sideeye

I’ve been drinking a protein shake each morning, and making sure I get protein in during the day. The soup itself is low on proteins and carbs - it’s more to give me a big meal so I feel like I’m eating a lot once a day. Mostly water though: probably 2.5 cups altogether, takes me a while to get through the whole bowl. I’m experimenting more with tofu too.

Vegan soups have been helpful for me. An enormous bowl of veg soup flavored mostly with the water from soaking dried mushrooms and a spoonful of miso and salt. Comes in at around 300 calories and is my big meal of the day.

Nothing off-limits or poorly tolerated, just quantity. My eyes are occasionally bigger than my stomach but my eyes never OVERRIDE my stomach. If anything, I found myself cutting out any “light” or “x-free” foods. I used to drink skim milk, and now I drink 2%. Post-surgery I realized that the “diet” versions of foods just didn’t register as “food” somehow; I could be satisfied with a cup of 2% milk but still feel deprived after a pint of skim (theoretically. obviously I cannot drink a pint of milk). The light bulb on all of this went off when I tried Halo Top ice cream, which tastes ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE to me and unsatisfying but I could work on a pint of Cherry Garcia for over two weeks and be fine. So now when I eat, I have a smallish portion of what I call “normal human food”. I buy the normal caesar salad kit, but throw out half the dressing... That sort of thing.

Wear a mask. And I know folks are out there who think they’ll get the second shot, rip off their mask and burn it right there in the clinic parking lot, but - STILL WEAR THE MASK. The science isn’t settled yet as to whether the vaccination means it also prevents you from passing it on. So there is a scenario where you’re vaccinated, you go to a large gathering maskless and YOU get everyone there sick because you were infectious and had no idea because the vaccine protected you from symptoms. So far, the one thing we’re sure of is the vaccine prevents cases from getting deadly, not whether it halts the transmission. And then there’s all the emerging variants stuff and please, please just mask up and stay away from other people. I am an exhausted, demoralized covid researcher and system designer and 2020 has been brutal for people being willfully stupid about a pandemic. It’s been sickening to watch people claim that “no one could have predicted this” when I know that’s bull because I told you in your office repeatedly what was going to happen and what you needed to do to mitigate and you told me it was too hard and your people would be fine. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for medical professionals.

My doc wasn't too fussed about multivitamins after VSG. Basically said as long as bloodwork remains good, there's no need. I don't have a very restricted diet, so everything seems to be coming through via food just fine. I do know that others have been advised differently be their docs - may be a case-by-case basis.

I can't eat solid food too late at night, it's like revving the engine and then I want to eat an entire loaf of bread. What's worked for me is an absolutely ridiculous array of hot drinks: teas, chais, coffees, Korean citrus tea, instant coffees... I'll also drink ice-cold water or low-cal lemonade mixes. The variety and sheer quantity on a nightly basis seems to work for me. Basically anything that is majority water and not too sugary, but I do take my coffee with sugar and half and half, and that will usually tide me over for an hour. During the pandemic I've abandoned some of the ground rules and begun including cocoa mixed in milk (no) and booze (I mean, OBVIOUSLY no) and that's caused a fair amount of regain, but I once I cut those back out I'm pretty confident that the flavored-liquids route will work for evenings.

I'd second the therapy, and add in a "medication". If you have depression or a mood disorder, don't hamstring yourself by drawing a boundary around medications. I'm not saying you HAVE to take meds - just don't start from a position of ruling them out. Keep an open mind. Stress is a huge regain trigger for me, and not in the typical comfort-eating way. Stress builds up in my jaw and throat, and is only minimally impacted by meditation and exercise. I find myself eating so that the action of chewing loosens my jaw muscles, and then the action of swallowing expands my throat. None of this is post-surgical in nature, it's all a weird stress-related physical tic, but it absolutely results in me eating more to alleviate pain but could SEEM like it's emotional eating. Alcohol relaxes those muscles too, and similarly adds calories. When I go on low-dose medication, those things are considerably reduced and I can manage the remaining stiffness with hot tea. Obviously this is one extremely specific case, but shows how completely quirky the causes for regain can be. I'd already figured these tics out with a doc a decade ago but if I hadn't, I'd want a therapist/doc to provide that outside-in perspective.

