Dumping & Portions....???

Good MORNING! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.
Well, I will be one year out at the end of this month. My period ended today and the week prior (last week) I have had really bad PMS. I have PMDD (severe pms) and I craved everything and anything and wanted to eat 24/7. (Which was the reason for my weight gain that led to surgery in the first place). I was able to control it over the last year, but this period was REALLY bad. I couldn't stop eating and I feel TERRIBLE! Most of all, I am concerened that I was able to eat more than the past months, and that I didn't dump!! I made Easter Cookies with the kids and I had a SUGAR COOKIE with FROSTING (straight sugar) and didn't dump! WHY??? I am so scared! I used to dump on anything over 5g of sugar, I didn't dump at all over the last week! (I didn't pig out everyday, for me, it was usually good choices, but I would eat several times a day, for example, I would have my protein shake for breakfast, an hour later have 3/4 of a hard boiled egg, an hour later have a cheese stick, an hour later have something else...etc,etc,etc,etc, but the few times I had sweets- the cookie, another piece of a cookie yesterday, a few jelly beans, sweet tea (which normally makes me dump) , none of it made me dump and I ate so many times a day! I tried to keep it to pure protein, but I was not satisified. I am so paranoid. I mean, TERRIFIED that this is going to be bad news for me in the future. My periods have always been really bad for me and I have been on every pill known to man to fix it, but nothing works. The cravings , for me, are so severe I could never control them in the past. I don't know why I didn't have them that bad the first 11 months after surgery, but now they just appeared. Do you think this is going to stretch out my pouch? What should I do? Any suggestions? Why am I not dumping? This morning I had a 1/2  glass of tea (mind you, I have avoided it the first 11 months because everytime I took ONE SIP, I would dump bad), and this glass of tea made me so nauseas and sick to my stomach (dumping) and I am wondering if I cannot dump during my period but after I can....does that sound silly? Thank you for your help. I am really paranoid. I don't want to be that obese person anymore! I am down to a size 8 from an 16/18 and I feel good! I would DIE if I went back to that obese person again. I am trying to fight the cravings! I try to eat healthy ALL the time and not give in to my cravings. But sometimes I get so hungry that my stomach HURTS, and it feels like a burning empty feeling that I have to eat or that feeling will not go away.
Thank you
Michele

OK...... *breathe*

No need to panic......  one of the greatest aspects of this board is that it prepared me for maintenance because my surgeon sure as hell didn't!  And I am not knocking Dr. Garth - he is a great surgeon - none of the surgeons prepare their patients for maintenance really.

Back to this board.....  what I learned from here is that the further out you get the more you can eat and the more calories you absorb because the body has this wonderful survival mechanism called ADAPTING.   That is why you don't dump anymore and it is quite common.  Some people will always dump but for most the symptoms moderate and sometimes even disappear over time.

What this means is you can't count on JUST your surgery to keep your weight off - sorry to disappoint.  I knew it before I ever went under the knife so I made up my mind to change my habits and if I ever got the weight off to not let my weight creep up, even if it meant I had to work really hard at it.  Before surgery I was working hard with pathetic results - now I have a tool to help! 

This is the best place you can come to for support and the best time to do it is not after the fact - but every day and especially when you are having craving attacks.  Someone here *will* respond with a helpful, encouraging suggestion to help you get through it.  Karla posts a thread every day to help those who need accountability and support.

Great response, Sarah!

Like Sarah said.. BREATHE!!!!! Im sending you a PM...

Liz

Thank you ladies! My surgeon pretty much left me to the wolves. I had no pre req's compared to some people! I went in for a consult, then was sent for a psych eval, talked to the nut, had bloodwork the next day, and a week later had surgery. There was NO classes, no weight loss, etc. My follow up consisted of talking to the dr every 3 months and she would say "You lost XX lbs, you look great see you in a few months". That was it. I would beg her to talk to me and she would always seem to busy. Once, I cornered her and said , why am I not losing weight like some people, I have questions. She finally said my calories, being around 500, were not enough and I needed 800/900. I still am hovering around 500/600 and struggle to go higher and I get bad attacks where I shake and get weak and almost faint. My current primary care doctor is finally doing bloodwork and checking on it. My surgeon ignored it. Some of my friends who had surgery had classes and support groups and they have to keep a journal of what they eat! I wish my surgeon was like that. The only thing I knew about surgery prior was what I read online. I changed a lot of eating habbits since surgery. I really have. Especially increasing calories because before surgery, I never ate breakfast, and I ate lunch once a week... who had time to eat? I was always on the go! Dinner was usually McDonalds! My husband was deployed and I had 3 kids to handle, who had time to eat? Who had time to cook? He was always gone. My eating was really crazy. So now I have learned to eat breakfast ( a healthy one), and lunch, and dinner and have small snacks in between to avoid getting the shakes. But when my period comes, there is no control. None. Just like before. Except before surgery I ate McDonalds or BK everyday for dinner for a 2 weeks until it was over. I bought ice cream and kept it in the fridge. I ate and ate and ate. Now, I eat small healthy meals thorughout the day but they are frequent. About every hour to two hours. that is scary. I thought I would feel the effects of my pouch more , which prevented me from even testing waters in the past. Now it is too easy to take a small bite of a cookie because one bite will not hurt. Uggh.

