PorkChopExpress

Just remember that the excercise you are doing for 45 minutes is raising your TDEE, so you may actually STILL be in a daily deficit.

Education and mental preparation. Read everything you can about peoples' experiences with the surgery, what they went through and what they continue to struggle with. This is 80% mental, and 20% physical...taking care of the size of your stomach will help, but if your mind isn't right, you WILL find a way to eat around the smaller stomach. So just really start focusing on your mental process, disciplining your mind and bringing it under control, so that you are able to control your behavior and choices. Surgery is no sweat. I've had a bunch of them...three abdominal (including this one) by laparascopy. Basically, here's what'll happen...you'll go check in at the hospital. They'll call you into the recovery room to get ready, you'll get naked and wear their thick paper gown (unless you're at a hospital that still does cloth), and then lay down on your gurney. A nurse will eventually come by to set you up with your IV tap (needle in the top of your hand most likely), put a blood pressure cuff on your arm and a pulse rate monitor on your finger. Take your vitals (they'll do that constantly while you're in the hospital). The anesthesiologist will drop by to introduce themselves, talk a little about whether you have any drug allergies that you know of, make sure you didn't eat or drink anything since midnight. They'll explain that when you wake up, your throat will probably be sore and you'll be very dry in the mouth and throat. This will be due to intubation, which helps keep your airways open while you are operated on. And he'll be right, as you'll discover when you wake up. The surgeon may or may not show up to talk to you - depends on whether he runs a high volume practice or not, or whether he cares at all about bedside manner Then the time will come after a while of waiting, and they'll wheel you down the hall to the operating room. You'll go in, they'll line your gurney up with the operating table and have you help get yourself aligned in the middle, with your head in the right spot, etc... They'll have you reach your arms out to the sides and start securing them, because the nervous system has a bad habit of forcing your hands to clutch at your abdomen when they start operating on you. While you're getting your arms situated and you're seeing the various people buzzing around you... ...you'll hear a voice from what seems like far, far away - and you'll feel like your head is full of molasses. Slowly but surely, the voices will start to sound sharper and clearer, and closer, and your eyes will open...and you'll realize that you're in the recovery room, and surgery is over. You may feel a slightly "pinchy" sensation in your belly. Your throat will definitely be sore and dry, but you won't be able to drink anything for a bit...all of your liquids will be coming from the IV for at least an hour or so after you wake up. Then they may let you have a tiny bit of ice to suck on, to help moisten your mouth and throat. You're going to be seriously groggy...but the fact is, you will realize that you slept through the hard part, and it's over. You're officially on the other side of the entire ordeal, and it's time to start recovering. When you get to your room, they'll encourage you to start walking. Do it...do it as much as you can, because your peritoneal cavity (the space between your abdominal wall and organs) is full of surgical gas. The only way it will pass through your intestinal tissues and out of your body is through movement...walking. So walk a lot, you will feel a lot better a lot faster, if you do. Eventually the nurses will probably give you little tiny cups and tell you how much you can drink per hour. You'll probably start with one little shot glass of Water. Then a couple, then three, etc... Eventually, they will try to get you going on some really horrible Protein shake, but do your best on it. They'll remove the IV fluids and then expect you to start trying to get liquids orally, so you'll have to try to stay on top of it. That means drinking often. This is important, because for weeks to come you are going to find that your sips have to be TINY to go down comfortably, and to get the water you need will require sipping every couple minutes, all day long. Then, if there are no complications, you're getting around good and your pain is well-managed, after a one night stay they'll probably discharge you and send you home. And then, you'll have to get yourself on a schedule with drinking and walking. It'll come together, just stay on top of things and focus on the process. Prepare yourself mentally for a bit of a "mourning period" where your brain struggles with the fact that you just robbed it of a major coping mechanism. You may obsess about food. You may find yourself preoccupied about WHEN you will be able to eat good things again, or what those things will be. It's all in your mind. This is the little voice you haven't been hearing, that has been dominating your behavior. Now it's time to shut the voice up and take back control. This is an approximation of the experience and your mileage may vary, but I hope it helps calm your nerves a bit. Trust me, you'll be in and out before you know it, and moving on with your new life.

