Coffee post-op? Also, leg cramps.

Hi Peachpie! Thanks for your response. I just checked the literature that my center sent me detailing the shakes my surgeon wants me to be on (Bariatric Fusion, 4 shakes a day, 30 grams of protein each, 150 calories each of made with water). G2 is listed as ok to have during the pre-op liver reduction diet. I dislike Gatorade but am willing to try this version! Thanks for sharing your experience, I appreciate it.

I eat bananas. Never stopped. I get leg cramps when I am slack on fluids.

Hi Kathy! I have heard this from others, as well. I'll be sure to hydrate as much as I possibly can! Thanks for your comment. :)

Hi Kathyjs! I suspect it will be a while before I will be able to have bananas post-op, so I will try to find another solution (though incorporating bananas into my diet has been a miracle cure for me!). Several people have mentioned hydration as you did. I will up my water and hope that will help me, too! Thanks for your response.

For a few years pre-op I had brutal leg cramps that sometimes brought me to tears...usually when I drank too much alcohol, but in the last year or so I was getting them much more often, and alcohol had nothing to do with it. Potassium helped for awhile, but I found it seemed to happen when I didn't get enough water. I also found that a bit of salt on my food helped as well. Fast forward to the 3 week pre-op liquid diet, and I am now 5 weeks post op and I have not had so much as a toe cramp for 8 weeks. I can only attribute it to drinking alot of water, which is a part of this new life.

I was never told not to drink coffee, but to drink de-caff for the first couple of months. I am only drinking 1 cup of coffee a day tho.

Hi NewLifeComingSoon! I drink very little alcohol - I'm pretty much just shy of being a teetotaller - so that isn't a trigger in my case. I do know that sometimes I don't hydrate sufficiently, though. My blood pressure is pretty low, and I don't want to only have sweet tasting shakes, I will add some broth in, which is part of my allowed pre-op diet (probably post-op, too) and which will supply salt. It's fantastic and encouraging to read that you haven't experienced leg/foot cramps at all from pre-up diet through 5 weeks of post-op! Crossing my fingers that I will be so lucky! Thanks for posting. :)

I took magnesium for restless legg syndrome and cramps pre-surgery. When I was in the hospital, they continued to give me magnesium. If I don't take it, I will get severe legg cramps. I also try to take potassium thru "no salt" substitues.

I don't have any problem with coffee.

Thanks for this, LynnAlex! I haven't been flagged as being particularly low in magnesium, but as I understand it, this type of (sometimes sub-clinical) deficiency is nearly ubiquitous in the US. It's worth checking out, and I will do so. Thanks.

Fully leaded Coffee is my drug/vice of choice. You will have to pry it from my dead, cold fingers...

That being said, I am pretty sure I waited until I was several months post op, and fully "healed"...I try to get plenty of other fluids AKA water, and don't count my coffee as part of my daily fluid intake total

About the only time I get leg/ foot cramps is if I have not eaten ENOUGH...which doesn't happen real often..lol...I try to eat some raw, dark greens every day (think spinach or kale), and walk at least 8-9,000 steps. Oscar, my grouch pouch, isn't crazy about bananas, but I know they help most people, in preventing cramps

Hi Gina!

Wow, 15 years and counting, that is very impressive!

I enjoy coffee too! But I'll follow my center's advice and eschew coffee for at least a good long while. I'll miss it - I miss it just thinking about it! But in the end it's a small part of the changes, and I am willing to walk a narrow line. Thank you so much for posting!