I've provided a link to my previous post about hitting a weightloss plateau and how to fix it.

I am 2 months post-op and I just hit the maximum estimated weightloss goal for the 3 month marker. From what I'm told they take your goal weight and subtract it by the starting weight. They then expect you to lose 20-30% of that weight in the first 3 months. I hit the 30% by month 2.

During weeks 5 and 6 I had hit a plateau and having previously been anorexic I restarted my eating disorder therapy through my military nutritionist just to be safe. The link provided will go into better detail. I made the changes my nutritionist told me to and at week 7 I lost 8lbs after having lost only 1-2 per week during the previous 2 weeks.

Week 8 I lost 18lbs which I was ecstatic about for obvious reasons but when I saw my nutritionist she was worried. She explained to me what happened and why it's dangerous to lose that much in a single week.

After my surgery my entire surgical team was stressing how important it was to eat protein. Having a 2oz stomach I was not able to eat much and wasn't coming close to the amount they wanted me to eat. So I ate as much protein and only protein as I could. This is why I and many others hit a weightloss plateau. You can't lose weight only eating protein, your body goes into lock down with weightloss. Protein is what you need for healing and it's the primary thing you need to intake but you can't only eat protein.

This is why I lost 18lbs in one week. There are several parallels between a gastric sleeve and anorexia when you only consume protein. My nutritionist explained that when you're anorexic and you start introducing healthy fats and healthy carbs which is what you need to actually lose weight your body's metabolism skyrockets burning everything you consume really quickly. So people who are anorexic have to consume more food then they'd usually eat to compensate.

The problem is when you have a gastric sleeve you can't really increase the volume you're consuming enough to compensate so when I fixed my plateau by fixing my diet my metabolism skyrocketed just the same but even if I had known this was happening I couldn't increase how much I was eating. So my metabolism burned everything I was eating too quickly forcing my body to burn fat AND learn muscle.

The 18lbs I lost in a single week wasn't just fat, it was muscle too. This kills your energy levels which also explained why during that week I didn't have the energy to exercise at all even through previously I exercised every single day.

Fortunately this rebound metabolism reaction is fairly easy to fix. If you haven't seen my previous post definately check it out especially if you are struggling with weightloss plus it'll add context to how I was told to fix it.

My eating disorder nutritionist increased my healthy fats (avacado) where I was only eating 1/8th of an avacado at lunch and dinner, I'm now eating 1/4th of an avacado. That's still a very small volume of food. So it's not like I'm stuffing myself further which wouldn't be possibly anyways. Monday (week 9) if I've still lost too much weight she says we'll increase my healthy carbs (sweet potato). She told me 3-5 lbs a week is a more stable weightloss though that just feels depressingly slow but I don't have an eating disorder for no reason lol.

I'm sharing all this because I see a lot of people posting on this subreddit about weightloss struggles and fear they have of failing. I am a military veteran and the military takes great care of me so I have access to professionals that might be financially difficult for some people to get access too on a regular basis. So it's my hope that sharing what I'm taught will be able to help even one other person.

I am not a medical professional by any means but the multiple people I see on a weekly basis are, so if you have a question feel free to write it in the comments and maybe I can help or I can ask my team when I see them next. I sincerely hope I can help others.