Smanky

I'm only recently bypassed, but I had bad GERD going into surgery, and it's under control post-surgery. Not even a whiff of it. But what has been an issue is the stomach acid causing ulcers at the stoma between my reduced stomach and new intestine join. So I'm on 40mg of Pantoprazole for at least 6 months, with the likelihood of having to take it longer because even with the drug, I still have the odd attack of pain. Early days in the grand scheme of things, but ulcers are a risk even when the reflux is gone. Birth control pills never agreed with me either, so I've had excellent luck with the Mirena IUD. It's an unpleasant ride having it installed (especially if, like me, you've never given birth), but mercifully not a long procedure.

I stalled every second week for the first two months, and the stalls sometimes lasted two weeks. then I'd get one week of weight loss before the next stall. That you made it a whole ten weeks before a stall is really impressive! As others have said - you just have to ride it out while sticking to the program. There's no one rule for how long stalls last, they just last as long as your body needs them to. They're frustrating and boring, but they do break.

Grapes, while a delicious little snack, will give me bowel cramps and purging diarrhea the next day. Fun! But goddamn they're tasty little buggers.

Have you tried protein water? I hit an absolute wall with protein shakes and could not stomach another mouthful, and switched to protein water which has been a lot easier. It's far from perfect, and I still feel it's the most punitive part of my daily intake, but I can easily get them down.

Thanks Arabesque! I’ll definitely have a look now I’m able to fit into some of it.

Cauliflower is one of my favourite vegies. Baked, fried, battered, stir-fried, grilled. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Cauli mash is a fave of mine. Boil until soft, drain, stick in a blender with salt, pepper, nutritional yeast if you're vegan, powdered Parmesan if you're not. Blend. Devour with sausages and greens. Purest happy-place comfort food without the carbs.

I've been steadily going through my clothes and and am now fitting into most of my smallest sizes. I'm not allowing myself to shop for clothes until those ones start to fall off, and hopefully by then I'll be able to thrift. I'm just really trying not to buy any more fast fashion because buying sustainable and ethical plus-sized clothing is IMPOSSIBLE in Australia. I can't justify buying new clothes that I'm going to once again shrink out of in a couple of months. Anyone asks me to go anywhere posh in the next few months, and I'll be turning up in jeans, a t-shirt, and a mildly apologetic expression.

I stalled every second week during my first two months post surgery. Frustrating? Yeah, but also totally normal. I was barely consuming 700 calories a day, and we're convinced that that MUST mean we lose weight. How can so few calories result in a stall and weird weight fluctuations, right? Well, the body responds to a prolonged and severe calorie reduction and post-op stress by stalling. It's a normal response, and our poor bodies have a lot of rewiring and adjusting to do after enduring major surgical changes. When I was finally able to eat more and up my calories to around 900 to 1200 a day ... the stalling stopped. I've now been fairly consistently losing, and feel like, after two months of modest weight loss, I've finally hit my "honeymoon period" (which everyone seemed to talk about but I was beginning to think wasn't going to happen for me). So stalls do break. Some go on for 3 weeks or even a bit over that. Others, like me, had them with mind numbing frequency. They're normal, and while it may seem counter-intuitive, super-low calorie intake often causes them.

I'm about 3.5 months out, and have always struggled to eat the amounts of food that my dietician wants me to aim for. It is getting better, though! I'm almost up to a whole cup, which felt impossible even a couple of weeks ago. My priorities are protein, vitamins and water, and I manage to double up on the protein and water by drinking protein-water which gives me my baseline 60g of protein each day. That frees me up to add extra protein via food and protein-fortified soy milk, without me feeling like I'm a bloated sack all day. I take all my supplements before bed once I know I'm finished my daily water intake. I try to eat nutritious meals three times a day with varying degrees of success in terms of quantity. I don't beat myself up about it if I don't manage a lot, and neither does my dietician. I'm getting my protein, water, and supplements in and that's the most important thing. Exercise I do every afternoon in the form of a good walk. Pop my headphones on and out I go. I enjoy this chance to unwind the mind. Ultimately, don't beat yourself up! I don't think any of us crack on out the gate with perfection. The post-op life has goals and milestones, and so long as you're trying your best, things will improve and click into place. Heartily recommend the protein water though. Two birds with one stone has definitely made it all a bit easier!

This. Sorry but the flags are SO red. Abusive, manipulative and controlling. No rational person threatens they'll lose their mind and go to a psychiatric ward over someone trying to fix a health issue. OR threatening to sue the surgeon for someone else's procedure they wanted. This is the abuser's version of a monkey flinging s**t at the walls. Every single thing the OP says they've said screams control issues. Sorry OP, but as someone else said, find the support here. And don't let your family control you.

Make sure you're hitting your protein requirements. That's important - even if it's through protein shakes and water. I really struggled to eat during the pureed and soft food phases, and I stalled 4 times (almost one week on, one week off). It was really frustrating. So that's one BIG negative to not getting calories in. I'm still not great at getting food in, but my calories are now between 800 to 1000 (versus 400 to 600 max), and the stalling has stopped and I'm losing weight now at a steady pace. So I absolutely feel you on the zero-hunger thing! Just get that protein and your supplements and water in, and until you can eat more, be prepared for the possibility of stalling. Keep at it. It does get easier to eat.

Thanks Sunnyway. I'm actually not a self-help book sort of person, so I haven't and won't. If I ever struggle again, I'll book in with a therapist.

