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I had it every day like you while I was on the liquid phase. As soon as I started the soft foods (14 days out after surgery) it went away just as fast as it came. Hang in there!! It goes away!

Just posted this a week ago, You can blow past your doctors guess and reach any healthy weight. Mix up your calorie intake One day go 1000 next go 500. Also Fasting works do a 10 hour fast then eat healthy then go to bed and fast another 8 while sleeping, You have to trick your body back into burning instead of storing. Its rather easy to do- For me the fasting broke it loose again.

It’s been five months since I had my surgery. I still get the feeling of something bring stuck in my throat!! I’ve about decided it’s probably me eating too fast, not chewing my foods enough and/or just drinking too fast!! Its not a good feeling and hopefully, it will ease up. Good luck to everyone. Oh, my GI Dr recommended me walking some after each meal. This does seem to help! If I just sit after I eat then it makes it worse!!

I hope it works out well for you and luck stays on your side. We have been at stay at home for five days now and stuff changes real fast. Good luck🍀

This is helpful, because I feel like I am in a similar position. I have been stalled for the past couple of months but have just started fasting and exercising more to get to my goal. I think it is interesting that a doctor would say this instead of recommending a solution. Being on this site has opened my eyes about the differences in the amount of support provided from one medical practice to another.

Everybody is different and from experience the more you weigh going in determine how much and fast you lose. Bigger ppl lose more faster but there’s no cap to how much you can lose honestly. Exercise more than you consume. Walk constantly and still well hydrated! Water is very important. A leak can make you stall. Good luck sweetie

