Berry78

Ok, first off, you need to be on an acid reducer. That isn't optional during the first weeks/months. That hungry feeling is probably acid. Whenever I'd have discomfort that felt like hunger, I'd take a swig of liquid antacid (in addition to the PPI pill). Ask your team about this. The heightened sense of smell is totally normal. Happens to everyone. Keep working on trying different liquids, different temperatures. Warm herbal tea worked well for me, ice water works for someone else. Go through it systematically. Room temperature, warm, cold, ice cold, frozen (like frozen popsicles) Every 5 minutes, take a sip of SOMETHING. The more dehydrated you get, the worse you feel, and the less you want to drink. Ask your team about pain medicine.. I was also a stomach sleeper, but found by making a "horseshoe" of pillows around me, resting my back on some, and my tummy on others, I could rest on my side. (I never before slept with more than 1 pillow, so this was a unique situation). After 2-3 weeks, I could sleep normally again.

Woo Hoo!! Sure, it's a big deal!! Can't wait to be merely overweight, myself! (Only 14 more pounds ). When people start telling you not to lose any more, it is a good time to take stock of where you actually are. BMI is NOT gospel when it comes to a healthy body. First metric is waist to height measurement. 6'1 is 73 inches. Your natural waist should be, at most, half that number... 36.5 inches. (Find your natural waist by looking for the area in your side where your ribs and hip bone almost touch. Place the tape measure between the bottom rib and the top of the hip bone. Measure horizontally around that area.. easiest in the mirror). Once you are below that number, then you've reached a healthy size.. and any extra losses are just icing on the cake. (It's not a bad idea to overshoot by an inch or two to guard against a bit of regain). Of course, the most accurate way is to get a body composition analysis done. They aren't free, but you get very good information from them. (I haven't done this yet.. plan to when I get close to goal). If you have a particular goal to reach, it's easier to dismiss the concerns of friends and family. "Oh, I haven't reached the healthy waist measurement yet" or "My body fat percentage is still higher than the healthy range". Sounds a lot better than "I wanna get as skinny as I can!" Lol! (I know that's not actually what you say, but hopefully it makes my point clear).

20lbs is average for the whole first month. Usually a huge rapid loss like that is followed by a lengthy stall while the body catches up. Totally normal.

21 is significantly above average. A portion of that wasn't fat, but water instead. Now that you are getting rehydrated, the water weight comes back. The scale will regularly go up and down by a few pounds. If you weigh every day, you'll get used to it. How I minimize the psychological impact for me is I write down my weight only once a week. I weigh every day and keep in mind the lowest number I saw that week. That's what I write down. I'm 7 months postop and have only had 2 weeks that logged a zero loss. I'm sure if I didn't do it this way, half my weeks would be zero losses! Lol. (The other half would be double). You're doing great!

This early in the healing phase, you should contact your team. Everything is probably just fine, physically, but you should hear what they have to say about it. In the future, make a plan. If you don't have access to something that is on plan, you can always just sip on a drink. Eating out won't feel "normal" for most of the first year. But this is the time to get into new habits.

I came across an article a while back, that gave a way for physicians to make an educated guess as to which procedure would be best for their diabetic clients. It split the patients into 3 groups: mild diabetes (short time, easily controlled with 1 medication), moderate diabetes (up to 10 years, controlled with 1-2 meds), severe diabetes (long time or uncontrolled or need lots of meds) The mild cases are likely to respond with sleeve or bypass. Moderate cases really need a bypass Severe cases are less likely to respond at all, so the sleeve might as well be chosen since it has fewer complications. There are no hard and fast rules, but this gives some food for thought.

This is an interesting one for me. Preop, I never used anything on my skin. Body wash in the shower. That's it! Postop I started using lotion after every shower to try and ward off loose skin, if at all possible. So, I had 10 years worth of lotions laying around that were almost never used. They are all used up now, and I had to buy my first bottle. I found a huge bottle of cocoa butter for like $2, so am using that right now. Actually smells like chocolate! Now, for my face, I use a facial moisturizer that has sunscreen. First I grabbed Cetaphil, and it seemed to work well. When that ran out, I went with CeraVe, but noticed my pores seemed to be clogged a lot more. Took a while to decide to change moisturizers. So tried Aveeno. Same thing. Went back to Cetaphil, and within a week the clogs were gone! At like $14 a small bottle, it's rich, but I'm sold. It does last a while. I do notice a bottle of body lotion used to last a couple weeks, now lasts over a month. Smaller body uses less!

