notmyname

I’m never on these boards, but I guess I still get emails from this thread. Still out here. Still down around 130 (up about 15) and holding steady (with Ozempic). Still hating the side effects of massive GERD and food sensitivities to almost everything (even stuff you wouldn’t expect - dairy, raw veggies, etc). I miss Greek yogurt and carrots most of all. Sometimes I eat them, but instantly regret it. Every year at my follow up doc wants me to convert to bypass for the GERD, but the first surgery was so bad I refuse to do a second one unless I’m dying . I can only imagine what the bypass would do to my food issues. But I do fit in plane seats more easily and it’s easier to buy clothes because I can buy from most stores. I’m sure I’m healthier, although my numbers were pretty good pre-surgery. My knees hurt less. I still have fairly complicated feelings about having done it - not sure I would do it again, but do think I made the best decision I could at the time.

I SO feel you. I love my doctor. I've had a hard road after surgery - not nearly what you went through, but it wasn't pleasant. It was only 6 months ago that I could eat more than 400 calories a day without being ill and I still mostly only eat soft foods 2.5 years out. So when I got the call about my blood tests after my last and the nurse on the phone (not my doc's normal nurse) said that my cholesterol was a bit high and that it can be "controlled with diet and exercise, for example, stop eating fried foods," I nearly lost my everloving mind. I sent a letter to my doctor and her practice manager complaining about the call. The person on the phone didn’t bother to ask about my eating habits to ascertain if that could be the cause of the high cholesterol, even though high cholesterol can unrelated to diet. Instead, she just assumed that I eat poorly and need to have some self-control. I told them that the reference to “stop eating fried food” was jarring and unnecessary. I also said it was unhelpful given that I don't actually eat fried food (and didn't before my surgery). I also asked them to read a study by NIH on weight bias and really consider training the person I spoke to on it. Writing and sending the letter made me feel a bit better. I'm sorry you dealt with this.

Hi - it is getting hotter and more humid here, plus there are more folks outside, so I'm finding it really hard to get outside for walks. Before all this started, I was finishing week for of C25K, but I really can't run with a mask on. I still do Pilates 1-2 times a week, but REALLY need some cardio. I've tried some online classes, but haven't found anything that really works for me. I really want something focused on cardio (so not weights or a bunch of planks, etc). I've tried some Zumba - they're OK, but I am not coordinated, so I'd say I run in place for about 1/2 of any given class because I can't do the moves. Would love any recommendations. I have Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, and of course anything else that is free and web-based. Thanks!

I'm not really sure that I'm asking for advice, more just griping. I'm over 2 years out from surgery. I eat healthy - pescatarian and mostly fruit/veg/protein. Almost no refined carbs (my body does not like them). I'll let myself have a small dessert on my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (knowing I wont feel great after) - something fairly low cal/sugar. Stay under 1000 cal /day (any more than that and I gain - even though I'm still teetering on an obese weight). I have two issues: 1. It seems like every month new foods do not do well with my stomach. So far: dairy, most raw veg, some cooked veg, some fruit, cocoa, peanut butter. New this month - apples. They just are cutting up my stomach. It makes my stomach hurt. Shouldn't this have all settled out by now? My surgeon and NUT say yes, but it doesn't for everyone. I'm basically on a very limited diet in terms of variety. I mean, its better than I was in months 4-18 of this journey where I was in extreme pain no matter what I ate and struggled to get more than 600 calories, but still not fun. 2. I'm in my early 40s. About a year after surgery, I started getting the worst hot flashes 5-10 times a day. That has tamped down, but now it seems like about 15-20 minutes after I eat, I get a hot flash. Every damn time. Could be wholly unrelated to surgery, but still irritating. Anyway, not really looking for anything here. I'm just a person that sometimes needs to send my frustrations out into the world to start moving past them. And this seems like the place to toss out my bariatric surgery related issues. I hope all of you are well.

