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I am 16 months post-VSG and not quite to my goal (but surpassed my medical team's goal). I do eat protein first and get 90+ oz of water in a day, but I find that I am grazing more often and not eating on-plan sometimes. I know the "go back to basics" and the typical bariatric responses to keep going on my weight loss, but I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts/experiences/etc. specifically about Weight Watchers (WW+) post-VSG? Good, bad, opinions?

Hello! I am in Gainesville, Fl. trying to having surgery at UF Health Shands Hospital. I had my consult with the surgeon(Dr. Mann) Feb, 1st and have completed everything on my check list for insurance approval except my psyche consult which I have an appointment March 29th. When I went to preop for my required EGD they drew my blood for all the required labs. I was not expecting to have those labs drawn that day. I am not a heavy drinker, but I do drink moderately every other week or so. I have stopped drinking and was planning on getting those labs drawn a little close to the end of my check list to give my body time to eliminate the alcohol. So, of course I tested positive for alcohol and now the surgery coordinator is saying the bariatric team is reviewing those results, but not giving me any further information. Does anyone have any experience with this? Could I be denied all together for having the surgery or will they delay submitting for insurance approval? I am anxious because they just handed me a booklet with a list and said go do everything on this list then call us when it is all done, but they never said stop drinking that day or gave me any real direction. I work for the State of Florida and have BCBS PPO insurance. Does anyone else have this same insurance and how long did it take to get approval after they submitted your file? Any and all help would be appreciated!

Hello! I am in Gainesville, Fl. having surgery (hopefully) at UF Health Shands Hospital. I had my consult with the surgeon(Dr. Mann) Feb, 1st and have completed everything on my check list for insurance approval except my psyche consult which I have an appointment March 29th. When I went to preop for my required EGD they drew my blood for all the required labs. I was not expecting to have those labs drawn that day. I am not a heavy drinker, but I do drink moderately every other week or so. I have stopped drinking and was planning on getting those labs drawn a little close to the end of my check list to give my body time to eliminate the alcohol. So, of course I tested positive for alcohol and now the surgery coordinator is saying the bariatric team is reviewing those results, but not giving me any further information. Does anyone have any experience with this? Could I be denied all together for having the surgery or will they delay submitting for insurance approval? I am anxious because they just handed me a booklet with a list and said go do everything on this list then call us when it is all done, but they never said stop drinking that day or gave me any real direction. Any and all help would be appreciated!

NeeWorldMe, I also have intermittent lightheaded ness. I have found that when this happens to me, I am behind on my fluids. I now keep water with me all the time. Regarding losing the hair, it is “normal” to lose hair at about 4 months. I believe I read on the Mayo Clinic’s bariatric website that while “normal” getting all your protein in each day will help with the hair loss. Also the does of Biotin may help. I take 10,000 2 x daily. Just some suggestions. 😊😊

Hi and thanks for your response. I dont have a bariatric therapist. I have looked endlessly for a dietition with no luck. Maybe the therapist is what I need. Sent from my SM-G960U using BariatricPal mobile app

What has worked best for me when I've regained a little....is therapy. Just figuring out the self sabotaging behaviors and the feelings and issues behind them...makes a tremendous difference. I watch my eating...if it starts to get crazy and I can't bring myself to food journal and address it...if the scale goes up more than five pounds...I make an appointment with the bariatric therapist. Helps like nothing else. For me, anywho. Might not apply to you, but figured it was worth throwing out there. Best wishes on getting back on track. You can do it:)

So I decided to try Jim Buddy's Protein Donut, from the Bariatric Pal Store. I got the cake batter flavor. I did not like it at all. I am so mad that I wasted $3 on it! It had a weird texture, and left an awful aftertaste in my mouth. I knew it wasn't going to be like a regular donut, but didn't expect it to be so bad.

