Good Cereal for breakfast

At the Bariatric post-op support group meeting last week at MMH we were chatting about breakfast cereals. I found a good one Weigh****chers "Flakes 'n Fiber with Oats " 90 calories (before milk) 17 g carbohydrates- 9 of which are fiber, 8 grams of protein, 2 g fat- in a 1/2 cup serving.

You know what I found that I love??? Kashi Cereals... I particularly like the high protein high fiber one... I sprinkle it on my yogurt in the morning, sometimes even chop up a fresh strawberry (or toss a few blueberries in there, or both!) and make my own home-made yogurt parfait!!! MMMMM it's DEVINE

then throw in some liquid calcium (by lifetime with flavors!) and you are good to go!

For me, the Kashi cereals are delicious and i love them, BUT, my intestines don't! I get the WORST gas from it! Both pre and post op. I do love Kashi in yogurt too, though! Yummy! I like the South Beach cereal. But I don't do cereal very often. I limit my carbs. paula

That's the fiber doing it's job!! hahaha (just joking) I like the SB cereal too. What you said about limiting your carbs... I hear ya 100%. I do pretty much all of my daily carb intake before noon-time (Which even still isn't ALOT at all. I have cereal for breakfast, South Beach Diet bar and milk for snack, and SOMETIMES a tortilla wrap with my lunch. Usually Lunch, Evening Snack, and Dinner consist of protein and/or veggie...) I learned the hard way that "NO carbs" is suicide on your system (I gained back double what I had lost once I re-indrotuced carbs... bleck!) And THEN, too little carbs doesn't give the body enough energy to burn up the rest of the food adequately. And of course we all know that too MANY carbs is suicide as well... FINALLY after years and years, I think I have found that "just right" amount of carbs to promote a healthy and active metabolism. But the road to get there sure was bumpy... Carbs... the bain of my existance... ughhhhh ~CarolJean

I hear you on the carb thing- it is hard to stay below the 25 grams we are supposed to be limiting it to, but I find like many, its a slippery slope- so I do watch what KIND of carbs I do. NO white type bread. IT's just too much a trigger. I will have a half a Thomas' Healthy Grain English Muffing with an egg on it for breakfast. Lunch- none- veggies/fruit and meat. I know there are some in fruit and even veggies- but they are fewer and not a trigger. Besides we are supposed to do healthy whole grains and fruits and veggies. SO I make a salad, or do rollups- deli meat (roast beef or turkey or ham- lean lean ) and lettuce and/or cucumber rolled up. Dinner I am eating a lean protein and veggies again. Maybe a taste of potato. Not much, not often- I can't fall down that hill. I had scallops (pan seared) with steamed green beans tonight. I worked out again today- and ended it with a few minutes in the hot tub.....aching muscles. Good pain though.....good pain. Figures they are discountinuing the one damn cereal within my acceptable guidelines...just when I thought it was safe to go down that aisle in the store......oh well. I will go grab another box of it anyway.....after that back to oatmeal.....

I bought some WW cereal this week actually. Its being discontinued so its 1/2 off at Stop and Shop. Personally, while its a little heavy, I loved it. That fiber is filling!

Hey all- I'm a little late weighing in on this...sorry. But here's some 'food' for thought! Start the day out with something that is higher in carbs than in protein and you're likely to be hungrier than it you did the opposite. So, if hunger is an issue for you keep that in mind. Just as an aside- I am always interested to see how different people choose to eat and thier motivations. I find it -well- totally intriguing. In that vain- please understand I'm not preaching, just chatting here...There is NO way I would have touched or even considered cereal a breakfast option when I was trying to loose, protein in it or not. Not only because of the carb vs protein, it's also a soft food VS dense protein thing. But, that was then, this is now. Maintaining is a much different story. (Hey- BTW- I'm NOT buying that you get to subtract out fiber from your carbs. I think that's a big marketing scam perpetrated by food companies to get low carb eaters to feel 'better' about eating thier food. A carb is a carb is a carb to me. If it's a carb that consists of fiber- well then good for me- er- or my intestines , but it's STILL a carb.) ALSO- Purty darn sure Dr A would have kicked my A$$ if I told him I was having cereal for breakfast anyway. Has he changed his mind on that? Just curious. That's my ramblings, folks. Interesting discussion, jeated debate (LOL) and opinions welcomed! Best, Lisa C

Here's what Liz- the dietician at Dr Aranow's office had to say on the matter of to count or not count carbs that are fiber "I believe you are asking about the "net carbs" concept. In theory, diabetic patients who are well versed in carb counting do these calculations to figure out exact carb intake in order to adjust their insulin to the amount of carbs eaten. Fiber is neither digested nor absorbed - therefore the grams of carb in fiber (and the 4 calories per gram) do not need to be counted. However, working with the overall number of carbs is fine, too - no need to be so exact unless you are on insulin."

Fiber itself is not carbohydrate. A molecule of fiber looks like carbohydrate, but it has branched chains that can't be broken by our enzymes so calories cannot be derived from it. Foods that contain fiber almost always also contain carbohydrate, but the fiber is listed separately on the nutrition label. It doesn't count as carbohydrate. BTW, cows and other ruminates digest fiber because they have bacteria in their gut that contains the enzyme to break down the branched chains in fiber. If we could do that, we could eat hay for breakfast. Also BTW, I tried the weigh****chers cereal - it tasted nasty! No wonder it is being taken off the shelves. Maybe they'll feed it to the cows. Arline