Search the Community

If you truly are logging and measuring everything precisely, and your intake is under 600 calories it is impossible for you not to lose weight. It has to be the three week stall. Sometimes it can last a little while. I know it’s hard but try to trust the process. The weight loss will start again soon.

It may take a few months to get used to eating more…both in volume and in calories. You are not even 6 months post, so you may be limited in your volume ability. You dont need to eat 1200 cals today…just aim to get there eventually (and trust me, you will). I reached goal at 7 months, and it took me 4 months and an additional 15-ish lbs lost before i found my maintenance balance. For me, this was about 2000 cals a day at that time. Which honestly was a Herculean effort as I too was sub-800 cals throughout weight loss phase. I got full really quickly back then (and still do today, but to a lesser degree) so i relied on chicharron (i.e., pork rinds/cracklins). I know, I know, its really high in fat so it may not be everyone’s bag, but for ME it was high in protein, zero carb, and did not stuff me like meats did/do…and its SUPER high in calories. Im 3.5 years out now and pretty much have been maintaining my weight ever since (+/- 5 lbs), and average about 1800 cals these days (eating all sorts of food, both healthy and not-so-healthy, and yes, i even eat bread now, lol) Do what you can, a little bit at a time, and you and your body will get used to more calories AND volume eventually. Good Luck! ❤️

Thanks! Yeah it went well but I wasn't feeling it tbh. He luckily didn't offer food or anything but we talked about weight loss because he said he really wants to lose 10 lbs and I can't believe it but I told him I was on a weight loss journey and recently lost a lot of weight. That was the first time ever I've been comfortable enough with MYSELF to talk about that so I'm very happy about that. In the past I would freeze up if a date talked about diet or exercise (even when I was losing weight in the past, I had such a negative relationship to myself and my body) but it made me realize how much I've grown as a person to be able to speak openly about that. I phrased it like yeah I'm on a weight loss journey so I'm very conscious about what I'm eating and drinking right now. Didn't mention surgery but then he was like thats great i want to lose 10 lbs, maybe for our next date we can go on a run together LOL Not sure there will be a next date for me. I did that for experience and to flex my dating muscle a bit. He was very sweet But I'm also moving states so I'm not particularly interested in long term relationships at the moment. He did give me this funny business card at the end. I wonder how it will be in the future though. I don't know why but I almost don't want to tell whoever I date I had gastric bypass until I'm at my goal weight. Sent from my SM-G975U using BariatricPal mobile app

Hello surgery buddies, for the past 4 weeks when i pee, my peel smells like my protein shakes. I take the fairlife ones. But am drinking my liquids, i dont make it to 64, usually 50 something oz daily. And my nails stopped growing, and now britlle and breaking that it hurts to grab things. My hair loss is better, stopped thinning and got a hair cut last week. I had my RNY Nov 2021 down 107lbs today. Im meeting with my dietician in 2 week in person to shop at the store and read labels properly. Thank you! Sent from my SM-G973U using BariatricPal mobile app

NONE! Apart from marrying my husband it is the best decision I ever made. I am officially a healthy weight as of last Sunday (-58.5 kg/-129 lbs total weight loss right now) at 9 months po and I could not be happier about it 💕

This has meal plans for liquid diet, post op diet, pouch reset, "get back on track", weight management, etc... I bookmarked it, and wanted to share it in case it might help someone else. https://store.bariatricpal.com/pages/meal-plans-for-back-on-track-weight-loss-diet#recipes-meal-plans-diets-12192

I experienced the same thing. Was eating less than 900 calories when I reached my goal & struggled for a while to physically eat more at any one time too. I had to snack & increased them until I was snacking 5 times a day. And yes I felt like I was eating all day long. My weight loss continued albeit very slowly & finally about 11 months after goal. I was still seeing my dietician through the first 6 months of this 11 months (Covid hit). For my snacks I added a second sometimes third serve of carbs (multigrain crackers), hummus, nuts, 1or 2 serves of fruit, protein bar, cheese, liverwurst, peanut paste, chia pudding, & used salad dressings. My dietician also suggested adding milk powder to my milk but I found it too sweet except in chia pudding. I eventually reached about 1300 calories. It can take a little time to sort this out in a way the best suits you. While you may lose more initially, you may also have a bounce back in your 2nd/3rd year as @catwoman7 said as you settle into a way of eating that complements how you want to live & enjoy your life. I eventually was able to eat about a recommended portion size of most foods (& I do eat slowly) & reduced my snacks to three a day. I am careful about what I eat 90% of the time. At my lowest I was 48.2kg but settled at 49kg for a good year. I put on 2 kgs a few months ago after I went on a higher dose HRT med & I had to add more protein to my diet due to an absorption issue (from my gall removal last year not my sleeve). I made some small changes to my diet but I still eat more calories as a result of the extra protein so the weight gain is understandable. All the best.