in 2011 I was sleeved with no indication of having a hernia. I believe if the doctor saw that, he would have indicated to me that he would go ahead and remove it, but because it wasnt seen then, the sleeve was a stand alone surgery. Now had he done the gastric sleeve with the rny, I think my weight loss success would have been for a long time before gaining little to none weight gain. Nevertheless, the infamous GERD came to crash the party in 2019 and I was scheduled a bariatric doctor for a revision in September 2020. At that point I started the process which leads up to surgery and I was approved by my insurance company, thus my surgery date was 02/23/21. The doctor chose gastric bypass which he indicated that he tightened up my sleeve and rerouted my intestine where whenever I eat, it would bypass my stomach and go straight to my intestine, hence longevity of weight loss. He also mentioned to me that I had an hiatal hernia, which he repaired during the surgery. Because this is a revision, my weight loss will go moderately slow, however I choose to think that is on a "case by case" basis. Ive seen people with this revision go on to lose around 50-60 lbs in 4-5 months. I may very well fall in with these people, due to my rapid weight loss 9 years ago. my hw in 2011 was 303, sw was 289, fw 179, gw 160. I never reached my goal weight the first time, but I lost a total of 110lbs in 1 year, and then in 2013 I couldnt get the skin to tighten up, so I qualified for a panni, aka tummy tuck. i have big turkey wings and that is considered cosmetic, had Ive gotten that done, I probably would have gotten to my goal weight with ease because I went down to 173 after that surgery then the plateau started, but I maintained that weight for 7 years, then in 2019 I went through a depression state and going back to my bad habits, and smoking ciggs, then to make things worse, covid came to join the world so my weight skyrocketed to a shockingly total weight gain in 2 years of 76 lbs of it back. Thats 40 lbs away from going back to my surgery weight! That was a scary thought, but I think if I didnt have the gerd, my hiatal hernia wouldnt have been noticed. I know how to keep my weight down, because I had highs and lows throughout maintaining my weight without having a head game behind the fact that I was no longer 173. I was dating this guy from atlanta for 2 years and all I did was travel, splurge and dine out 3-4 days a week breakfast lunch and dinner. I didnt work and he took care of alll my bills and my childrens tuition for college and high school. This caused me to be settled and gained happy weight then my happy weight went flat as I got tired of being smothered and controlled by him so I left him right after valentines day. I then joined the gym at the end of February 2018 because I had got to 220 in my weight! I was making 50 that year so I wanted to at least get back into my size 9/10 before my birthday. Well I did. I lost 22 lbs in 3 months and was toned and force to be reckoned with. So I know that this is a long response, but I just wanted to share with you my journey as a 2 time bariatric patient. Im 5 days out from my revision, and I have lost a total 17 lbs which is to include losing 10lbs in 3 days from preop preparation. If I stick to the diet the way my nut and my dr has set forth for me, I could very well get past the goal weight they have for me, which is 180, and thats due to my frame, and my height as an African American female. At the rate that Im going, I will have lost a whopping 80 lbs in 2 months! But because the weight loss will be slow, and if I had to guess, I would say to get to MY gw of 160 would probably take me about 7-8 months to achieve that goal. Who knows with a sustained diet and exercise, I could very well get to my goal sooner. I hope this document of a response helps. lol, but best wishes to whatever surgery you decide to choose and God speed on your recovery.

Please contact your bariatric surgeon. This is super important for your baby's health, so please don't guess. If I were getting pregnant after surgery, I would be sure to have my vitamin and minerals blood tests done with my bariatric surgeon... to make sure I'm not deficient before getting pregnant. In particular, I would be concerned about Iron levels. Getting professional advice about pregnancy nutrion and supplements from people who understand bariatric surgery is super important. Best wishes on expanding your family!

My bariatric team neither encouraged nor discouraged my goal of reaching a healthy BMI. My surgeon gave me the statistics and then said that those were just averages, that some people lose more and some less. He did say he'd be happy if I lost 50% of my excess weight and we'd see what happened. And I'm glad because if he had been more discouraging, I might not have believed a healthy BMI was possible for me. He didn't set me up with unrealistic expectations but he also didn't squash my enthusiasm. And in the end I did end up losing much more than average. I know getting there is only half the journey, I'm right now trying to learn how to maintain it. But I'm not sorry I set a healthy BMI as my goal. If I had set my goal to losing 50% of my excess weight, I might have stopped there because an authority figure said that was all I would lose.

