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I don't mean to annoy anyone but my question is ,I am on a 800 calorie diet and I find it very hard to stay on this diet no because I am hungry but because everything now is loaded with calories. So I am puzzled and wondering is 800 calories a day too much or too little. Dietician says anything over 800 will cause weight gain and disrupt the process with my shots versus other doctors are like 800 is nothing. I am confused.

So, I am almost 2 months post-op, and I am due to have my 8 week check-in with a bariatric nurse. My friend also had the same surgery as me, just the day prior, and she has had this check-in already. She was told that at the current stage we are in post-op, we should be eating 900-1000 calories a day!! 🫠🤯 I genuinely don't think my body is capable! I think I eat around 400-500 on a good day, and I mean a REALLY good day (which is rare), and around 300 on a normal day. Maybe I need to have more protein shakes? I don't know. The prospect of eating that much seems so daunting, and I really get full on what I am already eating!

Hello! I had the sleeve gastrectomy 9.5 months ago. I've been working on exercising and eating right, but I've been in a bit of a stall these past 5 weeks. I went down from 290 to 170 pounds, but I've been stuck at 170 for 5 weeks. I've been eating 1200-1500 calories a day and still not losing weight. I've done some research, and apparently, your body adjusts to low calories after a while of eating at that rate. At the beginning of my post-op phase, there were some complications on my end. I didn't eat ANYTHING for two months straight, not even protein shakes, and I was only hitting about 20oz of water daily (which landed me in the ER, but I'm fine now lol). I've looked online, and it says for my height, age, and weight, a good maintenance level would be 2100 calories. I'm eating well under that in a deficit and heavy weight lifting, so I don't know why my body won't drop anything. I'm worried that my body adjusted to the 0-calorie few months I had, then the 500-1000 calories three months after that. I've only started hitting my 1200-1500 calories in March when I joined the gym. I know the stall is not due to "muscle gain" because I'm not eating in a surplus, and I'm only eating 65-80 grams of protein in hopes of simply maintaining while I drop fat. I also read online that apparently people who go through rapid weight loss have even lower calorie maintenance than the average person, and that makes sense, but surely it cannot be under 1200, right? The majority of bodies need 1500 to operate. I'm so confused! When I ask my surgeon about calories, he says not to worry about them and eat healthy, which I'm doing. It's just frustrating because I want to work on building muscle, but I want to lose some more fat before that. I guess my question is, does anyone know anything about calories after surgery, and/or how many calories are you eating after surgery to help lose weight?

Hi all, I am 3 weeks post-op, and I don’t have any calorie guides from my nutritionist. She only focuses on protein intake and low carb options. In the past I have used calories as my main indicator and am struggling a little with diet conceptions now and after the transition periods without them. I have a goal of 60 g of protein a day and 1-1.5 l of liquids for hydration. I was just wondering if anyone has daily calorie guidelines that they can share?? Tia!

How many calories should I be eating 3.5month post op gastric sleeve? Keep seeing different amounts online. Had surgery abroad so the after care isn’t the best either. Also macros? I don’t know weather I’m eating too much or too little I’m a slow loser and have stalled for 4 weeks.

Hi can someone please help me . I have 1 stone 4lbs to lose still and I am 1 year post op (gastric sleeve ) how many calories should I be having and anyone else in the same boat ? When I put my details on a calculator to get to goal I need to eat 1200 per day which I find too less 😔 any tips and advice will be apperciated. Thank you x

Has anyone done a low calorie diet and not lost weight, but had success losing all the weight with VSG? I’m curious how it works if eating low calorie didn’t work out. Even though I’m getting VSG, I’m scared it won’t work since I have not lost weight with the low calorie diet.

At the end of the day, it is calories in vs calories out. If you are eating less calories than you expend, you will continue to lose weight. Those calories can be from cookies or steak... the benefits from what your getting from those calories is the difference. Ask yourself, am I getting a balance of all the vitamins and nutrients that I need from food? If you had a day where you ate amazingly healthy with variety, a cookie is probably not going to hurt.

