mswillis5

Congrats Matty! I have also achieved a weight that I feel good to maintain my body with. I have been adding more snacks to my day so that I eat more calories. At this point I am eating 3 meals and 3 snacks a day to slow down the weight loss. So far it has been working and I have had some fluctuations but am staying within a small weight range.

My wife and I had some strained broth based soups. After surgery we did the same until soft food stage and then we blended them. We ate a few soups from a take out restaurant and blended them as our Thanksgiving meal. It was quite enjoyable to have some awesome soup while everyone else enjoyed their food.

I spoke with my neighbor the other day and we hadn't talked in person since surgery. She was very concerned that I had cancer. (She had cancer and wanted to make sure I was alright) I am an open book, so I told her that my wife and I had WLS. She said I don't need to lose any more weight and I told her I agreed and am working on going into maintenance already.

My wife and I had surgery together. At our 2 week appointment our doctor told us to push the eating schedule a little bit, but not to go overboard. We started to eat a wider variety of foods at that time. We had tuna salad at about 3 weeks out as well and didn't have any issues with it. If you email your dietitian, that may help to ease your mind as well. We started eating full foods by about 6-7 weeks out.

My wife and I had surgery together and found that these stool softeners worked well. My wife also has been enjoying a smooth move tea every night and she says that has helped her as well. Link to the stool softeners: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077YDGFZH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Welcome to the forum. My wife and I both had surgery together. We kind of "skipped" the six month wait as we both had done a 6 month medically supervised program within the time frame that insurance wanted. The next 6 months will go faster than you think. The surgery has helped my family drastically and my daughter is also eating healthier. Good luck on your journey! My wife had a higher BMI than I did but I was still quite heavy. My wife is now down 90 lbs and I have lost 95 since preop and 115 over all since last year.

Maybe not that healthy, but my wife and I did refried beans a few times during our soft stage.

Ok, just a few of my thoughts. Take them for what they are and are not exact facts. First, when or if you speak to your nutritionist make sure to mention that this happened (Just be honest with yourself and your team). Second, and this is where my thoughts come in but while I was on the pre-op liquid diet I didn't have any craving but my sodium level dropped significantly. I have to wonder if that is why you had that craving and that your body may be asking for a bit more salt. If you haven't had many electrolytes or have a "keto headache" then upping your salt quantity may be needed here. Now just take it as my 2 cents, but that is a potential cause of the craving or at least I would think it would be. After I consumed a significant amount of salt my keto headache went away. I did this by taking a broth based progresso soup and strained all of the solids out. This left me with a high sodium broth that tasted just like soup but with only a small number of calories. Good luck on your preop diet and you should be fine, but your bariatric team/nutritionist should be able to verify. I have read a few other stories of people eating much worse than you on the liquid diet here and if you need some validation on this, you can search for others mess ups. If we are honest with ourselves we will be able to achieve great results and be the best that we can be.

This topic is actually very relevant to me. I was just about your statistics when I was at peak weight. When I was on preop I was only 260 but that is what I consider my starting weight. I now weigh 165. Now that I am at a point below my goal weight, I am adding in more calories a day. I recently 1 additional snack a day and if my weight loss continues, then I will add in another. I will continue to add calories until my weight stabilizes and will work on keeping that amount of calories daily when that happens.

My wife and I both had surgery. We haven't sat down at too many restaurants lately but we have done take out from restaurants about 1 time a week. We both split a meal and if there are left overs, save them for later. We still try to eat as close to plan as possible and have had some pretty tasty meals. We did not receive a medical card for the surgery.

I only sized down one time, but with working from home I was able to do that by wearing my clothes until they were excessively large. I bought most of my clothes second hand and donated my entire wardrobe. I also shopped at Ross/TJ Maxx for some extra new clothes. My wife is still losing weight and I found a couple of work pants for her at Kohls for only $10 each. She is just at a size 16 down from a 26 and is losing almost daily still. Since they were only $10 I also went down a few more sizes and bought a size 12 for her for when she is at that point. These should hold up during this phase and then we will donate what doesn't fit.

I am currently working to get a new sleep study and have been waiting for the company performing it to get it approved. After losing 110lbs I have noticed that my sleep has degraded and I spoke with my PCP yesterday and he told me to try not sleeping with my cpap machine to see if that improves my sleep. My theory that he agrees with is that because I might not need the machine now that it is pushing air it doesn't and is causing my sleep to be worse than it otherwise should be.

You give a lot of good points here. A lot of it is that we all need to be genuine in our responses and I fully agree with this. If we can't tell the truth that we will screw up at times, then lying about it just hurts ourselves and can put us mentally into a bad space. I will say that I was never a soda drinker and would only drink soda on occasion. I can also honestly say that I haven't had soda since last October before I started preop and I really don't miss it at this point. This isn't to say that I won't have a soda again, but at this point I don't have a desire to drink it. I really have followed drinking only water or electrolytes at this point. My wife also adds in tea and has had a few other beverages but nothing carbonated at this point. I have my wife to help support me in the process of what I eat and purchase that I think definitely helps our family to eat healthier and make better choices. You are totally right that we really need to do what we feel works for us as we all have different plans and thoughts on how to work with our new eating habits and try to stay in tune with what we are doing. We all had a disordered eating pattern at one point, or still do and I feel it will take continual work to make sure we don't fall back to those eating habits. I know my eating pattern is not the pattern of others here, but I try to make wiser choices in what I put in my body now. Does this mean I don't eat any treats or desserts? No, I definitely have had a small portion of cake and with my wife also having the surgery at the same time, we weren't even able to finish the slice together. Luckily we are able to avoid the excess treats like I was purchasing before surgery. I did have a few bad habits that affected everything that we ate. I would purchase a dozen donuts for just the 3 of us (11 year old daughter) and that didn't last more than 1 to 2 days. I also had a desire to have ice cream a lot (almost daily) before surgery. After surgery, I haven't eaten much and what I did eat was lower carb/sugar and at this point I haven't returned to the ice cream habits that I had before. I am extremely happy that way that I desired foods before is no longer there and I can work on being more mindful of the choices that I make. I think this surgery (the tool) has definitely helped me to get to where I am. I am now working on being honest with my self when I eat something and working on the mindfulness of what I am putting into my mouth. I have definitely struggled with my Binge Eating Disorder and I have a great therapist now who is able to help listen to me and understand what I do and helps to teach me how I can improve. I am in the mindset that if we work on improving ourselves, even if we eat off plan, that we can get to a better and less disordered eating plan as we progress. I feel that this is the hardest part that we will ever face with the challenge of eating (mostly the right things) and maintaining our weight to the best of our abilities. I may not be a Surgery veteran with being only a few months out, but I definitely have my own experience to go from. It is always personal to discuss how we got to where we are today and our eating habits (disorders) always try to return. I know that even though some of my struggles that I had previously are gone, that I will need to continually work on making sure that I take accountability for my actions and eating habits.