I'd research other surgeons, just to get a feel for the different approachs....then make your decision. There is emerging evidence that prolonged super low calorie diets before and after surgery could reset your metabolism to unrealistically low levels that set you up for weight gain later. (not saying this always happens, not saying this is gosple....bariatrics are an emerging science....just sharing that there are a lot of different ideas at play) My group did a very carb restricted diet for two weeks before surgery. We were allowed to drink 5 shakes a day plus one food item from a list.....but this was just to shrink the liver for an easier procedure. My group wanted 10% weight loss, but expected it to take months. We were required to work with a nutritionist, attend fitness classes, healthy cooking classes, support groups. Our whole process took 4-6 months...just to lay the nutrition groundwork and weight loss work before the surgery. After surgery, we were pushed to eat 1200 calories a day as soon as we could tolerate it...in hopes that this would give us a robust metabolic reset. (to be clear, we went through the gradual restoration of diet after surgery for safety....liquid, puree, soft, etc....but our caloric goals were advanced as tolerated) I lost weight slower than most people....but I made goal, and I'm doing really well maintaining. My preferences and nutrition choices are much healthier. I've got good support for the mental side of this process. I feel like I was better prepared by my group for the work of making the permenant changes necessary and dealing with the lifetime challenges. Be a little careful of clinics that push unrealistically brutal calorie restriction. Eating 600 calories a day will make you lose a crap-ton of weight and will make your clinic look like they offer "The Magic Cure"....but you don't need to be their walking bulletin board for a year and then be abandoned by them when you regain. You need a comprehensive program that supports your needs for a lifetime and teaches healthy nutrition and fitness and supports the mental challenges of breaking the addiction.

Hi, I did have my surgery in November. It has not been a very positive or successful experience for me. My issue is not with the surgery itself (maybe), but rather with the follow-up. Allina has been seriously lacking in that department. My questions and concerns go unanswered and unresolved. I am now consulting with a long time bariatric surgeon out of state to make sure I am doing everything right to maximize my loss during this one time only window. I’m not losing much and I get different and contradictory responses from different nurses and dietitians - I don’t even see the same people anymore. I’ve given up on Allina and don’t recommend to those who ask. Ugh - sorry about that. This still upsets me. Dr Svendsen is great. Unfortunately, you don’t see him after your surgery. You follow up with nurses, dietitians, and bariatricians. He’s only the salesman and surgeon. I wish your BF the best. I’m sure he’ll be successful, most are. 💕

If you sign up for Kindle Unlimited, you'll find so many books with recipes for bariatric surgery patients! I've already tried a few meals and they're actually tasty (parmesan-crusted cod, for instance)! Most of them have few ingredients and short cooking times, which are right up my ally. I also created a weekly meal planner with a shopping list section in Excel to help me plan better (I basically found one that I liked online and modeled mine after it). So I'll sit down, pick out recipes that I want to cook, write them in the days that I'll eat them, jot down the ingredients, then go through my pantry and mark off what I have. I just picked up a few things today, in fact. One thing I've learned while trying to diet in the past, is that it's much easier to stick to it when you plan it out and set aside a day to meal prep. The first image is the blank planner, the second is one I filled out for next week. I put the page numbers of the recipes to find easy and the circled numbers on the right represent how many servings I'm at from that recipe (most of them make 4 servings). Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app

Hello, Is anyone familiar with the Bariatric blogs for Kaiser Permanente for this area? I have heard about them a few times but I cannot find it anywhere! Thank you

Iron deficiency can cause hair loss and dry brittle hair. Sometimes it will NOT show up as anemia. It is VERY common in bariatric surgery patients, particularly women who menstruate. (or are vegetarian, or give blood regularly) Make SURE your doctor is testing your Ferritin level and not just your hemoglobin. You can be incredibly low on available iron and not be anemic. Non-anemic iron deficiency could explain your hair loss. And make sure you're taking your iron supplements separate from your calcium. Also, taking it with vitamin C helps.