So true! At first I thought it was all in my head, but then I noticed people at work who hadn’t ever talked with me (for years) would look my way, smile, strike up a conversation, etc. It’s like they were afraid obesity was contagious, or I was so low that I wasn’t worthy of their attention, or maybe I had finally redeemed myself and deserved to be acknowledged. And others are even more friendly than in the past, saying “You look great!” I know everyone sees I lost weight, but some people keep their mouths shut and remain professional. *Please don’t comment on my appearance* I am the same person on the inside. Others’ behavior is abundantly clear. And also I remember who treated me well before the weight loss, no matter how I looked. 😀

I’m sorry for all of your losses. I didn’t think I was nervous but on the morning of surgery I realized I was when I felt like I needed to pee every few minutes. I peed four times in an hour which seemed impossible since I hadn’t had anything to drink for the last 11 hours. I think I would have preferred crying to shuffling around in that awkward hospital gown and socks scurrying to the nearest bathroom

You can add more calorie dense foods like butter, cream, oils, cheese, nut butters etc. to your cooking if you need to immediately halt your weight loss. Then longer term maybe you can think about your protein/good fat balance? I cannot wait to eat avocados without having to balance the entire rest of my day around that. My stats are very similar to yours although I had my surgery a month earlier. I for one am riding this train as far as it will take me but I know we all have our personal goals!

Bypassingmyphat, I am just beginning my journey to surgery and have been doing research and learning all I can. My gut feeling on this is to go cut it yourself, take control over the one piece of this journey you can at this point. If it is long enough donate it to a charity that uses the hair to make wigs for cancer patients. That way you can bring some good to someone else.

A little over 2 weeks till surgery (6/16). Starting my preop diet Thursday. My program includes no caffeine :(, Sugar, Dairy, or carbs with the final two days being liquid only. As it gets closer the more anxious I get, I have been on a weight loss journey for 10 years and I'm really hoping this will finally be it.

Hello gang, I had WLS in 2004. I was one of the early lap band recipients in Australia under Prof. Paul O'Brien. I did great and lost 46kg (101lbs), but then life set in and I had two kids and a suicidal husband so I let the weight creep back up. I had a revision in 2013 due to a hiatus hernia so large I was having esophageal spasms. So now, I'm at the heaviest I've ever been, and I've got a ventral hernia that goes from my navel to my sternum. My surgeon said he won't even try to fix it if my BMI is over 30 because it will just come right back. He then talked to me about how the lap band has fallen out of favor because it was not as effective as the original studies promised. He suggested a revision to a VSG, and set me up in my insurance's approval program for WLS. The first step is the removal of the band and port and recovery from that. Surgery is scheduled for July 7th. After that I'll progress through the "hoop-jumping" to qualify for the VSG, which providing everything goes smoothly, I'll qualify for in October. So far no one has stated any pre-surgery weight loss requirements, but I have been studying the various plans and doctor's programs I've found online, as well as reading personal stories from support forums like this one, so I can get an aggregate view of the entire procedure both pre and post-op. I must admit that the pendulum swings widely across what I've seen, both in program execution and in individual responses. Of course, I realize that there are outliers on every scale, and I'm averaging what I see. I got this little binder from the program introduction meeting (Dignity Health), and I've been adding my own research to it, things like print out of appropriate bariatric (or equivalent) vitamins based on their recommendations, worksheets for tracking eating and drinking, pre and post-op protein shakes, mixes, and recipes, motivational type posters, and text documents on things like how digestion works, how protein is used by the body, etc. Note, all the research is stuff from actual university or journal studies, I'm not taking answers from Reddit or Quora as facts! I've decided the biggest issue I've seen is the grief process that hits people after the surgery when they suddenly realize they can't eat what they want. I've read a lot of threads (not just here) of people rebelling and hating themselves and hurting themselves because of this. I do not want to deal with this. I'm already working on changing my eating habits, albeit slowly. I want to be more in control of this transition than I've seen, So, if you've read this far, my questions to you are: Did you make any effort pre-op to really change your eating habits? Did you experience grief or regret post-op if you didn't? Did you regret your surgery for any reason OTHER than the food restriction/complications? Thanks for discussing!

my loss eventually stopped on its own. Don't forget that most of us have a 10-20 lb rebound from our lowest weight, so I wouldn't panic too much if you go a few lbs below goal.