The dramatic changes in our daily lives caused by the COVID-19 virus is likely the greatest crisis of our lifetime. Hopefully, you and your family are safe at home and can avoid harm. It would be easy to focus on all of the negativity and be glued to the news 24/7 but that would be a mistake. As someone working to lose weight or maintain your weight loss, this crisis presents a number of challenges but also several opportunities. First the challenges: Many of us are either working from home or are not working, but still at home. Being home presents a bunch of food and eating challenges. You may be more sedentary than usual, without your commute to work, and possibly unable to be out and about or go to the gym. Being home means that the refrigerator and the kitchen are only a few feet away. Your schedule is probably different. Without a regular schedule, unplanned eating and more frequent trips to the kitchen may occur. For those unaccustomed to working from home, it may be harder to focus on your work, and possibly wandering around the house and once again, back in the kitchen. The emotional toll this situation is taking on all of us is significant. If you have a tendency to eat in response to anxiety or loneliness, this can be a very difficult time. The challenges are clear. What about the opportunities? Before this crisis, many people were so busy with their jobs that they did not have time to make better food choices. Too much fast food. Too much take out. Too many dinners at 10 pm. Now there may be more time to buy and prepare healthy food and eat at a healthier time. Many restaurants are closed so you need to go to the supermarket where more fresh foods and healthier choices are available. Learn to cook! If you have more time, you can break out some of those cookbooks you’ve been meaning to read or find simple recipes online to try. While you’re in the supermarket, this could be a good time to experiment with new foods. Some of your favorites may be out of stock. This is a good time to explore different and potentially healthier alternatives to your old, less healthy favorites. While you are home, you may have more time to exercise. If you are restricted from going to the gym, you can still go out for a walk or a bike ride. Even if you walk with one or two friends, it is possible to practice safe social distancing while exercising. Learning to change your emotional relationship with food. It’s certainly tempting to make trips into the kitchen to manage your anxiety and other emotions, but this is a great time to learn and practice alternatives to emotional eating. Here are some ideas to try to implement in the coming weeks: Try to create and maintain a schedule including setting aside times for meals and snacks. If you already have an eating routine that was working, try to maintain it. If you don’t yet have a routine, examine your upcoming schedule and create one. If you are not used to working from home, it is important to structure your day to avoid working in an erratic “when I’m in the mood” manner. The latter is not very productive and will also lead you to wander around the house more often...and we know what room you’re likely to wind up visiting. If you are able to get out to the supermarket, buy healthy and smart! Make a commitment to using this time for positive change. If you continue to buy chips and cookies, this is going to cause weight gain. However, if you make healthier food choices in the supermarket, you can use this period at home to your advantage. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to help your family start eating healthier, this is a perfect opportunity! Many restaurants are closed, so if you stock the house with healthy choices, you’re more likely to stick to your plan. It’s probably not advisable to go to the supermarket every day as we try to keep our social distance, so try to make a list and do a weekly shopping. Think about meal prepping. What could you buy for a few breakfasts, lunches, and dinners? Make the healthiest choices you can. Experiment in the supermarket. Some of your old favorites might be unavailable. Even if they are there, check out other alternatives. Have you ever wondered if riced cauliflower was a good alternative to white rice? Now’s the time to give it a try. What about that all-natural, lower sodium and low-sugar spaghetti sauce? Maybe bring home a jar or two. We are all wired to buy what we’ve always bought. They’re probably the same items you grew up with in your parents’ home, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Use this opportunity to experiment with healthier and maybe even tastier choices. Get outside and walk or bike a few times per week if possible. Many gyms are closing down so if you have a home gym you have an advantage. However, even without a home gym there’s always the great outdoors. Walking and biking are excellent forms of exercise. It’s more important to try to build a habit of getting out there a few times per week than it is to walk a specific number of steps or burn a specific number of calories. In fact, it is possible that you make this a habit that endures long after this crisis ends. Learn to manage your emotions in ways that don’t involve going to the kitchen. It is completely understandable that you are feeling more anxious these days, but neither the current situation nor your anxiety is going to be helped by eating. Instead, use this time to learn mindfulness skills to manage your anxiety. These skills actually help reduce anxiety and don’t contribute to weight gain. Research demonstrates that learning mindfulness skills helps reduce compulsive eating. There are a number of great apps available like headspace or calm where you can get started. Similarly, if you did a quick search for “mindfulness techniques,” the internet has 100’s of free modules available. Just experiment until you find a few that work for you. Limit the amount of time you watch television and spend watching the news on your computer and phone. You know the news isn’t great, and more importantly, it can be emotionally harmful. The purpose of the news is to provide information, but many people watch news programs as a form of entertainment. However, today’s news is not at all entertaining, it’s quite upsetting. Worst of all, some news programs focus on how things can get worse. While you may need an update or two per day, you don’t need to watch any more than that. It’s very likely to upset you and may trigger emotional eating. Even if you don’t have a tendency to eat in response to anxiety and emotional upset, who wants to experience emotional upset more than necessary?! Instead, use this time to be closer to loved ones within your home or via facetime, teleconferencing or the good old telephone. If you are among loved ones or can use facetime or video conferencing to be with them “virtually,” break out those board games, color in a coloring book, create art projects or do other things that put a more positive spin on what is certainly a challenging time. To be sure, there is nothing good about this crisis and how it is affecting our daily lives. However, it is possible to take advantage of the opportunity that being at home provides. If you make some changes in your behavior, you can use this time to stay on track with your weight loss or weight maintenance goals, and maybe even develop some new healthy habits that provide benefits that last long after this crisis is over. May you all be safe and well during this difficult time. Warren L. Huberman, PhD. Is a Clinical Psychologist licensed in New York and New Jersey. • Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. • Affiliate Psychologist at the Langone/NYU Medical Center • Consulting Psychologist to the NYU/Langone Health Weight Management Program • Affiliate Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Northwell-Lenox Hill Hospital. • Maintains a private practice in Clinical Psychology in Manhattan and Rockland County, NY. Author of the book 'Through Thick and Thin: The Emotional Journey of Weight Loss Surgery.' Dr. Huberman can be reached at 212- 983-6225 or at wh@warrenhuberman.com.

