Recap of the Queens Meeting

December 13, 2004 Meeting Tonight's Queens meeting was very interesting. It is rewarding to get the entire group involved in a discussion. We spoke about an array of topics and the conversation was truthful and nonstop. We spoke about pre op depression, our last dinner or dinners and that was the extent of the conversation for the pre-op days. We all laughed when we said last meal or was it the last month of meals. Afterwards we discussed some hard hitting topics. Are you still depressed and what medication are you taking for depression. How do we stop taking depression medication? Getting off depression medication should always me done with your primary physician advice. Since many of us are one year out and longer we spoke about what is a normal meal and food eating strategies. Some days we eat more than other days. It was nice to compare notes with other long term post-op as to what you are eating, and the eating styles of the post op patient. After that we spoke about the age old problem, Combating Grazing. We asked each other the following: 1) Are you drinking enough water? 2) Are you eating protein first? 3) Are you exercising? 4) Are you planning your meals? Most of us agreed that my keeping a food journal is one quick method of breaking the grazing problem and it helps us to avoid unconscious eating. What are we leading to? The answer was obvious, going back to our early post op meal planning. The conversation then moved to are we dieting or developing behavior modification habits for success. Most of us have never dieted successful so we look at our changes in behavior as life style changes. We may not like to exercise but we are accepting that it is a necessary evil in order to achieve our goals. What do we really want? Do we want to be at a weight that the insurance companies have determined that is optimum or do we want to be at a weight where we have a quality life? Lenny [email protected]