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water weight.. might have eaten extra salt or hormones… you are going to be good in a few days.. drink some extra water to make your body release it

It can be a shock when you see the higher number on the scales, but fluctuations happen when you’re losing & when your weight is stable too . Fluid retention, constipation, hormones, just because our bodies can be weird can contribute. It could even be your scales - uneven surface, failing battery, etc. I’ve posted this before but my scales read this a couple of months ago. It initially read more than 150kg - 3x my weight. So yes, heart palpitations & a second or two of thinking how the &**##$ did I put on that much weight before I regained my senses. Replaced the batteries which saw the 136kg weight but turned out the scales were dying.

I told my wife before I had surgery that I would at some point or another regret my decision. I told her that her job was to remind me why it did it in the first place. Thankfully I didn't have to rely on her reminders too much, but there were definitely some times when I questioned if it was worth it. The good news is it does get easier and the bad days are a lot more rare now. I mention this because I think it's important to remember that some of the best things in life are also REALLY hard. Losing weight, whether it's with or without surgery is one of those hard, but ultimately satisfying things. Part of that satisfaction comes from knowing you endured the trial and came out a better person on the other side. I"m now coming up on 3 months post op and I can legitimately say that even though I still struggle sometimes, living with WLS is so much easier now than it was at 4 weeks. You can do it, but you just have to grin and bear it for a while. These sayings may sound trite, but reminding myself that "This too shall pass", and "It's a marathon, not a sprint" are what got me through the hard days.

I'm finally able to keep a little food down and the head cold part is easing up. This chest cold, tho. Lord have mercy. It's just settled right in. I weighed myself today and I lost 5 pounds in 5 days from being so sick. I could only hold down liquids and protein shakes. I'm all for losing weight, but not like that. As I slooowly integrate food back in my diet again, I'm sure I'll put those 5 pounds back on. But that's actually ok. I want to lose the right way. I still can't work out, but maybe things will start to turn around before long. I just want to feel better. I really miss working out. But I have an appt on Monday with my doctor. If my coughing and breathing don't get any better by then, I have to go get xrays of my chest and get put on a nebulizer, steroids, and whatever else. Again. So working out is definitely not in the cards for a while. Grrrr.....

Hi Everyone! I am going on vacation at the end of this month and I wanted to if there is anything you recommend I bring so that I can stay on track for my weight loss journey, I also wanted to see whether drinking while on my vacation is something I can do. It is my first time traveling since surgery and I am nervous.

I've learned to only weigh myself once a week now because sometimes water weight can make a 2-4 pound fluctuation, and it'll drive ya nuts lol Watch salt intake and I bet it'll go away soon. Water weight sucks.

You have to go into it looking at the surgery as a *tool* not a cure. A lot of the people who gain the weight back, as others have said, did not change their lifestyle. The surgery is permanent; you have to look at any behavioral changes you make as permanent as well. It's like that old saying, "If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got". I am 15 mos post op, and I am fully aware that if I were to slip back to old habits, I am absolutely capable of eating enough to gain back my weight, but I'm committed to doing this *for life*. My hair fell out between months 2 and 4 really badly, I lost MOST of my hair. It started growing back around the six month mark and I now have a lot more hair than I did even before the surgery. I have had some of the "weakness" others have had (specifically my grip is not as strong as it once was for things like opening jars). Considering I had dangerously high blood pressure (it's on the low end of normal now), sleep apnea (GONE 3 months after surgery), and was dangerously close to developing diabetes and knee problems, I would have the surgery again in a heartbeat. My only regret is that I didn't have it sooner. I am finally capable of doing everything I wanted to be able to do when I was fat and couldn't. That's worth the work. It's worth the sacrifice and if you want to make that change for yourself, YOU are worth it.

I once gained 3 pounds in a day by eating pickles! It's the salt, but my goodness.

I know I'm having the same problem you eat right and you gain weight Sent from my SM-A326U using BariatricPal mobile app

Wow! Well done. I’m having such a hard time drinking what I need to while just sipping. Plus, eating is a nuisance. I’ve stalled on weight loss in my second week bc I’m not eating/drinking enough…I suspect. What’s your schedule/ technique?

It happens, don't stress. You couldn't eat enough to gain that weight in fat so very likely water weight. Take 1 cup of lukewarm water and 1/8 of a fresh lemon. Squeeze the juice in the water and drink it. It is a natural diuretic and works amazingly! PS: I can gain and loose 10 lbs in water. I have seen it. Especially when I was bigger, now i don't see that much fluctuation but still fluctuate none the less.

Unless you ate 10500 cal, my bet would be it is water gain. It happens to me all the time, especially when I eat pickles. It should come off in a day or two.

