I am Really Nervous Now

I'm just judging by your weight loss. I haven't seen a good set of labs for you but those might be enlightening. I've seen folks with 200cm common channel lose and have vitamin deficiencies too. Your duodenum and most of your jejunum is bypassed and you have a tiny pouch that doesn't produce enough stomach acid to fill a thimble... I think he was wrong (dead wrong) to tell you you don't have to worry about vitamins.    

Fortunately I didn't believe him anyway.  Since I had so many problems before I wasn't going to take any chances so I supplemented like I still had malabsorption.  The labs I recently had were ok but I have to wait until next month to get another full set since I could not get my PCP to agree to doing the full set so I am changing PCPs and Oct was the earliest I could get in to see her.  She was my old PCP back when I had my first WLS and was always great about things so I don't think I will have any problems getting all the labs done.

Sounds like you're on top of it and I'm glad. Good luck with the new PCP.

Tazz
I can't offer any advice but I'm also sending you a group hug.
Take Care

This is a hard one.  I have no real advice except I agree with the others and that it is time to see a dr; also,  a good dietician might be able to help a lot.  I work in healthcare with a lot of fragile folks who deal with low BMI.......there are ways to add supplements without having to radically change your diet or to have a feeding tube.  Please know that YOU haven't failed.  YOU have been doing what is right.  And KNOW that there are a lot of us on here who are rooting for you. Hopefully this can be reversed and you can maintain a steady weight. 

Good luck!!!



~~~Jennifer

Ladytazz,

Do what Gina suggests and you might also email Michelle (vitalady) to see if she has any ideas.

That's a good idea.  I forgot that she has also had times where her weight was pretty low.
Thanks.

While most of us can just kind of gradually coast to a stop, I do think some people need to be more active about stopping the weight loss. Here is what I did:

-Figured out my RMR/BMR - that way I knew my base calories.

I estimated mine but you can get it tested to be even more accurate. One way is to get a BodyMedia FIT and figure out your typical calories burned per minute while sleeping and multiple that out for 24 hours to get your BMR. Another way is to find a place (like a gym) that has a machine that you blow into for 10 minutes and it tells you your RMR based on how much oxygen you remove from the air.

Then multiply your RMR or BMR by an activity factor. If you get your RMR tested via the breathing method, they do it for you.

Now you know how many calories you are burning outside of exercise.

-Tracked exercise calories & food calories

Each day I'd add in any exercise I did to my base calories, subtract out any calories I consumed to figure out whether I was eating about what I burned or not. It was never exact on any particular day but I wanted to be around what I burned over a 3-4 day period.

You'll also need to throw in a fudge factor for what you are malabsorbing, but over time that will lessen and might even go away. (And that's when you get bounceback... it's in the 2-3 years out from surgery period.)

You can wait for it to stop on its own but that doesn't work for some people. Some people's hunger level is below what they need to be healthy and they can't eat to their hunger. Also, we were in a mode where we doled out our calories very carefully for a long time and it can take a while to stop eating like that. So we put a small dab of butter on our toast and have two bites because "bread is bad" and "butter is bad" but we need to be adding stuff like that back into our diets and not just eating protein all the time.

Adding fruit to your protein shakes is actually a great idea. I do that during certain times of the year when I am working out so much that I have trouble keeping weight on.

Another thing is that if you are doing a lot of cardio for exercise and less strength training to do less cardio and more strength training. The strength training will build up muscles -- which will add weight and also make you less bony looking -- while cardio tends to burn fat which at this point  you want to do less of, just enough to keep your cardiovascular system healthy.