The Greater Fool

It gets easier. I had a rough time transitioning to food. Learning to eat, the mechanics of it, can be difficult. Small bites, chew extra thoroughly, time between. I found that during this process I had to really focus on what I was doing. Having had so many issues initially, stress about eating made things worse. For me, stress is a killer. So, focus. Try no distractions, no talking, just you and your food. Change anything you think will help. Start small, build success, then increase little by little. Relax. It's ok to fail. It can really be more about your head than your pouch. You can even play with the puree. Gradually move through finely chopped to smallish pieces to bite size, and before you know you'll be there. Trust yourself. If you feel that one more bite will be a problem, don't take it, at least until you feel you are ready. Each meal you are just working to get that one more bit of food until you are at your appropriate meal size. Eventually your pouch and you will come to an understanding. Tek

Moved to other thread.

Creekimp13 made some excellent points. A few studies would come in handy. I've always been shocked how so many surgeons and patients approach the post-op experience as a crash diet. Lose as much as possible while eating as little as possible so you can lose weight as fast as you can. Then when you've lost your excess weight you (hopefully) learn the new appropriate way to eat. Or, as so many people do, return to their old ways and regain the weight. My Doc's plan was to get on the 'forever' eating plan quickly. You learn new habits with the positive feedback of losing weight. All that success makes the plan solidly a habit. Then when you reach your goal (or stop point) you adjust very slightly to maintain. Anyone can do anything for the short term, it's why diets work for a time. It's the long haul that we need to work on. That so many programs make these two phases completely different I think sets a lot of people up for failure, the same failure diets setup preop. But, I would never say don't follow your surgeon's plan. Just remember that returning to the old "normal" will yield the same results as it did pre-op.

That I don't weigh myself isn't an effect of "afterwards." For me there is no "afterwards." My plan is forever. It is not a diet but is and always has been the new normal way I eat. I just don't want nor need a scale to push or encourage me to stay on plan. I do moderation usually on vacation. If you can manage moderation then have at it. Not everyone can manage it.

It's almost as if people are different, go figure. Different perspectives. Different motivations. Different concerns. Different measurements. Different goals. Different journeys. If it works and we're happy then don't mess with success.

I didn't rearrange my innards to live on a diet. I learned a new, sustainable way of eating with the positive reinforcement of losing weight. My plan long ago became my normal. As my Doc did, I measure success by my health and happiness. I will not live under the whip of a number on a scale.

I was too large to fit on a home scale so I could only weigh monthly at my follow-up appointments. Once I could weigh at home I weighed several times, just for the novelty of it. I have moderately severe OCD so I could see myself living on the scale so I decided just to go with the monthly weigh ins. I never experienced any stalls, or those pounds that just would not come off. Now I just weigh annually at my annual physical.

Give or take a symptom that's how I feel when I'm dumping. How is your eating, plan wise? It may behoove you to, and I hate saying this, keep an honest food log to see if there are any consistent types of food that show up. Post nasal drip may be both a symptom and a cause. Usually this is in relation, for me, to not eating. Often related to stress or fatigue. There are several intestinal issues that can result in your symptoms. Heck, constipation can do it. Now that I ponder it, give or take a symptom it sounds like a psoriatic arthritis flare. Just about any autoimmune disease can have these symptoms. I wouldn't take a chance. I would be talking to a medical professional, perhaps more than one if the cause doesn't jump out. Don't give up until you have an answer and resolution.

Another consideration is that us Gastric Bypass folks have the blind stomach. Ulcers or other issues in the blind stomach are not easily diagnosed and treated. They can't shove a scope down your throat to look at it. Medications that depend on contact, those that coat or numb don't get where they need to go to coat and/or numb. I did have a bleeding ulcer because of a medication I was taking. We were carefully monitoring for just such an occurrence, stopped the medication immediately, and it self resolved quickly.

Talk to your medical team. There are lists of "don't take this list of drugs" and "these drugs are OK". Not every surgeon agrees with either list. Mine didn't. Everyone is different. We have different medical issues, different sensitivities, different tolerances, different likes and dislikes, different beliefs. Different differences. We need to take all of these things and more into consideration. Drugs are always a risk v. reward thing. Are the possible negative effects worth the probable positive effects? Whether you can or should take any drug is up to your medical team and ultimately your personal choice. Inform yourself, talk to your team, make a choice, monitor carefully. I take drugs from the "do not take" list daily. I know the possible side effects and I monitor carefully. As an example, every pain medication known to humanity carries side effects AT LEAST as bad as NSAIDs. Of course, living in constant pain also has some negative effects. The first 6 weeks you are healing so some things have a higher risk during this period. Talk to your medical team. After the first 6 weeks, well, talk to your medical team. Tek

I have it on good authority that "foreplay" is a myth.