Me! I never had an eating disorder, never had an emotional attachment to food nor did I use food to cope when things got stressful or something went wrong. I turned to cigarettes for stress and emotional stuff - THAT was a long loooooong journey to quit, which I finally did. And stress always killed my hunger. I got obese because I liked to eat and food tasted good. I was a sugar addict, a junk food addict, and got to the size I got purely from gluttony and boredom. Sugar was the worst, I could cut down and quit and do well for a while, but if I had too much I'd be addicted all over again. So nope, the path to morbid obesity isn't always down to emotion/stress/trauma/issues. Some like me just... liked food too much. Taste... texture... and rubbish will-power.

SADI-S wasn't even discussed and would have cost me more to have done. MGB offers enough malabsorbtion for me, so even if the option had been there I still would have chosen the MGB.

Yep, people who aren't obese and struggling cannot understand what it's like, can't understand the despair that comes with it, alongside the health problems. And unfortunately, even people who love you can struggle to understand it, and sometimes even react with underlying jealousy if they're overweight themselves. Annoyance dressed up as concern. Glad you've shaken the comments off! You're gonna do brilliantly. 💪

There's your red flag right there! Yikes. There's often a subtext to people who try to talk you out of WLS, and she showed hers with that question. Stay the course! Ignore the nay-sayers. You're doing this for your health and quality of life, and if you're confident with your surgical team, no-one else needs to add their two-cents into it!

Thanks for this post, MiniGastricBypassDude! Us Omega-Loopers are a clear minority on the forum, so it's great to read a detailed post from someone further along the journey than I am. I concur with your praise of the MGB - despite a run-in with ulcers and my repeated stalls due to how little I've been able to eat (both have improved immensely now), I'm still super glad I got this procedure. Everything has resolved and it's now getting easier and easier. I can get more calories in now, so the stalling has stopped and I'm losing at a good clip. My surgeon offers Sleeve, RNY, MGB and SADI-S, but is very pro-MGB over RNY because of all you mentioned. He says it has better long-term results, though yes, our supplements are vital. I had originally wanted the Sleeve (the malabsorbtion and potential dumping had me a little wary of a bypass), but because of existing GORD, he talked me out of it and into a MGB. Glad he did, as yes, this is the right surgery for me. I'm also ETERNALLY grateful that I've never had an emotional attachment to food, or BED. I know I'm very fortunate that my head has been in a great space for this, and I feel for folks who are having a rougher time of it.

I'm sorry you've had a rocky start, Summerseeker, and hope you're on a upward trajectory now. My instinct would be to stay on the liquids for that second week, purely because your start was so rough. Give your system the gentlest easing into the pureed stage. Are you able to take your medicine and vitamins now that the foamies have subsided?

Congrats on getting your surgery and starting the journey, JoyLilith! I hear you on sushi, I love rice and adore onigiri but all of that is off the menu for me until maintenance. You could, however, have sashimi once you're on the soft food stage, so it's the delicious sushi hit without the rice. Navigating social eating is definitely something that takes time. I'm fine with friends and family who know I've had this done, but I'm a bit more wary of dining out with people who don't. And my partner and I are still trying to perfect the "new normal" of just the two of us going out to cafes and restaurants. We're getting better at it, though! Glad your procedure has gone so smoothly.

Your pre-op diet definitely sounds stricter than most, but at least it's only for a week. A week of hell, but still only a week (mine was two weeks, some go for three or even four!). It may be a similar diet to the milk diet some are put on? Basically a starvation diet to shrink the liver. I'm sorry it's such a tough one for you! The pre-op diet is 100% the HARDEST part of the WLS journey, and no one has a good time doing it. Just remember: It's not forever! You've got 3 days to go. Find something, anything to distract yourself and keep your water up!

It could be a double whammy like mine was. All the fun of a regular healing itch with bonus allergy itching! I hope yours improves soon.

I had a large hiatal hernia repair with my bypass, and felt like I'd been hit by a truck that first week. So it can definitely knock you about! As others have said, walk as far as you can each day without overdoing it to alleviate the gas pain, and the surgery pain will improve. It took me about two weeks to not feel pain when breathing in.

I move onto regular food next week, so I'm just coming out of the soft food stage and I've been eating vegan burgers and sausages and chinese seitan alongside some vegetables, with strawberries as a snack. This is on top of my liquid protein (protein water and protein fortified soy milk). Scrambled tofu and marinated tofu have also been going down a treat. Honestly, my "regular food" is pretty much going to be the same. Here's a site with the nutritional info for all of Gardein's products which you may find useful. https://www.myfooddiary.com/brand/gardein Their Beefless Ground has 18g of protein per 3/4 cup, so you could do a nice vegan cottage pie (with cauliflower mash top) with that.

Yep, the emotional eating issue needs addressing before WLS. It seems to be a BIG reason why a lot of folks really struggle post-surgery. It's the thing that really trips folks up. You can't replace a coping mechanism with nothing. The surgery itself (at least for a bypass) helps you switch up your habits and re-learn a new normal through restriction and hunger reduction. My personal experience has been zero hunger and having to pretty much remember to eat, and I'm truly done in a couple of mouthfuls. Drinking protein water and regular water fills me up. A switch has definitely been flicked in me, and while I know my hunger will eventually return to a degree, the surgery is giving me the luxury of time to unlearn bad habits and embrace better ones. The big reason I always failed before surgery was self-sabotage. I'd get to almost where I wanted, then some event would trigger a binge and it would all fall apart. The surgery is going to stop that binge and help me stay the course. And I'm honestly finding a lot of joy in not caring about food like I did. I still *think* about food, because it's a habit of a lifetime, but I no longer care about it. Let me just say it's great that you're taking your time and weighing this up before leaping in. All your doubts and questions are important ones to consider.

Congrats! I did similarly well with water post-op and had the hernia repair too. Glad your pain isn't too bad, and hope it stays manageable when you get home. Roughest part is done - go you!