Bread - The enemy?

Thank you for this answer. It's great to hear from someone who truly loved bread and pasta, like myself, who was able to make the transition. I'm trying to cut back as much as possible pre-op so that it's not as big a jolt.

I promise that you can't imagine how you're going to feel after surgery right now. It's amazing to me the things I don't crave. My family will eat pizza and I'll realize after the fact that I have literally no desire to eat a piece. None. Zero.

I'm that way with pizza too, which is weird. Pre-op, I figured that pizza would be something I'd miss. But I'm three years post-op and I've eaten pizza once because I was in a situation where I had to eat, I couldn't leave, and pizza was what there was. And then it was really just meh. Very weird.

Yeah, pizza was my "favorite food" for years.

Now...? Eh. Absolutely no desire for it.

It is really hard pre-op to imagine what the other side is going to be like. I live in New York, pizza is the best here, so our bagels. And it was hard for me to imagine not having them in my life on a regular basis, include pasta in that.

Have I had them on occasion and a small portion? Yes. Do I crave them? No. Usually I have them because somebody's in from out of town. But there is no draw like there was.

Bread won't work for you or anybody else if you're eating it daily. Only you will know if it's a trigger food that you can't have it all.

Depends on the surgery you get.

I eat bread and carbs all day long, however, I had the DS and I'm a guy (full disclosure).

When you are losing weight, you need to stay low carb. It's a lot easier after surgery.

Hi... being a recent post operation member, (surgery 6/29) I can share some of my journey.

I was forced to change doctor for the first time in 18 years due to a change in my insurance that started on January 1. I had my first appointment on January 3, and based on the lab work, my new doctor concluded that my BMI was 24, I now had high bad cholesterol, in addition to the high blood pressure I have been treated for, and I was pre diabetic. I have tried diet after diet after diet. I even tried medically supervised weight loss a few years ago. All with the same result, loose some weight gain more.

My new doctor referred me over to the Medical Weight Loss Clinic, to see what they recommended I try.

I started considering Vertical Gastric Sleeve on January 13th, while meeting with a Medical Weight Loss doctor. The reason was that her feeling was that my body needed a reset, rather than just keep trying to loose weight.

Since then, I started making conscious choices about was was a truly healthy diet that I could live with. And in turn it led me to sleeve. It has not been easy, and you need to decide if YOU are ready for a permanent change.

I have always been a global eater, loving food from all cuisines. So I started by changing my mind set as to what was breakfast. In Japan, breakfast often includes sushi/sashimi. So what limits me to American heavy grain breakfasts?

Mind you, I love... no make that...LOVE good bread. But do I need bread, or can I reserve my few carbs to hearty, great bread? I worked on that for a while. By worked, I do mean lived.

My husband, widthout who's help this would be impossible, joined in my mission by reducing our portion sizes, changing the ingredients we use, and going to EVERY meeting thy allowed him to attend. This has been OUR journey. (He has lost 10 pounds.)

Protein first has become my norm, drinking a gallon or more of water per day is barely drinking enough, starchs are a thing of the past, and I am working through the 4 weeks of "full liquids". My biggest challenge is that almost all the protein drinks are sweet and my system is totally revolted by sweet. Heck, I had to choke down the plain low fat yogurt that was mixed with V8 mango/peach so that I could get in the miralax, Prilosec, and protein powder.

The good news is I have already prepared a choice between Cauliflower & pollock cream soup, or Roast turkey with veggies creamed soup. The high speed blender IS my friend!

So my advice to you is to worry less about fitting breads into your diet. If you are really ready to reprogram your brain as to what is and is not the food in your life, then focus on healthy, tasty, food choices. If you never really cooked before, look at this as your opportunity to learn. How can YOU make chicken interesting to you? What about pork, beef, fish? Focus on getting 3 oz of those to be something you look forward to. Then how to bring out the best of broccoli, spinach, green beans, asparagus, Cauliflower etc? (Hint, cream and cheese sauces are not the answer.)

Back in January, I changed from having potato or white rice or pasta with dinner. When we went out, I always had some of the bread. By the last two weeks prior to surgery, I had no interest in what was in the bread basket.

This has been an amazing journey, and making the brain changes has been where I focused my energy. Thinking about what will please my pallet, and be the correct thing to eat.

There are lots of long time losers here. You will receive lots of support and ideas.

Best of luck on your journey to onderland.

I have talked to, and worked with, hundreds of bariatric patients at this point, aside from being one myself. The successful ones 10+ years almost all limit carbs to some degree.

Carbs are...hard. How low carb is low carb? If you are under 50g a day total, you are more likely to lose weight.

I was on a ketogenic diet for many years and lost around 300 pounds. On surgery I lost the next 150 or so. Limiting carboyhdrate helped tremendously with all of that.

Having said that, everyone's body is different. The problem with higher carb diets (over 50g a day, and particularly over 100g a day) is that they raise insulin in the body. Even if you malabsorb carbs, as do people with bypass surgeries of any sort (WLS and not) and diseases like Celiac, they still raise insulin. Insulin rises as soon as you chew, as amylase begins to break down the carbohydrate in your mouth.

Insulin is problematic for a few reasons. It causes us to gain weight, as insulin stimulates fat storage. That's why diabetics rotate injection sites - if you inject bolus insulin into the same site you will get a giant growth of fat tissue, a huge lump. It is profoundly lipogenic.

Insulin also causes systemic inflammation and insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is reversed by years of eating reduced carbohydrate or WLS.

It also stimulates hunger. Carbohydrates do, but insulin particularly stimulates hunger. Protein particularly, and then fat, trigger the hormones for satiety.

The problem is that it can take 2-4 weeks for the body to acclimate to using fat as fuel versus glucose. Many people experience withdrawals during this time.

Google Cloud Bread.

If you need something with the texture of bread, this is it.

So many of the above posters, including many WLS vets, report that they cannot lose weight or maintain their weight loss except by eating a very low carb menu.

That simply has not been my experience. Post-op (3 years ago) after the first few months after surgery I've eaten what I consider to be fairly high protein (100 grams/day), but haven't worried about carbs. I do focus on colored veggies and fruits, but also eat whole grain breads, brown rice, and pasta. Occasionally, I have small desserts, although it's likely to be berries and yogurt. I also drink wine -- 1 bottle a week. Since I reached my first weight goal a typical day's eating for me includes 100+ grams of protein, 160 to 180 grams of carbs and 60 grams of fat. My daily calories in maintenance (for the last 2+ years) have averaged 1725 calories.

I am confident in the above stats because I have recorded all my food in MFP since June 2014. I still measure or weigh all the foods that I prepare for myself with cups, half-cups, food scale, etc. I also weigh every morning.

FTR, I'm 71 years old, 5'5" tall, active (exercise at least 5 times a week, and maintain 25 acres), and in good health (have never had diabetes, heart or blood pressure problems).

I don't disbelieve anyone else's experiences or reject the regimens that work for them. This is just the approach that works for me and in which I have confidence. I just wanted to post this here to illustrate that there are various nutritional approaches that may work for some WLS patients.

IMHO, I think the commonalities among all these approaches are that long-time maintainers create a lifestyle that works for them (nutritionally and psychologically) and follow it with great consistency. I doubt anyone is "perfect," but I do imagine that long-time maintainers share a strong ability to learn continuously from both their successes and their mistakes and their changing cir****tances. For example, if I were to become less active than I am now I would need to eat less to maintain my current weight (135 pounds).

I would also posit that we're each running a lifelong science experiment with a sample of one. Here's to us all becoming better scientists!

Very best wishes.