@GoForwardGen Reading your post reminds me so much myself. Now I’m not as Young as you, I’m 40 and wish I would have done this sooner. I’ve been the fat girl since I was 8 years old. This is my experience and advice: I too have struggled with mental health issues including addiction and suicide attempts. I was put in rehab in 2017 for addiction to alcohol and opioids. I’ve not taken opioids for recreational use since April 23, 2017. Alcohol is a slippery slope so I have to be vigilant there. In September 2018 I was hospitalized under a mental health watch for a week after attempting to take my own life. I was in a very volatile domestic violence relationship at that time. Through the support of my family and friends and local law enforcement I was able to finally get out of that relationship for good in March 2019. I’ve been in therapy ever since then with my psychologist and psychiatrist and my life has changed for the best! I’ve been on some sort of anti-depressant and/or mood stabilizer since I was 21 years old. I’ve been i the mental health system for a while. None of these things held me back from getting surgery. This past October I had reached a point With my weight that I was defeated and ready for a change. I have Anthem BCBS—it’s the best option they offer and I pay out the wazoo for my insurance through my employer because I want the best. I also had to complete a 6 month weight loss supervision with MANY requirements. So that’s the story of my mental health past. This is my advice: Find a dedicated Bariatric center. I worked with Georgia Surgicare in my state. They were phenomenal!! I started my journey 10/7/19 and had my surgery 3/3/20. That’s 5 months! GA Surgicare advocated for me! They were actually able to push my surgery up one month because I had completed all requirements and was consistently losing weight. I actually found out because I was losing weight on my own is one of the reasons they allowed me to go early. It proved to them I was serious about this. My start weight was 256.6. Day of surgery I was 230. I’m 5’4” so yeah I was a big girl. I say was because I’m not that girl anymore. I’m 218 today and working every day to become healthier. I will no longer refer to myself like that, that was the old me. On 10/7/19 they weighed me and went over everything. I came back on 11/6/19 and had lost 4 pounds. They finally gave me the packet with all requirements I had to complete. They worked with my insurance and found all providers in my network that they also work with. I had to go to a cardiologist for a heart stress test and ultrasound of my heart. I had to get my PCP and psychiatrist to recommend the surgery—which they did. I had to meet with a nutritionist 3 times and show my food logs. I had to go to a Pulmonologist and have a sleep study, yes I have sleep apnea. The reason I suggest a dedicated Bariatric center is because they provided me everything I had to do. All I had to do was make my appointments and show up. GA Surgicare followed up with all the providers and got my insurance what they needed. I had to do every other week calls with a nurse with Anthem to discuss my progress and developed a rapport with that nurse who also advocated for me. Do your research find a dedicated center. Do your part. Lose weight to the best of your ability and show up for your appointments. It was a whirlwind. It went so fast and so slow at the same time. I wish you the best of luck in this journey that is going to change your life!

You're only a week post-op and already eating eggs? That might be a little fast - and clearly it is since you are either in some kind of discomfort or have the hiccups which means you are overeating (!). I had my surgery on March 3rd and was on full liquids and purees for 2 weeks - so blended soups, cottage cheese, yogurt, mashed/pureed veggies, soft tofu, etc. - all that. Now that I'm on week 3 I have started with soft/mushy foods. I tried the ricotta bake but that was a disaster - clearly I'm (hopefully temporarily) lactose intolerant (very common for bypass patients!), so I'll be avoiding any primarily dairy-based foods for a while. I tried some of Shelly's Egg Bites this week and they've been going down quite well. Canned tuna has also been a good option for me (I mix in a little shredded cheese and add some seasonings, warm it up just enough to soften the cheese). Here's the thing - just because you CAN eat something, doesn't mean you HAVE to - if it is causing any kind of problem, just refrain from eating it for a week, and try that food again later. Stay on full liquids, or add different kind of mushies like the ones I mentioned above. And the less liquid it is, the less you should eat of it, at least in the beginning. So if you can drink 1/4-1/2 cup of liquids at a time, your food intake should be 1/8c. Try that - you may have to have more "mini-meals" but it's better than waiting hours for the discomfort to clear so that you can your liquids and/or other food in.

