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I hear you! I am 4 weeks post op now and I have 2 mantras: "I'M NEVER GOING BACK!" and "IT's JUST NOT WORTH IT!" (when tempted to taste or take a bit of something not allowed.) This is way too much work, money, and risk to throw it away. Use this pre-op time to really clean up your eating. After surgery, you want every bite to be as nutritionally dense as possible, and as healthy as possible. The "New you" deserves nothing less. Get rid of the artificial sweeteners, colors and flavorings. Get rid of the soda and caffeine. (Caffeine may come back later, but you may find you feel better and more stable without it and really not want it anymore. I LOVED coffee, but can't even stomach the thought of it now!) Absolutely get rid of the sugar! ALL sugar! Get rid of processed food. Cook it yourself. Get rid of simple carbs/starches. Minimize wheat or get rid of it altogether. Learn to enjoy other whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, millet, teff, amaranth. Learn to enjoy veggies - LOTS of veggies! They will be the life saver of you success. Of course, get rid of alcohol and tobacco. If you can start making these lifestyle changes NOW, you will have a much easier time after surgery. Recovery is hard enough without having to cold turkey off addictions like sugar and caffeine. Use this time to really EMBRACE the changes. Each change you make means you "WILL NEVER GO BACK!" As far as temptations go, yes they are there, but..... "IT'S JUST NOT WORTH IT!" I had to fix a full Mexican meal for a family party, make muffins for work, and cake for a birthday party. I did take a couple of tiny tastes to check for seasoning, but then I spit them out. I remind myself that my time will come to have some of these things, but not right now. Each choice you make is a choice to "go back" or "never go back." Remember that a slip up one day is a mistake. A slip up 2 days in a row is called RELAPSE. Just get back on board immediately. I found that keeping my food journal is critical. I plan all my meals (as tiny as they are) the day before, so there is no guess work the next day. We got ourselves where we are by a lot of bad choices over a long time. (Even if we thought they were good choices at the time with the dieting, starvation, and other crazy stuff we did to wreck our metabolisms and disrupt the normal hormone pathways.) It will take a lot of GOOD choices to rewire our brains and reframe our thinking about food - what is wonderful (veggies) and what is poison (sweets and simple carbs.) We can do it! Let your OCD and rules work for you!!!!!

Everythinganna: besides drinking alcohol every night and the scrambled egg, we are so similar. No judgement here! I have my post-op visit Wednesday, I’m waiting to see what the doctor tells me about exercise before I begin.

One of my friends invited me out for a girls night on Thursday. She did not know that I had surgery but I told her about it so the situation wouldn’t be uncomfortable. I am not someone who goes out regularly but I am looking forward to this and also seeing how it is being out without drinking alcohol or gorging myself on food. Should make for an interesting evening!

I’ve decided just to do this “my way” and ever since I’ve been at a lot more peace. I may not be getting adequate nutrition and vitamins but I am giving myself a break and letting my body adapt. Vitamins were making me puke so I switched to vitamin patches. I ate HALF a scrambled egg (which foamed up in my throat) so I am mostly just drinking a protein water and a shake here and there (but never getting in the required 60-80 grams). I have been weighing myself every morning first thing when I wake up. I have been consistently losing a pound a day but now I’ve decided to stop weighing. I am sleeping like a freaking rock. After drinking a bottle of wine every single night for years (a habit that I slowly phased out during the weeks/months leading up to surgery) I am feeling and sleeping better than ever. I have no pain/no nausea whatsoever but a very very small capacity for food. I do get hungry now and last night I ate a pepperoni from my families pizza delivery order. And I squeezed it till it was bone dry with no oil and chewed it up thoroughly. No problem whatsoever with that. Figured if I only ate one pepperoni for the whole day yesterday I was OK. And most exciting I have zero desire to drink alcohol. It is actually somewhat repulsive to me. I feel good now!! The first week was a nightmare. I’m doing my post op visit this week hopefully (I may have to reschedule because my car is still in the hospital parking lot from almost 2 weeks ago - three hours away). Otherwise I’m doing great. My personal goal is to get out and walk more frequently. I have been taking only one real walk a day. Hopefully none of this catches up to me because I am not following the doctor’s orders to a T but I have had to tweak it based on what I can and can not tolerate. Please don’t judge! Anyone getting in real walks/exercise yet?