Hello. I was sleeved Dec 28, 2021. I have reached my personal weight goal. I had been eating about 800 calories per day. I talked to my nutritionist on Wednesday and she said go to 1200 calories per day. I will say this is really hard. I didn’t realize how hard it would be. It seems all I do is eat and then I’m trying to get fluids in. It is so uncomfortable. I have never been able to get 64oz. Of fluids. Probably 40oz. My nutritionist is ok with it at this point as it has been such a struggle and hard to get to that point. I weighed myself and down 2 more lbs since Wednesday. I honestly don’t want to lose anymore. Any suggestions and meal plan ideas would be greatly appreciated. Also, any idea how long it should take before the loss will stop? I don’t have another appointment until 2 weeks. I am 5’9 and 190 lbs. this is comfortable too me. I was previously banded and it malfunctioned and had to have it removed and then sleeved. I looked healthy and was good here. Thank you in advance for any suggestions

Well its Sunday and I have just one mote fay before surgery Tomorrow will be hard. I am going with my niece and her husband and daughter to a friends house for a cookout. They get to eat hamburgers and hot dogs and baked beans, while I will be sipping my clear broth and drinking water and apple juice. Juice to keep my sugar up. Have to be up btight and early Tuesday foray surgery. Have to be at the hospital by 8:00 am.for surgery at 10:00 am . My journey has been a real tough one. I started out at 410 lbs and am down to 367 lbs with just dieting. I haven't thought of a goal weight yet Any weight loss is a victory to me.After all my health issues, I have to do better and get healthier. I need to focus on just getting through this surgery and then I can begin the real weight loss journey. GOOD LUCK TO ALL( ESPECIALLY THOSE WITH SURGERY'S COMING UP) THANKS FOR ALL THE POSITIVE FEEDBACK AND COMMENTS. Sent from my LM-Q730 using BariatricPal mobile app

Thank you! The weight loss has definitely slowed significantly in the last 3 months, but I don't think that I'm done! I think I can and will get down to 200ish which is my goal. The surgeon said this is why exercise becomes so critical once you are like 6 months out and I need to start doing that. lol

Literally never--even now, more than three years after surgery. I just walked as necessary for my daily routine. And it didn't impact my weight loss at all--I was quite successful.

Who is this in response to? Because Summerseeker was asking about itching scalp relief, not hair-loss prevention.

Beat way to see if a low carb diet works for you is to try it out for several weeks and see? If you see/experience what you like, then yay! If not try something else. Everyone will respond to different types of carbs differently. I went ultra low carb during weight loss phase, and lost the weight I wanted. BUT…I discovered later in maintenance that my carb intake made little to no difference in weight loss/gain/maintenance for ME. All that mattered was total calorie intake, whether these cals came from bread or steak or cookies. What carb intake DID make a difference for ME, was physical appearance. When i am low-carbing i look more lean and defined. When I’m not, I look more puffy and full. So while low-carbing makes my body (in my opinion) look nicer, my face gets gaunt-er…so its a win-lose lol. (AND i am basically still the same weight either way, eating basically the same amount of calories). But again, try it yourself and see (and also speak to your NUT of course ) Good Luck! ❤️

Um, nothing you put *onto* your scalp will ever stop hair loss because that's not how it works. Hair is dead keratin-based stuff, like fingernails. Your scalp skin is an organ with many jobs to do. How on earth would bathing that scalp skin in anything after hair has already extruded from the scalp help it not fall out? It's what is going on at the roots (or what went on there many weeks ago actually) that determines that I had been so happy not to have lost hair after my surgery but this week it has been falling out in handfuls. I've had this many times in the past after doing VLCDs etc. It's annoying but it'll grow back eventually. I hope that everyone who has a hard time with this (for whatever reason) sees it pass very soon xxx

Lol!! I’m going to up it a little and see if that assists in my weight loss. It is scary though! I see you mentioned that upping your calories during your last stall was helpful. I believe that it may work for me too. I’ll report back!

TBH you are doing so well. 40lbs is a lot of weight to loose and you are on the right track. You should not change anything that your team has set for you. My dietician explained bariatric weight loss like a staircase. For every down step there is a flat step. If you track your food, { I use My Fat Secret UK} you know that you are in a calorie deficit. You can not fail. I am lucky if I manage 850 a day but I have had a difficult time since surgery. So am a little behind my peers. I once had a 5 week stall that had me worrying but the good people here put me right. Onwards and downwards.

1200 calories is pretty low. Have you considered increasing your caloric intake? It's not intuitively obvious, but sometimes eating more calories can increase your weight loss - your body may be in starvation mode and conserving due to low calories. Increasing the calories, even to 1400 or so, might kickstart your body into burning fat again.

Thank you! I am so appreciative of all the information that I'm getting from my Nutritionist and the weight loss surgery team in general. I do think that the education component is very important - I would say it's as important as the surgery itself. The surgery is a tool. The education is a tool. When both tools are used at the same time, success comes easier, I'm sure.