vikingbeast

Yes, it happens. There are at least a couple of reasons: 1. Lack of padding. As we lose weight, there's simply less of us to cushion us from the cold. Think about why bears eat so much before hibernating—they get fat both to insulate themselves and to nourish themselvesˀ. 2. Temperature regulation. This is related to #1. Our bodies are used to having the thermostat 'set' a certain way. Now that thermostat isn't keeping us as warm anymore and it takes time to catch up. 3. Iron deficiency. This is a big one, especially if it's your hands and feet that are especially cold. Right after surgery we struggle to get enough iron. And even if you supplement with iron, your body may not use it as efficiently as you need. And one of the signs of anaemia is... feeling cold a lot.

1 g protein per kg lean body mass seems like too little protein. I have a significant amount of LBM (enough that it alone puts me overweight without any body fat) and that would result in a daily protein intake of 89g. An average six-foot man with 15% body fat at the top of the "normal" weight would be eating 70g a day of protein. My protein target (set by nutritionist) is about 1.58 g of protein per kg lean body mass. BUT! I am also extremely active and do physical work as well as working out.

I was told 0.7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of /lean body mass/ - not weight. Which presumes you know your LBM (I do)—you can get a test to figure this out, or use a machine and get a guesstimate of your body fat percentage, and then do math. I am three and a half months out and am eating 1500-1600 calories a day—140 g of protein, 50 g of fat, and 120-150 g of carbohydrates depending on my need for physical exertion for the day. "The scale eats first," which means I weigh and portion everything and track it before I put it in my mouth (this is easier when you portion out a couple or three days' worth of food at a time to reheat).

So how did everyone's holiday season go? Usually, in the Before Times, I'd put on 5-10 lbs. between Thanksgiving and Los Reyes Magos. I'll be honest with y'all. I ate like crap this year too. Carbs and sugar and fat and hardly any vegetables or fiber. I did make sure I got my protein and water though. And I chose days when I'd be off track instead of having six or seven weeks of "eh, whatever, I'll start again January 2". Thanksgiving; St. Lucia; Christmas Eve and Christmas; New Year's Eve. I also had nice meals for my fiancé's birthday and went to a friend's party. The restriction did help, though I've discovered more "slider" foods that I need to avoid, ones that I can eat a lot of that don't seem to trigger my restriction. And yet, when I came to the end of the holiday season for my weigh-in this morning, I had lost 14 pounds over that timeframe. I'm stunned. Pants that I bought right before Christmas are now loose; shirts in XL are now starting to flap in the breeze a bit (but not so much that I'm going to size down QUITE yet). My body definitely has got used to the way I was feeding it; when I returned to my usual careful tracking each time, I felt so much better. I don't really restrict myself on foods unless I know they're sliders or I won't have any control (hello, Dot's Pretzels...), but it's a matter of just really carefully weighing things out. "The food scale eats first"—so nothing goes in my mouth until I've portioned it out and logged it.

Others have chimed in on the important bits and I don't have anything important to add there, but I will say YES, go sign up for a series of appointments with your chiropractor. My body was all kinds of out of whack because 285-pound me is still moving as though we're 396 lbs. Everything hurt! The chiro set it right.

Bathroom scales aren't precision devices. Let me give you the advice my nutrition coach gave me. Weigh as often as you want, but pick ONE day a week and average the last week's worth. Then track your average. Because maybe you slid your scale and it's balanced differently. Maybe you ate something salty or drank a little wine and you're bloated. Maybe it's almost time for Aunt Flo to visit, or you overdid it at the gym, and are retaining water. But the average won't lie to you. And so, on days like yesterday where I had a bunch of salty food for NYE and then weighed in heavy, it averages out over the week, and I see I am losing about 2 lbs. a week.

I'm "auditioning" protein shakes during my self-imposed pre-op diet. So far I really like OWYN ("Only What You Need"), except the chocolate flavor is disgusting. And it's 35g plant protein in 355 ml (12 oz), and it is still palatable at room temperature, given that I'm going to be sip-sip-sipping on it for an hour or two. Premier Protein is... just okay. (I hear the cafe latte flavor is good but it's also caffeinated which makes it a no-go). What else should I audition? I'm not planning to buy a ton of any one thing, knowing (from y'all!) that my tastes are likely to change post-op.

For me it means I ate too fast. Past my 'full point' is dramatic nausea and light-headedness.

