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This happens to me too, especially the chocolate based Quest flavors. I think I'm sensitive to the sugar alcohols or something. I can only eat half at a time and even then it's iffy. The mint Quest flavor was particularly bad and sent me running for the bathroom within 30 minutes. So, I finally learned my lesson and just gave up on the Protein bars. If I'm on the run I'll carry stuff like beef Jerky, nuts or pork rinds.

Part of the issue with Quest bars is the sugar alcohols and part is the Fiber. Many people have issues with them. I did when I was earlier in the process, but have been fine with them since about 9 months out.

Rules I "break"..... I drink alcohol. I eat pancakes, muffins, Cookies, cake, candy, Pasta, bread and rice I do regular sugar stuff...not low cal/sugar free (yuck) I drink with meals I don't count calories, track or measure my food (except Protein and water-see below) I usually drink decaf, but won't hesitate to drink caffeinated if that's all that's available I graze and snack I have no formal exercise program or plan (my regular life is active enough) Rules I follow... The first two rule breaks above are done in moderation (I guess this is MY rule) No carbonation (tried it....ouch) Take my Vitamins every single day Drink at least 64oz water/day Get 60-80g protein/ day Get bloodwork done regularly and adjust vitamins accordingly My personal #1 rule..... Eat a healthy, balanced diet of protein, veggies, fruit and whole grains every day.

And what rules do you NEVER break? To be brutally honest, I break the "no caffeine" rule (I drink a coffee every morning) and I break the "don't drink liquids with your meal" rule. On occasion I'm even known to consume an alcoholic beverage. These are my sins! That being said, I adhere firmly to: daily Vitamins, supplements, Protein intake, exercise (cardio and strength), calorie limit, no carbonated drinks. Is it fair to say we find what works for each of us? Compliance 100% of the time to 100% of the rules seems unattainable. But I like to think I comply to the vast majority of them most of the time. Disclaimer: This post is not intended to encourage rule breaking, and please don't admonish me or anyone else for being honest! I wish everyone success on their journey, whether they are rule-breakers like me, or not.

I have talked to many people frlom different parts of the country who have had different "rules" after surgery. Some said no alcohol, some said no caffiene, etc. What rules did you get? Have you followed them?

No alcohol,no smoking, actually alot of restrictions and I've followed them to the almost t Sent from my SM-G935T using BariatricPal mobile app

Penny, it sounds like you are in excellent hands with Dr. Hunky! That's the kind of Dr. you want when you're faced with difficult decisions. He is very reassuring and I hope he is 100% correct in his educated diagnosing. My prayers are with you. Lisa, I am so glad to read that you have decided to see a gastroenteroligist. (is that spelled right?!) You had an infection of long duration, and it probably requires long duration anti-biotics to resolve it. I hope the Dr.s take a personal interest in your case, and do what it takes to get you healthy and your band back in full working order. Best wishes your way. Oh yeah, I love to drink. It is my remedy of choice when stress comes a knockin'. I really watch myself though, because my dad was an alcoholic, and I don't want to go there. I strive for moderation, and it has worked thus far.

My friend that had the surgery last year around this time said what helps her to drink a bit more is eating some peanuts! Or little pieces of bread that will help absorb the alcohol more than your tummy! I'll try this when I'm ready to my first drink

Wait WHAT!?!?! You had five drinks and drove an hour later? :faint: Yeah i live like 10 minutes from where we were and was perfectly fine. I danced and pee'd it off. And we ate food afterwards so i was fine.The only way your body can get rid of alcohol is through your liver. Dancing and peeing will not help your body metabolise alcohol. Only time. You were a massive danger to yourself and other road users. I appreciate the consurn and i know how i felt and i know where your coming from. Thanks.

