BigSue

That is fantastic! Congratulations!

I was told to avoid pasta, bread, and tortillas for at least the first year because they can form a lump of food in the stomach that is painful to digest. I don't know if that's true or just a scare tactic to keep us away from "bad" foods, but I think someone like you who is already having problems with liquids and purees should definitely be cautious and avoid these foods. How about eating the lasagna without the noodles? You can probably pull the noodles out. Ricotta bake is basically lasagna filling, so you can try that. I added some turkey meat sauce to it once I started eating meat, which makes it meat lasagna sans noodles (but I would suggest starting without meat). If your goal is just to get carbs, maybe try diluted apple juice; this is what I was told to do in the liquid stage. Ensure High Protein shakes also have relatively high carbs, and that's what they gave me in the hospital. You could also try unsweetened applesauce.

If you are following your surgeon's eating guidelines, I wouldn't worry. Your body is probably still catching up with the initial weight loss, which was a lot. For comparison, I've only lost 27 pounds in almost two months since my surgery.

Caltrate is calcium carbonate, and as a gastric bypass patient, you need calcium citrate, so you should get some calcium citrate and stop taking Caltrate ASAP. (FYI, most of the common calcium supplements that you can buy at the drug store are calcium carbonate, so you'll need to check the label when you buy calcium supplements.) I use BariatricPal French Vanilla Caramel soft chews. They are delicious -- they taste like candy. I have an order on the way with the strawberry flavor, and I hope it's just as good. The BariatricPal store has lots of soft chew calcium citrate supplements in a variety of flavors. I can't vouch for anything but the French Vanilla, but they all have good reviews, so I bet you can find a flavor you like.

I can't answer your question because I've never seen that product, but have you tried cauliflower rice? I hate cauliflower, but somehow, cauliflower rice is not bad! I wouldn't eat it by itself, but with sauce and mix-ins (like meat and vegetables), I can almost convince myself that it's actual rice. It's very low in calories and carbs, and you get the added benefit of eating more veggies.

I had to get a UGI x-ray (a.k.a. barium swallow test) before my surgery, and it wasn't bad. The hospital where I went wasn't fancy enough to have a machine that lifts you in the air. I just had to lie on a table and tilt my body in various positions. There was also a portion where I just had to stand in front of the x-ray machine. I had to drink sips of the barium liquid while they took the x-rays. It didn't taste good, but it wasn't horrible. It was pretty quick and painless. Once they started, I think it only took about 15 minutes. I didn't even have to take off my clothes. Yours might take longer since you might have a GI problem (mine was just to make sure I didn't have a GI problem before I got surgery), but the upside is that if they find the problem, they can fix it and you'll feel better.

I don't eat more than 1 ounce of meat at a time, but I eat it with something pureed or liquid (e.g., 1 ounce shredded chicken + 1 ounce enchilada sauce + 1.5 ounces refried beans, or 1/2 ounce ground turkey + 1 ounce marinara sauce + 2 ounces ricotta bake). I don't puree the meat because I just find it unappetizing, but I shred chicken with a fork or chop up the ground turkey into very small pieces. I am 8 weeks out, so I'm theoretically allowed to eat solid food now. I didn't even try meat until I was 5 weeks out.

I'm glad it worked out for you! I'm plenty fat for my insurance to cover the surgery, but I still paid $4500 out of pocket, and I spent a lot of time going to all the various pre-op appointments. On the upside, all my followups, labs, and prescriptions are free for the rest of the year (since I met my out of pocket maximum). I'm not sure if you need to go to a bariatric surgeon for followups, but I would guess that a local surgeon would accept you as a patient. Even people who don't go out of the country for surgery move and have to change doctors. I know my surgeon takes patients who have had surgery with other programs. It wouldn't hurt to ask.

