rjan

Sorry - but this is not being "a down to earth person who tells it like it is." This is being bitchy. Let me "tell it like it is." What IAmGrace wrote is THE answer to your question. There is no other answer. If the answer to your question is so obvious to you - then why are you asking it?

I ate a pickle at 4 WEEKS! It was not a problem.

I'm only 5 weeks post-op for a sleeve, so I can't answer your questions. However, I wanted to comment that I don't understand why they are so worried! Assuming your stats are correct and you're 4'11", 137 lbs is still overweight. And 113 lbs in 10 months is fast, but well within the range of what I have seen here. How fast were you losing when they had you food journal and try to slow it down? What did you slow it down to? What have your calories been? Are you hungry, or still forcing yourself to eat? Are you having any other symptoms that indicate mal-absorption of vitamins or some other problem? Did insurance pay for your surgery, or did you self-pay? Do you have some particular reason to not trust the place you've been going, or just a general mistrust of doctors (which I get.)

Personally, my symptoms if I eat something that doesn't agree with me (or eat too fast or don't chew well enough) are stomach pain/cramps, nausea, lightheadedness, fatigue, and sometimes a racing heart. Often, I have a feeling like the food or fluid is sitting above my stomach and taking some time to get there, though this particular feeling has been fading away as I progress. I have never, not once, actually vomited - not even close. (Which I count myself lucky for.) I also seem to have a reaction pretty quick if I'm going to have one at all, which also seems like a good thing. I am 5 weeks post-op, and I often feel tired and lightheaded after I eat even if there is no pain or nausea. Not always, but usually. I try to plan 20 minutes to lie down after I eat. I'm hoping this symptom goes away someday, or else I'll never be able to eat out!

As an update, I tried pickle on my 4 week anniversary, and a raw cucumber about 4 days later. I cut them both into tiny slices and took my time and chewed well. I'm happy to report no issues! Now I'm having one mini-cucumber per day as an afternoon snack. It's a nice crunchy addition to my diet.

I'm only a month post-op, but I've had days where I can barely stuff down 400 calories and a few other days where I am starving and go as high as 1200 calories. Oddly enough, twice now my hungry days have coincided with big weight losses of a pound or more. So I don't feel afraid of my hunger. In fact - I feel like it's part of my broken metabolism healing. Hunger is natural!

That sounds like a really fun milestone!. Unfortunately my husband is a skinny little thing and only an inch taller than me. Not sure if that will ever happen - and if it does, it will be when I am already normal weight. 😂

Never attended, but I'm laughing at your falling asleep story. 🤣 Quite a recommendation!

I'm just lucky to like eggs and cottage cheese. 😂 Greek yogurt is a great choice, but personally, I got tired during the fluids phase of everything tasting sweet (even if sugar free). Have you tried an unflavored protein powder? I really like it because you can add it to various things. You can also use tofu like that since it doesn't have much flavor. Like I just found this recipe for mashed potatoes with tofu. https://passtheplants.com/protein-packed-mashed-potatoes-and-vegan-gravy/

I had my surgery a week before you - and I can definitely drink way more than 5 oz an hour now. I think it's only in that week or two afterwards where things are really swollen and your stomach can only hold 1-2 oz of fluid. So sure, give it a try to drink more fluid at a time. Just up the amounts slowly and listen to your body for any negative reaction. Also, personally, restricting drinking 1 hour BEFORE eating sounds like too much. The point of restricting drinking and eating together is to keep the food in your stomach for a while, instead of washing it down into your intestines too quickly. If you have an empty stomach and drink only water, it's not going to hang out in there for an hour - it will be gone in 15 minutes. So I might ask your surgeon if you can ease up on the drinking before eating restriction - perhaps change it to a half hour instead of an hour.

Boiled eggs and cottage cheese are pretty much my go-to's - sometimes I have each twice a day. Between that and my unflavored protein power, my husband is teasing me and asking me if I'm trying to become a weightlifter. 😂 But those are the soft, protein-rich foods that I like. All of the things you've mentioned are more on the carb-y side. Not everybody is so sensitive to carbs as I am - but still, you might want to see if you can find a more protein-rich soft food you can tolerate.

AJ Tylo is probably going to pop in here any moment to tell you about how hunger is all in your head. Personally, I don't agree. Your body has multiple metabolic pathways that stimulate hunger in response to multiple physical triggers - bariatric surgery changes some of those pathways fundamentally, but it does not affect them all and it does not not erase the ones it does affect. I got this surgery because pre-op, I was struggling with feeling starving all the time - even after a full meal. I was on metformin 3 times a day, my blood sugar was steadily inching up towards the diabetic range, and I am nearly the same age as my dad was when he got diabetes. My pre-op hunger was not head hunger - it was physical hunger from a broken metabolism. I'm 3.5 weeks post-op - a few weeks behind you. I've noticed really interesting changes in my hunger throughout this process. The first week after surgery I was starving - once I moved on to full fluids and found a protein supplement I could tolerate, this hunger vanished. In the past two weeks, I have gone back and forth a few times between not hungry at all and fairly hungry. For instance, for about 4 days my weight didn't change at all and I was so not hungry that I barely got my protein in. Then I dropped 4 pounds in a day and suddenly felt hungry again. You might need to do a little detective work to find out the cause of your particular issue. It could be that you're eating too much carbs in your meal, and your blood sugar takes a dip at the 1 hour mark. (I don't know if you're carb sensitive like I am.) Or it could be that you're hungry for a nutrient you're not getting - like how many people are hungry right after surgery until they start getting enough protein. Or it could be that you'd benefit from eating a smaller amount but more often for a while. Does this happen at a particular time of day? Maybe you're just more hungry in the mornings or something? (Or it could be that this is some funny symptom that entirely goes away in a week 😂.) Try out some different things.