Anything liquid should be fine. Ask your surgeon, but I would think if it's in liquid form you should be okay.

Stop weighing, you're gonna drive yourself nuts. Don't weigh for another two weeks. When your body needs to heal, it requires Water and Protein. If you're dehydrated, or you aren't getting enough protein, you aren't going to heal as fast or as well...so focus on those two things and if necessary, just drink Protein shakes all day long. Some depression after surgery is normal, your brain just lost a major coping mechanism, in all likelihood. You're going to be sluggish and tired as your body recovers. And yes, hormones get a little crazy, too...but a TON of the problem is going to be in your mind, and that's something you'll be continually addressing for the weeks and months to come. If you had the sleeve, you should not be feeling anything remotely like "starvation." You may have an acid buildup in your stomach that makes it feel kind of like hunger pangs, but that's not hunger. The hunger comes from your mind. Keep putting protein shakes in yourself all day long every day and you won't feel much of an issue...but the acid buildup is a problem for some people, but my surgeon said it resolves itself over time and mine has gradually gotten better over the last six weeks. I still feel a little acid bite in my stomach from time to time when it's empty, but it's not hunger. My stomach doesn't growl. But if you have food on the brain, it's easy to mistake it for hunger. But my biggest piece of advice other than drinking protein shakes all day long is, STAY OFF THE scale. Give yourself at least two more weeks before you step on it again. You are retaining all kinds of water right now because you aren't putting enough in, and you retain water anyway post-op as part of the healing process.

There isn't really a way to "cheat" the pre-op diet. It's designed the way it is for a reason...and part of that reason is to get yourself ready for what follows surgery. Following directions is going to become critical, so I'd get your mind in a place where you're able to do that, sooner rather than later. You aren't going to lose any more weight than you will just by following that pre-op diet, short of starving yourself, so just get on the stick and follow it to the letter.

That's pretty light, although it all depends on your build/frame...you may just be petite. But my feeling is, you probably shouldn't be losing any more weight, at this point. If you're not tracking your daily intake with an app or something, you should consider starting...you need a better idea of how many calories you're consuming daily and what the macro breakdown is. You need to bring your daily calories consumed in line with your average TDEE (total daily energy expended). That will keep you maintaining. I suspect that your daily calorie requirement is quite a bit higher than what you're generally eating. I wouldn't "binge" anymore, because that's a gateway for disordered eating...but if you need more calories, I would definitely be trying to schedule in an extra meal or two, to meet your calorie needs.

Anyone suffering from obesity and a repeated failure to overcome it could tell them what the "average person's" opinion was on the topic. Somehow, people equate needing to lose 10 pounds with losing 200 pounds. They have not a single, solitary clue about the challenges obese people face, trying to lose weight and get in shape. Not one. They don't get that the amount of willpower that is required to last two straight years or so on a calorie restricted diet, when your entire body will fight to maintain homeostasis and will require you to bust through month-long plateaus while feeling like your stomach is eating itself alive all day long, every day and you are quite literally BOMBARDED with signals to eat all day long, every day...not to mention you have behaviors and attitudes well-worn into your psyche that uses food as a tool to cope with issues in your life, and taking that away creates even more difficulty in staying on a program for years, to lose that much weight...it's asinine. Especially given that most people who are morbidly obese have a lot of co-morbidities that interfere with fat loss, like diabetes...and their entire metabolic system is different than a "normal" person's. If you have only ever been 10-20 pounds overweight, you frankly have absolutely no business commenting on what obese people should or should not be doing, in my opinion...because you don't have a clue what we have to deal with.

