SpartanMaker

Hmm, that probably why my program actually doesn't want me eating fruit at all in the pureed stage. They even caution that raw fruits are not well tolerated early on and that they are best held until at least 2 months post-op. Seems like it would be a good choice, but bariatric tummies don't seem always fit our preconceived notions.

Great goals. I'm actually a big fan of bodyweight exercises and bands, but if that's not for you and you want to start with dumbbells, that's great too. Here's the thing, as a beginner, there is no wrong routine for you. Whatever you do will be beneficial. As far as what exercises to do, you can google stuff and find some great ideas there. Some of what you'll find is great, and some is not so good. To sort out the good from the bad, start by making sure it's from a reputable source. Next, look for routines that focus on these three things: Make sure they are working your you upper body, your lower body, and your core. Make sure there are both pushing exercises and pulling exercises for your upper body. For example, a chest press, matched with a bent over row. By making sure they have both, it gives you a better overall workout, helps prevent muscle imbalance, which in turn helps prevent injuries. If you see a routine that does not have both, that's a big red flag. Make sure they explain how to do the exercise and what correct form looks like. Most people that hurt themselves doing strength training, do so from bad form. Now that said, let's talk a bit about sets and reps. A set is when you do all the exercises for that session one time. Many routines have you do more than one set. Three is the most common, but depending on the goal, it could be one to five or even more. A rep is the number of times you do a single exercise before you move to the next exercise. The challenge here is that the ideal way to build muscle strength vs. muscle stamina are a bit different. Typically for strength, you want a really heavy weight and you'll do ~6 reps for 3-5 sets. If you're able to do all the sets at 6 reps, then the weight is too light and you should progress to a higher weight next time. For muscle endurance, you'd ideally use a much lighter weight and do maybe 3-4 sets at 15-20 reps. The same applies here as well, though. If you can do them all, it's time to up the weight, do more reps (maybe up to 25), or add another set. You should feel like you did real work when you are done. There is a sort of compromise that you could take as well (and honestly, this is what most people do), that doesn't strictly focus on strength or endurance per se, but is good for both. That would be to do roughly 3 sets at 6-12 reps. Once again, if you can do an exercise at 12 reps for three sets, it's time to up the weight. Keep in mind also here that what works for a while may stop working at some point. Every now and again, you need to change up the routine you are using and try a completely different program. I'd say probably every 12-18 week at most, move to something else. It could be dropping the dumbbells and moving to bodyweight, bands, kettlebells, barbells, or just varying the routine. For example, instead of 3 days a week, maybe you move to 4 days a week and separate out upper body from lower body work (2 days of each). This type of variation is key to long term success. Enough for now, but I hope this helps. Also, sorry for the novel, but I'm passionate about strength training and guess I got carried away!

Good on you! Way too many people (women especially), don't do any sort of resistance training at all. That's a shame since it's one of the best things you can do to keep your metabolism revved up as you lose weight. Before recommending anything in particular, it might help to know if you have any particular goals in mind? In other words, what do you hope to accomplish with your dumbbell routine?

It's automatic. BariatricPal, links keywords to their products.

Haven't experienced it as part of pre-op diet, but many years ago I did Atkins, which starts you out with <20 carbs a day. My recollection was I had about 3 days that I felt pretty lousy, but after that I moved into ketosis and felt fine.

For sure. It's actually surprising to me just how different they seem to be? Here's mine: Pre-op: Two weeks long -- Only 3-4 protein shakes per day and unlimited clear, sugar-free liquids (which can include SF Popsicles and SF Jello). Post-Op Stage 1: Days 1-3 -- Only Sugar-Free Clear Liquids Stage 2: Days 4-7 -- Add in Protein Drinks, Skim or 1% Milk. Can also use Unsweetened soy or almond milk. Stage 3a: Days 8-14 -- Add in Cottage Cheese, Yogurt and/or Ricotta Cheese Stage 3b: Days 15-30 -- Add in Pureed Meats, Beans, Low Fat Cream Soups, Cooked Pureed Veggies. Eggs allowed, but must be soft. Fruit not allowed. Stage 4: Days 31-60 -- Low Fat Solid Foods, focused on protein first and introducing only 1 new food at a time. Fruits and veggies okay, but should be cooked. Best to avoid nuts and seeds. Stage 5: Lifelong -- Add in Raw fruits and veggies as tolerated. How does that compare to everyone else?

You might want to consider that a lot of people have problems with eggs early on. It sounds weird to me because when I have tummy problems, it's one of the only things that I can tolerate. I'm also curious about the fruit? My program does not allow fruit until 1 month post-op. I assume due to the sugar content and the possibility of dumping syndrome. Anyway, I wanted to make sure you have some other options ready in the event some of your choices aren't well tolerated. One thing I figured I'd try is tuna or chicken blended with fat free mayo as a way to make "tuna salad" or "chicken salad".