It's just a pain right behind the large incision on the right. The first 2 weeks it felt like it was pulling like a stitch or suture. It got better the third week. I think I bent over too much the last few days and now the pain is sharp when I bend a little or twist too fast.

I know this is like a no go on Fast food but I wanted to ask anyways when it comes to pizzas are the gluten free ones okay to eat. My stomach is like hell no to breads and other doughy things but I know like thin crust the gluten free is also thin. Has anyone tired it and how has it felt on your stomach?

I can't chime in on the fast weight loss or on the pictures, only with what I think about "being prepared". WLS is like learning to swim. You can read everything about swimming and the technique, about how your body will feel when immersed into the water and you can listen to the people giving you lectures on the "right way to do it" until they're blue in the face and your ears are bleeding. The only way you will know what swimming is like is when you finally hit the water and try not to drown.

most of us lose our hunger. And most of us get it back sometime within the first year. Mine came back at five months out. 51 lbs in three weeks is a LOT. I've never heard of anyone losing that much that fast, in fact. not being able to tolerate eggs for awhile after surgery isn't that uncommon. Most people who lose their tolerance for them are able to eat them again when they're further out. I can't really address the rest of the things you mentioned - but maybe someone else who can will chime in

If you have a body fat scale this can help as well. They might not be very accurate but when you see your weight standing still but body fat going down fast you're most likely just retaining water.

Yes switch up your calories and do some short term fasting - Remember this is a long journey and no two weeks will be the same Go less calories on day and more the next It will help restart your body

You probably want to get in touch with your doctor's office. There is quite the variation in pre-ops diets. For me, it was 14 day liquid fast, for others only 7 days and some fewer than that. And then others were allow to eat a soft diet with protein shakes. Since your date is next week, I would get in contact with them to see how you are to prepare. Congratulations on your date, because so many have been cancelled for the latter part of March/early April.

Hi Tilena, I am 5 weeks post surgery. I am not going to lie to you. The post op diet is a challenge. The first few day is clear liquid, then you graduate to full liquids, then to pureed foods, then to soft foods, and finally to regular diet. At first , if you're like me, the biggest challenge will be eating at all, b/c you won't feel like it after the surgery. However, after a week or so, my hunger--both physical and head hunger--returned full force, and I wanted to eat "normal" food, but my stomach wasn't ready, i.e. done healing. The good news is, you will fill up very fast, so even on the full liquid phase, your cravings kind of go away once you are filled up with soup, or whatever. Once you reach puree foods, I think it gets a lot easier, because you have more freedom in what to eat. It's important to remember, though, that even after you reach the milestone of "normal" diet, it is a NEW normal. I know that I cannot go back to eating the way I used to, consuming a high carb diet with plenty of sweets. For some people, their tastes change, and they don't really want the sweets and high carb meals. For me, though, I still crave sweets, if just in my head, and it will be a challenge as it has always been for me. This time, though, I know that if I stick with my healthy eating plan, it will result in weight loss (unlike the dozens of diets I've tried before). In other words, the work will finally yield results. My doctor routinely emphasizes that gastric sleeve surgery is not a magic bullet--it is a tool to use toward effective weight loss. However, the effectiveness of that tool depends on how I use it, that is, whether or not I make wise food choices. A hammer won't work unless you swing it the right way, and that takes some effort. Good luck!!! Let us know how you make out!

Also, try intermittent fasting. It works wonders.

As stated above, square inch for square inch Muscle weighs more than fat. So as you reduce fat stores and increase muscle mass, you can see weight gains. That's why I've pushed so hard for people to stop tracking weight as a specific number and start looking at the trend. I've tracked weight and body fat my whole process, not really caring about the numbers exactly, but what I was doing and which direction those numbers moved. The more I work out for muscle, my body fat drops and my weight gains. When I focus on cardio, my weight drops, sometimes body fat does as well, but not as fast as when working out for muscle gain. This is because larger muscle mass requires more energy in rest than smaller muscles do, so, bigger muscle mass, larger fuel requirements, faster fat breakdown. Plus,our bodies get used to what's going on and start to level off. Check into Intermittent Fasting if you haven't yet, really get me through some serious stalls.

