VSG Failure.......

Ok, since you said you wanted to vent- good, get it out. Ignore the rest of this if you don't want advice, you posted a vent, I post advice..

I can only give you my experiences and opinions, but maybe it will give you a different perspective seeing it coming from another side?

Hunger: Comes back for many, some never lose it.. mine- 4mo reprieve. Are you on a PPI? If yes, try switching or upping the dose with Drs consent. If the hunger dissipates, great- if not, you are going to have to work with it. I eat 5-6x a day. I still take my PPI for GERD. I get hungry most days, especially when I wake (I almost always wake up physically hungry.)

Restriction on only dense meats/eggs: normal for many. This is why we eat protein (meat) first.. the more solid, the better, this is for life. I can eat bowls of yogurt, cottage cheese, hard cheeses, cooked veggies, salad and gods forbid, anything cracker/carb/bready. Meat & eggs fill me. This is what I start almost any meal with, and especially on my very hungry days it may be ALL I eat, along with some cheese. Veggies with meat- I can eat more than just meat alone.. So, 2.5oz chicken is all I can handle, IF I eat just chicken. I consider myself to have great restriction- this is how the sleeve works.. I eat my veggies as snacks most days.

Tired: I didn't start feeling even my normal amount of pre-op stamina (which sucked to be honest) for 3mo. I rounded the bend by 4mo and felt mostly back to normal.. 2 mo, I was still exhausted and breaking a cold sweat walking around a supermarket. I'm not at all exaggerating.


You are just 2 months out. You are likely having a slow down, stall.. whatever you want to call it. Not every month will come with losses, this is for the rest of your life unless you revise (and if you do, only get the DS, please- which by the way, you can fail as well, just takes more work.)

You have from now till you die to get healthy, you got a smaller stomach to help you till then.. it doesn't go away. This is no race, no time lines to hit, nothing but you and living the most healthy life you can.. I don't understand calling failure at 2mo. Please, please if you don't already- consider seeing a counselor. The mental side of this is so much bigger than the physical side.. and I see you admitting defeat before you are even fully recuperated from major surgery. Your head is not in a good space from what you've been posting recently, and getting it there and keeping it there is extremely important in making these changes stick, and dealing with the hurdles you'll hit on the way.

 I love your post! I am 2 months out and down 23 pounds on my scale and 20 on the doctors scale. Which I hate cuz it always makes me feel heavy. Anyway I am hungry a lot too and physically I'll hungry in the mornings. You answered a lot of my questions , actually all theses post did. Thanks for all the posts . It feels good to know that this is just a phase and it will pass. If we work it and choose meat first I will not stay this fat! 

Ok don't read my post... It's just my thoughts. If you are not on a PPI get on one or change one. Also, are you getting your sleep? I am attending counseling for my eating issues with a bariatric counselor. She says that if you are not getting enough REM sleep the body tends to go into survival mode and can hold on to fat. I would log everything you eat and drink. Log your sleep and vitamins. Make sure you are doing everything. I have been in a stall for 3 weeks. I can tell I am losing inches so I am ok with that. My doctor told me that adding a protein drink and hour before bed can also help with flushing fat.. Just my 2 cents.. I know this isn't easy and I encourage you to look up the definition of failure.. You are not one by any means!

Hugs and encouragement sent your way.

Please don't give up! I was very emotional the first few months after surgery...I had good days and bad days. I am a stair step loser and often times went weeks without losing an ounce. I would get very frustrated and became a slave to the scale. Well recently I have been going through a very scary health situation and my focus has been on recuperating and not so much on obsessing about the scale and guess what? I am doing just fine in the eating department. I put faith in my sleeve, continued to make the best food choices I could and I am still losing, slowly losing, but who cares? I can honestly say that my perspective on my weight loss has changed. It doesn't matter how quickly I lose the weight. When I got the sleeve I made a lifelong committment to better health in general and I now realize that this is not a race. I am taking things one day at a time, hell, one minute at a time if I have to. Hunger is natural and I am hungry every day. However I have taken the time to find a plan that meets my needs and satisfies my physical hunger. Emotional hunger is a totally different beast and I truly believe in therapy if one can't tackle the emotional issues on their own.

You can do this! If dense protein fills you up, then eat only dense protein first. Plan ahead and track what you are putting in your mouth. Try to remind yourself that each positive choice you make only leads you closer to your goal but a negative choice isn't the end of the world! Get out a pad of paper and list what things you can do to be successful. Screw the scale...hide that sucker if you have to!!! Wishing you the best!!

I would normally have ALOT to say and I do but that's going to call for a phone call as I have time or patience to write.  But I lost 25lbs in the 2 months and I would NEVER consider myself a failure.  In fact I averaged about 5-10lbs a MONTH so ummm yeah.  