I think you’ll get different answers here from different people, but for me three years out? No. I could not plough my way through my pantry anymore, not without a lot of pausing for digestion. You’ll have a much better internal brake, which will hopefully make you consider what’s happening instead of the headlong rush you used to be able to do. For instance, if you cooked half a pound of pasta and tried to eat it in one sitting, you probably wouldn’t be able to. You’d maybe manage half of it, feel uncomfortably full, and then have to either put it away or slow waaaaay down and eat the rest of it over the next hour or so. So you become very aware of binging tendencies (at least in my case). This is where it becomes important to understand there will be a “WHY” you’re overeating, and to get ahead of that by lining up a therapist. For some people, the absence of hunger pangs is like flipping a switch - that hormone is gone, and now they’re good! For others there is a real need for a certain taste, like fast food fries or ice cream, and that craving is very difficult to snap because of the “just one taste” impulse. Some people are emotional eaters whose overeating is prompted by an emotional state change. And for others the act of overeating itself created an endorphin feedback loop, so overeating actually rewarded you by making you feel good, sort of the opposite of the emotional eater (I was this kind). For me, the endorphin rush is gone now and so I’m not chemically rewarded for overeating, even a few years out. That chemical hit just isn’t possible anymore. My stomach is around the same capacity as it was 9 months out, I can only really eat a max of 1.5 cups of food in one 20-minute period. My pandemic problem has been grazing (2.5 cups of pasta, snacked on during a day around other meals, for instance) plus a weird stress reaction where I pack all of my tension into my jaw and mouth and guess what alleviates that ache? Chewing and swallowing actual food, not gum (dammit!). I maintained for two years with little problem. The pandemic knocked me for a loop. Am relatively confident I can reset (if I can get this damn jaw thing under control) but I’ve come to think a LOT of success in WLS is getting to the root of WHY you eat. That will help you in deciding how to manage the rough spots, and will prevent you from getting blindsided as much.

Quick update: September to December was not good to me at ALL. Not sure if this happened to anyone else working on covid-related projects, but in August I was quite optimistic that months of research and development and discussion would result in common-sense public health policy. So when it turned out that NONE of those measures were adopted (and this is after 16 hour days for months developing low-tech mitigation strategies specifically to head off an autumn surge), I and a lot of people I know absolutely hit a wall. Cassandra-like, watching predicted disaster unfold and all of these people we’d been talking to for months then publicly claiming they’d had no idea it could get so bad. It was like watching a series of tsunamis. Went into a massively depressive funk until mid-December and focused on nothing but keeping immediate family safe. Was weighing myself the whole time on my wireless scale and it’s really obvious that the gain is related to the (totally foreseeable and effing avoidable!) reopening and holiday spikes. Of course, gained a lot of weight. About 25 lbs in three months. Caught myself and plateau’d around New Year. So I’m rebooting now. Not wildly concerned about the reboot, but looking forward to just spending the next few months focusing on getting ready to reenter society. In jeans. Preferably the jeans I was wearing this time last year.

I’ve had about 35 lbs of regain, all during the pandemic. I am not mad at myself about this, and I wouldn’t want anyone else to be mad about their pandemic regain either. Motivated to lose it? Absolutely, yes! But we’ve just been through a societal upheaval that disrupted almost every pattern and STARTED with repeated panics about food scarcity - hardly normal for your brain to deal with. I’ve been weighing myself throughout, so I loosely knew what was happening. It was all grazing, plus some higher-calorie indulgences (like cocoa instead of tea). A considerable amount of it is likely related to going from one glass of wine every week to up to two glasses of wine per night - stress relief that never got dangerous but absolutely got fattening. About three months ago I realized I was at a point where things were getting dumb, and plateau’d. I’ve been in the same 5 lb band since. Yesterday my parents got their first vaccination, and today is the first day I’ve coordinated jewelry in probably 6 months. Some switch has flipped to make me remember that I’m actually going to have to reenter society soon, and I’d prefer to fit into my nice jeans when I do. I’m going back to shakes and string cheese and peppermint tea, all the baseline stuff. I don’t get hungry anymore, which is great, but this is going to be a big reorientation. But the time feels right, and I’ve seen too many people on this site follow exactly this path and get back to their goal weight to beat myself up about it. It’s a pandemic. We all ate more, we all drank more, the entire population carb loaded on sourdough for the first two months! But now the winter is over and hopefully soon the pandemic will be too, so the time feels right to get back on track. We can all do it.

@Circlesis I had surgery over two years ago and didn’t experience this the first summer, so I don’t know - I’d be inclined to attribute it to 40 more than the sleeve. @waterwoman I’ve spent a hilarious couple of weeks with my summer-attuned parents, and every time they sighed about it being cloudy or cold I would follow up “...YESSSSS!” I do have some sympathy for those who get depressed in winter, but then I remember that they have NO sympathy for me in May, so.... Another interesting pandemic feature? Pre-surgery I was completely disassociated with my body - not only could I not predict whether I’d gained or lost weight by general sense, I also couldn’t tell by looking in the mirror. It was on the level of body dysmorphia, honestly. That TOTALLY went away after surgery and I was sensitive to as little as a two pound shift, but I think that faded over the pandemic months. Being with my family this month, I suddenly started feeling a lot heavier both in “sense” and in mirror-view, but there was no scale for validation. I’ve just gotten home and it turns out I’m exactly the same as when I left, which tells me that my sense of my weight somehow reverted during isolation and then weirdly caught up as I was around my family. weird, right?!??