This is such an interesting discussion, and we don't talk about this. My first goal was to just be under 200, too. That seemed like enough. Just to be pretty regular sized and not need special accomidation...not have to worry about weight limits, fit in normal auditorium seats.....and maybe get some good health benefits. I reached 200 and thought I could do a little more. I remembered feeling and looking my best at 170 in my youth...back when I could run five miles and work all day and not get too tired. So I thought...ok, I'll try for 170. I'm a muscular person. My feet are size 11 and my shoulders are broader and stouter than many men's. My body style isn't willowy. So I worked hard for 170....got there and felt incredible. Then, I went on a really rugged cross country camping/hiking trip and without realizing it got down to 160 and weirdly....just didn't like how I looked as much. I looked older, my wrinkles were more prominent, I prefer more curve and less prominent muscle on myself. I like eating a few more calories. I like getting 10,000 steps a day...and doing active things that I enjoy....but I don't enjoy constant training schedules and work outs. In the end, it's all a balance. Figuring out your best you...is a balance. Catwoman, I'm glad to hear that your team, like my team....had realistic information available for you and encourage realistic goals for their clients. My team was all about long term results, long term habits, therapy to figure out the bad choices, little changes that add up. Sometimes I feel like the teams that do super restricted calories for super rapid weight loss....are treating their patients more like walking advertisements for their "miracle fix" than patients whose futures they're invested in. I see my bariatric team once a year now. How long will I do this? Forever. They want to see me once a year. If my nutrient levels are stable...this can extend to once every few years...but they want a long term relationship to track my progress for research. I think this is so important.

that's often due to low blood pressure (although you might want to check it out with your PCP or surgeon, as there are other things that can cause that - like low glucose level, inner ear issues, etc - but it's usually a blood pressure issue). The medical term is orthostatic hypotension, and it's pretty common in the early weeks after bariatric surgery. If that's what it is, just get up more slowly. It'll usually resolve on its own, but as an above poster said, if you're on blood pressure meds, check with your doctor as they may need to lower your dosage (or even take you off them).

It’s probably time to visit your primary care physician and discuss your new reality. Are you on blood pressure meds? Other meds? Those might need adjusting. I went through the lightheadedness and my PCP reduced my blood pressure meds, with the goal of stopping them in another month or so. I think you get a different perspective and information from your PCP. The first time I saw her my hair had started falling out and she gave me a prescription for a shampoo. Didn’t know that was available (all I had gotten from the Bariatric center has the advice to take biotin). I’m not sure if the shampoo helped, or if it was the biotin, or just time, or all three but my hair is now growing back like mad. As an added benefit, I love seeing my PCP because she raves about how much healthier I am becoming.

Interesting read. I can't help though but think about how much weight people gain during a time period of 11 years who never were obese in their whole life, maybe not even overweight. I just need to look at colleagues and friends. Weight gain (sometimes really significant) between the age of 35-50 seems to be quite common. So while I definitely don't want to dismiss weight regain over a time span that long, one should maybe also take a look outside the realm of the bariatric world and be careful what to label as "failure" or not (though this usually seems to be more of a patient-problem than a doctor-problem). If "goal" is BMI 24.9 or less you're definitely right. Now I'm going to talk about something that is really rarely talked about in the WLS community (we seem to have exactly one moderately active thread about this): eating disorders or disordered eating. When one takes a look at "failure rates" of treatment of patients suffering from eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia, bariatric patients don't seem to have worse outcomes so we don't seem to be exceptionally "bad patients". Too many patients seem to only change gear and develop overly restrictive eating habits, starve themselves and compulsively exercise, all too often encouraged not only by the scales showing less weight, but also by their environment and even their treatment teams.

I don’t really know. That was what my bariatric team told me to do. Different practices do different things. I fully expected two weeks but glad there wasn’t!

