Four weeks since surgery

Last updated on Wed, 14th Sep 2022

It’s exactly 4 weeks today since I had my gastric bypass operation, and I thought I’d give a bit of an update of how I’m doing.

I’m still on the soft food diet, and am eating anywhere between 600 and 1000 calories a day. I find it useful to track everything I eat using the myfitnesspal.com app, so that I can track calories, but also the amount of protein I’m getting in my diet. I believe I’m meant to aim for at least 60 grams of protein a day, and most days I manage that.

I find that I’m often eating the same kind of things every day, so I think I need to be a bit more imaginative about what I eat, because it’s getting a bit boring. But I guess there are some foods (chicken breast meat for example) that I find it hard to tolerate, so I tend to shy away from them.

I’ve had a few episodes over the few week where I’ve got blocked, and it’s ultimately meant that I’ve had to vomit the food back up. But in every case I can attribute that to not chewing the food carefully enough.

At the moment my main struggle is about portion sizes. Often it’s literally a case of my eyes being bigger that my stomach. I put too much food on the plate, and then either don’t finish it, or instead I eat too fast and too much and end up feeling uncomfortably full.

One strategy to limit portions is to weigh out ingredients before cooking – but I can’t do that when someone else is cooking for me. So I try to stick with small bowls or side plates for my food – but even then I sometimes get it wrong.

The good news is that I’ve managed to lose 10.4 kg since surgery – about 23 lbs – which is fantastic.

I’ve already noticed that clothes feel a bit looser, and that it’s easier to do things like put on my socks and shoes in the morning. Also the pain that I used to feel when walking has also reduced significantly.

I’m still waiting for the energy boost that people talk about. It hasn’t happened to me yet. In fact I often feel quite drained, and don’t really have the energy to be as active as I used to be. But hopefully that will come in time.

I’m also back at work for a week now. I work from home doing an ‘office’ job so it’s not too taxing. My lack of energy means that I sometimes can’t concentrate 100%, but I’m lucky that I can just take a nap at lunchtime if I need it.