HI guys! I am being more strict on my macros till I can work out again, lots of sites and all different outcomes, these are what I have gotten: Macros for Weightloss while not working out: 1838 Calories 167g of Protein 61g Fat 155g Carbs OR 2035 Calories 153g of Protein 79g Fat 178g Carbs Macros for Body Recomposition 2725 Calories 170g Protein 222g Carbs 99g Fat Macros for Weightloss while working out: 2473 Calories 170g Protein 224g Carbs 100g Fat

Not trying to be argumentative here, but this seems like a bit of a strange comment considering that Google literally states that "AI Overviews use generative AI, which is a type of artificial intelligence that learns patterns and structures from the data it is trained on and uses that to create something new." Personally, I think it's important to treat anything AI Overview produces with a significant bit of skepticism. I don't doubt that this particular response was generated primarily from other sources since that's literally how AI works. That said, there's an old adage in computer science that goes "Garbage in, garbage out". This is just as true today with AI as it was in the dawn of the computer age. I absolutely agree, but there are 2 things we need to take into consideration. The first is to what extent we burn additional calories. There is data in the scientific literature showing that RMR (not total calories burned), increases anywhere from 15% to 50% during the acute recovery phase. Whether it's near 15% or 50% depends a lot on what one is recovering from. I'm sure you'd agree that having a grade 1 muscle strain is not nearly as taxing on the body as chemotherapy or, say recovering from extensive burns. Add in the fact that most people have no clue what their RMR is and it can be very difficult to estimate the exact amount of additional calories burned. (Plus, the farther along the recovery process you are, the lower the increase in RMR.) The second confounding factor here is whether one actually needs to eat back those calories or not. Just because one is burning more calories does not mean one also has to eat all those calories back. This unfortunately is not clear at all in the scientific literature so we're sort of on our own here. My personal belief is that if your calorie needs have gone up a lot because you're recovering from a significant injury/illness AND you are at or below maintenance, then it's probably more important to eat more because you have less stored fat to fall back on. On the other hand, If you still have excess fat stores and/or are recovering from a more minor injury/illness, then you probably don't need to consume as many calories as you might otherwise. I also tend to believe that eating good quality foods is probably more important here than just eating more calories. 1000 extra calories of junk food is not going to help nearly as much as 250 calories of whole foods. The problem is, most of us are just not going to be able to accurately calculate any of this. This is why I'm recommending caution and only jumping up a lot in calories if major fatigue is an issue.

Hi all! I am not scheduled for VSG yet, as I am still waiting to get my mental health clearance. That’s the last thing I need before getting the surgical team approval and insurance approval. I met with my dietician recently and she’s encouraging me to start immediately on 1200-1300 calories a day. My surgery could be MONTHS away (who knows because there’s pieces to fall into place before that?) I’m already on 1500-1700 calories a day, which is fine and works ok. However I feel very nervous about going to 1200 calories and being able to function properly at work (my job is semi physically demanding), and being able to maintain a vigorous exercise schedule. I asked the dietitian if I can eat a little more on days when I work out and was emphatically told “no”. With no idea when I’m going to have surgery, it feels risky to my body that I could hurt myself if I’m not eating enough. I understand after surgery that I will have to take time off from exercise. For reference, I am hoping to participate in a four hour swim event on January 1, 2025 and have been training for it. Does anyone have thoughts on my concerns? Is this normal to go this low on calories without surgery even being scheduled yet? I could be waiting for several months.

I am a little over 6 months post op, how many calories are you eating now? I am getting about 900-1000 calories, 80g of protein, 50g of carbs. Anyone else have a starting weight at 360ish at 5'9", how much did you lose at 6 months? My surgeon doesn't offer an aftercare support team and the nutritionist (had to get a referral from my primary) that I am seeing doesn't like giving numbers. I also don't feel I can ask him as he will just refer to the paperwork he gave me at the start, which just says under 1200 calories and 60-80g of protein. I am very happy with the weight that I have lost so far, 100lbs since surgery, but it has been very slow the last 2 months or so. I still feel that I should be losing at a faster rate than I am which is only about 1-2lbs a week. Is this just an average weight loss when I weigh 263lbs at 5' 9", haven't been down to this weight in over 15 years.