Aww shucks! Thank YOU!

I'm now a few days short of six months postop. Down a total of 86lbs. (305 to 219). First photo was day of surgery. I had already lost 16lbs on preop diet. Second photo is today. Third photo is my face at highest weight before preop diet. My pants are size 14 (brand runs large). Top vest is a large. Undershirt is a tight medium.

I know you haven't made this decision lightly, and it does sound like it's the appropriate course of action. Do tell your doctors about it, because it will explain any HCG, and in case you need any extra medical attention. Don't be surprised if there might be a delay for your surgery, though. The docs may want another month or so in between. [Hugs] Good luck.

Rainbow, what a sad and yet, uplifting, tale. My condolences for your loss. Helping family is a wonderful reason to take control of your health!

A shopping list helps, and going to the same store, so you memorize where everything is. I had the same overwhelm too.. but the more I went back (for brief trips), the easier it became. Make sure you eat before going, so legitimate hunger doesn't make it worse. It gets better, I promise! I now enjoy going and looking for "hidden" healthy foods.

I'm only 7 months postop, but my relationship has gotten slightly better. We didn't have a bad relationship before, just very stuck in a rut... a lot of apathy. It's not all rainbows, but things are shifting a bit in the right direction. A lot of people get the surgery when they already are in a bad relationship. ("It'll be better if only I were thin").. those are the ones that tend to fall apart first. Because even though we're smaller, we're still the same people. Solid, good, relationships tend to stay that way, from how it seems.

We are all so different! Milk felt so thick around 8 days postop, could barely drink any.. it just filled me up and kept me full.

A couple little walks a day are just fine. In another month you can worry about starting to build up (if you are ready at that point).

For this one, I recommend going someplace outside of your normal routine. Maybe to the next town.. go to a mall or movie, where you can do something while carrying a bottle of water or snack. If you are too weak from not eating/drinking, then you need to suck it up and swallow something. Call your doc if it's past the point of no return. You can get an IV, and maybe something for your nerves.

You could try cutting it up and eating less at a time. Otherwise, you may need to switch types.

Liquid is more important than protein this first week. If protein keeps you from drinking fluid, then minimize the protein. Watering down protein might make it go down easier too. Carry a cup or bottle with you constantly. Take a sip every 5 minutes. Try different temps and flavors. If you drink less than 40oz a day, contact your team. You may be getting dehydrated. Congrats, and good luck!

Try and drag yourself out for a little walk. It may actually give you a boost. If not, well, at least you tried. Don't worry about the low calories too much quite yet. Protein and fluid goals are key. Hopefully you won't be on 1000 calories forever (a few people need to be, so it depends on your metabolism). I was really breathless for walks for about the first month. At 3 months I finally felt back to normal. Hopefully something will give you some oomph.

Around here we don't usually recommend changing it up very soon postop.. because if you are following the plan, you don't HAVE to change anything. To keep looking for ways to break a stall is pretty much saying "I'm doing something wrong, so I have to fix it"... which is usually NOT the case! Self esteem issues are rampant, so the idea that you can screw up the postop diet (that you ARE following).. does way more harm than good. Of course if someone stalls out for an excessive time, then it's time to reevaluate. Maybe they aren't following the diet as well as they thought, or it may need a tweak for them individually. But, the vast majority of stalls break in 3-4 weeks on their own.

November 7th is my Birthday! You couldn't have a more auspicious day... I'm 5'7, female, and started at 305lbs before my preop diet. I was 289 in the before pic.