I'm close to two years out. Nothing makes me commit, but a lot of things either physically hurt my stomach or make me nauseous. Most raw veg (carrots used to be my favorite food, now they're evil), cantaloupe, sometimes apples (particularly when paired with peanut butter), probably some others I'm forgetting because I just don't eat them anymore.

I made black beans in my Instant Pot, then pureed them with a little salsa (if you can handle it). Heat with about 10g of cheese. Delicious - Pureed Egg Salad - 2 hardboiled eggs, T TBL reduced fat mayo, 1 TBL plain greek yogurt. salt/pepper/ground mustard to taste. Puree. I was able to eat scrambled eggs, but a lot of folks can't

I don't like flavored yogurt, so I usually buy plain greek yogurt (it is usually either the Kirkland brand or Fage). If I need flavor, I flavor it myself (I like getting the really small frozen blueberries and adding them in frozen - but I wouldn't do that so soon after surgery.)

Premier is typically cheaper in the Costco store than at Costco online. Also, they often has $5 off, so watch for that.

How far post-op? First phases: Yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, protein shakes (for me, it was premier protein) Later phases: fish shrimp (shrimp is so good - easy to defrost and you can easily tailor the amount) sargento balanced breaks nut/cheese snack packs string cheese canned veg Tuna frozen fruit Parm chips (sometimes they have single serving bags, sometimes they just have a big bag Veggie burgers

Talk to your doc (your surgeon may ask you to talk to the prescribing doc). One of my pills was small enough to swallow. The other I had to switch to a liquid form.

I take these once a day: Bariatric Once-A-Day Multivitamin 90 Ct Capsule-45mg Iron Made for Gastric Bypass Sleeve WLS Surgery https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JREK09G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Interesting. I've been pretty down about WLS lately because I never got to a healthy weight (I was close and OK where I was), then gained a bit. I was SUPER not happy with the gain. I just looked at a pic on a calendar my friend made me from a trip I took about 6 months after surgery. And I thought - wow, I looked great in that pic. I went back and looked at my weight around that time - yep, its about where I am now. Sure, there are other pics from that trip where I feel like I look terrible. But that one, I feel like I look good. Right-proportioned. So that makes me feel a bit better.

This is going to vary based on what your insurance contract says. I'd call your insurer. I'd also call the new doc to see what their office requires. This isn't exactly your situation, but I changed facilities/doctors in the middle of getting approval. My new doc was able to use the records from my previous surgeon to get me approved. But for his own purposes, he still wanted to see me several times before surgery. So it wasn't necessarily insurance that held me up, but the surgeon's requirements.

For stats, I keep my own spreadsheet that has both my weight loss from my top weight and from my day of surgery weight. I calculate my excess weight lost (a common measure for WLS) based on the day of surgery weight

18 months out from sleeve surgery, I'm still a pescatarian. Note that I wasn't able to eat some of this stuff for quite some time after surgery. Lost about 120 (gained a bit from my low, but have been maintaining here for a couple months). Some typical meals for me: * Stuff I ate in soft food stage (note YMMV because different docs have different rules. Might also be different with the RNY) **stuff i ate as I transitioned to real food (same caveat) Breakfast * Greek yogurt/cottage cheese (after soft food stage: add blueberries) *scrambled egg An egg and some veggies (scrambled, fritatta, crustless quiche, etc) Lunch/Dinner **crustless quiche (in early stages, be careful what you put in the quiche - I now do broc, but couldn't eat that until I was almost a year out) *Ricotta bake Baked sweet potato with black beans and some greek yogurt mixed with chipotle peppers. If I'm feeling fancy add soem avocado (*soft food appropriate if you cook the potato and beans really well and mash them REALLY well) Tofu and veg with some sauce **Tuna salad * Egg Salad **Fish with veg Shrimp with Veg *Hummus bowl or **falafel Breakfast hash (sauteed kale, roasted sweet potato, poached egg) Salad with fish or shrimp or beans Bean chili About once a month a pita pizza (small pita, tomato sauce, mozz, and veg) Curry chickpeas Snacks fruit (sometimes and apple w/peanut butter), veg, almonds, cheese, parm chips, guac, hummus

Thanks. I weigh and track every bite. I've done that for years, so it is habit by now. The thing I'm concerned about most is that at 1200-1500, I will slowly gain. My history is that I stay at a weight for a while, then I gain a little, then stay. I guess its my old mindset/worry creeping in.