One of those things you just kinda have to try and see, I think. I haven't had any issues with the spicier things I've tried so far, so I'm gradually ramping up the spiciness just to see how it goes. I may try some Indian curry and find out, before too long.

I thought about doing some YouTube stuff, but I decided not to. Just not sure I want to be that "out there" for people who might know me to see everything that's going on with me.

@@SleeveG You will still gain some strength at first with Stronglifts, but you'll hit a hard plateau where you just won't be able to gain any more, simply because you lack the calorie input to add more muscle. But the routine will help you maintain muscle mass, so I wouldn't worry about busting through any strength barriers when you hit them. If you end up wanting to switch to more of a bodybuilding-oriented regimen once you've hit goal weight, then you'll start wanting to do isolation lifts with high reps, or a progressive overload style like you'd find in Body For Life, where your goal is to completely exhaust the muscle and encourage growth. But if your foundation comes from strength training, you're going to have even better results with that, most likely. In the end, it'll be a trial and error process to see what works best for you, and what gets you the results you want. But for right now, a program emphasizing overall strength with compound lifts is, in my opinion, the best way to maintain as much muscle as you can, to help with your fat loss goals. It's just too hard to get the calories and Protein necessary to create hypertrophy in your muscles and cause them to grow a bunch, before you're close to goal.

Personally, I was feeling pretty good physically and ready to get back to work. I was tired, definitely, and sluggish...but healing wise, I was doing pretty well. Everyone heals differently though and there's no accounting for complications.

If they feel warm and the area around them is hard, and they aren't closing, or you're noticing any kind of drainage or swelling, then you could have an infection...but it's easily treated with antibiotics. They shouldn't be turning red, redness generally indicates inflammation/irritation and that's generally infection. However, part of the healing process IS definitely itchiness. So if all of your wounds have closed up well and scabbed over, and you aren't getting any drainage/pus, then most likely it's just the healing process. But as always, if you're concerned about it, have your surgeon take a look.

You will retain Water periodically for all kinds of reasons. Weigh again in a couple of days and see if the weight stayed, or if it dropped - and make sure you're always weighing under the same conditions, at the same time of day. If you're REALLY worried about it, start tracking your intake with something like MyFitnessPal. A pound of fat is 3,500 calories. In order to gain four pounds of genuine fat weight in one week, you would have had to exceed your daily TDEE (the amount of calories needed to maintain your weight) by 2,000 calories a day. You weren't going to do that by sharing a small Sprite. The liquid fast is unnecessary. Track your trend, not single points in time. If the scale freaks you out this much, don't weigh every week...do it every other week. The body doesn't lose weight on a 7 day schedule and it does it the way it wants to do it. What you care about is the trend...as long as it's downward, you're golden. But start tracking your intake, start looking at how your macros break down (are you still protein-heavy and carb/fat-light, or has that changed) and adjust if necessary. But honestly, you were just retaining water.

At the moment, probably reading about weight loss surgery experiences and successes. I have a tendency when I get into something to get kind of obsessive about it for a while. Eventually I'll exhaust myself of reading and researching it, and then move onto something else. I only do it with one thing at a time, usually. Right now, this is it. The next thing I WANT to become an obsession (that will last long-term) is lifting weights and fitness.

It is insane to think about the changes in perception of "how much is enough" happen, after this surgery. I'm into week six now and although the amount I eat continues to grow little by little, it is ridiculous how radically different it is from just two months ago. For dinner, I picked up a small order of green bean chicken at Panda Express. First of all, I made the conscious choice to avoid fried and breaded. Every time I make one of those good choices, I pat myself on the back for putting my brain in check. So far, I have a perfect track record post-surgery. I'm going to be the one in control, now. But sitting there eating my food (I got ALMOST all the way through it, had about 6 green Beans left in the bottom of the box), I had to chuckle to myself. A couple of months ago, I would not have thought twice while I ordered a three item meal with chow mein, orange chicken, kung pao chicken and beijing beef, with maybe one or two egg rolls and an extra large Pepsi to wash the whole calorie fest down. Almost 2,600 calories just in that meal, alone. My goodness. Number one, the change in the type of food I am choosing is big...but when I think about the sheer volume of what I used to eat, compared to today...it kind of blows my mind. I order a "normal" portion of food at a restaurant and I swear, it now looks like it could feed a family, to me. My brain is recalibrating...because for several weeks, I found myself fighting against the perception that my portions were "too small" when in fact, they ended up being a little too much. This is a crazy journey.