WTF lol. So i weighed myself on the 4th... at 205lb. and again today and i am at 208lb That is a big increase in such a short time with healthier stuff eaten. and i weigh myself naked every time haha. Well this increase better decrease lol.

Way to play the game! Basically getting paid to lose weight. Win. Win.

Decided a couple months back to try to drop a few more pounds. My weight had been fairly stable, between 172 and 175 for the last two years. As you can tell, I take my time, and after losing a couple pounds, I take a break and just maintain that weight loss. Losing the weight isn't the issue for me, but maintaining is. My weight is now between 168 and 170. Maybe not a huge difference; but for me.... I do not remember being in the 160's since college.... and that was like 1977..... so now at 66 years old, and a dozen years post VSG; I am down over 150 pounds from my highest weight. Age does do odd stuff to the body. But still working 40 hours a week, gardening, have my hens and fruit trees and vegetable gardens.... Of course, I can't recall how to update my ticker..... will research some. Updated !!!

There’s grazing & there’s grazing. Grazing when you eat an appropriately portioned size healthy meal over a few hours or eat several small healthy meals over the day that meet your caloric & nutritional needs are fine. Anything else, like grazing just to eat, or for boredom, etc. or grazing beyond just a mid morning &/or mid afternoon snack can be worrying & lead to the weight gain fear you have. Consider what you’re grazing on & why you’re grazing. Do you exceed your caloric need by grazing? Maybe try the mini meal grazing or eating a meal by picking at it over a few hours. Or even reduce your grazing to just a single between meal snack. (I snack three times a day. It gives me a needed additional 25 odd grams of protein but still fits within my caloric needs.) Worth trying.

Sounds awful. I really do hope you don't get pneumonia - hopefully the fact you have lost so much weight this year might make the chances of that less likely? Anyway - wishing you a full and speedy recovery. Nobody wants to be sick for the holidays. 🎄

I definitely need to start exercising more, and I have a fitbit, but I lost my charger. I was walking outside, but not that it's getting a lot colder and slippery at times, I plan to rejoin a gym. I'm just finishing up my final assignments at university, which are all due next weekend. However, I don't know if I'll have the time to work out five times a week. Walking outside is easy, but going to the gym takes time. I pretty much just have the time from when I finish work until my son needs to be picked up or comes home. Some days that's an hour, some days only half an hour or less. I definitely don't have the time to work out with a trainer, but I plan to have a trainer I know create a plan for me that I can follow on my own. In other news, I had my hair cut to shoulder length today. My hair looks thicker, but I think I look worse. Not necessarily older, but worse. At least, it will take some time getting used to. Maybe I'll look better after I've lost more weight. If not, the hair will hopefully grow back.

Sorry you're struggling so much! Based on what you're describing, neither weight loss surgery, nor GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic/Wegovy/Rybelsus would do anything for you. Both WLS and these meds work by helping patients reduce caloric intake. You've already said that doing so didn't work for you, so I see little point in either approach. Here's the deal. While this is a slight over simplification, you can't overcome basic physics even if there's some sort of hormonal imbalance. If you eat less than you burn, you'll lose weight. If you eat more than you burn, you'll gain weight. There's no way around that. This makes me think you may be asking the wrong question? I think instead of asking how can I reduce my food intake further, the question you should be asking is why is my metabolism so low and what can I do to increase how much I'm burning? Based on what you've described, there really are only two explanations: Either you are eating a lot more than you think you are (it's common for people to dramatically overestimate caloric intake), or your metabolism is unnaturally low. My first recommendation would be to have a baseline metabolism check done. This is sometimes called resting metabolic rate (RMR), resting energy expenditure (REE), or Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Do some Google searches and you should find a place near you that can test this. Even if you do nothing else, knowing how many calories you burn at rest will help you understand what you should do to get to a normal weight. Next, I'm going to guess that your previous fitness attempts were focused primarily on steady-state cardio. While that's great for heart health, it's not what I think you need. I would strongly recommend finding a reputable trainer that can help you add muscle mass through proper diet and exercise. Simply put, the more muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolism. In your case, where you've likely severely negatively impacted your metabolism through a starvation diet/anorexia, you may have to "reset" things with this type of training regimine. One final point: stop obsessing with the number on the scale. This is a poor analog for how fit you are. Your body weight is comprised of lots of things other than fat (muscle, bone, water, organ weight, etc.), so you could actually be really fit at 180, or carrying too much fat at 160. For example, you made a point of saying that after months of working out in a gym, you ended up weighing more than before you started. That's actually somewhat common and not necessarily a bad thing. That extra 6 pounds may have just be fluid retention, or muscle (likely some of both), so the number on the scale was not a good way of tracking your overall health. This is one of the reasons we strongly recommend also periodically checking your body measurements, as well as potentially checking body composition. You can buy a BIA scale to check that, or there are plenty of commercial places that will do it for you. Best of luck.