So, I guess since I hit 18 months post-op, I'm a vet. I've been thinking a lot about the surgery over the last few weeks. And since I'm stuck at home and don't really have anyone to talk this out with, I'm just going to put it here. I don't really think I have a question, just want to get it all out of my head. I really don't know how I feel about my surgery 18 months out. I had a ROUGH first 14 months or so after surgery. Well, I actually had a super time easy through month three, then I got really, really sick. Couldn't eat anything other than stuff that was basically yogurt consistency (after easily moving through the stages of food and eating shrimp/veg for dinner most nights). And the doc couldn't figure it out. To get more than about 300-400 cals a day, I had to mainline milk (protein shakes also made me violently ill, even though I'd tolerated them well the first few months). Anytime I ate anything moderately like food, I got an incredible pain in my abdomen. I remember at one point about 4 months after surgery being in so much pain I was in the fetal position sobbing on the phone to my surgeon's office begging for help). So I lost steadily, but felt like death on a stick because I was always in pain and wasn't getting enough nutrition. After about a year, I suddenly started feeling a bit better, but still couldn't eat most veggies or starches. I plateaued because I was suddenly able to eat more like 800 calories/day (doc/NUT rec at that point was more like 1000-1200). Then a couple months ago, I started to get to where I can eat most things (raw veg and some of the tougher veggies still hard) and I'm hungry all the time. I am SO grateful that I feel better, but I gained like 15 lbs in a month. I've been steady at that for a bit, but would really like to not be where I am. I feel like I eat healthy foods, and, frankly, I'm still not at that high a cal intake according to my NUT (1200-1500 give or take, she says most folks at my stage could be up more like 1800), but I just can't seem to lose,. Healthy BMI would be just under 170. I had gotten down to 183 (sustained - I got down to 179 for one day, but I don't really count that). I was fairly happy there. Ideally, I'd be in the 170s, I'd be happy in the 180s. The 190s is making me panicky. It kind of makes me sad that I'm still over 25# overweight eating roughly 1200-1500 cals. Would love to be about 15 lbs lighter (still overweight, but I feel OK at that weight). And, frankly, I am really afraid of regain - and I'm just not sure I can eat fewer cals. And I'm hungry a lot (legit stomach hunger, not brain hunger). I'm pretty good about what I eat (I keep a fruit/veg/healthy protein bowl near my work station to snack on. Eat protein/veg for B/L/D). Heck, since I'm home I really don't have much unhealthy stuff to eat. I suppose if I stabilize where I am, it is still better than where I was. But, frankly, if I gain much more I'm not sure that the cost/benefit is really worth it for me. So, that's where I am 18 months out from surgery. Not really looking for advice, just wanted to get my musings out there. Thanks! Edited to add - I'd started a C25K before this whole pandemic thing and got to the beginning of week 5. But now I've had to stop because I can't run with a mask on and, frankly, even if I could there are too many people out in my neighborhood to make social distancing possible/safe. I wonder where I'll have to restart when this is all over.

So, I'm 10 months out and still having problems eating solid foods (doc knows, nothing they can do). Since this appears to be my life, I need to get out of the rut of only eating yogurt for breakfast and dinner. Lentils seem like they go down fine. We have a meal delivery service here that is run by immigrants/refugees and I have been able to get all sorts of delicious Middle Eastern, Indian, and African (lots of stuff from Eritrea and Ethiopia)-style lentils from that. But those have a lot of salt and oil, so I'd love to be able to replicate them by cooking at home. Does anyone know of a good lentil cookbook that has a lot of different styles of cooking? Thanks!