Okay so I was curious to know exactly how much more our bodies burn while we are healing so I asked Google and this is copied from AI response. Basically if we need more calories to maintain as your healing you really may be good by just cutting back a tad on the extra Carbs since your carbs were much higher due to a very high level of activity, which you’re not sustaining but honestly if I was you I would Just wait until your through this to worry about losing you could take even longer to get back on track if you try to lose now “Yes, your body burns more calories during the healing process after surgery. This is because your body's metabolism increases to help heal the incisions, fight pain, and prevent infection. Explanation Hyper-metabolic state After surgery, your body enters a hyper-metabolic state, which means your metabolism increases. This causes your body to break down muscle protein, fat tissue, and neurotransmitters to provide energy for healing. Calorie needs During the healing process, you should consume more calories than normal. A general rule of thumb is to consume 15–20 calories per pound of body weight. Protein needs In addition to calories, you also need more protein during the healing process. Protein is a key building block of the body and is necessary for tissue growth and repair. Hydration Drinking plenty of fluids, mostly water, helps deliver nutrients to the wound site. What to eat Eat a balanced diet with a wide variety of foods Eat nutrient-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, lean fish and chicken, grains, beans, and nuts Take a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement if you don't get enough nutrients” This is from HSS.com “How many calories should I be consuming since I will be inactive? Now is NOT the time for weight loss! When people are immobilized, they worry about gaining weight. However, you should NOT decrease your calorie intake because you will be inactive. In fact, your calorie needs are now greater than usual because your body requires energy from nutritious foods to fuel the healing process. You will need to consume about 15-20 calories per pound (using your current body weight). If your overall energy and protein needs are not met, body tissues such as muscles and ligaments will begin to break down. This will compromise healing and may prolong your recovery period”

The ONLY thing you have to do to lose weight is eat fewer calories than you burn. If you do that you will lose weight. There are lots of tools we can use to help us in this regard, like tracking, meal prep, tweaking macros, eating more high quality foods vs. junk food, and a lot more, but at the end of the day, it's calorie consumption that will make or break a diet. For some people tracking is critically important because if they don't track, they overeat badly. Everyone has a bad tendency to way underestimate the number of calories we eat in a day, so especially for people that tend to snack a lot, or eat a super varied diet (which is not a bad thing!), then tracking at least sometimes is pretty helpful to make sure they don't overeat. Like you, I just can't track reliably. It's not so much that I forget to do so, as much as I find it incredibly time consuming and boring, thus I just don't do it. Would I love to be able to track calories consistently? Sure. Really honing in on my daily calorie intake appeals to my analytical mind. I know I'll never be able to do it though. At this point, what I try to do is "spot check" my calorie consumption here and there. Sometimes I might make it a whole day and sometimes I just evaluate a single meal. This helps remind me to keep things in check.

I would be confused too. How a dietician could say that anything over 800 calories will make you gain weight is just ridiculous. Here in the UK it is guided at 2000 calories a day for an active woman and 500 calories more for a active male per day. For information - To maintain my weight I need to eat around 1600 calories a day. Anything less and I drop weight. I don't exercise, just walk and apart from one day a week where I volunteer, I am retired. I still have a fair restriction on my sleeve. So my advice to you would be go back to the dietician, check the facts, ask for a diet sheet and if they want you on 800 calories it must be so you can drop quickly. It does not sound sustainable if you are active. I could do this diet for a short time because I cook from scratch, log everything religiously and can cook and plan ahead. So this is what my 800 calories would look like - Breakfast, 2 eggs scrambled in 1 calorie spray oil [ PAM ] and 200mls of full skim milk for my coffee Lunch, 2 cups of Vegetable soup made without starchy vegetables, so no potatoes Evening meal, 1 x 6 ounce chicken breast, side salad with calorie free dressing and a 7 ounce jacket potato I hope this helps

While I absolutely do not agree that it’s likely you will GAiN weight on 800 calories, 800 Calories can be a pretty good amount of food depending on what you eat. for example this is 757 calories and it’s 100 g of protein. breakfast: Caramel “Proffee” made from a premiere protein caramel shake with iced coffee mixed in. (It’s really good and filling with the protein btw). lunch: three eggs omelette with 2% cheese (1 ounce) and tomatoes and onion (1/2 cup). dinner: grilled chicken breast (3 ounce) and zucchini and onion (1/2 cup). snack: oikos triple zero yogurt I use the Baritastic app and I always have the same breakfast but then before I have lunch I plug in my plan and an idea for dinner to make certain it’s okay macro wise. I do pay some attention to calories but protein, added sugars and fat are more important. I also pay attention to my carbs because on some days my exercise is higher and I actually need to increase them a bit. If your dietician is not asking about your activity and your food choices and inky giving you a cookie cutter plan without real guidance I would be asking more questions. These plans need to be tailored to you specifically. if you are having a difficult time finding foods you like that meet the criteria you are definitely not alone. I had to do a ton of research and trial and error with recipes to find a couple weeks worth of meals that I enjoy and I was doing 900ish calories. I scoured the web and found low calorie recipes and also ways to cut calories from things I knew I enjoyed. Basically type “healthy” in front of anything you like and you should find ways to make a more bariatric friendly version. Some days you may need to reduce calories further by having two shakes or egg whites instead to budget for a higher calorie dinner. I don’t love to cook so I make double batches of things and freeze them in individual portions. this has been my lifesaver. For the 800 calories you may have to do a lot of lower calorie lean meat and veggie type dinners unless you cut calories during lunch. For instance instead of 3 eggs you could do five 5 whites and you could even omit the cheese if you need to cut calories further. i would imagine you could still lose on a little higher calorie budget and you have more flexibility in your menu but it may not be as fast as you would like. Either way, check out Baritastic (or another calorie tracking app). It’s very helpful to see exactly what’s in different food and to play around with these meal ideas on an app because you can add and delete and adjust the measurements to figure out how to make things work to fit your plan.

