Pre-Op Diet Screw Up
1st Day of the Pre-Op Diet.....did great for Break, Lunch.....then hit McDonalds for Supper, well now since I already blew it, ate a gazallion more carbs once I got home. arhggg Crap! Well tomorrow is another day! Afraid to write the truth for the Bariatric Dietician in my food journal since Im suppose to be showing compliance!
Did anyone else have issues during their Pre-Op periods?
Did anyone else have issues during their Pre-Op periods?
(deactivated member)
on 2/8/11 11:59 am - MN
on 2/8/11 11:59 am - MN
You are FROM from failing. We make mistakes. We are humans! Plus it is not like our morbidly obese go away over night.
Just do better tomorrow!
Just do better tomorrow!
You need to take each day 1 at a time, and all that you can expect is to try harder the next day. Write your slip in your journal but also address in the journal what you were feeling or how your day had been going. Maybe after a while you may see a pattern that will help you address some of these things.
Like Don said no one will be any harder on you than you will be yourself. Well unless you want us to be.
Like Don said no one will be any harder on you than you will be yourself. Well unless you want us to be.
Paul C.
First 5K 9/27/20 46:32 - 11 weeks post op (PR 28:55 8/15/11)
First 10K 7/04/2011 1:03 First 15K 9/18/2011 1:37
First Half Marathon 10/02/2011 2:27:44 (PR 2:24:35)
First Half Ironman 9/30/12 7:32:04
First 5K 9/27/20 46:32 - 11 weeks post op (PR 28:55 8/15/11)
First 10K 7/04/2011 1:03 First 15K 9/18/2011 1:37
First Half Marathon 10/02/2011 2:27:44 (PR 2:24:35)
First Half Ironman 9/30/12 7:32:04
Agree with the others.
One slip does not a failure make. You'll be fine. If you were expected to be successful with following a dietician's diet recommendations 100%, then you would be a horrible candidate for surgery because you'd already be thin.
I like Paul's recommendation of tracking your feelings too: pre, and post-carbing.
Next time, don't let one mistake turn into another: I know how that works as I always used to do that. If you stopped for a quarter pounder and fries. Stop, recognize it. Feel bad about that decision, Decide there to straighten it out. Don't excuse yourself to make more bad decisions because you already dropped the ball.
You'll be fine. Part of this process is recognizing your patterns and doing your best to govern and change those patterns.
My $.02.
One slip does not a failure make. You'll be fine. If you were expected to be successful with following a dietician's diet recommendations 100%, then you would be a horrible candidate for surgery because you'd already be thin.
I like Paul's recommendation of tracking your feelings too: pre, and post-carbing.
Next time, don't let one mistake turn into another: I know how that works as I always used to do that. If you stopped for a quarter pounder and fries. Stop, recognize it. Feel bad about that decision, Decide there to straighten it out. Don't excuse yourself to make more bad decisions because you already dropped the ball.
You'll be fine. Part of this process is recognizing your patterns and doing your best to govern and change those patterns.
My $.02.
HW: 316 / SW: 294 / CW: 197.5 / GW: 195
First 5K: 29:50 mins. on 3/12/11 (4 month surgiversary)
First 5K: 29:50 mins. on 3/12/11 (4 month surgiversary)
I can assure you we ALL had issues during our Pre-Op periods. Some managed to stick to the eating plan regardless, and some reverted to previous eating patterns.
So here's the lesson we all had to learn about this WLS journey: We ALL screw up. Before surgery, after surgery, even years after reaching goal weight... The surgery is NOT magic. We are NOT going to be able to re-program our eating habits of a lifetime just by having the surgery and deciding to "eat right". That's just not going to happen. Eating wrong and not exercising enough is what got us where we are in the first place, right? (I assume you had to document all the failed weight loss attempts from your past in order to get approved for surgery.) If you're like the rest of us, you've practiced eating badly for years, and trust me, your body will remember it for a long time...
The important thing is what you do after you screw up. Resolve right here, right now to do better next time. Don't compound a relatively minor mistake by saying "Well, I already blew my diet, might as well go ahead and eat {insert your comfort food here}." Instead, get yourself back on track immediately. Forgive yourself, and move on - preferably back on the "straight and narrow" path.
So you ate dinner at McDonalds. I'm sure it was more calories, fat, and carbs that you knew you should have. But if you think about it, coupled with what you had for breakfast and lunch, it was probably STILL a lot less than you normally would have eaten in a day. So even with a slip-up, you were doing better than before - right up until you gave in to the "old way" of thinking and scarfed down all the other stuff after you got home.
