ShoppGirl

Good for you. It’s important to love the skin you’re in. You are so much fitter and healthier already than when you started. Everything else is just a bonus in my eyes. Buy the dress now, do the thing you’ve been putting off now, live your life NOW!! You have come so far already and if you are like me you already feel 100 times better. The way you feel and your health are so much more important than any number on the scale. Try to make the scale second to the priority of being healthier. That would be a good resolution for many of us.

It was so weird though that BRAT diet is Bananas, Rice (white), applesauce and Toast (white) so basically carbs and not protein and not much else. Well between the diarrhea which is why I was on the diet and the food without any nutrients I was getting weaker by the day. I was staying pretty hydrated so I think that majority of it was just the drastic change in nutrition. Just one week with All them carbs and I was up hungry several times a night (craving sugar), lazy and fatigued all day and it was just snowballing by the day. I don’t ever want to go back to feeling that way!! I can’t believe that was our normal for so long and we had no idea how much better we were supposed to be feeling. The nurse is the one who told me to do that diet and I questioned it with my history but she insisted but as soon as I seen the Dr she said she never would’ve put me on that diet and took me off. I hate when the nurses overstep their authority and won’t just ask the darn Dr. Anyways, it’s a warning for me about how that diet makes my body feel and I don’t want to do it again.

This is such an amazing feeling and a wonderful way to go into the new year!! Congrats!!

Well today was round 4 of my chemo and immunotherapy and steroids, etc. Messing with my tastes a bit on certain stuff Things don’t taste gross just not good. I came home and i did chicken breast with a little ceaser side salad and a tiny bit of spinach tortolini. I know that last one was not ideal but it made the meal go down easier if that makes any sense. I guess it’s a balance for now to get the rest of what I need in nutrition wise and it was cheese filled so still protein. 🤷‍♀️ I am about to go eat some mixed fruit now for my snack. I also did five miles walking and tomorrow morning I have yoga. I think that getting my nutrition and exercise is really helping my body deal with all of this because I did the stringer one up front so it’s been two months and i don’t have alot of side effects yet. The doctors are pretty amazed. Knock on wood I am able To keep it up because I had to do that BRAT diet for a week and I could feel myself getting weaker and my sleep was off and I wasn’t wanting to exercise. I am REALLY trying to keep to my habits as best as I can. I hope everyone else is doing well with juggling their bariatric journey with “life” as well.

It’s always best to refer to whatever literature your dr gave you but I was told that anything that I could fairly easily cut with the side of a fork was considered soft food. i was lucky and didn’t have any issues with intolerances but i did go real slow starting with eggs and fish. I stuck with stuff I know was fine from days before for breakfast and lunch and had one new food for dinner. That way if I did have any issue I was home and I knew the most likely culprit.

Did you have a problem drinking while you were in the hospital? I was lucky that I did not but It’s not uncommon to have to take super super tiny sips for a little while but usually they won’t release you until they see you can get down some fluids. They gave me tiny little medicine cups to measure out I think it was one ounce of water and then I was supposed to take tiny sips from that. If smaller sips don’t help It can’t hurt to call and run it by your doctor though especially if the pain is intense. I think any new pain or pain that gets worse after the hospital should be reported to them just in case. They should have a surgeon on call after hours if they are closed for the holiday. Also, keep track of your fluid intake for the next few days and ask them if you should arrange for fluids if it continues to be really low (your probably good for a couple days if you spent any time in hospital on an IV but I’m not sure you did if your surgery was yesterday Especially if your having any diarrhea on top of not getting your fluids. I had no clue they could do this as an out patient and it was just a copay. Was way better than waiting until it got out of hand and ending up in the ER. Sugar free popsicles may help get fluid too. Also different temperatures if fluid sometimes help. Room temp or warm (not too too hot). Another thing that comes to mind is whether you are on a PPI. That may be something to ask about if not.

A lady in my craft group just sent a message that says “365 New Days, 365 New Chances.” I just love that. Happy New Years Everyone, Let’s Make This One Great!!

Some people can just have a taste but I learned after my sleeve that I am not one of them. I can’t have one slice of pizza or one brownie. Even if I manage to have just one that day I will crave more unhealthy stuff the following days. At bedtime I have been doing the sugar free popsicles. That seems to be working. If you have actual hunger then something with protein would be a better option. Like a Greek yogurt maybe. Can you budget the calories so you can do that. I think the triple zero is only like 80 calories. That should keep you full through the night though.

I don’t know about you but pre WLS when I was eating bad I would not get on the scale and it spiraled way further out of control because I basically ignored my changes in eating as they gradually got worse and worse. You didn’t do that, though!! You got on that scale and took accountability. As females our bodies are designed to pack on pounds and hormones make things even harder. You are not the only one that has times of the month that their bodies make them want to eat more. I think all we can do is give ourselves a little forgiveness if we slip sometimes. Maybe try your free foods. Did you have those on your pre op diet. I had several on the list but the ones I recall were sugar free popsicles, pickles and lettuce. If I was hungry, I was told I was allowed to eat as many of those foods as I wanted. And to this day I still consider them to be free foods. Those are the only calories that I do not log on my calorie app. I allow myself to have them when I am hungry so I never feel like I am starving. Just maybe not getting what I would prefer to eat.