Moved to other thread. Tek

Moved to other thread. Tek

I have a special name for this phenomenon: Healing. The swelling is going down making things less sensitive. You're having less pain because you've been careful to take small sips. Keep doing what you are doing. Good job! Tek

Apparently, for you it is. Something consider is you've been on a pretty severe pre-op liquid diet. You've basically been starving yourself for a couple weeks. Yesterday and today you may have had nothing. So hunger is reasonable response. Many people don't feel hungry because of their reaction to surgery and anesthesia and all the other stuff that can affect their response. Yours is a rational hunger. I would view this as a good sign that your going to have a good recovery because, again apparently, you are experiencing little inflammation. Good news. Follow your program, learn your new functionality. Do you. Good luck.

I've had scrambled eggs that were so flakey it literally melted in the mouth. I've had scrambled eggs that were like a big yellow blob that required cutting to get a mouthful. I would say one qualifies as pureed and the other not.

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All things in moderation, including moderation.

Try this:

I, too, hate exercise for it's own sake. But, I do like people watching. So my spouse and I would go walking to people watch. Malls, museums, zoos. We lived in Las Vegas so going downtown and the strip was always good turf to watch people. Before we knew it we were walking 6-8 miles several times a week. We had a blast. But no exercise. Later, for some reason, I set myself a challenge to run 3 miles. I enjoyed it more than I thought. Listened to a lot of audio books. Bottom line: If you don't like it you won't maintain it. 'Activity' works too.

Correlation is not causation. What you are feeling may not be related to the chili. You may have a stomach bug or any number of other unrelated issues. Or maybe it is the chili. I can't say that I've felt ill effects a food, even during a massive dumping episode, that lasted more than 3-4 hours. Except for food poisoning which I haven't had in 30 years? Maybe 40. If this had happened to me even though I might not 'blame' the chili it would be a while before I could try it again because of the association of chili and yuk. But if I liked the chili I'd give it another shot eventually. If your pain continues a call to your medical team may be called for.

Everything varies by the individual so YMMV. The explanation that pureed digest better than food makes no sense to me. Pureed is only slightly finer that chewed food and that difference would not affect digestion or absorption. RNY bypasses a small portion of your intestines, the part that does some of the heavy lifting of nutrient absorption. So you absorb less calories, pureed or chewed the malabsorption is pretty constant. You leave a lot of information out that would make giving a specific guess at an answer for your situation. You say you lost 130 on the band, but don't indicate how much more (if any) you have to lose. The smaller the weight you have to lose the slower the weight loss generally is. Fullness is going to feel different than with the band. The band was at the top of the stomach, so food backed up basically in your esophagus. With RNY you have a small pouch that dumps directly into your intestines, so 'full' will be lower than you are used to, and it will empty out a bit quicker, or perhaps more correctly, easier. Follow your plan. I would doubt your plan says 'eat until you feel full' but rather 'eat this much of this' or 'eat these many calories, grams, whatever of that'. Feeling full is a cue to stop before you've completed the meal. For me, feeling full happens when my pouch isn't thrilled and says enough is enough before I've eaten my meal completely. Most often I complete the meal without feeling full. Eating constantly to fullness (and beyond) is what got me to needing RNY. Bottom line is you have to learn your new situation, the new sensations. Your new reality.

Check the ingredients and see if you can pin down the problem, if in fact there is a problem. A lot of things impact if I can deal with marginal foods, or even traditionally good foods. If I am stressed, tired, overly hungry, sleepy, sick it can make a good food not. Pay attention and learn. For example: If I don't sleep all night (say working) eating the next day is challenging at best. Always has been, even before surgery. But, at such times I know that I have to be extra careful and I have to pay attention closely and choose carefully, then I have to eat exceptionally small portions. OR ELSE. Even knowing all this after years, I make the occasional mistake. But, if I threw away every food that I had an issue with once or even twice...

From my decision to surgery was just shy of 4 months. It would have been two weeks sooner if my Doc's office put in the paperwork when they said instead of dallying for two weeks.

Tim, You're going to ignore me, but I'm gonna try anyhow. This period is called the honeymoon period for a reason. No matter what you do, no matter how well or badly you follow your program, you will lose weight. The honeymoon can teach you one of two lessons: 1) You can follow your program and you will receive the wonderfully positive feedback of losing weight. It's a great motivator to continue and to get the feedback. Month after month of staying on program and losing weight is a great teacher and motivator. By times the weight loss slows you will be at or near goal and you've built your lifetime habits so you won't regain. 2) You can do whatever you want and you will receive the wonderfully positive feedback of losing weight. It's a great motivator to continue and to get the feedback. When you leave the honeymoon and stop losing weight, or worse, gaining weight, you are now where you were pre-op: Working to learn a diet with little to no positive feedback. Make a good choice. From what you've described so far, you are basically in starvation mode. Even if you worked to follow your program you would be near starvation. Starving yourself for 8 hours then worse for 16 hours a day just puts that much more strain on your body. You NEED protein to heal and right now you have to do the absolute best you can. This was supposed to be an action to get healthy, not, well... Keeping your scale moving via starvation is not healthy. Watching the scale is screwing with your mind. Talk about this honestly and frankly with your medical team. Listen to them.