Non-fattening cheap and delicious potato croquettes

I have good restriction, too. In fact I often find myself thinking that my restriction is so good I could probably get away with eating whatever I want and trusting my tool to help me moderate.

Than I watch "My 600 lb Life" and see all these other people with the same tool who manage to regain dozens of pounds in a month with the same kind of thinking and I figure I'll pass on that thought.

If all I needed was my tool than I wouldn't have regained 100 lbs after my first WLS. Given the right set of cir****tances and self deception I could manage to out eat any WLS no matter how good the tool.

Preach!

My "tool" must suck, then as a " self regulating overeating- preventer" because it somehow allowed me to regain 125 pounds eating just the type of food you are describing here.

Hmmmm???however, come to think about it, if my broken"tool"was to blame, how did it help me loose that regain in 13 months?

Here's what I think, for what it is worth, your WLS does what is does. THE self regulating-overeating -preventer is not your sleeve-band-bypass..whatever--It is your BRAIN.

I made it all the way to RNY surgery eating a potato-based diet. Adding cheese to potatoes would get me back to 500 pounds within 2 years.

This us just a horrible horrible food for WLSers.

It is NOT "calorie light", and would create intense carb cravings.

Actually, the way she was specifying things it is fairly calorie light, as she was using a lot of non-fat and fake butter products, and some mozzarella or parmesan garnish, which are standard WLS fare. Not my style to use all the fake stuff, but many use a lot of fake carb stuff to fill their cravings. Potatoes may or may not create cravings - that's an individual thing. I had potatoes (generally roasted) on my menu all through the loss phase - not a staple but an occasional thing as they have pretty good nutritional density (bucketloads of potassium) so they fit within a normal dietary balance program. Haley used a lot of high fat ingredients in her analysis which calorically takes them out of the usual weightloss domain, though there are many who go that route (full fat everything, fat doesn't make you fat, you have to eat fat to burn fat, fat calories don't count, etc) so that shouldn't be a problem for those of that faith.

So, maybe not ideal for us, but not really any worse than what many do in their effort to avoid "carbs" (fat bombs and bulletproof coffee, anyone?)

No one right after surgery are doing fat bombs. And at about 100 calories per croquette, one croquette is a HUGE percentage of a day's calorie budget post WLS. These would be an insane choice.

Potatoes in general are a bad choice. They stimulate a huge insulin response. They are not a good nutritional choice, at all. The cultures that relied on potatoes in their diet did so because they had almost zero other choices, and because potatoes pack the most calories in a compact package. Even the author of "The Martian" used them to highlight their being calorie bombs.

Keep pushing carbs. I don't really care what works for you, or doesnt, but I know what will hurt others, and recipes like this will do a lot of harm.

I don't think that she is necessarily talking about right after surgery, but we do see people coming through here trying to lose weight with their bulletproof coffee.

100 calories per is Haley's vision of it with all of the high fat stuff in it; with the nonfat stuff in the OP's recipe it would be around half that. Not terrible, but not my thing either. Not really any worse than a lot of the low carb junk foods that some get into making.

Potatoes aren't particularly bad - in and of themselves they are pretty low in calories and have decent nutrition. Like with commercial salads, it's usually the added junk that kills them. Whether they trigger a "huge" insulin response is a matter of context - worse if one is insulin resistant or sensitive, less so if one isn't; and quite variable depending upon what else is being eaten with it (the difference between glycemic index for an individual item, and glycemic load for a meal.) Back when people were into low fat dieting they were all worried about the resultant cholesterol hit with the fats; today insulin is the "hormone of the day" and as with the earlier case, it is another case where in extremis it's not so good, but in moderation there are great benefits. I will use some whole grain bread in a sandwich before going for a longer swim as that provides that appropriate blood sugar responses for the task, something fats and proteins don't do (but in appropriate combination, they are just right.)

Actually, nuts are a lot better at calorie density, but they get a pass in today's diets since those calories are fat, and those supposedly don't count.

Potatoes were used in "the Martian" because they were the most likely food to be packed as a whole food that could be regrown; most everything else tends to be freeze dried stuff with is hard to grow. They may well have had some packaged nuts on board, too, but growing trees for sustenance doesn't fit the story's timeline very well.

I don't push carbs any more than to moderate the low carb fad diets that get pushed around here, and to show how well a moderated diet works for long term WLS success. Many bring their failed dieting habits from their pre-op days along with them and find that, miracle of miracles, they now work with their WLS. Reality check here is that WLS works with most any diet, so one is free to toss those old habits and adopt new ones that are more sustainable in the long term. One doesn't need to agonize over carb counts and macro ratios because they don't matter; concentrate on what foods satisfy you, and what foods trigger undesired cravings - in you, not someone else. I don't need to worry about what foods to avoid because of someone else's reactive hypoglycemia problem, because that's not my problem; nor should others be concerned with what I may avoid because of problems I may have that aren't theirs. I don't promote any particular one-size-fits-all fad diet (like carbs will do a lot of harm....) but rather well established basic nutrition that all can use for their specific needs.

>> Reality check here is that WLS works with most any diet, so one is free to toss those old habits and adopt new ones that are more sustainable in the long term.

I'm inclined to disagree, largely because of the habits of the formerly-SMO. I believe you're ignoring the behavioral component here.

Yes, WLS would work if one could stick to 800 calories a day of carby junk food like donuts and potato cakes. But many/most of us are here as WLS patients because even with restriction, that target is behaviorally unlikely.

Certainly, you can do an 800 calorie Twinkie diet and lose to goal, but of course you won't maintain that. Thirty years ago, patients were often told to just "eat like you always do, but less..." and of course they lost, and regained. Much like patients today often carry their same failed diets with them post op, but never learn to eat sustainably, so they wind up continuing their yo-yo diet patterns, though usually over a longer cycle period courtesy of the WLS restriction.

The point is that one can choose to continue doing an unnecessary diet regimen, and then try to figure out how to maintain that and learn weight control, or one can choose to start learning sustainability from the outset (or preferrably earlier) and carry that through the loss phase and maintenance.

Many make a big deal of "oh, I can't have that now (fruit, vegetables - including root vegetables, whole grains, legumes, etc.) because that's a maintenance food, not a weight loss food. If it makes sense for a sustainable maintenance menu, then it can make sense within a weight loss menu, as well - assuming that one sticks within the appropriate calorie and protein limits. It makes the whole process much easier, particularly on the later weight control phase as one isn't worrying about what to cut out to "go back to basics" if one picks up a few pounds one wants to lose; one can be much more like a "normal" person and just cut back 10-20% for a while. It is part of the learning process of moving toward a more intuitive eating style that gets inhibited by unnecessarily extreme dieting.

Grim I could say the same thing about high protein diets which cause kidney failure appendicitis and even( unsolvable) pancreatic problems.

Carbs minus fat are not fattening ... particularly natural complex carbs like potatoes quinoa and soaked raw wheat grains ( like we use in Tabbouleh ) . Of course the more processed grains are the worse for you .. pasta bread pastries are not that great lol and best eaten in moderation .

But you can enjoy the same tastes you loved pre WLS post ... with a few clever fat free substitutions . No ones ever eaten at my home and complained ( or even noticed ) the absence of fat.