What struck me here is not really the macros and much as how different the calories are. The thing is, no calculator is going to tell you what the calorie count should be. My suggestion would be to simply track your existing calories for 1-2 weeks to see where you're at now. I assume your looking to maintain based on the fact you are showing to be at goal. If that's not accurate, then we might need to make some adjustments to what I'm about to propose. At this point, you can completely ignore anything a calculator spits out in terms of calories since by tracking your calories at your current weight, you know exactly where YOU need to be to maintain. Let's say for the sake of making the math easy, you determine that 2000 calories is working for you at maintenance. Skip the calculators and do this: Protein should be somewhere between 1 and 2 grams per kg. If you are inactive, 1 gram is probably minimally sufficient, but if you are very active or shooting for body recomposition, then you need to be closer to 2 grams per kg. 1.5 to 1.6 g/kg might be a good target if you are working out, but not super active, or are not really trying to add any muscle. The next thing to determine is grams of fat. If you are just maintaining, anywhere between 1 and around 1.5 g per kg is probably fine. If you are actively trying to lose or recomp, it would be better to be closer to 0.7 g per kg. Carbs is next and really will just be the rest of your calories, vs. a specific number of grams. Here's how that looks in practice: Again, just to beep the math simple, I'm going to stick with 2000 calories at your current weight of 170lbs, which translates to about 77kg. If your goal is body recomp, then 2g/kg should be your target protein, which equates to 154g per day. 154g at 4 calories per g equals 616 grams from protein per day. Fats when doing a "recomp" would be 77 x 0.7 = 54 grams of fat. 54 grams of fat at 9 calories per gram would be 486 calories from fat If we subtract 616 and 486 from 2000, we'd get 898 calories from carbs. This would be roughly 225 grams of carbs per day. A few notes: This is all based on research, but I also am not "carbophobic". My personal experience is that sufficient carbs are needed to fuel workouts. Some people have success with fewer carbs and more fat. I have no problem with that approach if it work for you. If so, feel free to adjust fat up and carbs down. Either way, the protein is the key, since you'll need that to build muscle. If recomp is not your goal, feel free to run the numbers with lower protein and correspondingly higher fat and carb numbers. Don't go lower than 0.7 g of fat per kg. You need a minimum level of essential fatty acids to stay healthy. In terms of how to change this if you are working out more than you are today, it really comes down to both the types of workouts (endurance sports virtually demand more carbs), but also how vigorous your workouts are. If you are trying to lose weight, I would recommend eating back at least half your calories from your workouts. Any less and you're likely to feel too rundown to put the proper effort into the workouts. If you just skate through workouts, then you lose a lot of the benefit of them. If you are trying to maintain or recomp, then you really should eat back all the calories from your workouts.

My program also only counted protein and suggested "low carb" with roughly 40% of calories coming from protein, 30% carb, and 30% fat. If you eat 1000 calories (to make the math easier, but you won't probably hit 1000 calories for a while, at least a few months), that would be 100g protein, 75g carb, and 33g fat. As time goes on and calorie intake goes up, my dietician says the percentage of protein might decrease and carb might increase, but it's about finding what works for you. Also, I was told not to worry about hitting these numbers perfectly every single day, but to look at the weekly average for a better idea of how you're doing.