Pre-plan your meals. Seriously, make them and reheat them, that way when you're hungry it's "heat this up" not "ALL HANDS ON EVERYTHING". Can you get a DXA scan (InBody, BodySpec, etc.?) It'll tell you your body fat percentage much more accurately than a Renpho scale can, and you can track it (I get one every 3 months) so that you can see whether your weight is muscle gain or fat gain. I'm gonna say, though, that if clothes still fit, you're likely doing a body recomposition and not gaining fat. But only a body fat scan will tell you.

Hold on, I'm about to use SCIENCE! Your body has a set number of calories it burns even if you are completely inert (sleeping, G-d forbid in a coma, etc.). It's called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). It fluctuates with your weight and with how fast your metabolism is. For, say, a 40-year-old, 5'4" woman who weighs 250 lbs (not unusual for a bariatric patient), BMR is around 1800. Now add on any kind of daily living to that, which required calories, and you end up with a number called total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). If you're the same woman above and you're sedentary, your TDEE might be 2200; if you are one of those nutters like me who goes to CrossFit and goes running and works a physical job, your TDEE might be as much as 3000 calories. Now. You've had your surgery. You are not physically capable of eating anywhere near that amount. Let's say you're at 800 calories a day. Simply by eating those 800 calories and existing, your body will naturally be in a 1000 calorie a day deficit. Add in sedentary lifestyle, and you're in a 1400 calorie a day deficit. Generally speaking, about 3500 calories is a pound lost (this is not always true and can be overcome by fluid retention, fluid balance, hormonal changes, menstruation, eating really salty foods, vitamin deficiencies, etc.). Now let's say you're "overeating" and you're doing 1200 calories a day; you're still 600 calories short of your caloric needs just to exist, and 1000 calories short of what you need for a sedentary lifestyle. You are going to lose weight. You are not going to 'ruin' anything. What is happening to you is your body is rebalancing its fluids. That is why the "three-week stall" happens. Every body is subject to the rules of CICO (calories in calories out), and eventually CICO will take over from your body's rebalancing and the numbers will drop again. And do measure yourself once a week! Bust/chest, waist, abdomen, hips, thighs, calves, biceps, neck. This week I didn't lose a ton of weight BUT I lost a half inch off my waist, and I can tell because my trousers keep slipping and I had to put a new hole in my belt. One suggestion: don't weigh every day. And if you can't help it—some people just have to, I'm one of them—keep a running tally and then pick a day, let's say Tuesday, and average your weight over the last seven days. Then use the average weight to gauge progress, not the number on the scale that day. Where the thick smoothies and things come in is that your stomach is still healing from the trauma of surgery. But here's the thing—your body will TELL you when it doesn't like something you eat. It will clam up your stomach. Or make you nauseated. Or have unstoppable hiccups until your stomach empties. Or give you the sniffles (which is SUPER AWESOME during a respiratory pandemic, let me tell you). I ate a bite of an egg roll yesterday and got punished for it. So... tl;dr... don't worry too much about it, especially at first. Feed your body the protein and liquid it needs, and then move on to other foods.

I've learned to be okay with wasting food, especially because I live in the United States, where portions have been out of control for decades. Last night I went to a birthday party at a seafood restaurant. I ordered the "lighter appetite" bucket and it came with—I kid you not—eight grilled prawns, a decent size lobster tail, probably 8 ounces of grilled chicken, 6 ounces of grilled steak, a whole elote (cob of corn), a cereal bowl full of rice and beans, and half a dozen taco-size flour tortillas with sweetened butter. I ate four of the prawns, the lobster tail, and a bite each of the chicken, steak, elote, and rice and beans. I had a tortilla without the butter, and was absolutely, 1000 percent full. I took the rest home to my sister. And I'm okay with that. I ask for a to-go container to be brought with the food because I know I'm not going to eat the whole thing. Sometimes I just order an appetizer, too. I offer no explanations, and the one time someone protested, I said, "This is as much as I care to eat."

The synonym for buttinsky is Nosey Parker. I am, in fact, majority Scandihoovian blood, and the part of me that ain't is Scottish and Lithuanian, so all "let's store fat for the cruel Arctic winters and working in the rutabaga fields of the north". Too bad I live in a desert along the Mexican border now 🤣

Looking good! I figure I'll just roll my eyes when I have to deal with buttinskies talking about my weight.