The orthostatic hypotension is not unusual with rapid weight loss, and is one of several ramifications of your body still trying to function at your old weight when there is substantially less of you at hand - we often feel cold for the same reason, that the body is still trying to cool what is no longer there. These things do improve over time, though it may be a year or two. In the meantime, as the docs and others suggest, more salt, lots of fluids (non-alcoholic), and also exercise is also a common prescription to "keep things pumping" On the exercise front - this should improve things, but let your trainer know that you have this problem so they can watch for it. Also, another side effect of the rapid loss is that your heartrate will likely be lower, at rest and in activity, so if the trainer is pushing to achieve some specific heartrate to indicate some level of exertion, (often it is 80+% of a theoretical maximum rate) their measurement scale may be skewed and they may push you harder than they should. When I was 2-3 months out, I noticed that exercise (brisk walking short of a jog) that used to get my heart into that 80% zone (140-150 for me at the time) would barely get me over 100; even today, years later, my resting pulse is low, often 50 or below, and doctors/nurses unfamiliar with me will question it (yes, it's normal) though my BP is normal to a touch high. So, the exercise should be OK, but let them know and don't let them push you too hard - your cardiac system may have excess capacity, but you may be evertaxed elsewhere. Your ketone levels have little to do with whether or not you are losing weight. They are in indication that you are burning fat. but that can be ingested fat as well as stored fat. If you want to burn your stored fat, you need a good caloric deficit, and it matters little what style of diet is used to accomplish that - low fat, low carb, keto, paleo, Atkins, whole 30 or whatever it may be. I used a relatively high carbohydrate diet (by Atkins/keto standards - 100ish g/day) and lost quite rapidly - because of the fairly high caloric deficit; ketones were there in the blood tests because I was burning my fat stores, but those readings weren't a goal. The high fat/low carb type diets a la keto and paleo are popular these days, but the high calorie levels that often accompany them can sometimes make weightloss difficult. Clinically, high fat/low carbohydrate diets are often prescribed to avoid or minimize weight loss after a non-WLS gastrectomy, so if you are trying to use such a diet for weight loss, you have to keep a close eye on calorie levels. Being four months out, you should still be fairly restricted in you eating volume so that you should still be losing at a reasonable pace, but if you are ingesting too many calories by "eating around" your wLS - drinking calories or very high calorie foods - then you can see low or no loss at this point.

I was expecting my tolerance to be one drink but I can have a bottle of wine and be totally sober even if my BAC says otherwise. I think I’m not absorbing the alcohol or something magical. Was really looking forward to being a cheap drunk.

How far out did you consume your first alcohol beverage ? How was your experience? (Not here to judge each other, but to learn from each other’s experience)

Dude, it was a Mardi Gras parade---I am sure you weren't the only one that didn't stop when they should. :-) Seriously though, unlike food, consuming alcohol is a choice. You don't need it to live. Have you tried setting a firm limit for yourself. For example, you can allow yourself to have two drinks over a 2 hour period and that's it for the night. You're there to be social, not to get a buzz or f---ked up. If you can't do that and you don't know when enough is enough, alcohol is not working out for you and you have to cut it out completely. The reality is if you feel this way now and you don't put the breaks on drinking, it's going to become a serious problem for you. You didn't get to 400 without abusing food---so, you have to be really careful with anything that is potentially addictive. You're picking up on this early before it becomes serious, so that's a great thing!!

Hey there. Thanks for the reply. I may go out to have drinks a couple times a month. I can go for long periods of time without a drink. That’s not the issue. I don’t consume alcohol during Lent every year. That’s 40 days that I go without a drink. However, if I am at an event that has alcohol and I’m not driving, I will partake. I rode in a Mardi Gras parade over the weekend. I started drinking and didn’t stop. Since the alcohol hits me so much quicker than when I was 400 lbs, I don’t know when to stop.

This was brought up during one of my group sessions. It seems that the body post WLS absorbs alcohol faster since the stomach is smaller. People tend to use the pre surgery amounts of tolerable alcohol as a guide when they drink post op. The body doesn't function the same way. There must be an adjustment in the alcohol intake amount so to not get inebriated when drinking post op. It was also stressed that one should refrain from alcohol post op since alcohol contains empty calories with no nutritional benefits to the WLS patient. In other words you get better weight loss maintenance drinking zero calorie non carbonated beverages.

My doctor let me decide though he suggested bypass. I chose the sleeve. First reason - dumping and alcohol. We entertain a lot with wine pairing dinners. Not willing to give that up. Second was purely anecdotal. Having lost a lot with band then regaining after it failed, I am completely averse to rebound weight gain. I saw too many examples of rebound weight gain in bypass patients as people’s intestines learned to absorb nutrients (and calories) again.