I really didn't think I'd do it. My goal was -88. I've been hovering right around -98-99 for awhile but wasn't trying to lose anymore. Then I went on a carb binge (ice cream, bread, muffins, chips, chocolate, Cookies, potatoes and LOTS of alcohol) while traveling to visit family and attend a conference and gained 4 pounds. I was totally OK with it, since I was still below goal. But after just 10 days back to my normal eating routine, I lost that 4 pounds plus 1 extra to hit the magic number 100. I'm not real big on the scale numbers, but this one does feel kinda cool

We don't have any carb limits and are, in fact, encouraged to eat low glycemic carbs very early. One of our first soft foods is mashed potatoes...regular or sweet. We're encouraged to eat 1000-1200 calories a day as soon as we can. (I did at 3 weeks out) We are supposed to get 60+g of protein per day We eat six 200 calorie meals per day. (eventually transition to bigger meals, lighter snacks) We are told to avoid high glycemic carbs, only one caffeinated beverage a day...the rest should be decaf. No NSAIDS. Alcohol and carbonated beverages are both treated as something you can have once in a blue moon, but should not be part of your regular diet because they have poor nutritional value and high empty calories. Empty calorie items....sugary foods, added sugar, alcohol, soda...should be consumed at no more than 75 calories total per day....and should be avoided altogether if possible. We eat low glycemic bread (sourdough, pumpernickel, whole wheat), lower glycemic brown rice, and protein pasta. We eat fruit early and regularly. Veggies and fiber are encouraged. We're cleared for almost all foods at about 6 weeks. We take a multi vitamin, B12, B Complex, and Calcium

-No carbs whatsoever until we're in maintenance (I've mainly followed, although I'm not sure about staying into ketoacidosis so long.) -No alcohol until at least 6 months and make sure you're at home the first time. -Limit caffeine -Atleast 30 minutes of exercise a day. Try for an hour. (I have no problem getting this in.) -No fruit until 6 months out because we don't eat much they don't want us filling up on the fruit and its sugars. I've mainly stuck to these rules although I don't agree with all of them.

Ive suffered from anxiety and depression which is crazy because i havent felt this good in years!!!! I signed myself up for mental health and they said it is very common after weightloss surgery as well as divorce/breakups and alcoholism. advice/ heard of/ going thru ANYBODY? Sent from my SM-G928T using BariatricPal mobile app

If the cheeseheads were not so heavy the possibility of wearing it would probably be greater, which also includes the amount of alcohol that was in my body. Anyway I get that asked quite often! I am a season ticket holder and the tailgating rocks! What else do you have to do in the winter????:crying:

Wow! I always thought I was a pretty savvy NFL fan, but I only recently learned that the Packers are a fan-owned franchise. I think that is absolutely fabooooooo! Sure, professional sports are big business...but it's great to see a fanbase that actually has more invested than the typical fair-weather loyalty that most clubs see. Win or lose, Packbackers seem to be loyal. I asked my dietician during my consult about the prohibition on alcohol after the band. She said that it wasn't just about it having empty calories. Since your stomach is so much smaller, you won't have much food in it at a time. Since there isn't any food to slow things down, the alcohol you drink goes straight into your system. She never understood how true this was until she did a guest speaking at a support group and heard that most folks get smashed on a single shot. She said that some folks have wine now and then, but since you cannot drink with your meals she said you'd have to keep an eye on how you tolerate the wine on it's own. :crying:

Drinking alcohol also throws you out of ketosis. I'm doing a personal study on this with the level of ketosis and time passed post-alcohol using ketone strips.

How long were you advised to wait until you consumed alcohol? What happened when you drank for the first time?

How are you with the alcohol? My brother's wedding is at the end of this month and while Im not going for tipsy or drunk i'd like to share a toast with them.

I nursed a mixed drink at about 3 months while I was on vacation, some sort of blue coconutty conconction, didn't impact me any differently. I didn't finish it because I couldn't hold it all and, like Kindle said, not worth the calories . TBH, I haven't had any alcohol since, so I don't know how my tolerance would change with time.

The only "rules" I was given were: Don't wash your meals down - I adhere to this one as drinking with meals tend to make me uncomfortable anyway. Get your Protein - Yes. In maintenance 1 year now and still put a scoop of whey in my (real) coffee every morning. I avoid caffeine the rest of the day now. (Previously lived on diet coke). Stay compliant with supplements - Yep. Still do that too. Vitamin deficiency is a real risk with us. My Iron sat was down a bit even while taking iron supplements as directed (outside any other supplements) so I changed to a chewable with C. Hopefully I'll absorb it better. Don't know if it's helped, but I have more energy now. Guess I'll find out at my next physical. Other than that, I eat high protein and pretty clean during the week, exercise every weekday and party on the weekends including alcohol in moderate amounts. I don't consider it "rule breaking", but living life as a fit person in maintenance!