I think just about everybody is happy to get to the pureed stage and eat something resembling real food after weeks on liquids only! I'm 8 weeks out and I'm not sure if I've felt "restriction" yet. I'm theoretically allowed to eat normal foods now, but I still mainly stick to soft and mushy foods because I don't want to push it and get sick. Sometimes when I eat meat (even when it's soft and moist, like shredded canned chicken mixed with enchilada sauce), it will feel like it's stuck. It's quite uncomfortable and I have to stop eating for a bit while I wait for it to move. I don't think it's because I'm full because sometimes it happens a couple of tiny bites into the meal, and once it gets unstuck, I can finish the rest. I eat about 3-4 ounces per meal, and I haven't really gotten to the point that I couldn't eat another bite. But maybe that's because I'm only eating soft foods. It is all pretty weird, because I don't feel full, but I also don't feel hungry. I just measure out the right amount of food and eat it. I do worry about whether I will feel restriction once the hunger comes back, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I'm 8 weeks out. The time it takes for it to go down varies. It's usually just a few minutes, but occasionally it's more like 15-20 minutes. A lot of people have trouble with chicken early on. When I eat chicken, it's canned chicken (very soft), shredded into tiny pieces, with plenty of sauce, and I still have trouble sometimes.

I wait for it to go down and it eventually does. The wait is not pleasant, though. What are you eating when this happens? You might be eating something that is too dense or dry. Are you chewing really thoroughly before you swallow? Are you taking small bites?

I didn't mind it. After two weeks on all liquids, eating yogurt and pureed beans was a treat! Some people eat pureed cooked chicken, but that looks gross to me, so I waited until the soft food stage to eat meat. Here are some of the things I ate during the pureed stage: Fat-free, sugar-free yogurt with protein powder Sugar-free pudding with protein powder No sugar added applesauce with protein powder Protein oatmeal (from the BariatricPal store) with protein powder Pureed fat-free refried beans with protein powder, topped with enchilada sauce and Laughing Cow cheese Mashed cauliflower with protein powder, topped with gravy Pureed black bean soup with protein powder

A lot of people experience nausea from iron supplements, especially if taking them on an empty stomach. It might help to take it with food. Also, there are different forms of iron. I just checked the ProCare multivitamin and it contains ferrous fumarate. Carbonyl iron and chelated iron tend to be easier on the stomach.

@regina r, what I said above only works on the BariatricPal website. It looks like you’re using the app. From the app, you can update your stats by clicking “Profile” on the bottom right and then selecting “Patient Information.”

Click on your username on the top right of the screen, then click “My Surgery” under settings. Then click “Progress” on the left sidebar, and that’s where you can edit your weight.

Yeah, this forum is really helpful for preparing. I do not like surprises, so I wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- before I committed to surgery. I also watched a ton of YouTube videos and found those helpful as well. Some of the ones I watched are Kimberly H, Minnie Me in TN, My Level 10 Life, Clusie L, Timetodeflate, and Foodie Turned Sleevie. There are many more (which you'll see on your recommended videos once you start watching WLS channels), but a lot of people just have a couple of videos about WLS. Like so many things in life, WLS is a tradeoff. You have to make big sacrifices, but there can be big rewards. It was important to me to understand going into it what I would be sacrificing and what benefits I would get. It was daunting to think of what I would have to give up for WLS, but when I looked at what I hoped to get out it -- to get my health back, get my mobility back, and so many other things that I have missed out on in my life because of my weight -- it was a lot easier to accept those sacrifices.

Thanks for the helpful info! Interesting that Barimelts are on the list of not recommended supplements. That's what I've been taking, but in addition to the multivitamin, I'm taking separate supplements for iron, B-12, D3, and biotin. I'm planning to switch anyway once I run out of Barimelts because I can take pills now and the Barimelts are pretty expensive.

Good to know... I guess I'll start taking the extra iron now and see what the surgeon says when I go in for my next followup. The endocrinologist said to take it twice a day, but that will be difficult because I'm supposed to take calcium 3x per day, two hours apart from each other and two hours apart from iron, and my thyroid medication four hours apart from calcium and iron. Thanks for the info on endocrinologist vs. surgeon. I've been wondering about that since this stuff is more in the endocrinologist's area of expertise, but she doesn't specialize in bariatric patients, so maybe she doesn't know all the specifics of bariatric post-op changes. The surgeon doesn't even do bloodwork until 3 months out, so his directions are just based on the general bariatric patient guidelines.