Can share what you're finding challenging? Is it hunger, lack of chewing, thinking about food, loss of mental clarity or physical energy? Something else? Just trying to understand better what we can expect.

Honestly, it's not very intuitive. Click on your name at the top right and look for "My Surgery". Most of it's in there.

Welcome all! If you can, please update your profiles to help us know more about you, such as type of surgery, surgery date, starting weight, goal weight, etc. These will help all of us as we support each other through this process.

A couple of additional thoughts on this thread: First, as many have pointed out, averages are just that, averages. Some people will lose more and some less than those numbers. Whether of not you are on the lower side or the higher side depends a lot on you. Work your plan and you too can blow that "average" out of the water. Second:, avoid the temptation to select your target weight from the BMI "ideal weight" range. Some people don't realize this, but on average, 25% of your excess weight is not fat. As you might expect, it's made up of the additional muscle mass needed to carry the extra weight (much of which you'll lose), but it's also extra blood volume, bone mass, organ weight, excess skin, etc. Some of those things will continue to cause you to be "overweight" in terms of BMI, but in actuality, you might be in a very health place in terms of lean to fat mass. Get it checked if in doubt.

The others are correct, weight loss, especially after WLS is never linear. If you were to graph it out, it would look more like exponential decay (with lots of fits and starts and even deviations up). At one point. I even tried graphing out my potential loss based on a decay constant but realized it was all based on my previous experience losing weight in the past. The decay constant will undoubtedly be different than my past attempts. If it helps, I saw a couple of references in the scientific literature that suggest the AVERAGE across large population groups shows the weight lost at 2-4 months will be roughly 50% of that lost at 12 months. As an example using totally made up numbers to make the math simple, let's say you lose 50 pounds in 3 months post-op. Then the average above would suggest you'd lose another 50 pounds in the next 9 months. Again, these are averages. Your loss may be higher or lower than that depending on a lot of factors such as amount and type of exercise done, how compliant you are with your plan, total calories consumed, etc.

I use MyFitnessPal. Recipe creation is pretty easy on a desktop, but not quite as easy on the app, at least in my opinion. It's also very easy to copy a meal from a previous day, which I use more than the recipe builder. One word of caution. Because there are millions of users and anyone can add foods to the database, some common items have gotten out of hand. Always look for the green checkmarks on things, as these have all been verified by staff.

I hear you there! If I could provide one piece of advice it would be this: We have to start where we are. Forget about all the guidelines like "you must get x amount of cardio per day". While we all want and need to get to that level, some of us just can't do that right now. As long as this week I do a little more than last week, and next week I do a little more than this week, I'm trending in the right direction. I recently saw a video of a 700 pound man and his weight loss journey. For him, exercise was walking from one side of his very small kitchen to the other side. He literally started off with one "round trip". After a while, he made 50 round trips. Before long he was walking outside, which was a major milestone for him. Up to that point, he'd been house bound for years. Maybe for you, it's an extra trip or two up the stairs everyday, or walking to the end of the block and back. Whatever challenges you today, is where you start. Once you establish this, forget about "routines" and do this every day until it's no longer such a challenge. That's when you progress to the next challenge, either by extending the distance or intensity.

This is good advice. What you're experiencing is something called adaptive thermogenesis in the scientific literature. In effect, your body adapts to your restricted intake by also reducing the amount of calories you burn. As much as we hate it, this is actually a evolutionary advantage. When our bodies detect "lean times", they adapt to make sure you survive long enough to make it to the next time of plenty. This was important over most of human history because we we didn't always know where the next meal would come from. To break out of this adaptation where you body is "helping" you survive, you should try to do something different. Varying your macros as suggested above, varying your exercise routine, or potentially even upping the number of calories you eat for a while can all "reset" the metabolic changes that caused the stall. Now that said, even if you changed nothing, it's unlikely the stall will last forever. At the end of the day, your body can only slow your metabolism so much. If you prefer to wait it out, that should eventually work as well as long as you are sticking to your plan.