If it puts your mind at ease, the only way to gain 10 lbs of fat in 5 days is to eat 7,000 extra calories per day (in addition to your usual maintenance calories). If you ate like 8,500 calories per day, 5 days in a row, you would remember. Swelling, on the other hand, is an easy way to gain fluid weight really fast. Hope you heal quickly and start feeling back to normal really soon! Once you get through the awkward first several weeks, I'm sure you're going to be thrilled with the results.

So did you eat less than you normally do the day that you logged it? If so, you might wanna log it for like a week or something and try to get a better idea of what you actually eat. It’s possible because your activity has increased that you can still lose on 13 or 1400 calories. I think really it depends more on the quality of your calories than it does the actual calories. Like as long as your carbs are natural carbs, and your fats are healthy fats. They may have more calories, but they may not cause you to slow your loss. I’ve been eating a lot more calories but I think mine is a little different because of the chemo. I know that they said it burns a lot of carbs. So I’ve been eating like fruit and vegetables all day long and my calories are up to 13-1700 some days even and I’m losing still. Slower than I was but it’s hard because I do my infusion and my weight shoots up like 8 pounds and it scares me but then it eventually goes down and I don’t know how much it’s really going to go down this time it was an extra two pounds. But I know for me based on my activity I was able to increase my calories before all this chemo stuff probably like 300-400 of mostly healthy carbs that I added and I was losing the same, which was the occasional very small portion of brown rice and then lots of extra fruits and veggie snacks. Like I would have just a small side salad in between meals or a cup of fruit. Of course I was working out like a mad woman. 😂

@AmberFL I must have missed that you are recovering from surgery. While I probably wouldn't recommend a significant fat loss diet while healing, I'd also be a bit cautious about using Google AI recommendations. The idea that you need 15-20 calories per pound of current body weight to heal just doesn't pass the smell test. If this were true, none of us would have properly healed from our bariatric surgery. Keep in mind that 15-20 pounds for you right now would be roughly 2500 to 3400 calories. At your starting weight, that would have been about 4500 to almost 6000 calories a day! Looking through the scientific literature, I couldn't find a single reference that this level of calories was needed to promote healing after surgery. There were some references to additional calories being helpful in the event of significant wounds, thus your calorie needs may be somewhat higher for more involved surgeries vs simple ones. I apologise, but I have no idea what "PS surgery" is, so that doesn't really help narrow things down. I think my recommendation would be to base this more on feel. If you are feeling really rundown, that's probably a good indication you may need to up your calories. You're always going to feel somewhat tired after any major surgery, so I'm talking about feeling excessively tired. If you do feel the need to add more, my recommendations above regarding macros still stand. We do know that wound healing requires adequate protein (thus 1.6g/kg is a good minimum target). We also want to make sure you're getting adequate essential fats, so shooting for a minimum of 50g is still good advice. If you are more like 70 to 80g, especially when not on a fat loss diet, that's just fine. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going much higher that that on fats because if you do, if will mean you would likely be subtracting calories from carbs. Good whole food sources of carbs like whole grains, vegetables and fruit have tons of nutritive value that you really shouldn't be skipping right now. In short, protein first, essential fats next, and carbs for the rest of the diet.

The pre-op diet is probably the hardest thing you will do for the next 10-12 months. It's honestly so difficult, but you can get through it! Once surgery was done, 400-500 calories per day felt totally normal to me for months. A few things that helped me were sugar free jello, sugar free popsicles, and the Millie's sipping broth. Almost no calories in any of these, but you get sort of the feeling of eating, which helps combat the head hunger. Is it perfect? No. But it kind of helps. Also, sugar free gum might help. And if you're truly hungry, ask if you can add more non-starchy veggies throughout the day. I wasn't allowed any meals or veg, just liquid, but since you are, the difference between 2 cups of broccoli and 3 cups, calorie wise, is pretty much nothing. You can eat a whole cucumber for barely any calories, or a salad with baby spinach, cucumbers, shredded carrots, and balsamic vinegar (no oil).

How many calories for just the curious kitty? 😉

Yes to your first question. I only lost like 60 to 70 lbs. My surgeon staff only wants me on a 800 calorie diet loss weight. Except low cLorie sweet tea I don't eat much food let alone it's hard to eat anything when most foods have above 200 hundred calories.

I am 51 year old, 5 foot 6 inches and weigh 296. I started at 340. My calorie intake is 800-1000 calories a day set by my surgeon, 30 carbs a day and 64 oz of fluid with 60-80 grams of protein each day.