Reintroduction - Susan

Here's my blog from today, that should about say it all. I've enjoyed reading through your group's posts and hope the April 07's will help me figure this all out. my husband Rob is planning to have Lap-Band done on December 4th. He is going to a different surgeon than I did due to the fact that Weightwise, where I went, no longer takes our insurance for new patients. I continue to use Weightwise for my followups and occasional band fills. When I first started this process, I participated in some online boards and forums for lap band, but basically, since I've been doing well, haven't been participating. Since I haven't been active, I guess I just wasn't aware of the huge range of differences in diet plans between different doctors. I had to lose 30 lbs. before my doctor would schedule surgery. But once I did lose it, the surgery was like a week or two away. Rob didn't have to lose anything, but he does have to do a 10-day high protein and mostly liquid diet before his surgery date. That starts tomorrow, by the way. Tonight we'll be getting rid of any Thanksgiving leftovers and junk food around. We want a 'clean' house for him to start this process out in. I wanted to know what foods to buy, and what I need to be preparing for Rob over the next 10 days, so we reviewed his diet plan. And MAN is it different than mine. Even the diet after surgery is really different. His place incorporates daily use of protein supplements and has a daily protein requirement. My plan doesn't do any of this - it just requires me to eat the first half of every meal as a protein. I lost a lot of hair and had a few dizzy spells, but I thought that was normal. Now I see that Rob gets to have protein drinks during his first couple of weeks postop. I think this is great. I started thinking about this and went out to one of the Band forums and did a seach for "protein." It looks like a lot of people have specific protein goals and that eating enough protein may actually increase your ability to lose weight. Interesting. Apparently I need a little re-education. According to a formula Bonnie gave me, I should be eating about 90 grams of protein. OK, let's just play this out. I have 'almost' an egg for breakfast every day. That's 7 grams. Let's say I have 1/2 cup of fat free refried beans (7 grams protein) and 1/4 cup green beans (.5 gram) for lunch and 1/2 of a chicken breast (8 grams) and more green beans (.5) for dinner - it's not adding up. 23 grams is not 90 grams. Hmmm... I'm committed to following Rob's 10-day diet with him as much as possible. He's got some specialty food in there, but I can do similar things. Especially meals where we eat together, I'll have the same thing, just less of it. Here's another eye opener. My place didn't set a specific goal weight for me. And my other supporting doctors told me to shoot high, like "anything under 250 would be great." At my last doctor's appointment, I was well under 250, and pressed the doc for a goal weight. So Weightwise set a good goal at 199. This puts me in the 'overweight' range and not any 'obese' range, according to the much-hated insurance charts. I'm shooting for that by New Year's. The reason this comes up is because I went to the forums to look up protein, and then I find that all these people have set goals. And they've set them to a normal weight. I don't know why, but I never really believed I'd get to a NORMAL weight. Sometimes I wonder about myself. Ultimately though, I secretly (well, not so secretly now, I guess) think I should get down to about 160. (I'm 5'9". ) I hate to admit it because I'm afraid I'll never get there. I wonder if I really can do it. I feel myself already wanting to make excuses for not getting there. But, I've got to change my way of thinking. 1. I can get to a normal weight if those other folks can. 2. I need to count how much protein I'm eating and start logging it. 3. I need to supplement my diet w/some protein...apparently. 4. I need to be participating on some forums regularly, hence the blog. 5. I need to get past the fear of adding the calories that 63 grams of protein will add to my diet. So this is what I'll focus on while Rob's doing the 10 day. For now, my next goal is 199. If I can do that, I can do 160. So far, I'm down 133 lbs. My diet has slipped a little, and the mentality I've incorporated is that I can only eat a bite or two so it might as well be something good. I'm going to clean that up and see if I can pull these last pounds off without too much of a struggle.

Susan, while I'm a RNY post op, not a Lap Bander, I've noticed that unless I get at least 800 calories and about 80 grams of protein, I don't lose. I've researched the reason, and it seems that unless you hit your bodies minimum calorie and protein needs, your body goes into starvation mode and hangs onto stores of fat. I calculated the 80g of protein from the nutritionist's range of 0.8 - 1.2 g of protein per KG of weight you'd like to maintain. IE - If I want to weigh 220#, that's 100 KG, so 80-120g of protein is needed to maintain it. If you want to weigh 160#, that's 72 KG, so 57-82g of protein to maintain. An easy way to think of it is 1g of protein for every KG of weight you're aiming to be. Another thing I really find helpful is to keep carbs to the bare minimum. I typically find that my daily diet includes about 40-50% calories from protein, 20-30% from Carbs and the rest from fats. I mostly just make sure to get protein in, while keeping carbs low - the fat just seems to work itself out. As for protein in food - I think you might be using bad data for your protein amounts. You said that a 1/2 breast of chicken is only 8g of protein, my software (calorieking) says that a 1/2 breast of chicken is 26g of protein - quite a difference. According to calorieking, you'd be getting 344 calories, and 41 grams of protein from that diet if that's all you eat in a day. While that's most of the way on the protein you're getting, your body is only getting 344 calories. I'd bet that if you supplemented some protein and added some low carb calories, you'd see the weight start to come off again. Just my experience here, so take with a small shaker of salt. Good to see you online here - and good luck!

OK thanks for the information. Sounds like I need to re-evaluate a couple of things, and possibly stop doing cursory searches of the web for my protein data! Although it's scary, I'm going to up the calories and do my best to eliminate the carbs. I think I'd better do a really good job of journaling my intake for the next couple of weeks to prove everything to myself. If I start with a clean protein diet along with exercising as usual tomorrow how many days do you think it'll take for a change to kick in? Thanks for your input! Susan

I really suggest looking into some of the computer programs or online websites that track your calories and proteins etc. for you. I use calorieking (calorieking.com), and their program on my computer. It has a huge database of any and all foods, but if one's not there, you can add it yourself. I've got over 1 year history of my intake now, and it's interesting to see the changes. It also lets you track your weight, and individual nutritional items and see trends. As for how long it will take, I'm not sure. I do notice that if I get too little calories, or too many carbs, I can see the difference within a week. IE - with T-Giving this week, I've done too many carbs, and therefore am not suprized that I'm stalled this week. I'm almost at goal myself, and look forward to using this tool to help gradually reintroduce carbs into the diet - I'll be able to correlate increased carbs with other data and come up with a sustainable diet. I'm an uber geek, so this all plays to my strengths - but I'm sure the programs can work with non-geeks as well. Good luck!