weight gain 6 years after surgery

it has been a long time since i have been on here!!! i have been gaining weight and i am getting super frustrated. i am hoping that some of you can relate and that you have some ideas as to what to do. i weigh about 164 and i never thought i would be that size again. i prob have about 30 lbs to lose. also something else i thought i would never say again. and its gotten me pretty depressed and i am not sure what to do now. i eat every 2 hours because i am hungry pretty often. and i do try and make good choices with what i eat. sometimes it gets super hard making everything no carb. and for a while just doing no carb was making me feel sick. 

if anyone has advise, i would greatly appreciate it. thank you so much!

Welcome back :-) I wish I had something magical to tell you but    all I can say is that you need to go back to a protein forward regime and track what you're doing.  I'm not as far out as you, but if I was in your situation I would assume that I had significantly increased my calories and would cut back by at least 500 a day - more if I could - to lose about a pound a week. I'd eat virtually nothing except dense protein and some low carb veggies. 

Maybe you have acid issues that are contributing to your hunger? 

If you're looking for daily support/accountability, you may want to join the VSG Maintenance Group.  

Good luck to you!  

i do have a lot of acid issues and that may actually be part of it. thanks for the advice!

Going low carb will only make you feel "sick" for a few weeks until you detox from them.  It will be "white knuckle" for awhile, but YOU CAN DO IT!  Eating carbs is probably why you feel hungry every two hours.  Why are you allowing yourself to eat every two hours?  That is almost grazing behavior.  You should be waiting at least three or,better yet,  four hours between meals and your meals should be VERY small (200 to 300 calories).  

Set an alarm clock for every four hours and eat by the clock.  Anyone can wait four hours to eat.  If you feel hungry, IGNORE IT.  Hunger is NOT an emergency requiring your immediate attention.  Nothing bad will happen to you if you force yourself to wait until your next SCHEDULED meal time to eat.  It's OK to allow yourself to feel hunger.  Many of us gained weight because we used the full feeling as an emotional crutch.  Eating feels like comfort to us and we never allowed ourselves to ever get truly hungry.

There are lots of low carb choices.  Instead of sandwiches, do deli meat and cheese stick roll-ups, or make your sandwich into a lettuce wrap.   Pre-cook meats in a crock pot and snack off of that for a few days.  Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta bake, almonds, etc are good choices.

Eat protein first and then non-starchy veggies (like broccoli, green beans, cabbage, cauliflower, etc).  Limit fruit to one serving per day and remember that a serving is 1/2 an apple.  Berries are the lowest glycemic value.  No bread, crackers, sugar, pasta, rice, potatoes, et****il you reach your goal and, even then, you must limit them for the rest of your life if you want to maintain.

If you are drinking with your meals  STOP!!!!   This is one of the biggest reasons for regain.  Drinking with your meals allows you to eat more food at one sitting, causing weight gain.  Wait a least 30 minutes after a meal before you drink.  Many of use wait an hour.   You do need to drink at least 64 ounce of water daily ( I drink closer to 120 ounces to feel good).  Thirst acts like hunger and it's very hard to distinguish which it is.  You may be thirsty every two hours instead of hungry.  Drink a cup of tea or any other no calorie drink.  Never drink your calories.

This website has a ton of ideas and recipes for folks who have had weight loss surgery.

YOU CAN DO THIS,  but you'll have to buckle down and work hard.  No excuses.  You know what you have to do, because you've done it before.

thanks for the advice. the water thing especially made sense. i drink a lot of water and tea. i never thought about waiting before. so yes, that could really help. i also dont work out and i have decided that this has to change with the new year. i have a week off work new years week and i am going to start working out and start meal planning.

thank you for the advice :) 

that website brings back memories! wow! i havent been on there in years!

You need to start using My Fitness Pal, an exercise tracker, a digital kitchen scale to weigh all of your food, and a good scale to weigh yourself.  People who are serious about maintaining their weight never say they weigh about a number.  They know exactly what they weigh because they do not miss a day on the scale.

You need roughly 1640 calories a day to maintain and to lose a pound a week you need 1140 calories a day.  If you are going to eat every two hours then that will mean keeping each meal about 150 calories each. 

It is not super hard to eat low carb.  Just don't eat potatoes, crackers, cereal, chips, bread, flour, sugar, cereal, or sweet.  Eat lean meat and a few non-starchy vegetables.  Throw out the garbage and stock your refrigerator with yogurt, cheeses, beef, pork, chicken, fish, lettuce and celery.  With dense protein and low carb you should not get hungry every two hours.

There is no magic to take the weight off and keep it off.  You have to make up your mind that you are worth taking care of.

you are very right because when i was obsessed about my weight, i weighed every single day!!!!!

i think that its been more of an issue since i got my new job and they feed us. so i am really dealing with free food vs paying for food. but as i mentioned in previous comments, i want to start really dealing with this now. and next week i will start working out and planning out meals. i think it also hasnt helped that i havent been working out! 

i also did not know about the 1640 cal, so that really helps. 

What do you eat?

No carbs is no good, but lower carbs, or low carbs is doable... 

I am over 7 years post op.  If eat carbs I get very hungry, and need to eat every 2 hours. But if I limit my carbs to carbs from non starchy veggies, nuts - then I am doing much better. 

If I want some starches - car by foods - I try to limitthat to my afternoon - dinner meal.. That way it is a last meal. 

But ... If I do low carbs I need to increase fats (with overall lower calories per day) to make sure I don't eat too many proteins. 

I do avoid dairy (milk, yogurt- way too much sugar)  and grains... I will eat eggs, veggies, avocado, nuts, etc, limting my fruits to a small serving of berries every few days.. most fruits, even though they are nice, have too many sugars, and my body treats that like any other sugars - candies. 

Good luck.