Stop for a minute and think about WHY you ate more junk after getting home. In my case, every time I slipped up, I was flooded with feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt. I felt like I didn't "deserve" to lose weight. By eating yet more junk, it was like I was punishing myself for my past failures, and for "failing" yet again on my new venture. But that was really pointless and counter-productive! I was sabotaging my best chance to get my weight back under control, and improve my health and my quality of life.
I had to learn to be completely honest about my mistakes (which you seem to have already learned - at least in this forum), document those mistakes (along with the thoughts and "rationale" that caused me to make them), then FORGET about the mistakes, and live the next 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week making better choices and decisions. I'm not going to lie to you and say that once I did that, everything came easy and I never screwed up again. But I will tell you that I never again "compounded" a bad decision at one meal by "throwing in the towel" and pigging out for the rest of the day...
As for your journal - two things to think about. #1) Your NUT has worked with hundreds of obese people. They've seen it all, heard all the excuses, and NOTHING surprises them. I chose a policy of 100% truthfulness with my NUT and WLSurgeon. If you start shading the truth with them now, where does it stop? How can they help you, if you aren't telling them what's actually going on? You really need to think about the potential consequences of lying to them. #2) The goal here is long-term success. If I screwed up enough during my pre-op phase - to the point where they determined that I wasn't really ready to have a successful outcome from WLS, and needed to postpone the WLS for a while to get my head straight, than I would have done it. I might not have been happy about it, but I would have done it. Because they are the experts on this stuff, and I'm (clearly!) not...
I was fortunate to find this site early in my journey, while still in pre-op phase. I discovered the Men's Forum right away, and this has become my primary support group. I learned about what I wrote above from others on this forum - not all at once, but over time. It took me a while to get my act together, and I struggle a little bit every day. Yesterday (with only 1 lb to go to make 100 lbs lost total), I was incredibly tempted to eat some chocolate candy (my biggest weakness).
But someone here on this site taught me to wait 5 minutes before giving in. During that 5 minutes, think about what you've been through to get this far. Balance the "instant gratification" of eating the candy bar against all the blood, sweat, and tears you've shed to get to this point. Think about all the reasons you chose to have WLS surgery to begin with, and what you'll be able to do when you reach your goals. When the 5 minutes is up, if you still want the candy bar more than you want to achieve your other goals, then go for it.
At least you've thought through the consequences and made a rational decision instead of an impulsive reaction. But, I think you'll find (as I have) that 99.9% of the time, you will realize that it's just not worth it. It's just your "old self" talking to you again, saying you "deserve" a treat 'just this once" because you've done so well this far. Yeah right... As GrandpaG says, junk food is poison, and why would you knowingly want to poison yourself?
There - sermon over! Now get yourself up off the ground, learn from your mistakes, and get back on your plan. You CAN do this, and we'll be here to help you along the way. Sometimes with encouragement, and sometimes with a swift kick in the rear... But always with the best of intentions, and to help you as we've been helped by others along our journey.
So here's the lesson we all had to learn about this WLS journey: We ALL screw up. Before surgery, after surgery, even years after reaching goal weight... The surgery is NOT magic. We are NOT going to be able to re-program our eating habits of a lifetime just by having the surgery and deciding to "eat right". That's just not going to happen. Eating wrong and not exercising enough is what got us where we are in the first place, right? (I assume you had to document all the failed weight loss attempts from your past in order to get approved for surgery.) If you're like the rest of us, you've practiced eating badly for years, and trust me, your body will remember it for a long time...
The important thing is what you do after you screw up. Resolve right here, right now to do better next time. Don't compound a relatively minor mistake by saying "Well, I already blew my diet, might as well go ahead and eat {insert your comfort food here}." Instead, get yourself back on track immediately. Forgive yourself, and move on - preferably back on the "straight and narrow" path.
So you ate dinner at McDonalds. I'm sure it was more calories, fat, and carbs that you knew you should have. But if you think about it, coupled with what you had for breakfast and lunch, it was probably STILL a lot less than you normally would have eaten in a day. So even with a slip-up, you were doing better than before - right up until you gave in to the "old way" of thinking and scarfed down all the other stuff after you got home.
Stop for a minute and think about WHY you ate more junk after getting home. In my case, every time I slipped up, I was flooded with feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt. I felt like I didn't "deserve" to lose weight. By eating yet more junk, it was like I was punishing myself for my past failures, and for "failing" yet again on my new venture. But that was really pointless and counter-productive! I was sabotaging my best chance to get my weight back under control, and improve my health and my quality of life.