I haven't experienced it, but I had to get medical sign off from my surgeon for a work assignment in a place that has a LOT of gastrointestinal bugs. When talking to him, he said that my reaction to stomach illness would be the same as anyone else's - and he said that in the official paperwork, too. I wonder if maybe you just got a really bad version of the illness?

I'm in the early phases of being able to eat real food (6 weeks out). Typically, I take egg salad, ricotta bake, or beans and cheese to work. I have to work offsite for a week without a microwave. I can take egg salad, but don't want to eat that every day. Any other good, easy to digest, protein-rich foods that I can take in my insulated lunch bag? for lunch? Thanks!

Not a failure, so to speak, but you can get terrible reflux* or hernia. *One study shows 20% to 31% incidence of post-op new reflux https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23238373 *Another says only 1.1% need something other than PPIs to deal with the reflux https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19949885

Hmm. Well, that's disappointing. Today is my 1 year anniversary, and this month is the first month I've gained weight (1 lb) and inches (2.75 overall). I understand how it happened - about 6 weeks ago I was finally able to eat more real food, so my body isn't used to getting more than 600 calories. Will talk to my doc/NUT on Friday at my appt. Hopefully, my body will eventually progress to tolerating raw veggies - that would really help with being able to eat lower calories. But, the good - I'm down 134 from my high weight, 112 from surgery weight. Lost 89% EWL. Only 13lbs over a healthy BMI. My doc tells patients to expect to get to a low point, then gain 10-15# over a few years. I had hoped where I am was the weight after a bit of regain, but I suspect I'm now at my low. I've been bouncing around the same weight for 7 weeks - about the same time I got out of the purgatory of only being able to eat yogurt. Hope everyone else is doing well.

Not an empty nester, but I live alone. i cook a lot on weekends and freeze. One thing that has helped is getting a vaccuum sealer. I cook batches of food, freeze them in individual quantities in normal tupperware, then once it is frozen, I transfer the frozen block of food to a vac sealed bag. Lasts forever. I also tend to make 2-3 things at once, then I have about a month of food. Some stuff I make (I'm a pescatarian, so you could always add meat): Chili ricotta bake (I use eggface's recipe and add sauteed spinach) Sauces (curries, tomato sauces, etc) - freeze in ice cube trays and pull out a cube or two to put over tofu, fish, shrimp, etc. I really like the sauce for the fire roasted tilapia from bariatric foodie - I just make the sauce and add to individual fish when I make it Beans ( I don't like canned beans, so I made from dry and freeze) Lentils/dals, etc Some other easy stuff Eggs - I scramble an egg, add salsa and cheese, and eat with a single serve of guac; or make fancy baked eggs. I also like Shakshuka eggs - I make a big batch of the sauce, then freeze and can make a single egg in a small pan. yogurt with frozen fruit (yep - for dinner) Shrimp - easy to thaw just a few and really quick to cook Frozen fish from Costco - they're individually packaged, so easy to take out 1 filet.

So, are you having hernias repaired after your sleeve? My hernia came back, and my doc has told me the only way to fix it is to covert to bypass (which I won't do). Would love to hear that there are surgeons who will repair a hernia on a sleeve without conversion. Thanks!

I'll be hitting the year mark on the 29th. I FINALLY started feeling a bit better about a month ago. I can finally eat more than yogurt without pain/getting sick. So, SO thankful. My first few months, I was creating such good habits - cooking every night, eating healthy stuff. When I started feeling like death in February, all that went out the window because all I could eat was soft foods like yogurt, cheese, or milk. So, here I am, nearly a year out, and I have to start over trying to create the healthy habits. And for some reason it seems harder now than right after surgery, but I'll do it. Now that I can eat, my loss has slowed. I'm up and down a lot, still about 1-2# down in a month. I'm down 135 total, 114 since surgery. Lost 90% EWL and am down to a 26.7 BMI. I'm now a 12/14 (depending on the brand), down from a 24/26. But I still look super flabby. We'll see how it all shakes out now that I can actually eat.