I started walking from day one, but I didn't do any harder exercises until I Was cleared (which for me, was 7 weeks because I had my gallbladder out four weeks after my sleeve). I'm sorry your friends are not being supportive; they're going off old biases and stigmas, though. It's been proven that this operation has been able to help a lot of people get to where they need to be. It's not a magical fix-all. It's a tool that you use to make sure YOU are successful in making yourself healthy, but you are still doing all the hard work. And you are losing weight! That's amazing still. Everyone loses differently; some people lose fast, some lose slow. You'll find a good rhythm and see what your body can do.

They do and they don't. If there is a woman at home (mother, grandmother) then they usually prepare healthy meals. But many people who live alone (like students and young workers), or salarymen on a busy day, will stick to fast foods like ramen, which is so full of calories and fat one bowl of it will almost make up your entire daily calorie limit! The bentos at my university (all universities are the same) are geared to be cheap, so every single one of them has some kind of fried food (chicken or pork usually) in addition to at least a cup (or more) of rice. If you want something other than that the little cafe has curry rice. The department store next door doesn't have any healthier options, it's all noodles or rice-based dishes. Japan is a mountainous country, only 11% of it is arable land, and many people live on that. There are fruits that are grown here - apples, peaches, grapes (muscat - the kind used for wine, for some reason), and watermelon are the most common, but they are so babied (each piece of fruit has a little bag hand-tied around it to protect it from birds and the weather) which makes them quite expensive. If the fruit is not perfect, it doesn't go to market. I've seen watermelon fields where about a third of the crop was left to rot in the sun, especially after the crows got to them. Students at my university (and some teachers!) would sneak into the fields at night and go grab perfectly fine watermelon for a snack. The reason they were left to rot? Either because they were not perfectly round, or they had a patch of yellow on them (in Japan they should be 100% green). The further south you go the more citrus fruits are found. Vegetables tend to be a lot of starchy root vegetables which take a long time to prepare and/or may be quite slimy, other veggies like Chinese eggplant, tomatoes, and pieman (a kind of green pepper that most children hate) and leafy vegetables like lettuces, spinach and cabbage. OMG, they love cabbage here! I can't eat it, which makes it almost impossible to eat pre-made salads here since about 98% of them are mostly cabbage. Also everything is grown really big - big apples, big peaches, big carrots - they look good, but the taste is meh. The apples and carrots are not that sweet. Tomatoes look good, but can be mealy and tasteless. I think the reason many Japanese are so thin is a good part genetics (fast metabolism) and the fact that they eat smaller meals than what is available in most Western countries. For example, large drink here is the equivalent of a small back home. Sweets are not that sweet - when I first came here I didn't like them because I couldn't "taste" anything, but after being off sugar for almost a year I found that they were much more palatable than Western sweets which were too sweet. Also, they walk or bike a lot. In fact, they move more than almost any other people on the planet so that helps too.

I have Two views about this ..... In 2009 i had the band done. At first my (now ex) husband, two sons, DIL and my friend Paula (who had it done the year before), she was also a co worker. It wasn't until about 6 months and people started noticing the WL that i started to open up about it. Of course, i got all the "look"... OHHH you took the easy way out. I did get judged by most everyone. I had people watching me eat... saying, should you be eating that... why aren't you losing weight as fast as others.... You are losing too much.... blah blah blah. So this time around... only my husband (remarried Sept. one month PO). Lately i find i have been getting a lot of.... Wow you really have lost a lot of weight.... This weekend i was so proud of my husband..... We had a crawfish boil and one of our neighbors commented on my weight...... He chimed right up and said,.... she changed her eating habits.... Bam... Love him. So much better not telling.....

