Question about weight?

So my surgeon never discussed with me my goal weight. But from researching online, with my height, my ideal weight (or at least the weight that would give me a normal BMI) would be 145.6 pounds and below. Also, using the formula of current weight minus ideal weight to get excess weight and then multiplying that by .70 and subtracting that from my current weight to get to the weight I can expect to be at after losing my excess weight. That would only put me at 205.42 pounds. And don't get me wrong....while getting to 205 pounds would be amazing and I'd be so much healthier than I am now....I still wouldn't be at my ideal weight.

My question is....is that all I can expect to lose? Or is that just an estimate of the average expected weight loss? Will I have to work even harder to get to my ideal weight after I hit 205 pounds?

I'm already getting discouraged because I'm kind of stalling now. I started out at 345 pounds before surgery and for the past few days I just fluctuate between 296 and 297 pounds. Like the other morning I weighed in at 296 then later that evening I was back at 297. Next day I'm at 296 again. This morning I was 296 and tonight I'm 297 again. Is this normal? Or do I need to work harder? I know I shouldn't....but I'm obsessed with weighing now. Sometimes I weigh 2...3...4 times a day everyday. I'm just so afraid of gaining! Perhaps I need to drink more than one premier protein shake a day in place of solid foods. I don't know.

What is a normal amount of weight loss per week? Per month? I don't even know if I'm on track or should be losing a lot more. I have another follow appointment with my surgeon next month and will discuss this in depth with him. Just looking for some insight in the meantime! Thanks!

Hi Madison!

As far as your goal weight or when you stop losing: you get to decide that. The 70% of excess weight loss I believe is how some surgeons measure the relative success of their patients. In other words, if you lose that 70% your surgeon will count you in his "success" statistics.

But you don't have to stop there. There is no reason you can't reach any (reasonable) goal. By reasonable I mean healthy. For example, I definitely encourage you to shoot for your 145.6 ideal. I wouldn't encourage you to work on getting to only 100 pounds.

The goal weight you choose is specific to you and what YOU would consider success. Your surgeon is using that 70% figure for a completely different purpose entirely. My surgeon didn't set a goal for me either. So I worked my ass off and got as low as I could as fast as I could. I ended at 177 pounds. I was happy there for nine years, but just in the last year I've taken off another 34 pounds so today I'm at 143. It's reassuring to know I can work this surgery for the rest of my life. You can too.

If you want a certain weight or size go for it. Lot's of us have changed numbers on and off. The most important thing is to get as much out of your surgery as possible. And at the beginning that means losing as much as possible as quickly as possible.

As far as your stalling - you've talked about some eating choices that weren't optimal. You can do and eat almost anything early out and you'll lose for the first year or two. But bad choices that get reinforced will cause a lot of trouble by year three when your malabsorption wears off.

IF you could give us a couple of days foods and quantities that you've been eating, there are many here who can pinpoint how to improve and how to stop this stalling now. Can you do that for yourself? I promise you'll wish you'd handled this sooner than later. You deserve to be successful over the long term and the only way that happens is if you learn from those who have gone before.

Good luck. Take advantage of the wisdom that is all around you here and be open to following suggestions. If you do you'll be just fine.

Thank you so much for the information! It's really helpful! As for what I normally eat in a day....

Breakfast: chocolate premier protein shake

Snack: usually some cashews

Lunch: 3-4 ounces of chicken breast on salad or tuna on salad.

Snack: I normally don't have a snack between lunch and dinner, but since my lunchtime at work has been changed to an earlier time, for the past couple days I've been having one of those laughing cow cheese dippers snacks with the whole grain breadsticks and garlic and herb cheese. They are 90 calories, 4 grams of fat, 8 carbs, 4 protein and 2 sugars. But I don't know....maybe they aren't the best snack option? Any input on this is welcome!

Dinner: 3-4 ounces of either some baked salmon with a salad or like the other night I had some chicken breast with zucchini and yellow squash.

Snack: this varies....either some baby carrots with hummus, some grapes or some beef jerky.

Last night though when I got home from work I was starving for some reason and ended up eating some beef jerky. Figured I'd eat a couple pieces while I waited on dinner to get ready, but I ended up not eating what I had planned for dinner and just had the beef jerky and went to bed.

Anyway, maybe I'm eating too much? I will say that I don't get anywhere near the recommended fluid intake. On a good day I may get in 40-50 ounces, but normally it's more like 30-40 ounces. So I know I need to work on that! Also I know I need to work on exercising more. I've only been doing some walking, but haven't even done much of that because my lower back hurts so bad. I've considered joining the gym at work, but I get very self conscious working out in front of people so I don't know about that. I am supposed to be getting an exercise bike this weekend so I'll try that out and perhaps that will be easier on my back. My back has never been the same since my ovarian surgery and I'm hoping that getting down to a healthy weight will help!

Thank you so much for any feedback you can provide!

Are you weighing and measuring everything? Amazon has very good, cheap scales that will become your best friend. If you're not weighing, you're really not keeping track of meeting your protein goals and that could be impacting you; not hitting your water goals is definitely an issue -- dehydration makes you feel bad, can create backups (which make you feel bad). Feeling bad makes it hard to focus on doing the right things.

I would focus on the weighing/measuring and water (along with making sure you're compliant on vitamins/calcium before increasing your workouts). I know we're supposed to do 30 minutes of exercise every day and it's important but getting the basics consistent first would be my priority (that's just Jen's opinion, others may weigh in differently...and I would say if the vets say something else, ignore me and listen to them!).

