Am i failing ALREADY!!!???

[willowwaters 25]

Today marks day 31 after my operation..... Starting weight was 265, day of operation 240, go home weight was 246.... today I am 222.... is that normal???? I do understand everyone is different.... but the first few weeks I was dropping over a pound a day..... now I am looking at only 2 pounds a week..... which "normal people" loose when dieting and exercising the right way.... getting frustrated and discouraged quick.... I was sooooo hoping to be at a 30 pound loss by my first post op appointment. putting me at 210.... I am not even close!

[sundog 8]

Hi - I"m 53 days since surgery. My weight loss really slowed down after the first 3 weeks, and twice now I've had a three or four day stall. I' am losing about 1 to 2 lbs per week now, even though I eat about 800-1000 calories and excercise every day. When I've tried to lose weight before (which I've done several times) I had to excercise like crazy and go to bed every night hungry in order to lose at about the same rate. The difference this time is that I don't feel deprived or hungry and I've been working on changing my eating habits without feeling like I"m battling cravings.

Imagine that you can still keep this rate of loss going for a whole year. Say you average only 5 lbs per month. That is still 60 lb loss, which puts you where you want to be! And a steady weight loss like that is better for your skin and kidneys. Stay positive!

[James Marusek 5,244]

Just follow the program requirements that you were given covering Vitamins, fluids, Protein, exercise and meal volume and you should do well. Your weight loss will taper off the further you go post-op and eventually come to an end when you slide into the maintenance phase but you still have many, many more months to go before maintenance.

[willowwaters 25]

I am trying.... I am a counting down the minutes... my HAAARRRDDD part right now is I need to drink about 1.6 ounces of Water every 15 minutes to get enough in for hydration (up about 630 bed about 1030..... 3 meals a day = 2 hoursish around meal time I cant drink)... my pouch cant handle that yet.... and food was I am oka... I still don't want food a lot I am around 400 to 600 calories a day, with out Protein Shakes, with Protein shakes its about 160 calories more.

[SGirl35 165]

Today marks day 31 after my operation..... Starting weight was 265, day of operation 240, go home weight was 246.... today I am 222.... is that normal???? I do understand everyone is different.... but the first few weeks I was dropping over a pound a day..... now I am looking at only 2 pounds a week..... which "normal people" loose when dieting and exercising the right way.... getting frustrated and discouraged quick.... I was sooooo hoping to be at a 30 pound loss by my first post op appointment. putting me at 210.... I am not even close!

While my losses were super fast up to 30 days post surgery- I understand your frustration. I keep stalling .. super slow loss , and not consistent. You’ll lose again soon don’t worry. It seems as though everyone has such a different pace of loss. Im currently frustrated too. Need to stay clear of the scale to avoid stress I think...

[mel1214 14]

I’ve hit a stall as well. I had lost 32 lbs at 3 weeks and have lost 2 since then. I’m 6 weeks out and super frustrated. I’m struggling to eat, so I should be losing like crazy.

[Amburmist 55]

I, too, was frustrated so much at my slow rate of loss. I was seeing so many on these boards losing so much so fast that i was feeling defeated when i had only lost like 15lbs a month out. I am about 2.5 months out now and "only" down 33lbs (310 to 277 lbs) and have resigned myself to just "keep with the process" and what will happen will happen. There's not much else i can do. My body is just not one of those bodies that is going to lose quickly. But if i continue to follow the program, i can't go anywhere but down, right? My big butt cannot sustain all this weight only eating 600-700 cals/day, plus exercise. I thought that too, that people who didn't have this drastic-ass procedure lose weight at 1-2 lbs a week, same as what's happening to me now (unless im in a stall, which i have been in SEVERAL TIMES already in 2 months!). But, like a poster above said, the difference is I don't feel hungry all the time, like I'm forcing myself into this diet of starvation like i used to. It's easy now for me to only eat 4 ounces of food and push away from the table, for instance.

Also, keep in mind, just because we're only eating 400-600 cals/day, doesn't mean we're going to lose faster. I, too, thought that initially. But when i started including more grams of healthy fats a day (almonds) and about 100 more cals, i started losing more. That's the hardest part, i think, is finding the sweet spot of cals/day, fat grams/day, protein/day, carbs/day, etc to where ur body doesn't think ur starving it. I think my body was holding onto weight before i started increasing the macros. And I'm ok now but i know I'll have to change again as my weight gets lower. Bottom line, its a pain in the butt...but it's way easier now post-op than it was pre-op, don't u think? Maybe it's a mental thing but whatever it is, I've finally given in to the process. Eat better, exercise daily. There's no magic trick (eg, rny bypass)...just tools to make it easier. You'll get there too!

Ps. I still cannot get in 64oz of water/day. No matter what i do, i just can't do it. I'll continue to strive but as of now, i can only get in, max, 30-40oz/day. Yes it would be good if i could drink all sorts of Water, but my body seems to be accepting of my lower intake...for now. It may change or it may not. I just have to wait and see. My point is...just keep trying. That's all we can do.

[FluffyChix 17,415]

So I am still pre-surgery and @Amburmist made a great point. There's kinda two groups among veterans:

Group 1- Eat as few cals/carbs as possible to satisfy your Protein needs while in the losing phase (especially the honeymoon period).

Group 2- Follow your doc plan to a T. Do as they advise to up the cals and also include "healthy" carbs and get to a level of X cals/day while satisfying your protein needs. And do this for life.

Group 1 claims that there is no such thing as starvation mode with a severly obese person in weight loss mode. They claim that there are no "too few calories or carbs."

I don't know which one is correct!

But I do have a daily spreadsheet from May 2017 to present that shows what happened with my weight from when I was consuming 200-400 cals daily with about 3g net carbs, to now when I'm eating 1500 cals daily with an average of 64g of net carbs. It's pretty enlightening! What it shows is that I had a sweet spot where I lost 13lbs in 1 month when I was in the 800-900cal range and carbs were in the 20-25net carb range. As I increased my calories to the 1500, I'm in what I call "maintenance" phase until surgery. I'm still losing anywhere between 0-5lbs per month and I think that depends on how much of that 1500 is protein and carbs.

I figure the surgery RNY will affect my rate of loss and how many calories I can consume while losing at a reasonable rate. I just don't know how it will affect it yet.

I suspect that for many of us, eating so few calories does affect us. It isn't CICO for metabolically impaired people--too many feedback loops that rely on hormonal levels/vitamin levels etc. I also think that for many of us, protein isolate is very insulinogenic. If you keep insulin high, you will not lose. It's as simple as that. I was eating 300cals, less than 10g net carbs, and not losing. My insulin was on the high end of norm at 14 and my HOMA-IR was >3.3 (very high). So no wonder. When I started eating real food and dropping the protein supps, I started losing better.

I intend to keep my spread sheet so I can track what happens as my calories and macros shift. If it were me, I'd try to up my cals and healthy (veggie/fruit) carbs from low glycemic sources to see if that 1) Helps me feel better and more sustained/nourished and 2) Increases the rate of loss.