Hit me up via mesage if you'd like to talk.  As you said there really isn't anything you can do about it NOW except stop feeling sorry for yourself and get proactive.  There are so many variables and yeah hit me up.

Ms Shell

 One awesome chick posting here - I apparently need to hang out with you MORE do your amazingness can rub off on me. Your spaghetti has magic weight loss effects :)

Awww love you and yeah diet in Atlanta YOU are my idol!!

Well 2/6 days down...:)

 This really was a vent because noone else in my world that remotely understands what I'm going through. But my calling it a failure is based in part on the fact that I have had some prelim labs done and according to my family Dr (whom most of the time I do NOT agree with), I'm in constant ketosis, and he's seen greater weight loss with obese patients who test consistently in ketosis. There were some other numbers that showed that I'm "metabolic resistant" which indicates that I will lose alot slower than similar patients. So this is not me blowing off steam and self-diagnosing. We are running additional labs to figure out a plan. But the more I study and research, the more obvious it is i shouldve had a different surgery...either RNY or DS. 

I think someone responded that I said I'm hungry unless I eat dense protein....correction....what I said is that I only feel restriction when i eat very very dense protein..big difference. At least my world. 

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Again im not looking for a pity party or even a kick in the butt. But I am going to have to add some additional components in order to make my sleeve work. This includes rx meds that I'd hoped Vsg wouldve helped me to avoid. So at least with the current info I have and facing what Im facing, I have to say that vsg was not the best weight loss choice for me.

"I only have restriction when i eat very very dense protein" Okay, that's true for us all.  Look i was on diets whole life and lost a ton of weight each and every time.  I never had a problem.  My first 6 weeks of vsg i lost 6lbs and my 2ND,  6lbs.  so in the first 3 months i lost 12lbs. 

Did it suck?  Sure. Did anyone believe me when i posted?  Mostly they said i had to be doing something wrong but what? 

I was doing the mantra'd 600-800, 30-40 carbs and exercising.  It just wasn't working for me,  As it turned out after a ton of metabolic tests and every possible machine known to man that my lifetime of diets had diminished my lean muscle mass to the point where i just was going to lose weight at the rate i was going to lose weight and i had to try to build muscle along the way. Oh Joy.

Has it sucked? Sure but at 14 months out I'm less than 10lbs from goal.  Did the weight fall off?  No.  I lost 3-4lbs a month, less than i did on WW but it was easier.  (look for the rainbow) I would eat my 1/3 cup and leave the table full.

As for hunger.  It has come and gone.  My 3rd and 4Th week out i could not get full.  There were tears, i even blamed my DR, very loudly and angrily.  That hunger went away.  I shows it's face every now and again but if you put hunger into the search box you will find a host of posters who went through wrenching hunger that subsided, to varying degrees over time. The whole Ghrelin issue clicks in at different times for everyone, so yours could still be coming. One thing that won't change "Dense protein will always be your friend"

I will say this.  To be posting here, where weight seems to fall off everyone, when that is not your story, is lonely and it means you almost never reach people who know what you are talking about and so it almost always reverts back to user error.  On the other hand looking at your stats, I'm not seeing that the problem is exactly the problem yet.  Your first month seems to have been stellar, your 2ND month (and you are still in that) a stall could explain it.

I know your doctor is going with the idea that maybe this was not the surgery for you but ask yourself how much of that is at your insistence.  I knew something was wrong and i would not let it go but as experienced as my doctor was he was flying in the dark. 

The one good thing is that he believed i was eating what i said i was, I'd email him my food log, but he went down that road with me because i was insisting on answers but i say to you, in your case,  this could pass, it could be a stall, your expectations could be too high, your first month worked well. 

Maybe you need to just keep the course until you're 3 months in and in reality, like me you have no where to go.  But here's one thing i do know. If i was not losing weight right off the operating table with 600 plus cals and 30 carbs, no amount of malabsorption was gonna work for me.  The body needs a certain amount of calories to work, so thinking that another story would have been the answer, may not be that answer. Even if it is, this is the surgery you have and so you have to find how best to work with it and your set of cir****tances.

My advice and i know it will agitate you because you want answers and you want them now, is to continue what you re doing.  Buy a lot of chicken, eat it and do it for the next month and just calm down.  This is your reality right now, there is no other road to take, this is it.  So just calm down and wait.  Wait and see if it is a stall and i know you will get this from a lot of people, but the reason i say that your story may be different than mine (and i sincerely hope it is) is that you had a great first month loss and what you may be experiencing is a stall.  Some people have had them for 4 Weeks in their 2ND month, so please do yourself a favor, keep the faith and calm down.

Good luck.