Yes, I have PCOS as well. I was actually diagnosed years ago - probably more than 15 years. But in the past few years, things have gotten bad, and while I was not yet diabetic, my doctor upped my dose of metformin to 3 times a day. Even taking all that metformin, I was struggling to even maintain my weight, let alone lose it. And I knew diabetes was around the corner because things were getting worse and my dad got it around this age. This is the main reason why I chose to have bariatric surgery. I think PCOS is a very common reason. I did my surgery self-pay, so I did not have to go through the pain of a doctor monitored weight loss regime before hand. However, I have read others talk about it on here. It sounds like there are two point of the monitored weight loss regime. One is to make sure you can follow a restricted diet, since your diet will be very restricted after the surgery. I am 3.5 weeks post-op, and I probably spend more time and energy on food that I did before the surgery - I have to eat more often, and I have to track my food to make sure I am getting protein, and I have to make sure I am getting enough water. Not everybody is up for that, and those people who aren't ready aren't successful long term. The second is to reduce the amount of fat stored in your liver, which makes the surgery safer. It sounds like you are following the advice from your doctor well. He knows you have PCOS and about your medication problems and why you are struggling with weight loss and how hard you've been trying. Your profile says you have lost 26 pounds - so that's not nothing. A 26 pound loss is enough to reduce the fat in your liver, and to show that you can follow a diet. So let us hope that you still will be approved. Also, talk to your doctor directly about this concern - she probably has dealt with insurance companies/patients before. If you're wanting some suggestions on how to get your diet back on track just to make sure you are approved, I wonder if you have thought about low-carb? I'm not an anti-carb fanatic, and I hope to be able to eat reasonable amounts of carbs in the long term now that I've had this surgery. But before surgery, whenever I was having trouble controlling my appetite, low-carb usually got things back on track. At it's core, PCOS is a metabolic problem with your glucose/insulin metabolism and low-carb helps. And doing low-carb pre-op will prepare you for the post-op diet. The post-op diet isn't strictly low-carb, but when you can't eat much and you need to make sure you get your protein, it pretty much ends up that way.

I've been regularly drinking my own kefir since one week after surgery. We're allowed to have yogurt (which does sometimes have live cultures in it, depending on the brand), so I don't see why you couldn't have other probiotics.

I’m still waiting for this 3 weeks post op. Today I exercised hard enough that I was super thirsty - which made it really annoying not to be able to drink normally.

Thanks, everyone, for your responses. It's very helpful to hear what others have experienced; that's why I love this forum. I did low carb often before my surgery, and I don't know how I would be able to do that long term without vegetables. They add such a variety of texture and flavor. I like eggs and cottage cheese and found an unflavored protein powder that worked for me, so I've been having no trouble getting my protein in, but it's been getting a bit boring. I tried a little mashed sweet potato yesterday. It was an enjoyable experience, but probably too much carbs to eat regularly. Next I'm going to try a riced cooked cauliflower dish with garlic sauce I always loved when doing low carb before. If that goes well, I'll probably try peeled cucumber sliced thinly at 4 weeks. I hope those of you still in the months after surgery will continue to update this thread with vegetable experiences.

The benefit to him is the years you are adding to your life, and the significantly better health you will have during those years. For example, check out these articles. https://asmbs.org/articles/weight-loss-surgery-reduces-risk-of-coronary-heart-disease-by-40-percent https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180716103541.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25466723 You've reduced your risk of coronary heart disease by 40%. If you already had diabetes, your chance of remission is 40% - if you don't have it you've reduced your chances of getting it by 74%. You've reduced your risk of certain cancers (breast, endometrial) by 77%. If he does not see your improved health and longer life as enough of a benefit to him, then he is not the sort of person you want to be with.

The other thing going on here is that I'm staying at an Airbnb apartment in self-isolation for 14 days before I go home for real. I was flying back on those days when the airports were packed with people coming back from Europe, and I really don't want to take any coronavirus home to my husband. So all I have are the really baggy clothes I took to wear after surgery. This will all be a lot better in a week when I can really go home. I'll have some company, hopefully my stomach will be feeling better and I'll be eating a bit more normally, and hopefully I'll be feeling good enough to get back to work (I work from home anyway.) I know in the long run this is going to take me towards where I want to be - preventing diabetes, gaining a normal relationship with food, and mostly focusing on other things in my life. Right now this is just a really weird time. I'm all alone, and I'm still feeling weird post surgery and barely able to eat anything, and it's all I can think about. Thank goodness for this forum!

What? They cut out PART of our stomach, not the whole thing. We still have nerves and sensors in our stomach. We also still have other nerves and sensors in the rest of our body that are sensitive to nutrient levels. Your rapid post-op fat loss is going to cause a rapid drop in leptin levels, because leptin is made by fat cells. Leptin normally makes you feel full - dropping levels make you feel hungry. Also, your muscle cells are sensitive to insulin, protein, and glucose levels. There are multiple mechanisms that control hunger in the body - bariatric surgery affects only the gherlin pathway because gherlin is made by the stomach. There's no way a person can be eating only a few hundred calories a day after bariatric surgery, but the "hunger is all in their head."

I had a coffee for the first time this morning, 10 days post-op. Didn't cause any issues. Luckily I was able to tolerate it with some protein powder. But if you can't, what's the harm in having it the way you usually do? A cup and a half of milk still has 12 g protein.

Normally I would agree. Like I said - that's why I don't have one. And I usually roll my eyes at people complaining that they've been stalled for 3 days. But at this point, where I just did something pretty extreme and I'm nauseous half the time and hungry the other half of the time, and still too tired to really get back to work, it would be nice to at least see that I lost 10 lbs.