I used protein powder mixed with almond milk.

For the second week of my pre-op diet, I was only allowed to have liquids. I was supposed to have 4 protein shakes per day (although I only managed to get that many on one day) plus broth, sugar-free Jello, and sugar-free popsicles. I got really bad bloating from the protein shakes. I had one especially bad night when I was so bloated and nauseated that I couldn't sleep. I hadn't experienced that during the first week of the pre-op diet when I was drinking 2 shakes per day plus a small meal of lean protein and veggies. I don't think it was the shakes, per se, but the fact that I was drinking so many of them and that was pretty much all I was consuming. I was actually kind of relieved on the last day before surgery when all I could have was clear liquids so I didn't have to drink any shakes that day!

I actually progressed more slowly than what my program said because I don't want to eat anything that will make me sick. I was allowed to start "soft foods" in week 3 (which included eggs, canned chicken and tuna, soft cooked veggies, etc.), but I mainly stuck with pureed foods. I started eating shredded canned chicken in week 5. I'm 7 weeks out now and I still haven't tried eggs because I've seen a lot of people say they don't tolerate eggs. My program says I can eat "regular" textures now, including raw veggies, but I'm still eating mostly pureed or very soft things (like refried beans, cottage cheese, and ricotta bake) because I know they won't give me any trouble. I have had some issues with shredded chicken and ground turkey (in very small pieces and swimming in sauce) and butternut squash noodles getting "stuck" and feeling like they might come back up, so I'm reluctant to try anything denser or firmer than that.

Ooh, that sucks! I can see how she would assume your daughters knew, but a healthcare professional should be more careful about blabbing your personal health information without your consent. I haven't told anyone in my family about my surgery, and I would be really angry if one of my healthcare providers assumed it was ok to discuss it with my family. I don't like to get people in trouble, but I think this is a case where somebody needs to talk to this tech about privacy so she doesn't do the same thing to someone else.

Thanks, that's good to know! The chelated iron is pretty cheap, too, and supposed to be easy on the stomach (and not cause constipation). Dr. Weiner said that chelated iron is best for gastric bypass patients because it can be absorbed anywhere in the intestine, while elemental iron is mostly absorbed in the first part of the intestine (which is now bypassed). But that video was from 6 years ago, so I don't know if there's any more recent research that says differently. Do you take 90 mg at a time or split it up into two doses?

Study after study has shown that dieting alone is not effective for long-term weight loss. Roughly 95% of people gain back all the weight they lose from dieting, and often more. Most bariatric surgery patients, on the other hand, maintain weight loss of at least 50% of their excess weight long-term. Many bariatric surgery patients do regain some weight, sometimes a significant amount, but typically still maintain some amount of weight loss (whereas without surgery, they’d most likely be gaining steadily over the years). The amount you can eat after weight loss surgery gradually increases, but usually not to the point that you can eat as much as you used to. People call the first couple of years the “honeymoon period” because that’s when it’s easy to lose weight, since the restriction is strongest. WLS also changes the hormones in your body that cause hunger, so at least for a while, you don’t feel hungry. They say it’s important to take advantage of the honeymoon period to change your eating habits so they become permanent even when the effects of the surgery weaken. Some people experience changes in taste after surgery and come to dislike sugary or fried foods (and these foods can even make you sick after WLS, which creates a strong disincentive to eat them). So yes, it still takes work and lifestyle changes to lose weight and maintain weight loss after WLS, but WLS makes it easier than dieting. Many, many people who have repeatedly failed at weight loss through dieting alone have been able to succeed with WLS. (FYI, I’m only 7 weeks out from surgery, so I don’t have personal experience to back this up, but I’ve read a lot and watched a lot of videos from people who have been through it. There a lot of people on this forum with amazing success stories.)

Welcome to the post-op side! Hang in there... My first few days after surgery were miserable (including intense regret when I first woke up), but I'm 7 weeks out and it all seems like a distant memory now.