitting there nursing that little bitty thing I log everything in MyFitnessPal to see where I'm at, and I guess I was thinking of my 1oz numbers when I posted...going up to 1.5 has only happened over the past few days, when I realized I was comfortable doing it and not feeling too full. I am generally getting in the neighborhood of 25-30g of protein from my meals now, I think. So it's not terrible, but I really want to work up to the point where I'm getting 50% of my protein from actual food. The Protein powder is just so darned expensive...but I know it's gonna be a while before I'm to that point. Probably at least 6 months. Can't rush this process, it's coming along and so far, no vomiting...so that's a big win, to me

Time is going to fly by, now...before you know it, it'll be over and you'll be on your way. Congratulations!

My wife worries that it'll cause her to be less attracted to me physically, she has only ever known me as a big guy and although she knows it's important to my health and she supported me all the way, she's just worried about how she'll feel about it. She doesn't want a "skinny guy." I told her not to worry, even if I get lean I don't plan to be a "skinny guy." My goal is to put on some pretty serious muscle mass after I get closer to goal. I want to be able to do all the stuff I've pretty much never been able to do. I want my kids to think I'm a superhero and for them to be proud when they point me out to their friends...and I want to set a good example for them. I've read that WLS can sometimes damage relationships though, because the party NOT doing the surgery often has reasons of their own that have nothing to do with their friend/partner/family member who is undergoing surgery, for them staying the way they are. Either they prefer you heavy, maybe they're insecure and worry about other people hitting on you, or you deciding you're too good for them...or they liked having an enabler to their own behavior, etc... There can be a lot of reasons. To me, this is something I have to do and if someone likes or loves me less as a result of it, then that was a problem on their end, not on mine.

I definitely have more energy, even after just three weeks. Feeling pretty good, definitely an improvement.

Eight total. I had to be converted from a gastric bypass to a sleeve due to a umbilical hernia repair using a mesh though, and I think they made some incisions and started placing scopes before they realized they had to work around it.

Yeah, I plan to take it SLOW at introducing new stuff. I am pretty cautious about how I eat, I take it slow and I chew till it's totally unrecognizable before I swallow it. They said "chew until you could suck it through a straw," so I think that's part of why things sit pretty well with me, easy for my stomach to deal with. To me, I could go three months on what I'm doing now, no problem. But it'll be nice to try a few things and see how they go down. I'm like you though, I REALLY don't want to get sick

Starting week four! One more week and I will be one month post-op. Incisions have shed most of their scabs and are healing up nicely now and the fur's growing back When I received the instructions for weeks 3-5 I was told to gradually advance from ground meat consistency Protein, to shredded, and finally to whole pieces. This week, it's shredded meat! I bought some very good pulled chicken in the refrigerator case at Trader Joe's, and I've had it several times. Chews to paste consistency easily, and I've had no ill effects. Stomach seems like it's healing up pretty well, the ache of eating is decreasing gradually every day. I still find that it aches a bit more first thing in the morning, with Breakfast...but every meal thereafter is okay. I am up to 1.5oz of meat at a meal, so it's going well. That only works out to 5 grams of protein though, which is so frustrating. I do wish I could meet more of my protein goals with actual meat, but for quite some time I expect I'll be relying on supplements. The GENEPRO works well though, mixed it in with some chili and didn't even notice it. Having trouble reaching 64oz of Water every day, which was my target...but eating 3x a day takes away about 4 1/2 hours from drinking, since I have to stop 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after. The window the nutritionist said was 48oz to 64oz, and I'm getting in that window...but to get 64oz would require drinking just about every other minute, it's really hard to achieve. I'm not hitting 90 grams of protein either, I'm settling in there somewhere between 70 and 90 which is again the window they wanted me to shoot for, but I wanted to do the maximum. I'll get there, it'll just take time. My stomach has to heal up and be able to handle a little more meat. They say after three months I should be able to do 2oz of meat or more per meal. So we'll see how it goes. Interesting how much my priorities in eating have already changed. I am very protein-centric. Not to say that I don't still like having a little bit of carbs in there, but my focus in eating is protein and that's what I enjoy. I don't crave the breads anymore, pastas and things of that nature. Sugar is also not a craving, I think I pretty much detoxed from that after the month long liquid diet. So far, so good...but man, have I grown to hate the Vitamins I bought. The Bariatric Advantage chewable Multivitamin now tastes heinous to me, I cringe and almost gag when I have to chew that thing up and swallow it. Then I have to chase that with the also awful "chocolate raspberry" Iron chew. It's a brutal way to start the day. I can't wait until I can just swallow normal Multivitamins and not taste them, again.

Yeah, my program has me in "try anything" mode at week 6. That's when I can try salads and pretty much anything. They just encourage me to try one new thing at a time, to see how it works out. I expect that if I make sure to chew everything thoroughly, I'll be okay with most things. Everything I've tried so far has worked out.

I went through a six month program with Facey Medical Group, which was the "supervised diet" portion of the requirement. They notified Blue Shield when I completed it. I stayed in their program and went to their surgeon, Dr. Quilici in Burbank. So all of my steps were basically handled via Facey's program.