I had to learn to be completely honest about my mistakes (which you seem to have already learned - at least in this forum), document those mistakes (along with the thoughts and "rationale" that caused me to make them), then FORGET about the mistakes, and live the next 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week making better choices and decisions. I'm not going to lie to you and say that once I did that, everything came easy and I never screwed up again. But I will tell you that I never again "compounded" a bad decision at one meal by "throwing in the towel" and pigging out for the rest of the day...
As for your journal - two things to think about. #1) Your NUT has worked with hundreds of obese people. They've seen it all, heard all the excuses, and NOTHING surprises them. I chose a policy of 100% truthfulness with my NUT and WLSurgeon. If you start shading the truth with them now, where does it stop? How can they help you, if you aren't telling them what's actually going on? You really need to think about the potential consequences of lying to them. #2) The goal here is long-term success. If I screwed up enough during my pre-op phase - to the point where they determined that I wasn't really ready to have a successful outcome from WLS, and needed to postpone the WLS for a while to get my head straight, than I would have done it. I might not have been happy about it, but I would have done it. Because they are the experts on this stuff, and I'm (clearly!) not...
I was fortunate to find this site early in my journey, while still in pre-op phase. I discovered the Men's Forum right away, and this has become my primary support group. I learned about what I wrote above from others on this forum - not all at once, but over time. It took me a while to get my act together, and I struggle a little bit every day. Yesterday (with only 1 lb to go to make 100 lbs lost total), I was incredibly tempted to eat some chocolate candy (my biggest weakness).
But someone here on this site taught me to wait 5 minutes before giving in. During that 5 minutes, think about what you've been through to get this far. Balance the "instant gratification" of eating the candy bar against all the blood, sweat, and tears you've shed to get to this point. Think about all the reasons you chose to have WLS surgery to begin with, and what you'll be able to do when you reach your goals. When the 5 minutes is up, if you still want the candy bar more than you want to achieve your other goals, then go for it.
At least you've thought through the consequences and made a rational decision instead of an impulsive reaction. But, I think you'll find (as I have) that 99.9% of the time, you will realize that it's just not worth it. It's just your "old self" talking to you again, saying you "deserve" a treat 'just this once" because you've done so well this far. Yeah right... As GrandpaG says, junk food is poison, and why would you knowingly want to poison yourself?
There - sermon over! Now get yourself up off the ground, learn from your mistakes, and get back on your plan. You CAN do this, and we'll be here to help you along the way. Sometimes with encouragement, and sometimes with a swift kick in the rear... But always with the best of intentions, and to help you as we've been helped by others along our journey.
Hi pulic. I'm two weeks into my pre-op diet so I'm right there with you brother. Amazingly I haven't had too much trouble sticking with mine, but I have had my moments of temptation, and I have certainly done and felt what you felt with your slip up. I don't know how many times I would find myself eating something that was terrible for me and not realizing understanding why I was eating it. Of course I would feel terrible afterwards and come down real hard on myself. It often would feel like the person who has chosen to eat that crap, and the person who felt guilty afterwards were two different people.
Like one of the other fellas said, we're not having this surgery because we can just eat normal, healthy meals and lose weight. We're having it because at our core, our relationship with food is fundamentally different from that of other people, as I'm sure you've even more aware of now. Accepting this fact has helped me to both embrace my WLS journey and to look at food and my relationship with food in a whole new light. Food and I aren't buddies and every meal is a challenge.
Own your mistakes and take full responsibility, but most of all learn from them and don't allow one, two or several to cause you to lose focus. Weight loss for us is a job now. It's my second job, as I like to think of it and there's little room for slacking. This is going to be a long journey and every meal is a going to be a challenge. I keep a little saying in my head to help me try to take one day, hour, meal at a time. How did they build the Great Wall of China? One brick at a time. So take it one brick at a time.
Like one of the other fellas said, we're not having this surgery because we can just eat normal, healthy meals and lose weight. We're having it because at our core, our relationship with food is fundamentally different from that of other people, as I'm sure you've even more aware of now. Accepting this fact has helped me to both embrace my WLS journey and to look at food and my relationship with food in a whole new light. Food and I aren't buddies and every meal is a challenge.
Own your mistakes and take full responsibility, but most of all learn from them and don't allow one, two or several to cause you to lose focus. Weight loss for us is a job now. It's my second job, as I like to think of it and there's little room for slacking. This is going to be a long journey and every meal is a going to be a challenge. I keep a little saying in my head to help me try to take one day, hour, meal at a time. How did they build the Great Wall of China? One brick at a time. So take it one brick at a time.