I don't have the money to reward myself with anything, but I guess I just give myself a little mental high-five and keep on trucking. The end result will be my reward.

I took my wife out the night this thread was started, we went to a new and well-reviewed steakhouse, as we hadn't been out together in AGES and I was starting week 6, which was "try anything and see how you do with it" time, according to my nutritionist and surgeon (avoiding fats and sugars of course). My wife up and mentions to the server that he shouldn't be surprised when I don't eat that much, and that it won't be due to the quality of the food...but that I just had weight loss surgery! I was surprised by it, but not really embarrassed...it doesn't really matter to me if someone knows, particularly not a stranger. But the waiter then revealed that he's "a boxer" too, because he has Crohn's disease...so not to worry! That dinner did make me aware that this change is also a big one for my wife to handle. We couldn't get the appetizer that we both normally would have, because I couldn't eat it anyway (not and have any room for the steak), and I ate like 10% of my food...although I enjoyed it THOROUGHLY. She felt a little weird with me boxing up 90% and her taking home maybe 20% of hers. But the fact of the matter is, I feel like I actually enjoyed the meal MORE than I would have two months ago, and for the right reasons. The flavor was amazing, and I really appreciated it. I didn't just wolf it down. For me, I don't really care what anyone thinks. I did this for myself, not for them.

I specifically didn't cheat because I was trying to recondition myself mentally, prior to surgery. My thinking was, if I couldn't succeed at following the rules for two weeks pre-surgery, how was I going to succeed at this long-term? I took a lot of pride in sticking to the plan, and it paid off when I weighed in the morning of surgery. I feel that pre-op diet really set the tone, for me.

Addiction transferrence. You basically are prevented from indulging in your food addiction, so you end up transferring it to another thing, in order to "cope." Often, that's alcohol. The solution is, don't drink alcohol. My surgeon said I need to avoid it for a year post-op, anyway. Probably partly because it converts to sugar and partly to avoid the risk of transferring my mental/emotional addiction to alcohol.

http://www.superfoodly.com/protein-farts-best-powder-shakes-which-wont-cause-gas/

It takes a little time to work up to the required amount. I was getting close after a week, but that's with almost everything I drank being a Protein shake, so I could try to get my Water in, too. Each week will get better. Just do your best, and I would say any time you drink, make it a Protein Drink. The lack of desire to eat and the emotions are also totally normal. It'll be a little bit of a mental/emotional ride for a few weeks as you adjust to the new situation. Just be thoughtful about it and try to see all of it for what it is. You are starting the process of re-conditioning your mind and throwing out a LOT of bad habits, old foods, etc... This is where the rubber meets the road.

That usually seems to happen with overeating but it may be that certain foods are causing inflammation, which might cause it. You will have to consult your surgeon, but I would start journaling your food choices and the results. See if you can narrow down which foods are routinely causing this reaction. But if you are eating until you're stuffed, that's likely the reason. You mentioned eating a rice cake...if there is a food more likely to expand like a sponge in your stomach, I can't think of one.

My "goal weight" is more of a window, because I'm not as much focused on scale weight as I am how I am looking and feeling. I have an image in my mind of what I want to end up being like, and my goal weight is basically just a "jumping off point" for that. So it doesn't really demonstrate my goal, because my goal isn't a weight. It's a state of being.