I heard that we don’t or won’t absorb alcohol the same way after surgery. I haven’t had any since my surgery (7mos sho)but I’m not really a big drinker. Maybe check w your NUT on suggestions.

Hey everybody. This is my first time ever going into a forum. I had my surgery in March 2010. Nine years ago in just a few weeks. Originally, I lost 175 pounds. I bounce up and down. But, overall I am doing well with maintaining. I’ve learned how to eat again and I do well with that. My issue is when I consume alcohol. Something is not clicking and telling my body that I’ve had enough. I am a social drinker. Unfortunately, when I do drink, sometimes I tend to just keep going. In nearly 9 years, I still can’t figure out how to get my body accustomed to it. Like I said, food is not an issue. I know when I’m full. I also know that my stomach cannot absorb alcohol like it used to. Has anyone else had this experience and if so how do you manage it? Any help is appreciated. I’m more than happy to answer anyone’s questions as well.

Yes I did. I had been doubting this for weeks. During the pre op diet I had been a good girl. (not a shake diet but i chose weight watchers, half portions) Everyone asked what my last real meal would be and up to half an hour before I took it, I was convinced I would just eat regular food. But then my husband asked if I wanted fries with shoarma (spicy fried meat pieces) I took it, at half a small portion and enjoyed it very much. And you know what? No guilt, for I had been working to lose several kilo's before the operation, my liver would forgive me. I am 3 months out now and haven't had that meal since, and don't crave it. So my advice, yes take a last cheat meal but do not go overboard. Like I said, take half of a small portion. And I would advice against taking alcohol the day before operation, it might linger in your body too long? Anyway, good luck either way

Anyone have any last cheat meals or drink of alcohol? I have a month until I get surgery and my doctor kinda gave me the okay to go enjoy myself a little, but do not go over board. Anyone have any last minute confessions before surgery? Is it ok if I just self indulge a few more times before surgery dine and wine? Let me know your experience. Will the surgery still go good?

i’m 7 months out and started dating again 3 months out. honestly, everything the person above me said is great, try and make plans for dates that don’t revolve around drinking/food. and most people don’t even notice the amount of food we eat or don’t eat, it’s really mostly something you notice yourself. also- not gonna encourage smoking weed cause that gets you nowhere on this forum, but before i was able to drink alcohol, i just suggested smoking instead of getting drinks. there’s alternatives for everything in life!! everyone has insecurities about their bodies, surgery or not! fake the confidence until you make it. anyone worth dating doesn’t care what size you are anyway, just try to remember that! although i am only 23 so my dating life might be very different from yours and some of this might be easier said than done.

I haven’t had a surgery yet but honestly, these sound like typical thoughts of a person that’s not been on the dating scene for a while surgery or not, these are all hang ups that people worry about when getting ‘back in there’. If you meet for drinks, make an excuse for not drinking alcohol, perhaps you had a few too many the night before (they’ll be amazed by how well you handle a hangover!) and as for food, just don’t arrange a dinner date? Maybe arrange a walk in a park or bowling? This way, you can always figure out if like a person enough before you give them your entire history? Good luck

I have just lost my first 50lbs and I am starting to get a lot more confident in myself. I have started using the dating apps and now that the possibility of dating is more real I am starting to get really freaked out. Has anyone starting dating soon after surgery? These are the things I am nervous about: - they will think my minimal eating is weird (I am not 100% open about having the surgery and don’t want to have to explain my situation to every tinder date.) - most people want to meet up for a drink but I’m still not drinking alcohol - even though I am much more confident I still have a ton of insecurities about my body so I’m not sure I will be ready for an intimate relationship if the time comes and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Anyways any thoughts and advice are appreciated. I’m just excited to start dating but also scared.