Without a preop, this sounds like a lot of water weight. I was 260 before my preop and was 238 the day of surgery and lost at least 1lb per day, every day, for weeks after surgery. I am now down over 90lbs since starting my preop diet on October 27th and my wife who had surgery the same day is down over 80lbs since that day as well.

Before surgery I used to get headaches at least 1 or more times every week. During preop I had a massive headache and found that I had an electrolyte imbalance and consuming electrolytes helped to relieve that headache. After surgery which has been almost 5 months, I have only had a handful of headaches. This is just what I have found, so I have to wonder if all of my headaches were caused by not having enough electrolytes and my body showing me that through headaches.

Our surgeon said that we could just take our normal meds after surgery that were not extended release from day 1. I am currently taking the bariatric pal capsule multi-vitamin.

I agree with ShoppGirl, that you need your wife to fully support you in this journey and as long as your marriage is very good now it will stay that way. Maybe have her watch some videos from the Bariatric Doctors on Youtube that have lots of helpful information as well. That is how I started out when we started to go to the surgeon so that I was fully prepared for the changes that were coming. Seeing a therapist will help with the mental hunger/stress eating or overall poor eating habits that led to our weight being so high. I have Binge Eating Disorder and see a therapist for that and this has helped me on my weight loss journey. I, like you had UPs and DOWNs with my weight. I went from 220 to 175 back to 220 and then all the way down to 145 before going all the way up to 280. The surgery has helped me so far lose 90 lbs and I am just shy of 5 months out. My wife and I both had the surgery on the same day and for us this made sense and has helped us to maintain our relationship. It also helped us with our meals as we eat the same thing together now. Even my 11 year old daughter eats the same as us and we have seen her health improve as well. Right after the surgery the only real limitation that I had was lifting weight for 6 weeks. Taking care of your children, minus lifting them, should be doable after a few days of rest after surgery. One possible option is to hire some help if your wife is concerned about this aspect as well.

My wife and I both had to do the 6 month diet, however we were able to use doctor supervised diets from almost 2 years before our surgery. We both were approved using those. We had to have a document signed that stated each visit over a 6 month period. Not sure if other doctors do the same but that was my experience and since we had done the diet already the rest of the requirements fell in line. We met the surgeon on 9/15/2020 and had surgery on 11/11/2020 together.

I have lost 90 lbs in the last 4 months and I have definitely struggled with how I look in a mirror and the size of clothes that I wear. The head games with food are definitely still real and have been quite a struggle for me. I work with a therapist about this though and that has helped. For the first time that I can remember, I actually feel full and know when I have eaten too much. This surgery has changed the way that I taste and view food as well. If I try food that doesn't taste good, I don't give it a second chance and throw it out. I didn't do that previously.

Thank you. It has been a journey but I got here a lot quicker than I thought. I am looking to lose just a bit more before I stop losing weight, but I think my body is going to regulate itself at this point. My wife is down almost 90 lbs and has about 50 lbs more before she hits maintenance, but she also wants to go quite a bit below that. We will see where our bodies want our weight to stop at. It looks like you are also doing amazing with 113 lbs of weight lost. Congrats!

My wife and I had our fall into place as well. Met surgeon on 9/15/2020 and we both had surgery on 11/11/2020. Insurance only took 1 week to get both of us approved as well. So the entire process was quick and smooth and the surgeons scheduler said that she wants everyone to have my insurance because it was extremely easy for her to get this done.

If you are new with your CPAP I would speak with your sleep doctor. If you take this mask off at night, I would recommend trying a different one as there are many and some didn't work for me or my wife when we first started. I did find it difficult at first because it does force air into face and that can be a difficult feeling.

My wife and I are doing pretty good. I am down 88 lbs since preop and my wife is down 76 lbs since preop. We have been in a slight stall lately but are just pushing on. I am at about maintenance weight but my wife still has a bit more to go. I also had to replace my entire wardrobe and just donated everything. I went from a 44 size pants to a 34. It's been quite an incredible and quick journey up until this point and I am still working on the head games that I know will persist for a long time.

I agree with the previous posters. The first week/s out from surgery are the hardest an it will gradually improve as time goes on. I had surgery in November and can now drink about 20 ounces in 20 minutes. Definitely not like I could drink before surgery but I feel that I am at a reasonable pace now. When I am driving, I find it a great time to drink. I take a sip or two when I am at a red light or whenever I have a chance. I haven't been driving often but it has helped me to make sure I get my fluids in on days that I do drive a lot.

My wife and I were in the hospital for 1 night and went home at about 10am.