I think you're doing really well! I've only lost 3.8 kgs since surgery and that was two weeks ago. Some people lose weight really quickly post-op, for others it's more of a slow burn and then really gets going a few weeks in. Also, in regards to your friends, I find that a lot of people don't understand how weight loss works. Most people think it's a matter of less calories in + more exercise = weight loss. But our bodies are really complicated, much more so than a 2+2=4 equation, and most people who are obese or morbidly obese have other issues, like insulin or leptin-resistance, which can really hinder weight loss. In addition to that we have lower metabolic rates that are difficult to change. There are two contradictory actions when we diet and start an exercise regimen at the same time. The exercise will give a boost to our metabolism, but the diet will slow it down. So in effect they cancel each other out which is why most people plateau after a few weeks and can't figure out why. The body doesn't like change and will always try to get back to where it was, especially metabolism. Also fat cells like being fat and will use any opportunity to fill themselves up again - something to remember when you are 1 or more years post-op. Going back to any old habits will be a very happy reunion for your fat cells, which is what happened to me and why I needed revision surgery. Fat cells never disappear, they are always there, just much smaller than before. Which is why people who were obese before will always struggle with food compared to people who have always (or mostly) been at a healthy weight. And of course most of us probably have real addictions to food, which is difficult to deal with. Compared to drugs or alcohol, none of which are needed to survive, we need to food to live, so have to deal with our addictions every time we eat, go shopping, or are in any other situation involving food. It really is a hard mental game to keep up with. Anyway, I'm just saying this because if you think of losing weight as a race, obese people do not start at the start line with regular (mostly healthy, maybe overweight) people. We are handicapped by our obesity, our metabolism, our brains, our resistance to different hormones, our food addictions, our co-morbidities, etc which puts us way back behind the start line. So we never get a fair "race" compared to our healthier counterparts. But when we get surgery, the loss of part of our stomach basically resets the entire body back to zero, and now we have a more even playing field. We still still have to work at it, and be vigilant with our food choices, but at least we are no longer handicapped by everything else that was preventing success in all the years we were trying to lose weight. I was reading an recent medical journal that says a) obesity is a disease, just like cancer, and should be treated as such, and b) gastric surgery should be renamed metabolic surgery since it has so many positive effects on the body. Honestly, it's now even being considered as a treatment for diabetes, since it has been so successful in eliminating that problem with obese people who had it pre-gastric surgery, but not afterwards. A good book to read (if you haven't already) is "Fat Chance" by Robert Lustig (M.D.) who goes into really good detail about what I explained above. I find educating ourselves with facts is the best way to counter people who will dismiss what we are doing as a "scam". Most people who think that probably have a very limited idea of what weight loss really entails. Finally, you don't need to prove anything to your friends. The only person you need to prove anything to is yourself! Good luck! Stick to the program, don't worry too much about the scale when it doesn't move fast enough or stalls (because that will happen). When it does, focus on non-scale victories, like clothes fitting better, or moving down in size, being more comfortable in a seatbelt, needing to fill the bathtub with more water since you don't displace as much as before (!), finding your collarbones and cheekbones again, etc. You got this!

I'm struggling with this. I have no sensation of being full, even when I've overeaten. I do get some burps and gurgles when I've drunk too much too fast (especially protein shakes), but no real signals for food. But in the past three days I've had two episodes of dumping syndrome, the last one definitely because of overeating. It took over 8 hours for me to feel decent enough to be able to start drinking water again, after being up all night in pain. I had the ricotta bake which I used to eat after my first surgery no problem, but in this case it was a disaster. 😞 I definitely need to portion out everything to stop this from happening again since I can't rely on my body to stop eating. I did eat a small portion, but I guess it was still too big for someone only 2 weeks out from surgery.

Hello, question to anyone who has had recent surgery. I am 11 days post op and have not had my post op appointment due to the craziness of the Covid-19 virus it was postponed. Since surgery I have had intermittent itching to my stomach, not the laparoscopic incisions, but to my stomach. When I scratch i have little welts that come and go. Has anyone else experienced this?