Yes, that's me at 290 (actually 292 in that photo). People are already warning me not to lose too much weight, but there's still a ways to go... and in any case I literally can't eat enough to overcome my TDEE even if I wanted to. It's slowed down. My primary care doctor says 275 would be fine and really he just wants me under BMI 40 (which I am), but I'd like to see where I can go. I went from size 54/34 pants to size 35/34... if I end up back where I was in college, I'll be in 32/34s. I have a DXA body fat scan every three months (it's cheap here, about $40/35€/£30) which reads my body fat. The problem is that the body fat measuring weight scales have two settings. If I leave it on normal mode I get a reading of 42% which is CLEARLY untrue. But if I put it on athlete mode, I get 25%, which is also clearly untrue, though closer. They need to have "kinda fit kinda fat" mode! The last DXA reading last week had me at 31.7% which I was a bit disappointed as I wanted to be under 30%, but it'll get there. Slowly but surely. I just want under 20%. 15% might be a stretch at 45 years old, but it'd be nice to have the beginnings of abs under the loose skin. 😁

I had two brief meetings with my surgeon; one via Zoom and one in person because I insisted. Honestly, you're not going to develop a super long term and close relationship with your surgeon; they're the cutter. I think I would call the office and just say look, I want to meet this person more than ten minutes beforehand.

I had VSG and lost 37 lbs the first month and 19 the second month, so I'd say 29 in a month is pretty darn good and not to worry.

SleeveMeAlone got it 100%.

Me too, my friend, me too. I look at photos of what I used to consider dinner and it's now an entire day's worth of calories for me.

I'm slightly broader built than you, I think (it's always hard to tell with pictures, see below), and my weight loss target is higher than yours (225 would be about 15% body fat on me, aiming for 240ish, currently 290). But that was a REALLY great thread. I did not have the MGB, just the regular sleeve. My nutritionist is way on top of things and is an active woman who fought and won her own battle with weight, so I am confident she has got me on the right track.

My program doesn't do calories. It's stupid crap like "half a cup of food five times a day" which could be 20 calories if I eat it as cucumbers or 2000 if I eat it as mayonnaise. My nutritionist, who is not affiliated with my program (I fired the program's nutritionist, which I chronicled elsewhere on this site), has me on about 1600 cal a day at three months out. 135 g protein, 130 g carbs, 60 g fat.

One thing I learned was that my surgeon's "nutritionist" was someone who'd gotten a minor cert and was literally reading from a booklet. Find an actual nutritionist or better yet a registered dietitian who has long experience with bariatric patients. In case you didn't hear it: 800 calories is WAY. TOO. LITTLE. I eat twice that at three months out and am losing 2 lbs. a week or so. Bump up your calories to 1000 or even 1200 for a week or two and see what happens.

I'm engaged to a Mexican, so spice is a big part of life. For the first couple of months, I literally could not eat spicy food. I had to go back to "wypipo spicy". But it's getting a lot better. I can eat jalapeños now, and my fiancé made a salsa with chile that wasn't too much for me. I never had an issue with spices (as in masala type spices), just chile/chilli. But yeah, for a while I'd eat a bite of something I loved before and would suddenly be streaming tears for my eyes and moaning "ay me enchilé..."

Don't freak out. Seriously, it will be okay. If you look up "three week stall" on BariatricPal, you will find almost 20,000 posts about it. It happens a LOT. And it's nothing you're doing wrong—it is literally your body rebalancing itself (particularly fluids) after a traumatic surgery. It will break. Mine did—it came late and lasted about a week and a half and suddenly WHOOOOOSH went the scale. I had all the same worries and made a post here and everything. It WILL break. You will continue to lose weight! And once you're fully on solid foods you'll feel the restriction.

Agreed. The "steak is what I do" comment, though, wasn't about my mourning a grave loss. It was about the fact that I work on a ranch and literally the ranch produces steaks 😆

Post your food log. (No editing!) Are you very active? I stalled and stalled HARD at around 1000 calories a day because I work out a lot and I work outdoors. I was actually expending more energy in a day (beyond the calories required just to exist in stasis) than I was taking in and my body literally went into "we are starving, conserve every pound possible" mode. I now eat about 1500-1600 calories a day (three months out) and it's still slow loss, but it's not stalled. The problem is, I literally can't eat enough to get where I need to be (per my NUT) without eating junk food, which I refuse to do.