Life with the sleeve
Reader forum · 2 threads
Stalls on the scale, eating out again, and the everyday reality after surgery.
After the operation the drama moves to smaller stages: a scale that stops moving for no reason, a first restaurant meal ordered off the kids-portion end of the menu, the slow working out of what normal looks like now. This section is the running conversation about all of it.
- How is anyone getting 60g of protein into a stomach that holds six mouthfuls?? Week 3 and falling short started by bakerpete, Jul 1, 20265 replies240 viewsbakerpete Jul 6, 2026
- Lost 18lb in the first two weeks, now NOTHING for 9 days. Is the three week stall real? started by traceyvsg, Feb 8, 20263 replies320 viewsMr Ian Calloway Feb 10, 2026
Reading the scale threads without panicking
Half the traffic in this section is some version of one question: the scale has stopped, is it broken, am I broken? The collected experience of the threads says the same thing every time. Nearly everyone stalls, many in the third or fourth week, the stall nearly always breaks, and the people who suffered least were measuring themselves by more than one number, tape measures, clothes, and how far they could walk. The site's guide to stalls and plateaus explains the mechanics properly.
The threads about restaurants, family tables, and awkward questions are the other half, and their collected wisdom is shorter still: it gets easier, portions stop being anyone's business, and a calm one-liner beats a medical lecture at every dinner table. For the longer view of how eating, habits, and headspace shift over the first years, there's life after the gastric sleeve.
What none of these threads can do is interpret your body for you. A stall that stretches on, pain, trouble keeping fluids down, anything that feels wrong rather than merely slow, goes to your bariatric team, today, not to a forum poll.