A rule of thumb I learned from these boards is you should strive for 10 protein for every 100 calories so I try to keep that in mind when I look at snacks. I don't always meet it but if I don't, I know I'm choosing not to!

Thank you! Yes, I have gone back to weighing everything I consume. I don't trust my own judgement. I know if I didn't weigh everything I'd just end up overeating.

This is great! Thanks for providing an average menu. I'm hoping you'll hear from those that are best at analyzing food choices and get some feedback. (that's not one of my great strengths,lol). It's just so vital to look at what you're consuming, get solid input and be willing to tweak things a bit.

Honestly my biggest concern right now for you is your fluids. You do know that things other than water count towards your fluids number right? Because if that 30-40 ounces represents the total of all the different things that you drink on any given day you are headed for some serious, serious problems. I'm bringing this up in the hopes that you'll address this ASAP.

I believe the minimum fluid requirements in a non-op are 64 ounces per day. You are now post-op and quite honestly the bare minimum is 80 fluid ounces. Most of us get 80-120 ounces each day. I fluctuate between two and three liters.

Fluids are actually more important than food. You can easily fast for 40 days, but if you were to try and do that with fluids you'd be dead before few days have passed. You've got what is essentially a bunch of sludge moving through your veins if you're drinking so little. That's not going to help you lose weight at all. Work as hard as you can on increasing your fluids. I realize you are only a month or two out so I'd never expect you to go straight to 80 ounces from 40 in a day or two. But you can add a few ounces a day until you're where you need to be. Bonus: you won't believe how much better you'll feel as you concentrate on this.

I'm glad to see you are asking these questions until you get your answers. Those of us who give suggestions aren't doing it because we're "perfect" by any means. Most of us reply because we stumbled over similar issues and don't want you to have to go through what we did.

Take Care and keep participating and asking questions. This forum has helped a lot of us immeasurably.

I appreciate your feedback! Yes, my fluid intake really sucks right now. I know I need to drink more. It's so hard. I honestly don't know how people do it. Do you have any tips? I know before surgery I had no problem getting my fluid intake in, but I was drinking things that wasn't healthy for me. I was a huge sweet tea drinker and I probably met my fluid intake goal on that alone. Now that I can't drink sweet tea any longer, I come way short of my goal. I also do not use artificial sweeteners. I just don't care for the taste and they seem to trigger my migraines when I do consume them. So I've been strictly drinking water, water with lemon or unsweetened iced tea with lemon. I just can't seem to meet my goal and I do try to sip all day. Like right now I'm sipping on my unsweetened tea, but I swear sometimes it takes me over an hour just to finish a glass. I also used to be a huge coffee drinker pre-surgery and I miss drinking it! I've tried it several times after surgery, but I just can't drink it. It tastes gross to me now and makes me gag every time. I never thought I'd never be able to enjoy coffee again. I still love the smell of coffee and makes me crave it, but as soon as I take that first sip the rest has to be thrown out. I just can't do it.

You know, I don't actually have any tips. Water was never a problem for me and now I drink Diet Coke as well and it's pretty easy to get to that minimum number for me.

I think you should start a thread asking fellow post-ops how they worked their way up to the required ounces. You'll get a ton of ideas and you'll also probably feel better about the struggle when you see how many are/have struggled with this right along with you.

First thing you need to do is take a deep breath and relax some. You just had surgery in January. Your body needs to heal and adjust to the changes. As for weighting yourself, you will always be the lightest first thing in the morning. You haven't eaten in several hours and your body has flushed out a lot of the excess fluids. Through out the day you're adding the food and liquids you've consumed, so naturally you weigh more.

As for a normal amount of weight loss, that's like asking how much does a car cost. It varies from person to person depending on current weight, calorie amount consumed, activity level...and so on; just like the cost of a car depends on if it has heated seats, sun roof, and custom paint or if it's just a base model. However, this is my history. I had my RNY when I weighed 340. The first month I lost 17 lbs, the second month I lost 24 lbs (which was the highest amount I ever lost in a month). I would typically stall at every 15-20 pound increment. Sometimes that would last a few days, sometimes it was a few weeks. I got to the point of weighing myself only 2 times a week. I discovered if I weighed myself and I didn't lose anything I would get disappointed and discouraged. I would feel like a failure and that wasn't helpful at all.

Let's look at your progress. You've lost almost 50 lbs since January. No matter which way you look at it, that's a fantastic job. You've lost around 14% of your pre-surgical body weight. You can't continue to compare the amount of weight loss, from month to month in pounds, since the body mass changes with each pound you lose. (For example, a 300 lb person that loses 30 lbs has lost 10% of their body weight, but a 150 lb person that loses 30 lbs has lost 20% of their body weight).

Instead of looking at pounds lost try looking at the percentage lost. At the beginning of each month, weigh yourself. At the end of the month weigh yourself again. Figure out what percentage you've lost. The number of pounds may not be as high, but if the percentage is close to the same then you're doing great (even if it's less pounds).

Final question of how much excess weight you can expect to lose. I started out at 340, ideal weight was 135, so I had 205 lbs of excess weight. I proceeded to lose around 175 lbs after surgery which was 85% of my excess body weight. I know other people who have lost almost 100% of their excess body weight and I know others who lost around 40%. It mostly depends on how determined you are to follow the instructed "life style" meal plan that the doctor has given you. The only thing that will stop you from dropping your weight below 205 is you. Good job on your progress so far!

Thank you so much for this feedback! I truly appreciate it!