One thing we don't talk about here....because it's negative and not motivational....is that for lots of people, this surgery DOESN'T work. Not because it doesn't do precisely what it's said to do....but because people who have it are sometimes not yet ready to change their habits and address the causes of their poor choices and what drives them. The surgeries are a tool. They absolutely help. But they are not the cure. They fix your stomach, not your head. If you don't fix your head and your habits, the weight loss won't last. The surgeries will NOT prevent you from regaining weight. It's not even that hard to regain. Go to the veterans page...notice that not a lot of people hang out there....and that most of the posts are about...OMG, i'm regaining everything! Most folks don't reach goal. Most folks lose about 50% of their excess weight. This is STILL a really good thing, and WORTH having the surgery. Tons of health benefits in that 50%....and that 50% gets you that much closer to your goal weight when your head is ready to do the work and get disciplined enough to get there. https://www.mdedge.com/diabeteshub/article/150969/obesity/weight-recidivism-after-bariatric-surgery-what-constitutes?sso=true

Kinda reminds me of the time I started dreaming about BREAD of all things. About four months post op I started having vivid dreams about bread. Sandwiches, toast, cinnamon bread, etc. I told my nutritionist about it and she thought it was hilarious! 😂 Then she told me low carb bread would be fine to add to my diet and I tried some low carb wheat bread (not knowing at this point that I have a wheat allergy) and I DUMPED! I felt like I was dying it was so bad! 😭 My bariatric surgeon had told me you didn't dump with my surgery and I complained so loudly at my 6 month check up for that. They said it was weird and asked me what my symptoms were and I told them it was the WORST nausea of my LIFE (and I had brain surgery, for reference), diarrhea, stomach cramps, sweating, shaking, dizzyness, lightheadedness, etc. and they were like: 'yeah that's classic symptoms of dumping syndrome, but that shouldn't have happened'. So they did an allergy test for wheat and it came back positive. How a food allergy mimics dumping syndrome, I don't even know... Anyway, I was so scarred by the incident that I actually had bread that I haven't had it since. On one hand I miss it, but hey, wheat is in like almost EVERYTHING and it gets annoying when you look at labels and see wheat on it and then I can't eat it... why do they friggin' use wheat flour in so many things?! 😡 Anyway, yeah, it's normal. Hilarious and weird, but normal to have vivid food dreams.

It can be done - it is called a total gastrectomy and is usually done for cancer, gastroparesis or other severe gastric problems - but it is something of a big deal to do. The long term functional difference to your RNY is small, but healing time is the big issue - the esophagus (eating tube) is only a two layer structure compared to your stomach pouch which is four or five layers (depending upon how you count things) so the direct attachment to the intestine is trickier than the stomach to intestine. This was an option I looked into some years ago on a cancer issue, and the partial gastrectomy (basically an RNY) had a normal RNY post op healing and eating progression. The total gastrectomy would have required several months on a feeding tube to let things heal before any food could be introduced. So, this is not something to go into lightly. (And, no, I never had either procedure done - second and third opinions indicated that they weren't necessary, at least for the time being.) Something else to look into - have they determined if the GERD is acid, or bile? That's a big difference in treatment, as if it is bile reflux, the basic RNY structure is already somewhat predisposed to that, and taking out the pouch will no help, and likely make it worse. A possible clue here is that the anti-acid meds aren't working, and they wouldn't if it was a bile problem. It sounds like your problem, or a good part of it, is a weak Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES) which is the muscular valve between the stomach and the esophagus. That can be weakened by your obesity history (though that was a long time ago), by over eating - over stuffing your pouch can put pressure on it and weaken it, or by some other disease mechanism. There are procedures available specific to this problem that may solve things without having to go through the gastrectomy. Do some research on surgical treatment for GERD. You need to research and find a surgeon who is very experienced with bariatric problems and revisions to figure out what exactly is going on, and then what the proper solution would be. The RNY (or any procedure, for that matter,) does occasionally cause significant problems so you need someone experienced with that. Good luck in working this out! Note - there are some Facebook groups that cater specifically to people with total or partial gastrectomies, so that would be a good place to look to get a better idea of what living with that procedure is like.

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