As long as you are eatling small healthy meals I don't see any reason for you to gain a bunch of weight back. 

But, if you are eating all day then it can add up.  By eating every hour your pouch never gets full and you feel hungry so my advice would be to eat more but less often and don't drink with your meals (if you are) so you don't wash the food out of your pouch.  Also hard proteins will stay with you longer, unlike carbs which are "slider foods" and go down ooohhhh so easy and trigger more cravings.

There is no reason you can't keep a diary just because your doctor hasn't asked you to.  You are in the same boat as all of us and we have to be pro-active and do what is best for us and that includes learning from the ideas of others until you find what works and what doesn't.

The nutrition classes are good, but nobody I know eats like they tell you to in class, at least not in the long term.  Sorry, just not reality.  But if you strive to eat that way MOST of the time your chances of being successful long term are much greater.  In other words - yes, I have had McD's and french fries but only on rare occasion and only a fraction of what I used to eat.  Instead of a whole carton of fries I have a small handful.  I can't even finish the kid's burger w/o taking off the top bun, whereas before I could make short work of a whole Big Mac!

So, my point is even though you didn't get the nutrition classes up front you DO know how to eat healthy - we all do.  The hard part is not using food for comfort.......

Hey GF.....I love the new avatar!!! Hubba Hubba!!!

Ditto everything Sarah has said! If you are still getting only 500/600 calories you HAVE�to up that amount. My NUT had me increase mine from 600/700 to 800 at about 3 months and I lost 10lbs the next week! If you're getting shaky and weak that's also a sign you need more nutrition. But it has to be proteins and reasonable good carbs.

OK...here's where that nasty math comes in! If you follow the 40/30/30 rule it will really help with your losses now then to stabilize you later. That's 40% protein, 30% carbs and 30% fats. So if you increase your calories to 800, you will need to get 90g protein/60g carbs/22g fats.� I love My Fitness Pal for tracking. It not only has a big database of healthy foods, you can customize it for what you need, for this formula for instance, as well as sugars, sodium and anything else you want to track. www.myfitnesspal.com/� I know it sounds hard to add 200 calories a day with HEALTHY stuff but it really isn't. I added another protein hot tea, and some almonds a day and I can't stress what a difference it made. It helped me avoid the grazing all day, too.

I can't help you with the monthlies, I quit those 7-8 years ago (Thank you, Jesus!) Kudos to you for at least keeping all your grazing to protein and healthy foods!

eta...typos

Sorry if I sound stupid, but am I really supposed to have 60g of carbs and 22 of fat???? I was staying about 70g of protein, 30g of carbs or less, and under 10g of fat. I thought anything over 10g of fat was too much. I don't know why, I just thought to lose weight you had to cut out the fat. Again, please, sorry if I sound like an idiot, but I really had no idea! 

Not a stupid question at all! I thought the same thing when I first started learning what my body needed. We need to get the thoughts that all carbs and fats ate bad! Firstly, our bodies NEED both of these things to function properly and healthily. 'They' say that our brains need a minimum of 30gr. just to keep our bodies breathing and functioning when laying in bed. Now consider the energy it takes to do everything else we do, especially the extra exercise we are all told to do. Our body need carbs for the energy to do them all. We just need to make sure these carbs are the 'healthy' carbs....from veggies, fruits, whole grains. Totally avoid anything white....bread, rice pasta.

As for the fats, we need those, too. First it helps keep our bowels moving, very important since constipation is prevalent post-op. Fats keep our skin and hair in good condition, and thus healthier all around. In just the 1oz of almonds I eat a day I can already see the difference in my skin condition and the help in the bathroom.

So YES, we really do need those levels of carbs and fats. In fact, lots of people eat much more than that! These level are based on a 800 calories diet. For the folks who are maintaining with 1200-1500 calories a day, or more, they get significantly more than that.

Don't be scared! Start tracking everything you eat and try it. What do you have to lose other than feeling better? If you show a gain just up your exercise or revert back to what you were doing. A huge part of this whole journey is trying new things and finding out what works for YOU. Unfortunately you sometimes have to just jump into the deep end and try it!