Exercise may end up being your “you time” if you find something that you enjoy doing. I never in a zillion years would’ve pictured myself exercising and I have not always been obese either. My issues began when I was like 25 so I was active And fit but never did actual exercise in my life until post revision. Well, no I absolutely love YOGA. That, and my crochet group are my time. I shut my phone off for both and I am just present for the entire time. The YOGA makes me feel so good for the entire day. I love it.

Ooh and Amazon has the core power shakes in chocolate which I am 99% sure are the same as fairlife. if not, they use fairlife milk and they are really good. People say that their kids will even ask for them because they are just like chocolate milk. According to google the fairlife is lower calorie and core power is a workout recovery drink but I found it comparable to premiere protein and it worked for me for weight loss. Maybe check it out to see how it compares to fairlife.

If you find some protein shakes are okay except they are too sweet try mixing them with coffee. This helps a great deal. Cold or hot. I mix iced coffee with a premiere protein caramel shake and it’s like an iced coffee. I actually kept this habit after all the others went out the window from my sleeve because I like them so much. Well that and the premiere protein caffe latte shake. I just prefer to mix my own now because I do decaf coffee and the caffe latte has caffeine. Both options are good but I’d say the caramel with coffee is less sweet of the two if sweetness is the issue. Also, the change in taste for sweet is often temporary so try again in a month or two and keep checking because this most likely will go away at some point.

https://bariatricbits.com/single-serve-baked-ricotta/ Thats the ricotta bake recipe

Wrong thread. Sorry

Are you measuring and logging everything that goes into your salad? Not all salads are created equal and it’s not uncommon to underestimate what goes into them. A salad can have over 800 calories pretty easily if you aren’t careful. The usual culprits are the dressing, cheese, crouton's, nuts/granola, avocado, bacon, etc. If you don’t use measuring tools at least for a while it’s pretty difficult to know if you are getting just one serving or more. And if you are getting more than one serving of a few of these things you may as well just have a cheeseburger calorie wise and you may not realize it. I hope this helps.

I was also allowed scrambled eggs and I made pureed egg salad (that wasn’t bad). My saving grace were refried beans with a little 2% cheese and the ricotta bake. Just be sure your tomato sauce doesn’t have chunks or that you puree it if so. I got a little kitchen aid food processor. Not cheap but cute enough to leave on the counter and I use it now to make pico and guacamole so it wasn’t a waste (they do make much cheaper ones though if you have room to store it I just have a tiny kitchen). I imagine you could use a blender or nutra bullet in retrospect in a pinch but it doesn’t give you as much control over the consistency. The nutra bullet comes in handy to make drinkable yogurts and smoothies later too. The drinkable yogurt you should be able to do during the puree phase as well (i just used yogurt, fruit and almond milk).

While I absolutely do not agree that it’s likely you will GAiN weight on 800 calories, 800 Calories can be a pretty good amount of food depending on what you eat. for example this is 757 calories and it’s 100 g of protein. breakfast: Caramel “Proffee” made from a premiere protein caramel shake with iced coffee mixed in. (It’s really good and filling with the protein btw). lunch: three eggs omelette with 2% cheese (1 ounce) and tomatoes and onion (1/2 cup). dinner: grilled chicken breast (3 ounce) and zucchini and onion (1/2 cup). snack: oikos triple zero yogurt I use the Baritastic app and I always have the same breakfast but then before I have lunch I plug in my plan and an idea for dinner to make certain it’s okay macro wise. I do pay some attention to calories but protein, added sugars and fat are more important. I also pay attention to my carbs because on some days my exercise is higher and I actually need to increase them a bit. If your dietician is not asking about your activity and your food choices and inky giving you a cookie cutter plan without real guidance I would be asking more questions. These plans need to be tailored to you specifically. if you are having a difficult time finding foods you like that meet the criteria you are definitely not alone. I had to do a ton of research and trial and error with recipes to find a couple weeks worth of meals that I enjoy and I was doing 900ish calories. I scoured the web and found low calorie recipes and also ways to cut calories from things I knew I enjoyed. Basically type “healthy” in front of anything you like and you should find ways to make a more bariatric friendly version. Some days you may need to reduce calories further by having two shakes or egg whites instead to budget for a higher calorie dinner. I don’t love to cook so I make double batches of things and freeze them in individual portions. this has been my lifesaver. For the 800 calories you may have to do a lot of lower calorie lean meat and veggie type dinners unless you cut calories during lunch. For instance instead of 3 eggs you could do five 5 whites and you could even omit the cheese if you need to cut calories further. i would imagine you could still lose on a little higher calorie budget and you have more flexibility in your menu but it may not be as fast as you would like. Either way, check out Baritastic (or another calorie tracking app). It’s very helpful to see exactly what’s in different food and to play around with these meal ideas on an app because you can add and delete and adjust the measurements to figure out how to make things work to fit your plan.

