Food help

No really. I know my questions are getting lame. but im still in the mush-only stage of my diet. So Can I mix fruit with my protein shakes? Can I mix in peanut butter? Can I eat cheese? Or cream cheese? Is dairy bad? WHY DIDNT I FIND THIS STUFF OUT BEFORE I GOT CUT OPEN!? haha Someone needs to come up with an approved bariatric mush list, and different food stages list like with babies or something.

Amber! You poor girlfriend! Most of us had a very extensive list given to us by our surgeon's program. I still have mine from almost 4 years ago with Bridges/St Lukes. .... Who is your surgeon? Doesn't the nutritionist give you some pre-op teaching in regard to your food choices?....I can imagine being crazy with "what to do" if you don't have any lists! I'll riffle around through some of my old stuff and see if I can scan and send some of it your way...... In the meantime...I think there's probably some info on ths o.h. site if you hunt. Dairy is NOT bad per say. It's just that drinking milk is high sugar grams which makes many newbies DUMP!!! And, though things may say "no sugar added" when dairy is concerned it is NOT sugar free because dairy has natural sugars. IF you are trying to live a low carb lifestyle (recommended by most post-op plans) then you'd want to eliminate milk prdoucts from your lists. Many folks become lactose intollerant following WLS as well and the effects of drinking milk are just not worth it. Soooooo....mix your protein drinks with water and not milk......I recommend staying away from the little protein mix that involves carnation instant breakfast and milk....that's just a recipe for high carbs, high calories and high lactose! ....Cheese and cream cheese are "soft food" stages and are fine. For some reason, cheese, cottage cheese, cream cheese, yogurt, etc. don't have the same lactose issues that mlk does and they are lower in carbs and lower in sugar. My favorite things to have while I was in the soft food stage were: refried beans with melted cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, soft cooked eggs (though eggs can sit very very hard in the pouch if not moist and soft), shrimp is a soft food but if they are grilled then they could be too dry which would cause foamies/vomitting....Anything you have can be beefed up with protein by adding 1 scoop of "Any Whey" protein powder. IT's a flavorless protein powder that adds 17 grams of protein to the food it's added to.....I also liked Boston Market's Chicken Tortilla soup....it's so moist that you can whirl it through the blender and still have all the delicious flavor but in a puree!!!!....chicken is probably the most difficult meat of all of them for people to tolerate so go easy on that at first and maybe try dark meat vs the drier grilled white meat.... Baby foods are just gross so leave those for the itty bitty folks and find some foods with flavor. The beginning stages are such a short time really that you just need to find 5 or 6 things that give you some flavor and hang tight til the teeth can do the work for you!!!! Let me know fi you need more info and if you'd like me to try and resurrect my old program book. Huggggz, Joyce

Thank you SOOO much! I was wondering if eggs were possible, and was concerned about my sugar free yogurt and such. I went through about 2 hours of pre-op training and then I managed to lose my packet right after so I wasnt able to review it again. I have a great memory.. but not that great! haha I'll definitely have to grab me some of that soup though! I tried a little bit of the yams mixed with potatoes from there (so it wasnt so sugary) and it went down well.. but im so danged sick of potatoes! Youre just wonderful! thanks! Just 4 more weeks to go