disappointing almost 3 month check up

Maria,
I think you are doing a great job!!!  Don' let her discourage you.  I don't think she looked very closely at your chart or stats.

You are NOT going to fail.  Keep doing what you are doing because you are successful.  I've been impressed with your food and exercise both.

Remember what several on here have said - this is not a race!! 

This is going to be the rest of your life and you are going to be successful.
Linda

Maria - quite frankly I think you are right on track.  That's averaging 11 lbs a month.  My 2nd month I lost just 9 lbs... She HAS to be comparing you to the people that have a lot more to lose.

Don't let her get you down.  I totally understand how you feel though, you want your Dr to be happy with your progress and can be so disappointing when they're not.

Hang tough babee!! This is a "long run" tool, and you have a lot more time to work it!!

I really do love you LW's.

Thanks for putting things in perspective and letting me vent.

Maria

You are doing great!  And it is the folks on this LW board who are getting us through it, not the health "professionals."  My useless NUT wouldn't even look at my food log on my 1st postop visit, just waved her hand "no" at me when I tried to bring it out.  I get far more help from this board.

I think you have done an incredible job and with all that you are doing, exercise wise, there is NO WAY you are going to fail.

Rock on, babee.

Kat70  

Maria- my post after my 3-month check up was nearly identical to yours.  Before going in for my appointment, I had talked to my nurse over the phone the day before.  I told her what I had lost since my surgery and she got quiet for a second while she was looking at my chart.  (This was over the phone.)  Then she mumbled something, made a "Tsk" sound and said, "well... hmmm that's not too bad, but you should have lost more."  And then her tone was less friendly and she said she would see me at my appt the next day. So I was nervous about going in for my appt the next day.  But I pushed myself to go anyway.

Turns out that nurse was out with strep and another, more experienced nurse saw me.  She and my Nut said I was doing just great! They pulled out a chart that showed where I was in comparison to their other patients over the years.  They have average weight loss, bottom of the average, top of the average, etc.  And it turned out one of my weights that was on my chart was wrong.  

So what I learned is that (1) these people can make mistakes (2) sometimes they just are not very sensitive or mindful of how vulnerable and sensitive we are.  (The more senior nurse was kind and encouraging.) (3) If I go to an appt and discover that I could be doing better, I am going to pepper the nurse and nut with questions about ways in which I can improve my results or speed up the weight loss.  Which is exactly what I did at this appt.  

Also, after talking to that 1st nurse, I've decided that I'm not going to walk away from bad news feeling disheartened.  I'm going to get motivated.  No one is going to tell me what my body can or cannot do and I will take it as a personal challenge to prove them wrong.  

Here is what I have learned recently about increasing the weight loss:  
- Be sure to eat enough. You need to fuel the body for it to burn the calories and fat
- Get enough sleep!  Look at the study I posted on Tuesday. 
- Do more cardio exercise. Move move move.  I say this for you in particular because you said the emphasis on the other types of exercise might not be working.
~Kathy

Don't be discouraged.  Keep working your program.  Without practical guidance on how to improve your fat loss such comments are worthless.  It took me 135 days to loose 50 lbs and my surgeon felt I was doing just fine. 

What % of the excess weight have you lost?  That's oftentimes more telling than actual pounds.  My surgeon focuses on percentage given actual pounds will vary widely by where you're starting from. 

Ramping up the cardio is a good thing period.  An hour non stop strengthens the heart muscle and it feels good too.    I started this several days a week years before wls.  Its a great stress reliever for the bad days. 

Hang in there and stay motivated.  You WILL do this. 

I'd be discouraged if I'd heard that, too!  

Hopefully you can feel encouraged by all that we have to say, which we say not to be nice, but because it's true:

you are doing great!  You are losing weight and you're getting healthy.  If she wants you to be doing something else, it sounds like her priorities are in all the wrong places.  Like holding people against strange benchmarks for marketing purposes.  That is NOT COOL, nor is it good patient care. 

When you're farther you, you may consider sending a note, from one healthcare professional to another.  You may be saving someone else's confidence down the road if you can help to stop this behavior from continuing...

Congratulations on a job soooo well done!

Others have answered the rate of loss question so I'll answer the muscle question. No, you can't be putting on a lot of muscle at this point. First, women just don't gain a lot of muscle period. We haven't got the hormonal balance for it. Second, you need to be operating at a calorie surplus to make tissue. You are operating at a calorie deficit.

I think what happens is that when people do a lot of strength training, they retain water for muscle repair. Then, their fat starts disappearing and showing off the nice muscles they already have (obese people tend to be more muscular as it is more work to haul that extra fat around). So it *feels* like you are building muscle, but you aren't really.

Oh, I will say one thing about rate of loss. You can't measure it by absolute pounds. It's by percentage. My surgeon likes to see 50% of EWL by 3 months, which I find to be a bit aggressive but doable if you really work it. I was 191 on day of surgery and 132 is a normal BMI so that means he wanted me to lose 29.5 pounds by 3 months out. Which I had. Sounds like you are right around 50% too. (Probably slightly less since it's not quite 3 months yet.)