DON'T EAT SHRIMP!!!

You mileage may vary, as they say. Shrimp and also the imitation crab and lobster were some of the proteins I tolerated best when I went to solid foods about a month out of surgery.  Chicken gave me some problems with pain after I ate it at first, as did pork.  Not so with shrimp. Everyone has different reactions to different foods.  I have read a lot of comments about people having trouble with rice, this hasn't bothered me, either.

This is why I love this forum.....where else can I find out valuable info like this!  I need to get over my fear of shrimp (early on I learned what "de-veining" them really meant!) b/c of the protein value but I think your story has set me back!  Good luck with new foods!  Joemama!

OK, so why did the shrimp cause this reaction? Was it that you ate it too fast, or took too big of a bite, or just something in the texture of the shrimp?   I have my surgery coming up on April 15th and after reading about these type incidents, I think that maybe I should just living on protein shakes from now on.

Shrimp is a great food nutritional-wise but it used to plug my pouch up something fierce when I first tried it several months post-WLS. If I ate shrimp, I always ended up with the foamies which ultimately led me to barfing. I love shrimp so I would chew, chew, chew and eat it slowly but nothing seemed to keep me from ultimately barfing.  For me, I think it was the texture and dryness of shrimp which was the culprit. After about 5 or so barfing episodes, I refrained from eating shrimp entirely until after a year post-WLS. Know what? No more barfing and as a matter of fact, I had a bunch last night for dinner. I also had similar experiences with pork. Bottom line is that after WLS, everyone's tastes and abiliy to tolerate different foods will change and experimentation is required. Also, the pouch will change so certain foods which you may not be able to tolerate in the first year, you may be able to thereafter.  Hopefully you all are smarter than me and it won't take 5 barfing episodes to figure this out. The good news is I knew that shrimp was healthy so at least I was trying to eat a healthy food rather than cake or ice cream.  Boner

To answer your question BamaBob, my experience has been that the moisture and fat content of the food you're eating has a lot to do with how your pouch reacts. I've gotten nauseous four times since my pouch was built. Once on turkey breast, once on chicken breast, once on the shrimp that I mentioned earlier, and once on roast beef. The problem with three out of those four was that they were too dry. Very low fat content. The roast beef was a problem simply because I tried to eat it to fast. So the problem with shrimp for most people I would guess is that it has an extremely low fat content. Early on, I would slime my meat up with either a little bit of Miracle Whip light, or some guacamole in order to get it to feel ok when it hit my pouch. Yeah, some added calories from the "lubricants" but I don't think they hurt you much at that stage. I eat about 4 oz of boiled shrimp with some ****tail sauce for lunch two or three times a month now a days with no problem.

Gotta tell you, for those who have never heard of boiled shrimp if you ever had a shrimp ****tail you had boiled shrimp.  The best place I found other then the Gulf to buy shrimp was Wal-Mart believe it or not. They have it in the frozen seafood section. Extra large 16 count shrimp already peeled boiled ready to eat usually 2 lbs for $10.99, which is the same stuff they have in their fresh seafood cabinet (guy told me the just dump it in a nice bowl and jack the price). Just let it thaw in the frig make up some ****tail sauce or good Ol' Louisiana hot sauce and dig in.  It will break my heart if I can't eat shrimp, just a few days out of surgery so no where near getting to try yet.  P.S. get down to Hammond a few times a year I'll look out for your bike!

I have absolutely no idea why it happened to me.  I know to chew slowly, so I did, I took a tiny bite off of one shrimp and chewed and chewed and chewed and then it went down fine.  I took about 2 more bites just like that over about 7-10 minutes I guess and wham, it just hit me.  I'm assuming it was the "foamies" everyone's talking about, but that has never happened to me before, and it only lasted for maybe (tops) 20 minutes, then I was fine.  I'm able to eat tuna salad mixed up really well in a blender, so I'm assuming it's the consistency of the foods and how well they are "lubricated" as mentioned in a previous post.  I didn't mean to put you off completely, but yeah for the first few weeks/months, etc I would stray away from "solid" meats like that just b/c they really don't have any fat to make them less dry and whatnot.  I love shrimp and crawfish so hopefully I will be able to eat them both soon enough, but as for now my ass is steering clear of that.  I do good with beans though, refried beans and mozzarella, pizza sauce and mozzarella, refried beans and no fat sour cream=yum.

did you see the movie alien? yeah, ate a shrimp and it came out of my chest. didn't have another for a long time. i had dinner with friends a few weeks ago and had a seafood plate. i gave away all but one shrimp. i ate it for like a half hour then swallowed it. somehow on the way down it got out and fell in my nut sack instead of my pouch. you gotta watch certain foods and fiberous stuff like that is nasty. beware.....carbonblob

Not big on shrimp myself - they eat **** for a living.

You must have a hard time drinking water too then. I mean.......I've heard that fish **** in it.