Does anyone have any favorite products or suggestions of stuff I should try from the bariatric pal store? I have quite a few points saved up from posting on here and I was gonna order their vitamins to show my dr next month but I need to order more to get free shipping.

That’s a shame. I believe if you contact customer service they guarantee their products if you don’t like them (let you exchange it maybe). . I know they made me pay return shipping though, which I didn’t love and they require you to purchase insurance as well, but I guess you would get the difference back after that at least. I have been satisfied with the quest products and the vitamins I purchased on there but I admit that I haven’t tried many others. I ordered the oatmeal, chili and some other items for purée stage but they were delayed in shipping (not their fault) so by the time I got them I was done with that stage so they ended up at the bottom of the pantry 😢 I suppose some day I may have a craving for oatmeal but it’s not my favorite food so who knows. The chili just sounds gross now that I can make the real deal.

This is a very good point about having a different procedure. I went with the SADI because it was a revision to an existing sleeve and revision surgeries do not produce the same results in terms of weight loss and durability, but the SADI offered more. In terms of other medical issues, though you will constantly have to have your bariatric doctor in the loop with any issues that may even remotely have to do with your gastro system and this can be complicated because the doctors don’t want to step on one another’s toes. But in terms of family doctors or doctors of any other specialty, I have not met one since I started researching this surgery or since I’ve had it that I have even heard of it. If you do go with this one, you need to educate yourself so that you can explain that to them. And it is possible that you find yourself in a position where something could get messed because the doctor just hasn’t seen it before where it’s more likely if you had something as common as a bypass they will have seen it. I mean there’s pros and cons with everyone. There’s no perfect answer or they would only do one and we wouldn’t be here naming off a handful of surgeries that are sort of commonly done and in terms of revisions, they do even more. I think they just make up names for them as they go along, honestly. My best advice would be to educate yourself as much as you can and go back a couple of times to make sure you get all of your questions answered by the doctor. They usually only want to give you one appointment but if you say you’re not ready to choose, they should give you another appointment with the doctor or a PA or NP. But that is a very good point about having the less common procedure does present obstacles or potential ones down the road. I mean if you raised the fact that you have it to any good doctors attention, they know where to find the information and should be able to still provide you adequate care but in an emergency situation it’s better for the information to already be in the doctors head.

Anyone have a trick to detoxing from carbs. I swear they are like a drug to me and I have a little bit of processed carbs and I crave them for weeks. I will do it somehow but it’s not easy for me. I can do healthy carbs without issues. It the processed ones that I’m addicted to.

Yea I just keep thinking that I will do my best to not gain too much and when I get through the obvious priority my tool will still be there. It won’t be as easy as it was at 3-4 months out but I should be able to do it. Just have to keep my eye on the prize which is getting through this curveball but then get back on track to lose. It may be a bit harder but it can be done. I’ve seen people on here lose their regain several times. I’m sure I’m not the first one to have another major life event at the same time and I won’t be the last. I’ve got this!!

I don’t know much about the mini gastric bypass but the SADI is now covered by insurance and it has better stats thus far than then bypass and sleeve. Its weigh loss is statistically quicker, more weight lost and more durable than the bypass and it’s considered comparable in terms of safety. It is relatively new so not all surgeons do it and the research is still coming in but Maybe look into it. I have been very happy with it as a revision surgery. I have lost 75 pounds already. I have some other medical stuff that’s slowed my loss a bit because the doctors don’t want me to be at such as calorie deficit right now, but I feel like once I’m back at it I will lose the rest pretty steadily. Also, There was a guy on here that put a whole lot of information out there about the mini gastric bypass a while back. If you search for it you should find some of his posts and if you respond to one of them it should send notifications to the others who were active in the thread so hopefully someone who knows about it will get an email the thread is active and come back and read your questions. I just did a search and he must’ve deleted his account because now it’s listed as guest. His screen name was MiniGastricBypassDude but I guess he won’t receive the.notifications. Others who were active on the threads will though and there is lots of information there to read about the surgery that he posted In the past.

Sounds good.

I feel the exact same way about when I don’t eat clean. I don’t sleep as well and I feel fatigued all day. It’s weird I didn’t realize how good I was supposed to feel until after this revision and now I know when I eat poorly because I feel like crap. Oh sugar free popsicles. I forgot about them. I am pretty sure I’ve got some in the freezer. Them will help at night. I wake up at night, several times a night, when I am off the wagon with carbs. That’s when I usually give in just so I can go back to sleep.