No worries - easy to get lost, and it’s tucked up in the main thread header but none of the subthreads. See you in April 2021, and good work on the progress so far!

N&I, it looks like you had surgery in Oct 2019 - the Vets board has an 18 month post-op requirement.

I'm New York, and within the past few months - bleh. The lockdown didn't bother me so much as a concept, weight wasn't a problem for the first two months. I was VERY involved in a virus-related contact tracing effort that has basically consumed all of my time, and obviously the status of healthcare in America means that I've spent since mid-Feb bashing my head against a wall to try and make things happen and hitting political and insurance roadblocks and let's just go ahead and agree that being 20 feet away from the kitchen during 13-hour days when you can't leave home without wearing a mask is... not ideal for maintaining weight loss? Long story short, I am a whopping 30lbs up on my lowest weight right now. It's reversible, and in fact with some of the virus-related work finally getting traction (Americans finally stop living in denial, hopefully?) and being parceled off to other teams I'm actually seeing work hours go back down to a normal schedule, but I'm rebooting starting this week through Orgain protein shakes twice a day and one carefully planned meal, plus coffee, water and a cheese stick. I've deliberately and proactively sectioned off my calendar to make sure I don't keep working until 8pm every damn night anymore. I have done terrifying things in Salesforce so now all of my spinning plates are in view at all times. How did I get here? Well... Stocked up in late-Feb when I realized that this was going to be a pandemic. Then tried to order once or twice a week from restaurants when it was clear they'd otherwise shut down, which meant a single dinner lasted three nights. Two months in, I started going to the store occasionally for simple human contact, usually ended up buying stuff I didn't need as an excuse to make the trip. By the end of the spring, the stocked-up stuff started to reach the end of its expiry date, which meant I had to eat it... You see how this spirals. I hate summer. Hate it. Seasonal depression (yes, it does exist for summer). Oh, and then this year it turned out I developed a sun allergy. So even if I did go out to exercise, I risked days of an itchy, poison ivy-like rash. Pool closed, obviously. Work stress. Firstly, trying to make sure I kept my team employed and occupied and engaged as they ended up stranded in apartments and parents' spare rooms in rural towns and assure them that layoffs aren't coming to get them. Secondly, all the virus work. Work happy hours at the start of the lockdown. I had maybe 3-4 drinks every MONTH before lockdown. But then everyone started having happy hours to stay connected, and about three weeks in I think the cocktail started representing the time you officially stopped work so we were all starting making it more of a daily ritual. And once you're having a drink every afternoon when you shut your laptop, you start having two on the days things are particularly rough, and now it's August and I have consumed a remarkable amount of calories via gin, tonic and cider and definitely need to change that pattern. Pandemic stress and constant, haunting thoughts about why I didn't get New Zealand citizenship when I lived there and could do it, dammit. Stopped wearing proper clothing. I vowed to keep wearing my jeans and nice work tops, and stuck to it for about two months. Then I realized that wrap dresses worked great on calls and were cooler. Then started wearing yoga pants (but not doing actual yoga!) and a nice top on calls. Over the last three or four weeks, I've worn zip-up hoodies on internal calls. So it was easy to ignore the weight gain. My wireless scale broke and it took me three months to buy a new one. Anyhow. The pandemic sucks, so many things about living in the US reality distortion field suck right now, but one thing I very much can control is my food intake so it's back to basics on that count. The grocery supply chain is just fine, I've bought a projector TV so I can lock my dog out of the room and do yoga with an image projected on a wall instead of trying to contort myself to do yoga via computer while battling weak wifi, and IT'S GOING TO BE AUTUMN!!! Also I'm taking a week off. Also one of my NZ friends is now living in Sweden, so we spend a lot of time WTF-ing at each other about our situation compared to our friends' situations. How are all of you doing? Working parents, I am not one of your number but know that as one of your colleagues, I do not mind seeing your kids onscreen, totally understand you can't make that deadline, and basically just want to make sure you can make it through the week with 50% or more of your sanity intact. This pandemic has not fallen equally across all shoulders by a long shot, and anyone who's trying to make you stick to a Before Times schedule or gets ratty about "unprofessional" childcare complications can go stuff themselves. **definitely not looking for any advice or encouragement here, and am in fact allergic to both unless expressly requested - just figured since this is a check-in I’d update on current state of play for anyone interested in comparison.

January sales. I have been able to buy so much at January sales, and I have been able to be PICKY. I bought a freaking ball gown! (There’s a purpose, this isn’t rechanneling food bingeing into shopping.) It all fits, now it’s a question of does it look awesome. And just the purchase of the gown is novel. Before I would have (rightly) assumed the quest for a dress would be maddening, that I’d end up in something that made me feel acceptable at best, and even if I went to the event I’d have to gin myself up for it. There’s a fair chance I’d skip the event. But now I’m looking forward to it!