Is there a normal first "plateau"?

[Txkat]

I have always had "fits and starts" in weight loss. I'll lose 10 lbs pretty quickly, and then nada for sometimes up to a month, and then it will drop down again 5 lbs or so, etc... I thought that surgery would change that, since, especially in these first three months, the diet is so restricted. I was down 22 lbs at my post-op visit 12 days after surgery ( 13 of it was fat, so yay!), but since then, 10 days ago, I'm down a scant 1.5-2 lbs. I don't have a body composition scale, but I'd bet that's a lot of water, because I've done a pretty fantastic job of throwing up and diarrhea. I have been experiencing a good bit of "buyer's remorse" about this surgery. I feel a bit depressed. It's discouraging to have so much pain every time I eat, and without weight loss to buoy my spirits, I'm not in the best place. I'm already back to working out. My doctor's office has an exercise physiologist and a physical therapist to create workouts that won't do any damage to all your healing bits, and that actually really helps, but I have a major case of the blahs, and find it really discouraging that 600-ish calories a day isn't providing faster progress. Any advice?

 

[more2adore]

Hey! The 3 week stall is infamous - you can search for it and you'll find a bunch of results. It always happens - sometimes at week 2 or 4, but usually around week 3. Hang in there! Your body is probably still working on the inflammation/fluid from the surgery. The scale will start moving again, and much more reliably than it did before! Make sure you're getting in enough liquid and as much protein as you can. That's especially important since you mentioned diarrhea/vomiting. You don't want to end up in the ER getting a bag of fluids if you can avoid it.

 

[DianaCox]

http://bariatricfacts.org/threads/the-three-week-stall.743/

 

[JackieOnLine]

as Diana posted, yes - perfectly normal to stall then. or anytime, actually.

 

[brooklyngirl]

Ya know, I would think if you're throwing up and have diarrehea, and then working out on top of it, your body is probably trying really freekin hard to hold onto anything you give it. I feel like I wouldn't be doing any kind of exercise until your fluid and protein intake & output is normal.

 

[Txkat]

Well, tomorrow will be a month, and I'm only down 1.5 lbs from where I was @ day 12, which is kind of discouraging. I've been going in for acupuncture, which has been amazingly helpful for my digestive issues, and I seem to have that mostly under control. I just never feel particularly well, and my belly aches when I haven't eaten, right after I've eaten, if the elastic on my pants is too tight, pretty much all the time. I work out with the physical therapist at my doctor's clinic, so they're pretty careful with me. I have pretty impressive amounts of arthritis for somebody my age, and if I don't keep up with my exercises, I have trouble keeping the pain in line.

 

[cris]

i had a gain last week and the ladies here gave me some advice you could try. Because as soon as I listened to them, things started moving again. Stop eating food. Just because the doctor says you can doesn't meant you have to. Go back to shakes. With the pain you are having you also may not be drinking all you are supposed to be. That water is the key. Once I stopped eating and just drank the weight moved again. With the food I was only drinking maybe 30 oz....back on shakes only I can get in the 64 easy peasy. Worth a try?

 

[marissamast]

i had a gain last week and the ladies here gave me some advice you could try. Because as soon as I listened to them, things started moving again. Stop eating food. Just because the doctor says you can doesn't meant you have to. Go back to shakes. With the pain you are having you also may not be drinking all you are supposed to be. That water is the key. Once I stopped eating and just drank the weight moved again. With the food I was only drinking maybe 30 oz....back on shakes only I can get in the 64 easy peasy. Worth a try?

I am going to give that a go....