Hi guys, As a newly registered user I like to say hi to everyone who uses this forum. I am a newbie to this forum. I am NYK from Canada. I am glad to join your wonderful forum. Thanks NYK alcoholism treatment

I am just curious , as it will be my first christmas post weightloss surgery I will be about 5 months post, I am wondering what it will be like? Right now I am not interested in food much but every now and again I miss being able to over indulge lol. Luckily I am allowed to drink alcohol on my plan so that will not be so bad haha. ( I am not even into it when I used to love it lol) I am worried to people gain weight over christmas lol ? What was your portion sizes like, would love to see christmas food portions lol

It's been interesting looking back over my entries on this blog along with the journal that I keep intermittently on my computer. I think that it's chronicled not only the weight loss side of my journey, but a portion on my journey through my mental illness in relationship to my weight. I started seeing a therapist last week. I probably should have sooner, and for anyone who has any kind of mental health disorder and is thinking about/having/had the surgery and even some of those who don't have a mental health disorder, it is something I would definitely recommend. I have struggled with my mental health since I was a teenager and it has huge ties to my weight, so it's definitely relevant for me to have new issues as well as old issues cropping up as I continue to lose weight. It's funny because before surgery I reminded myself a number of times that weight loss was not a catch all for solving many of the problems that I have. Weight loss is just that - a loss of weight to increase my health. I am now at 233 (lowest I have seen is 232) and still losing steadily, although much slower than before. Some days I feel like my entire life has changed, others I feel like I'm still left standing in the same place. Half of the time I cannot see the weight loss in the mirror. I can see it in the pictures, I hear it from the people around me, but there's this mental disconnect between that and the person I see in the mirror. I fit into smaller pants and my measurements shrink, but my waist still looks the same size (though one side of my stomach is bigger than the other, apparently I have some scar tissue or something holding my left side at a little bit larger around the stomach). I think this is one of my biggest struggles in regards to motivation. So now that I'm approximately five months out, I'd like to take a minute for myself to outline what I think are the good and the bad that I've experienced from this surgery and from my journey over the past five months. Good: - Moving down from size 28 tight pants to size 22 slightly tight pants - Hearing my coworker tell me today that I look like half of the person I used to be and that I now have a baby face - Being told by my boyfriend that from the back waist up I look like I was never heavy to begin with, supposedly I now have a thin frame - Having my mom notice that you can see my cheek bones - Not being out of breath when trying to keep up with my classmates - Having my smaller scrubs be too big and baggy - Having my boyfriend be able to wrap his arms almost all the way around me (like almost back to himself) - Having a boyfriend who is amazing (Yes, I attribute meeting him to the confidence I gained after surgery) - Being able to walk up flights of stairs without being winded - Being able to shave my legs without feeling like I'm doing some weird acrobatics - Every time I realize something new fits - Being able to sit next to someone on a bus and not feel like they are crossing their fingers I don't sit next to them - Having a ton of extra length on my seatbelt - Realizing I have collar bones and bones in my shoulders - Being able to see the bones/tendons in my hands - Having my rings fit every finger - Feeling like people look at me instead of through me - Not feeling like the largest person in every room - Hitting the high end of projected weight loss by my doctor and still continuing to lose - Not seeing a 3 on the beginning number of the scale - Having lost something like 20% body fat according to my scale - Not having to clear my plate out of anxiety at social settings - Being cold at night instead of sweating my butt off (I prefer blankets to fans) - Not feeling like the first thing people see is my weight - Feeling comfortable enough in my body to have sex with the lights on and no covers - Being able to reach my toes without doing weird bending manuvers - Being able to paint my toenails - The relief of not being at imminent risk of diabetes at 25 - Being able to fit in the bathroom stall and not always having to seek out the handicapped one - The periods of increased confidence - Feeling like I am moving on in my life Bad: - Hormonal imbalances - increases in mood swings, neediness, clingyness, irritability - Saggy skin - Lack of motivation to: Work out, take vitamins, get in protein - I struggle daily to fight my noncompliance - Fatigue (Probably related in part to intermittent compliance with vitamins and protein) - Anxiety related to the possibility of ever gaining the weight back - Alcoholism could easily become a problem - I have to stay away from it completely - Dealing with feelings rather than being able to turn to food for comfort So the goods obviously outweigh the bads by far. And many of the downsides are either related to mental health issues that were already present and have started to reoccur or lack of compliance with my plan. I have tried to start schedules for myself and that's one of the things I will be working on with my therapist. I have always had issues with compliance - and the biggest thing I need to do is make sure that I get all of my medicines and vitamins in, because I feel 110% better when I do. So my New Years resolutions will include: - Setting a day out every month to increase my compliance through scheduling, setting short term goals, and recognizing where my weaknesses have been - Increasing my exercise - Tracking my protein - Not allowing myself to justify that bad foods are ok because I can only have 2 bites anyway (2 bites four times a week still adds up) That was kind of long and rambley. Anyway, I hope that it helps others who might be looking into this and have some of the same mental health issues to maybe understand what it's like on the other side so that maybe they can prepare a little better and be able to manage some of the barriers to health better than I have.

