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Ok, I really like salads. In particular Wendy's apple pecan salad. 560 calories, 24g fat, 52carbs, 7fiber & 38g protein. I've been eating 1 a day. I also like baked tilapia fillet. A small fillet is about 3oz I think. 110calories, 23p, 2.5gfat & 0carbs. I eat about 4 a day.So nutritionally how am I doing?
I'm 13yrs out and I'm up to 164lbs and I really want to get down to 140.
Eve
hw:400+
sw:340
cw:163
It is normal, especially if you menstruate. Here are my tips:
Try to focus on the thing you can directly control, i.e. what you eat. Congratulate yourself every day you follow a healthy diet. When you stall for two weeks and then lose two pounds "overnight", was it really overnight? No; you were making progress during those two weeks, even though the scale didn't move.
The other thing you can control, to some extent, is constipation. Drink more water, and that will help keep you regular and reduce the scale fluctuations.
Get a scale that shows body fat percentage in addition to your weight. I usually find that when my weight is stalled, the body fat percentage is going down, which reassures me. Early on, the body fat percentage won't change much, because each pound is a small percentage of your total weight. But as you get closer to your goal, the pounds come off more slowly, but each pound lost has more of an effect on body fat percentage.
Dr Atkins started low carb, high protein dieting. He said that low carb gave a 10% advantage. Which means if you lose 10 pounds on high carb, you would have lost 11 on low carb.
Real life begins where your comfort zone ends
That depends on what type of diet you're following. Generally speaking, there are two types of diet, which use different mechanisms to lose weight.
- low calorie: which for WLS people means high protein, low fat and generally no restriction on carbs
- low carb: which for WLS people means high protein, low carbs, and generally no restriction on fat
The medical research indicates that these two types of diet are equally effective, so the recommendation is to choose the one that's easier for you to follow, because you're more likely to stick with it.
If you're on a low carb diet, let us know and you'll get more specific recommendations.
I follow a low calorie diet and have been very successful. I don't worry about carbs.
After 2/3 frustrating months I've noticed an annoying pattern. I lose about 7lbs in 4-5 days and then stall for 10-17 days. This has happened about 4 times already and it's quite discouraging. Also when I enter the 'stall period' i go up about 2.5lbs. I know I should be happy that I'm losing weight, but I'm not sure that this is normal at only 5 months out. I will confess my eating habits aren't the greatest. I go some days barely eating anything and feeling nauseous when I do. then some days I can literally eat anything (in smaller amounts than before surgery, but still not healthy foods.) any advice on how to control the nausea and weight stalling?
Thanks for the insight. I was just wondering because I'm a vitamin schedule "tinkerer". While my actual vitamin list stays pretty much the same now I tend to look and see if changing the time or the combination has any change to my levels. Mostly it doesn't and I end up with whatever is working for my schedule but I did get a rise in D by moving it to overnight and morning (1 50k each time).
I've been pretty stable for many years. My D was about the only thing I changed in the first few years, but it has been the same for many years now. Everything else is pretty stable. I am anemic and get iron infusions every few years, I think 2-3 in the last 10 years. But we aren't sure that is related to the WLS. Overall, everything is stable.....
Jinjer
YES! Thank you, Janet! Choices are important and now I remember how I framed my choices while I was experiencing my best success! Thank you for reminding me! I love the idea of scooping out the inside of breads! I hadn't thought of that before! Definitely going to do this from now on!
I took nutrition classes in college, so I define carbs as anything plant-based; wheat, potatoes, asparagus, carrots, sugar...they're all carbs and some are better than others. I used to have success counting only quickly digested carbs and processed carbs, but gave myself a free pass with slowly digested carbs. So if it had a high glycemic index (easily digested), like bread (even whole wheat), pasta, rice, potatoes and yes, anything with sugar in it, I counted the grams. If it was raw or had a low glycemic index (slowly digested) I gave myself a free pass. So I would count the baked potato I had with dinner, but not the asparagus. This gave me more to eat, in both quantity and options, while helping me maintain my blood sugar levels. In short, I ate like I was diabetic.
Maintaining blood sugar levels is important because the faster food we eat gets converted to energy, the higher the levels of glucose in our blood. Protein and fats get converted to energy too, but at a much slower rate than carbohydrates.
The more glucose free-floating in our blood and not being used, the faster our pancreas kicks out the "hoarder" hormone, insulin, which converts and hoards excess glucose that isn't being used for energy in the form of body fat. This explains why A) more muscle mass means higher metabolism (more energy is required to maintain, so insulin can't store excess energy) and B) why fats (especially DSers) don't make us fat. Simple carbohydrates do.
The DS works by creating a therapeutic malabsorption, but doesn't work as well with carb absorption, nor does it control our pancreas, which explains why and how we need to continue to control our carb (plant based) intake.
I like to understand why and how things work. I enjoy research. But I also, unfortunately, have a short memory. Your comment about choices reminded me about all of this and will help me formulate my intake to easily get myself back on track! Thank you!