Due to insurance and scheduling issues, I had to wait 8 months before my surgery. This gave me a LOT of time to weigh the pros and cons, examine my motives, and get psychologically ready for the change. It is different from other surgeries - this is ELECTIVE. You are choosing to put yourself at risk. Like many others, I lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds on my own..... only to have it all come back, plus. After a life time of this, my metabolism was totally screwed up and the brain-stomach-hormone mechanism was also screwed up. I had no "stop button." I never felt full. I ate very healthy food, but could never stop once started. Meanwhile, I had given up, wheat, sugar, all artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors, alcohol, caffeine. I ate nothing fried, only healthy grains, my homegrown veggies/poultry/ and eggs. I maintained an active lifestyle with my garden and animals. One day, feeling afraid of the surgery, I suggested to my PCP that perhaps I should just try again to do it on my own. She very kindly told me, "If you could have done it on your own, you would have." She was right. I was just fooling myself, maybe thinking I was weak for not being able to do it on my own. But I came to the realization that my body would NEVER lose weight because of all the damage I had previously done. Weight Loss Surgery was the final tool I needed to bring my metabolism and hormone mechanisms back to a more normal baseline. I was still scared, even laying on the Pre-op bed, I was crying and told my surgeon I was just scared about making such a big decision for an elective procedure. He reassured me that none of his patients had ever come back to him and said they wished they had never done it. He was right. I am only 3 weeks post op. I did have a complication that has now been handled, and I can say that my life looks so different. I feel better already, having lost 31 pounds since beginning the pre-op diet. I am very, very glad, even at this early point, for having done the surgery. I think this is one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. Preop, it is like you are looking up at a cloud layer that is obscuring the sun. All you see are shadows (doubts.) Afterwards, it is like you are flying above the clouds in the sunshine, looking down at the clouds that are now bright and white. It's all about the perspective of where you are, and you can never get above the cloud layer unless you bravely make the decision to go forward. That being said, you must be determined that you will do everything you can after surgery to be successful. No cheating, no compromise. Surgery is a tool - you still have to do your part. My best suggestion is to give up all addictions BEFORE surgery so you don't have to deal with them on top of the recovery. (Caffeine, sugar, simple carbs, processed foods, artificial anything, alcohol, and of course smoking.) Determine that these are lifestyle changes that you will never go back to. That is my slogan: "I'M NEVER GOING BACK!"

I wish! I was told zero alcohol for at least 6 months. I am not a huge drinker, but I used to have martinis once a week.

I just eat when I'm hungry. Sometimes that's 3 times a day, sometimes it's 6 or 7. I only eat small amounts, so it seems to work out OK. And because I eat when I need to, I don't feel deprived. The only thing I'm strict about its alcohol - I only drink it when it's an occasion with friends. I think wine was what piled on the pounds in the past, so I'm not going down that road again! Some people are really strict about food too, but you have to find out what's sustainable for you. If you're really very strict about food for a few months and then fall off the waggon because you feel deprived, then you won't keep off the weight. I have the occasional treat, but make sure I still lose a pound or two a week. I think I'll be able to sustain that in the long term. There won't be a single right answer - I think you've just got to experiment to find out what works for you.

Nobody will fully understand your struggles with obesity and the need for WLS like people that are going through the same thing. It's like a person struggling with an alcohol or drug addiction trying to get support from someone who thinks they have a handle on it. Until a person gets to the point where we are now and seeks out and joins a group like this, they will (in most cases) be ignorant to the battle. Education is key and most people in your life won't take the time to learn your struggles unless they're in the same boat. They will only use your predicament as fodder for gossip.

Yes! Exactly! We each have to figure things out and hack our bodies in order to develop those life-long new and healthy relationships with food, alcohol, and socialization that will keep us at our healthy goal weights for life rather than to returning to another day/night at the Obesity Ball.

About 5 years ago. I had gastric sleeve surgery. I lost weight for the first year. I had just lost my mom and I turned to alcohol and I gained all the weight back and then some. My sleeve is stretched. I went back to my Dr. to see what can be done and she suggested a gastric bypass which is what I wanted to do. I have to have an Endoscopy done before knowing the full picture, but I don't having dumping syndrome now and i was wondering if i will get it later? I has anyone had this surgery done? What advise would you give? I am going to make do diligence not to stretch my new pouch out. If I get approved. Sent from my SM-G930V using BariatricPal mobile app

I knew that surgery was going to be very hard, requiring discipline and a new way of eating. Wanting to give myself every chance for success, I tried to give up every addiction I could PRIOR to surgery, so that the battle would be less complex afterward. Prior to surgery I gave up sugar (my joints never felt better!), caffeine, soda, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, artificial colors and flavors, processed foods, and snacking. I also started 16/8 Intermittent Fasting. I had already given up wheat/gluten several years ago, I was never a smoker. The sugar, caffeine and snacking were especially hard, but I am SOOOOO thankful I am not dealing with those now that I am only 2 weeks post op. I would suggest this to anyone in their preop period. Get rid of the junk NOW! You don't need to deal with cravings after surgery - food deprivation is enough! It will give you the confidence to comply with the post-op restrictions, and will set you up for a much healthier life style for life.