Headline: "Fish oil supplements during pregnancy don't improve child's intelligence, study says" There is a study where pregnant women consumed fish oil supplements, and the children were compared 4+ years later to the non-supplement children. The children scored the same. So the big headlines! Don't waste your money on fish oil supplements during pregnancy! Now let's back up. What is DHA? DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is a fatty acid found in: Fish (salmon, mackeral, herring, tuna, whitefish, sardine, sablefish, swordfish, striped bass, tilefish, trout, bluefish, sea bass, etc.) Brains (lamb, beef, pork) Testes (lamb) mollusks (blue mussel, oysters, squid,) crustaceans (blue crab, shrimp) Our recommended average daily intake is about 0.5g. (4oz of atlantic salmon supplies about 3 times this amount.) For amounts in each of these (and other) foods, please visit: https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/report?nutrient1=621&nutrient2=629&nutrient3=851&fg=&max=25&subset=0&offset=0&sort=c&totCount=5822&measureby=g We hear a lot about the omega 3 content of seeds and nuts, and the idea that we can convert ALA to DHA and EPA. Ok, so we CAN make DHA from flax oil.. and to be sure to get enough, we should consume 1-2 Tablespoons of fresh flax oil a day. (Do your own research to see how much YOU want to take.. Flax oil can cause upset stomach, interact with medications, etc). And get this.. they caution pregnant and breastfeeding women against consuming flax seed oil. Fish is limited because of mercury, and flax seed oil because its use has been related to preterm births (likely due to its blood thinning properties). Ok, so now it looks like DHA is really important during the last 3 months of pregnancy, and for the first 2 years of life. Since brain development continues after birth, what about breast milk? I have searched all around for information, and there is are HUGE differences in the levels of DHA in breastmilk between people, based on their fish consumption. Japanese women have about seven times the DHA in their breastmilk compared to Americans. Guess who has the higher IQ scores? Average in the US is 100. Average in Japan is 105. In other words, if a baby animal is born that is deficient in DHA, there is a window of opportunity to "catch up". But, if that time frame elapses with no remediation, the window closes, and the damage is permanent. Ok, so after all that, I'll revisit that headline: "Fish oil supplements during pregnancy don't improve child's intelligence." The study evaluated the children 4 years after the mothers were supplemented. The period of rapid brain development after birth wasn't supplemented. AND the controls in the study received normal levels of DHA from their mothers.. they weren't fed deficient diets. So it is no surprise that there was little to no difference between the children. The current recommendation is to consume 8-12 oz of fish a week.

Ok, here is another way of looking at it for yourselves. First, figure out your personal mercury maximum based on your ideal weight. 100lbs = 5mcg/day, 35mcg/week 125lbs = 6mcg 150lbs = 7mcg 175lbs = 8mcg 200lbs = 9mcg Ok, now, you'll use the ppm (or mg/kg.. they are equivalent) in the chart. Figure up how many grams of fish you want to consume per day or week (28.4g =1oz) Multiply ppm * [grams of fish] = mcg of mercury consumed. Here is the fish chart: https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/metals/ucm115644.htm Here is an example: So, my ideal weight is 150lbs. I don't want to consume over 49mcg of mercury a week. I want to eat fish 3 times a week, 4oz each time. That is 12oz (341g). I want to eat canned chunk light tuna, which has an average of 0.126ppm. 0.126(341) = 43mcg 43 is less than 49, but not by much. Keep in mind, we get mercury from other places, not just fish, so we don't want to get too close to our maximums. And, if the reason I want to eat fish is DHA, and there isn't any in the canned tuna, then maybe I want to switch to frozen skipjack. It has only a little more mercury (0.15ppm)... but that small difference puts me over my 49mcg limit. (It gives 51mcg). Crazy stuff....

For those that eat 12oz a week or less, they can eat all the fish in Rainbow's list, and can add: Cod Flounder Herring Pacific Mackerel Atlantic mussels Oysters Ocean Perch Pacific pollock Atlantic salmon Pacific yellowfin tuna For regular fish eaters (12oz/week), we should NEVER eat fish that have a level higher than 0.13mg/kg mercury. 8oz/week open up a few more (.20mg/kg): Pacific crab Pacific lobster Pacific albacore tuna You hear "limit consumption" so you think if you eat shark once a month it's fine. Right? Actually, it's only fine if that were your only fish consumption at all. If you also eat salmon or shrimp or anything else, you've gone over the safe level.

Ok, so with your high level of consumption, I looked at the mercury level chart as it would pertain to you. I don't know where your fish come from (which is really important), but if they come from the Atlantic and/or Pacific then the following are the only types you should ever eat: Pacific anchovies Atlantic herring Pacific mussels Atlantic pollock Pacific canned or fresh salmon Scallops Shrimp There may be safe fish that aren't on my list, they would have to be looked up individually. They should have .04mg/kg mercury or less. If you eat local fish or types other than what are on this list, I highly recommend you get tested for your mercury level. Ask your doc.