So it may be time to take a little break from the ongoing saga of why it’s taken me over two and a half years to get to surgery and instead talk about how I got to the point of wanting to have bariatric surgery in the first place. My lightest weight as an adult was while I was in the Army. Just sheer physical activity and regular PT had me lean down to around 175 from maybe 185 when I graduated high school. Unfortunately I was severely injured in a training accident while in the service and left the military with a bad limp and a knee brace as a constant reminder. Weight wise, things went downhill from there. Being somewhat disabled made it hard to exercise, but meanwhile I was still eating like I did when I was in the service. (Lots of food, very quickly.) This was obviously not a good combination. Several other health scares and life events later, I shot up to around 240. I managed to stabilize things at this point and was even able to get into strength training pretty seriously for a while. Most cardio was still out, though. Life went on for several years, until I got a new job that paid me very well, but also took it’s toll on me physically and mentally. Within 3 years in the new job, I was up to 285 or so and climbing. I knew I needed help, so my wife and I tried just about every possible diet program imaginable. Interestingly, I’ve kept logs of every one of those diets. For at least the past 15 years, the typical pattern was for me to be somewhere between 285 and 300 pounds lose 30-80 pounds, then yo yo right back to my starting weight and then some. In about 2017, I finally asked my Doctor for help. We did all the things you’re supposed to do: talk to dietitians, try medications of various kinds, and even do physician monitored diets. None of that worked any better. The problem was, they just assumed like everyone does that I was weak-willed or to stupid to know how to eat properly. That’s never been my problem. I actually eat pretty well overall, with lots of fresh veggies, and plenty of lean protein. The problem is, in addition to all the good food, I’m also an emotional eater that soothes with sweets. I knew I’d reached rock-bottom when I started hiding food from my wife. As an example, I might buy a box of donuts and plow through it in a matter of minutes. Or buy the boxes of chocolate intended for Valentines day and devour them all in a morning. No box or bag of candy or pastries ever had the dust settle on it around me! About this time, I got up to 330 (my highest weight), and knew I needed to take a different road or I would never live to see my grandchildren. (I may never actually have any grandchildren, but that’s a story for a different day!) This takes us to late 2019 when I discovered, quite by accident, that my new insurance plan starting in Jan 2020 would finally cover bariatric surgery. After about a millisecond of research (okay, maybe a little longer), I decided this might be the thing for me. I think you already know what happened in my saga in 2020, so we’ll stop there for now and start back up next time in the summer of 2021, when I finally got the cardiac clearance I needed to get WLS.

I pretty much have all the feels right now, but mostly I'm just anxious to get the surgery done and move on!

Yep, me too, especially that last one. That's going to be so hard for me!

I'm a fan of the ones that have both footpads and handles that you hold. I don't have any data to suggest that they are any better, but it just seems like having more sensors in more places would be a good thing. The one I have now in an Omron, but I recently saw on Amazon that InBody also makes one for the home market. InBody is the brand my Bariatric Center uses, so I'm tempted to get one of those as well. One thing to keep in mind: none of these home BIA scales are all that accurate. In reality, that's not super important to me. What's more important is that they are consistent; meaning I can actually track from one week to the next if my percentage of body fat is trending in the right direction. When I want a more accurate number, I'll go get a bod pod scan. .

I agree with many others here that have said only you can decide what's right for you. I will share some of my thoughts & experiences in the event they will steer you one way or the other. First of all, I think we all can sympathize with wanting it done NOW. I personally have been waiting 2.5 years to have my surgery and (maybe unrealistically), sincerely believe that my surgery date is when my new life will begin. It's hard to be patient for such a life changing thing. Even though I could easily have written a check for the cost of the surgery, I never really considered self-pay. Remember that ultimately surgery is just a tool. Even though it can be lifechanging, I know I still have to put in the work to be successful. Unfortunately, too many people end up right back on the diet yoyo. The last thing I want is to go through all this and still fail. For me, getting to this place where I really do feel mentally and physically ready took time. Perhaps a minor thing for some, but I also wanted local resources in the event I had complications or needed more help down the line. Something else for you to consider perhaps? A lot of people that lose significant amounts of weight, eventually need plastic surgery to get rid of excess skin (and potentially correct some other issues). While sometimes that can be covered by insurance, most of the time it's not. My point is that you need to make sure you're also financially ready to take on that expense.

Seems unlikely to me that it's related to RNY after 9 years, but could be I suppose? More likely there's something else going on. There are a lot of things that can cause those symptoms, so it would be best to see a doctor and let them figure out the cause. Best of luck.

You really need to talk to the prescriber. At the very least, they should help you learn how to properly give a shot, and may also be able to do them for you if you really just can't get over the phobia. Please don't skip the shots. Blood clots can be fatal.

Most likely just temporary water weight from working out. This is why the scale is actually not a great way to track progress. A scale that can track your % body fat, or even just simple measurements are probably better.

You've actually made the first step! Emotional eating is a huge problem for a lot of people and it's not just lack of willpower like people think. There are actual appetite-related hormones (cortosol is the big one), that are triggered by stress. Cortosol tells your brain that there is a danger and that it needs to fuel up to fight the danger. The trick to overcoming this is first to recognize that stress is a trigger for you (YAY, you already did this part!). The second part is harder: you need to train yourself to recognize the difference between real hunger and stress hunger. If your stomach is not telling you you're hungry and it's just your head, that's probably the cortisol at work. If you're still not sure, one thing you can try is to wait 20 minutes or so. If the hunger is real, you should be hungry still. if not, it was just the cortosol. This will take time, but you can learn to tell the difference and overcome the stress induced eating.

Thank you!!! I know everyone get's really anxious before WLS, but after so long waiting, I'm just about beside myself! As a guy, I'm not good with the whole emotions thing, but I do know there are lots of different feels going on!