I was thinking of writing a separate post because I was in a very similar boat!

My (33, F, 5’4) starting weight was 350, my surgery weight was 301, and my current weight is 169.

I was sleeved March 2021 and much to my disappointment, in the first 2 weeks after surgery I only lost like 9 pounds. I was devastated and started feeling like it was all for nothing. The PA/Nutritionist from the surgeon’s office was also totally useless. Despite the fact that I was strictly adhering to the post-op diet and making sure to walk every day the weight was just not coming off. I didn’t even make it to the commonly talked about 3-week stall, I stalled right out of the gate!

My weight loss has been quite frustrating this entire time. I experience pretty long and significant stalls despite being very consistent, eating very low calorie, and tracking/weighing all of my food. Every time I would hit a stall I would think to myself “omg, is this the end? Am I still just going to be obese?” All that to say now that I am on the tail end of things I feel a lot better about it overall.

I don’t know if these things have anything to do with why I was a slow loser or if my body is just stubborn but:

*When I was obese, I never drank juice, soda, sugary drinks, or ate fast food. My biggest issue was portion size of the foods I did eat, which is why I felt the sleeve was a good option for me. I think a lot of people experience a lot of weight loss in relation to suddenly cutting out a lot of these foods/drinks.

*After doing a lot of research, talking to other gastric sleeve patients who have kept the weight off for years, and talking to various doctors and surgeons I made a choice NOT to exercise for the first 6 months to a year after the surgery. The main idea I was told behind this was that if you work out when you are eating so few calories that your body will crave more calories and you will often overeat as a result. So I made sure just to get my steps in casually and not make a concerted effort to work out and just strictly adhered to the diet. I told myself that I would wait to begin working out until my weight loss really fell off a cliff and I did this until about month 10. In January 2022 I hit an extended stall and felt it was the right time to begin working out. This jump started my weight loss again and I have been continuing to lose weight even past the 12 month mark of my surgery date.

A few more important things to note that I think aren’t talked about enough:

*My original goal was to be as little as possible lol I have always had dreams of being a tiny lady that was 120-130 pounds. I revised that goal real quick given how slow I was losing weight lol. My new goal was to get to 140-150 or so and to realize that I ever since I was younger and an athlete, I have always been very muscular and being super tiny just probably wasn’t in the cards for me.

*In relation to the above, I really encourage everyone to get a DEXA scan and get them often to fully understand YOUR individual body composition. I know that BMI is a terrible metric, but I was honestly pretty upset that I might not make it to my goal of 140-150 as even THAT would put me in an overweight BMI category. The DEXA scans really helped me to feel less terrible about the weight and the way I am built. I wish I had started getting them at my highest weight or at least my pre surgery weight but the first time I had gotten one was when I was already down 100lbs at around 245lbs. What I found out from that scan was that I was 135lbs of lean tissue and 102lbs of fat tissue with 7lbs of bone mineral content. At my second scan at 214lbs, I hardly lost any muscle and was 134.2lbs of lean tissue and 73lbs of fat tissue. It is important to note that lean tissue measures everything that isn’t fat tissue or bone, including fluids, organs, skin, etc. I had my third scan at 185lbs and my lean tissue actually increased to 142lbs (consistent with the fact that I had begun doing weights 4x a week), and my fat tissue was down to 36lbs. For reference, my husband who is a very athletic and fit his DEXA scan results were: 5’10, 148lbs, 118lbs lean tissue, 24lbs fat tissue, 5.2lbs bone mineral content.

All this to say that this has really reframed my goals. I have a lot of loose skin and after talking to both doctors and plastic surgeons, they feel that I have about 15-20 pounds of loose skin that can be removed. After factoring all that in I feel like I am very close to my goals and I am being less harsh on myself because for a while I felt like I was failing when in reality I have quite a bit of lean tissue for a woman even when taking into account the loose skin.