My surgeon is/was excellent and I had every confidence in him. That's about where it ends. Most pronounced are the two NUTS in his office, just wack-a-doos, All of my time with them has been...interesting. My two nutrition classes were dominated by PATIENTS who wanted to discuss when they could drink alcohol again, and all sorts of other ridiculous crap that was just a waste of time. I will certainly see MY surgeon in the future when/if I have any questions or concerns, but after my 8 week check I am pretty much done with the rest.

Ok so it's been a while since I last blogged but a lot has been going on. I'm from Iceland. An island way up north. So I just came back from travelling to Spain, a Mediterranean country and let me tell you, things there are different from what I'm used to. I've been to Spain 3 times before and never thought that much about food. I just ate what ever and loved it. But having the lap band is more difficult. The town I was staying at didn't have that many restaurants but when I went to them, they carried BREAD BREAD BREAD. They loved serving bread or huge dishes! I love tabas mmmm but it's served on bread, thick slices of bread. I can only eat thin slices. So when out eating, I ended up eating fries, omelette and lasange. But only found one restaurant carrying lasagne. But I tried cooking at home as well, so I wouldn't starve and didn't really want omelette or fries for every meal. The temperature! Gosh it was HOT. That mean that my polar body was swollen ever day with extra fluid and that also meant that my stomach opening was a lot smaller. I had to make a lot of trips to the bathroom spit out food that got stuck in the opening. The Productive burping was terrible! No matter what I ate. My worst case was a tomato!! Hello!! A tomato, a very well chewed tomato! I just had terrible time with it. That's why I was afraid to eat what ever was on the menu. But fries, I know they are deep fried and not that healthy, but I could chew them into baby food! What does a hot woman need in a hot weather??? ice cream. mmmm love some good ice cream. And I had a lot of it. It was a guilty pleasure. But it was so good in the hot weather. Alcohol. I was very very careful with that. I wanted a cold beer very badly but I stuck to cocktails with no carbonated liquids in it and yes that was just fine. And never got drunk or tipsy or what ever. Did not want to add hangover and throwing up to the PB!! I even at once point thought that it would be best to finish the trip off by eating only chocolate and ice cream because that went down very well haha. Also the company I was with. They were so nice and understanding but I was giving myself hard time for making them wait for me while I ate really really really slowly. We could never eat anywhere in hurry, ever. I came with a solution though, I sometimes grabbed a banana because that's easy to eat on a go. Now at home, I'm still swollen from the travel but I couldn't wait stepping on the scale and no weight gain!! to my surprise! I'll see how it went after my body has adjusted after the travel. I have to tell you though that for the first time in my life, I had lots of left overs at the restaurants I ate at. I felt like apologizing for it to the waiters, for not finishing my food. I've always finished everything at a restaurant but I was very careful, even though the portions were big, that I would only eat until I was satisfied (not full) and I'm proud of that. Overall, I did enjoy my trip very much and Spain is a fantastic country. And I've always enjoyed the food there before the lap band. But this was a difficult trip food wise and not that healthy I'm glad it didn't set me back tough. I'm happy to be home and on Monday hopefully my body has recovered and that I will not have any extra fluid.