Great tool-but not a magic one!

Regarding the calories, your body needs a certain number of calories each day to "maintain current weight."  That number of calories is based on, you guessed it, your current weight.  If you eat less calories than the maintenance number (everything else being equal), you lose weight.  If you eat more, you gain weight.  The literature says that if you have a 3500 calorie deficit, you will lose a pound.  When I track my calories exactly, this works for me, i.e. before surgery, if I had a 500 calorie deficit a day, I would lose a pound in a week.  (after VSG, I have a 1500 - 2000 calorie deficit a day, so am losing 3-4 pounds per week...(I am only 45 days from surgery, so my maintenance calorie intake is about 3200).

Bottom line, if you lose weight, the "maintenance calorie number" goes down and you have to decrease your overall calorie intake to keep the weight loss up.  Check out this website:  http://www.caloriecontrol.org/calculator/weight-maintenance-calculator-men.   There is one on this site for women too.

Onward!

Thanks! Amazing how much I am learning on this forum. Learning how to take care of my body and myself. Knowledge and humility are tools we need along with the WLS. I do think our metabolism changes on this diet though because I am now over 8 months out. I've lost about 90 lbs. I'm at 258 lbs and you would think that under 1200 calories a day with exercise I would lose weight or at least maintain, but to lose weight I have to eat less than 1,000 calories which was getting harder but I was eating wrong food. Now I'm back to more proteins and fluids. Thank you!

You made my day replying to my post.  I tell a lot of people:  If you eat what you are supposed to eat, you will weigh what you are supposed to weigh.  I know I couldn't do it without support either!  God bless you.

I had surgery 8/4/14 and I am feeling and doing the same. I want to shake myself out of this funk/plateau but I don't know how. I did great in the beginning but now I am tired of the same foods, measuring everything etc. I have been stuck at this weight for 2 months. Teetering at 203.  So close to onederland but I can't get motivated to move pass this.

i hope you find a way through this. Good luck!

I can relate to how you feel but think about 1 year ago and the condition we were in. At first there is this pink cloud and we are willing to do whatever it takes. At this point, we kind of slip back to old habits and our sense of urgency is lost, or at least not the priority it once was.

 I mean think about it: Do we eat protein first? Do we drink all our water. Do we eat healthy? Most likely we rely on the Sleeve to restrict our food but basically are back to our old routines.

I can't speak for you or others but I noticed this is my case, so we, or at least "I" need a wake call every few months and that is why I come to this forum because the posters help me recognize my accountability. I also realized that each one of them have been exactly where I am, but they survived it and reach their goals or at least got through their plateaus multiple times.

So we both did the right thing coming here-this is the reality of WLS-it's just a tool. It'll aid us in losing weight fast especially in the beginning but eventually we have to step up to eat and to live healthy. It's our turn now! Thank you for relating, good to know I'm not alone.

Thank you for posting this. I am 17 months out. I did reach my surgeon's goal of 160, but old habits do slip back. I always said that I would never let that scale creep back up, and it has. From my lowest, I fluctuate between 8-10 pounds. It's not acceptable. I need to get focused. Before, I would never eat bread, rice..I had more willpower to pull away from food when I was satisfied. I find myself grazing and mindlessly eating and I pretty much halted the exercise. Today, I may the re-commitment, not to the "diet" but to the lifestyle that gave me my life back. Again, thank you for posting this and for everyone's responses.

After 2-1/2 years, my head is still very much the same as it was pre-surgery so I can't rely on it to keep me motivated. I volunteer walking dogs at a pet shelter and am part of a weekly walking group on Meetup. I've found that keeping plugged in with groups of active, like-minded people keeps me on track more than if I went it alone.

I will be nine years out next month. Having surgery 9 years ago there were not a lot of options... for me surgery was the "last" choice I had to lose weight and get healthy.. I dieted, I exercised, I did therapy, tried medications etc etc etc.... I went into surgery with the thought of if this doesn't work, I have no other options... so I WILL make this work. I WILL lose weight and do what I need in order to be successful. Going in I had friends who had surgery before me, some successful some not... I learned from both of them... the do's and don'ts if you will. I never set a large goal for myself... just mini-goals I could reach, celebrate and keep motivated by.. reached one goal, set another.. this kept from being disappointed... I only saw de-motivation by setting a goal like losing 10lbs in a month or being at goal weight in 8 months etc.. those were not realistic to me and seemed so far off in the future I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Set yourself mini-goals and work out a rewards system... the goals shouldn't all be scale related... they can be anything from losing inches, logging your food for a week, running a mile, doing something you couldn't/wouldn't do pre-op etc.... then reward yourself with non-food rewards.. massage, new shirt, even simply acknowledging you set at goal and achieved it can be enough.

It is a lot of work, but think putting in a year or two of work you will enjoy the benefits a thousand times over for many many years to come. For the first two years post-op I went thru working on losing the weight, weighing/measuring food, working out, learning how to eat properly, learning about nutrition, working on my personal issues.. then it moved to learning how to maintain the weight loss in the long term and settling into normal life. That two years seems like it was another lifetime to me... doing what I need to do now is second nature... its how I live my life daily.. I don't have to think about it any more... so two years of work, so far, has given me 7 years of being healthy and happy.

Thank you. I really appreciated the suggestions about mini-goals not related to the scale. I was not recording my foods as I did in the beginning, also I was not going to exercise as often as I used to-not just at the gym-but on my job getting up and walking or being active. Also I was not drinking my fluids. So these mini-goals not related to the scale actually in the long run will contribute to weight loss on the scale! Also it makes me accountable each day and helps me realize that I am accomplishing something! Thanks!

Some really amazing posts on this thread.  I think one thing I heard in your posts is boredom.  Maybe it's time to shake things up a little.  Search this site for recipe ideas, go online to sites like pintrest and see what's cooking.  Take out your old food journals/MFP and look at what you were eating 5 months ago, buy a recipe book, try a new exercise.  You will be surprised how shaking things up can get your body rolling.  I think the hardest thing for many of us to do is to stay motivated as this is a LIFELONG process not a short-term contract job with a start and end date.  If you are getting de-motivated now you need to try learn what will shake you out of the funk so when it happens again you have learned how to deal with it (BTW am talking to myself here too :)  Good luck!