I ended up going alone to mine. My wife and kids moved ahead of me out of state, but I had gone through this almost year-long process preparing to have this surgery and all the requirements were met, and I have a job here, so I've stayed. But my wife wasn't able to get out here until the evening, and my procedure was in the morning. I'm a bit of an old hand at at abdominal surgery though, this was my third. So I was comfortable with the process. The thing is, there's nothing your friend can really do to help, except talk to you before you go in...and after that, the focus will very much be on getting fluids in and walking as much as you are able, to get the gas to move out and speed your healing...and sleep. You'll do a fair amount of that. A couple days later, they'll probably discharge you and you'll head back home. You'll be walking under your own power, but you'll want to use a cart for your bag. Don't carry anything heavy. You can do it! It's not ideal, of course...but the situation hasn't changed that much. You're still the one being operated on, you're still the one who has to undertake the recovery, and the battles that you'll fight will be in your own head. So don't be discouraged or scared, most of it isn't any different without company...and you'll be even stronger having done it on your own. You can take pride in that.

Don't forget that part of the puree and soft food stages involves training your stomach, to some extent. It is recovering and it has to start functioning in a much smaller form than it has in the past. Your system has to sort of "recalibrate" through this process. So going in stages helps with that. If you jump right into soft foods, it may be a little harder on your stomach to process stuff. These stages are relatively fast though, one or two weeks...you can do it. Yes, it's sort of joyless, but you'll get through it. There's a time limit on it. Gettting that GENEPRO flavorless Protein has been a real help. I don't even do shakes anymore, I mix it in with Crystal Light, or with chili. After four weeks of shakes, I couldn't imagine buying another bag of that stuff.

Man, what an awful experience. My surgeon also runs a high-volume practice, but he was totally professional and everything was done as it should have been, no real complications. Too much we don't know right now though, not even sure what procedure you had done. How much you're able to eat, what kinds of things you're eating, etc... If you had gastric bypass or sleeve, you should not be feeling hungry right now (a lot of people mistake the rumbling stomach for hunger, which it's not...it's a byproduct of the surgery). You probably have mental hunger, which is a byproduct of not having gone through the mental process of letting go of the old way of eating and the old habits fully. But we'd need to know more about the procedure you had and what you're eating, to suggest where your stall might be coming from. But also remember that the body loses how it loses. Everyone is different and it doesn't happen on your schedule. If you're in a significant calorie deficit every day, you WILL lose the weight. It just doesn't necessarily happen the way you expect it should.

The only thing that got me through the pre-op diet was sheer willpower and determination. I knew how important it was to the success of my surgery that I follow the surgeon's directions though, so I did. After a while, I started taking a lot of pride that my will was stronger than my mind, which has controlled me for so long when it comes to my eating. I decided that I was setting a tone with that diet, in embracing the change and getting my mind right before I had the surgery. I had made the decision to permanently alter my digestive tract in order to get my life back, but I knew from reading success stories that the journey is more mental than physical. I had to get my mind right about it, and that two weeks of liquid diet was the start of it. It's a test of your dedication to this process. You are giving up the old way of eating, the old patterns and habits, forever. This is the start of it...so embrace that, because you will struggle even more post-surgery if you don't, mentally. You'll be thinking of nothing but getting back to the old way of eating, and that is a recipe for failure at this. You have to be willing to change...a lot. You're getting the physical part taken care of, but the mental part is all you. But you can do it. If I did, you can too.

I've heard that people have the taste of things change after surgery and it ends up being permanent. Not a thing changed for me, post-surgery, in terms of how things taste. Except maybe having detoxed from refined sugar, now sugar-free things taste pretty sweet to me (like Popsicles). In terms of "my tastes" changing, they have. I don't crave sweets, baked goods and cakes, cookies and candy and stuff anymore. I think that has to do with detoxing from sugar too, though. It's pretty addictive.

The scale has always been my enemy with weight loss, it has sabotaged me and derailed me so many times that I am kind of avoiding it now. My plan is to weigh when I visit the doctor's office. I figure my clothes will tell me all I need to know. So my little signature ticker here probably won't change for a while, till I go to a doctor visit

Weightlifting can help with this, too. As you grow your muscles, they fill out the skin a bit and tone you up all over. If you get into a muscle building regimen, along with the lotions and water, you'll see some positive changes.

I still have to take the chewables for a while and I bought some from Bariatric Advantage, but I hate the taste. I have to grin and bear it when I chew them up, and then I chase them with a bite of food to try and wash the flavor out of my mouth. I can't wait until I can just take a Centrum and swallow it, and not worry about tasting it. The only supplement I have that's decent is the calcium chew, which is basically like a caramel. But the iron chew sucks and the multivitamin is really bad.

Definitely don't drink. I was advised by my surgeon not to drink alcohol for a year after my sleeve...and I plan to follow that advice. Besides, it just converts to sugar in the gut anyway. I have never been a big drinker myself and so I never felt like I needed an excuse NOT to drink. I'd just grab a water with a lemon in it and nurse that all night. You may end up having to excuse yourself early from the get-together, because being around drunk people when you're sober is pretty annoying

Gas X will only help relieve what has actually made it into your digestive tract. The surgical gas is piped into your abdominal or peritoneal cavity, to basically provide clearance between your abdominal wall and your organs. It passes into your digestive tract through a kind of osmosis, when you move around. That's really the only solution to working the gas out of your system - movement.

Congratulations, that's some serious weight loss! When I started, I needed to lose about 200 lbs. Always encouraging to me, to see people with the sleeve having such great success reaching their goals, because I initially thought I was getting the bypass and couldn't, because of the scar tissue they ran into from a prior surgery. Initially I was a little disappointed because it was always sold as the "gold standard" but I see a lot of folks on here having a lot of success with it, so I'm encouraged by that!