Hitting McDonald's was a small mistake, the ( well now since I already blew it) was your big mistake. We all slip up, when you do, correct your actions, don't make excuses for more bad behavior. Let that be lesson #1 on day 1. You will have gazillions of lessons before you are done.
We are here to serve you, don't be afraid to fess up we have all been there.
Robert
Wow, I cant thank you guys enough for the words of encouragement and advice....I really needed to hear something positive for a change, so thank you! What a weird and stressful part of the process this is ...coming down to the wire.....I have one month to go to "satisfy" my insurance requirements so I am afraid to say or do the wrong thing that will cause me not to get approved. I'm suppose to be compliant to a program....yet at the same time I have to show I cant manage to lose 10% of my body weight, in my case about 34 lbs. How can I comply to a program and not lose weight at the same time....hence am I suppose to be giving my doctors and dietitians a line of crap until we get the insurance approval....then I can let the honestly.....gush....gush seemed like a stronger word than flow :-) ..... I have just a ton of medical appts and getting such conflicting messages and advice about WLS (more so from my endocrinologist whom feels everything should just eat better and exercise more then we will be OK...what an ass...truthful but when I cant meet those expectations and my A1C is back to 9 something...what do I do after his appt....run through BK for a Double Whopper.....hence, not in the food journal.
SO do I think I can do this alone....No. DO I need help, support, and all that, yes. What is stressing me out.....I don't feel like I can be honest about much of anything until the insurance is approved....what is stressing me out even more, I'm stressing out now and this is the easy part....the hard part is yet to come and I have alot to learn and relearn....but am I ready, heck ya. Tomorrow is a new day and will make it a good one! SO I gave up smoking cigarettes, I don't drink, don't use drugs, about to give up the bad food....hopefully the next addiction is something moderately healthy....jogging maybe? Guess first I have to be able to tie my shoes without losing my breathe!
SO do I think I can do this alone....No. DO I need help, support, and all that, yes. What is stressing me out.....I don't feel like I can be honest about much of anything until the insurance is approved....what is stressing me out even more, I'm stressing out now and this is the easy part....the hard part is yet to come and I have alot to learn and relearn....but am I ready, heck ya. Tomorrow is a new day and will make it a good one! SO I gave up smoking cigarettes, I don't drink, don't use drugs, about to give up the bad food....hopefully the next addiction is something moderately healthy....jogging maybe? Guess first I have to be able to tie my shoes without losing my breathe!
MP - part of the problem is that if you can't stick with the program at a reasonable level of compliance before surgery, and can't be honest with your NUT and Surgeon now, you may be approved for the surgery and go through it, only to fail by not being able to follow the plan afterward. It does happen - just not too often because of all the screening that goes on ahead of approval.
Here's the thing - everyone expects that a morbidly obese person will screw up at least occasionally on a radically healtier eating plan. It's been programmed into us ever since we began gaining weight... If you're able to be successful even with an occasional screw-up, you'll be OK after surgery as well. But if you lose less than the expected weight, and your log has been "doctored" to show that you were 100% compliant, it could be interpreted differently by the team. It might even cause your surgeon to take a more aggressive approach (smaller pouch, longer bypassed portion of the intestine, etc.) than is really needed. The result could be more difficulty getting the nutrition you need long term, after the weight loss.
Does your surgeon have an insurance coordinator? If so, you might call and talk to them - even "anonymously" - and explain the dillema to them and ask what they think. They see 100's of these packets, and know how the insurance companies react to different things. If they tell you to fudge the results, then go ahead. But I would be truthful with the surgeon, in any case.
Here's the thing - everyone expects that a morbidly obese person will screw up at least occasionally on a radically healtier eating plan. It's been programmed into us ever since we began gaining weight... If you're able to be successful even with an occasional screw-up, you'll be OK after surgery as well. But if you lose less than the expected weight, and your log has been "doctored" to show that you were 100% compliant, it could be interpreted differently by the team. It might even cause your surgeon to take a more aggressive approach (smaller pouch, longer bypassed portion of the intestine, etc.) than is really needed. The result could be more difficulty getting the nutrition you need long term, after the weight loss.
Does your surgeon have an insurance coordinator? If so, you might call and talk to them - even "anonymously" - and explain the dillema to them and ask what they think. They see 100's of these packets, and know how the insurance companies react to different things. If they tell you to fudge the results, then go ahead. But I would be truthful with the surgeon, in any case.
Most Active
Recent Topics