thanks… just more annoyed that i had to go through it again… was nasty, still is… only gained 2 lbs from fluid from the er visit that will flow out in a couple days

If snacking &/or overeating are your concerns, IF may not work for you. As @SpartanMaker said, its success depends upon compliance. If you’re drawn to snacking &/or overeating now, you’ll likely still do it in the smaller eating window of IF. It doesn’t stop you from eating or stop you from making not the best food choices. If these are your areas of struggle, you’re half way there because you’ve identified the problem. Go back to measuring & monitoring your portions to get back on track. What are you snacking on & why are you snacking? Habit, boredom, craving, etc.? Look for something to distract you instead of snacking. We’ve years of thinking we need to go on a ‘diet’ when we put on some weight. When some simple changes of behaviour might be all we need.

@SpartanMaker This is incredibly helpful. THANK YOU for taking the time to share such a thorough and thoughtful answer. I'm mostly considering IF because I'm concerned about weight regain. Now that I've moved into maintenance, my calorie count is creeping up. I find it pretty easy not to eat before lunch, so IF might help limit my snacking/potential overeating. Again, THANK YOU. You've given me lots to think about.

This is an interesting question. I've read quite a lot of the scientific literature on Intermittent Fasting (IF) and I think it can be summarized as follows: IF has similar and many times better results vs. daily calorie restriction if the goal is weight loss. A lot of this additional benefit is due to the inherent ketogenic nature of IF. Compliance with IF is typically better than daily calorie restriction. If weight loss is the goal, IF can fail spectacularly if the subject overeats when not fasting. This is problematic for some people because they feel like IF gives them an excuse to eat badly on refeed days/times. IF really only works if you eat "normally" when not actually fasting. While there are numerous studies showing improved biomarkers with IF, almost all of those were done with either animals, or with overweight subjects. When compared to daily calorie restriction, many, if not most of the benefits are explained simply by underfeeding, not by IF specifically. (I should note here that IF can be extremely beneficial for certain specific medical conditions. I'm excluding a discussion on that subject and assuming we're talking about otherwise healthy adults.) Taken as a whole, the conclusion I've personally come to is that IF can be beneficial for the right people, but it's not for everyone. Which leads me to your question: Is Intermittent Fasting good for maintenance after WLS? Assuming by "maintenance" you mean you'd be at or under a normal body weight, I'm not sure how beneficial IF would be? After all, IF is typically talked about as a diet or weight loss strategy. My point being that if instead, you are worried about or are actually seeing weight regain in "maintenance" then IF may work for you. Keep in mind however that IF & daily caloric restriction should both technically work. The question I can't answer is which is best for you. Only you know which eating pattern you can best comply with. Also, there are genetic and epigenetic factors at play here as well. Some people just do better with different eating patterns. The best advice may just be to try IF and see how you like it. Don't forget there are lots of different IF eating patterns and while 16/8 may work great for one person, someone else may need 5:2 or even alternate day to be successful. If gaining weight is not an issue and you're looking more for the potential health benefits, I'll point out again that most of the scientific literature seems to support that both IF and underfeeding in general have the same benefits. This means it really comes down to you again. Can you avoid overeating when refeeding? Do you struggle with compliance on a "normal" diet? Your answers will determine your success with IF.

So much of this is an individual journey. There are averages & common experiences but a lot of variation too. From whether you’ll lose hair or not & how much you’ll lose & for how long to how fast or slow you lose. As for the hair loss, some, people swear by taking supplements to help with the hair loss (biotin is very popular) but their hair loss still slows to their usual rate after 3 or 4 months like most do. I say save your money. Cut your hair if it’s long so your new growth doesn’t take as long to catch up to the length of your remaining hair. Plus short hair looks thicker & bouncier without the weight of longer hair pulling it down. And it doesn’t look as much in the bottom of the shower. 🙂 As for the rate of weight loss, best advice is to stick to the plan you were given by your dietician. Or if you didn’t get one for past the initial staged return to eating, get in touch with them to review what your eating, guidance & other options yiu could include in your diet. But I agree, 25 lbs in 2 months is a good loss. Remember you lose at your rate & your weight loss will slow as you get close to your goal.

@kelly jojo First few weeks, we are usually bloated. After surgery I gained over 10 lbs due to the IV. Your body is healing and adjusting. I was told not to take my weight too seriously until I was fully healed (6 to 8 weeks). Try to be patient and stick to your program. 3 lbs a week is actually good at your weight (10.5k calories less), that's 12 lbs in a month if continues at that rate. If losing 3 lbs a week is upsetting then beware of the infamous 3-week stall where you may not lose anything for a few weeks.