Eatin' Good in the 20's Neighborhood...TGIFriday

Hey 20-somethings! The weekend is finally here. How did you all do Friday? Did you focus on getting your minimum protein and fluid requirements? How 'bout those vitamins? Don't forget those! I found something out today. I went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch with my kids and my best friend Brandon who came down to see me from Raleigh today. It's a great place to take the kids on a 103 degree day in the humid South...I had a southwest chargrilled chicken salad with fat free honey mustard, I love their butter garlic croutons so I went ahead and included those but left the sunflower kernals out. Later on when I looked up the nutritional info on their website so that I could enter it into fitday I was surprised to find out that the FF Honey Mustard salad dressing actually had 22 grams of sugar in it. I should have checked the label first but I just totally forgot. It's important to mention that when you consider a FF product, its important to check the sugar content because often sugar is substituted for the fat. Also, interesting is that I had heard that dumping tolerances can be affected by what you are eating the sugar with. In this case it was eaten along with 25 grams of protein with the chicken and some good fiber from the veggies and guess what? I didn't dump - interesting...Although, I don't think I will take this experience as a green light to eat 22 grams of carbs again just as long as I eat it with protein.  Another cool thing is that if I wasn't using fitday to journal my food I never would have realized this, and because I did I decided to try to really limit the carbs I ate the rest of the day. I don't like my carb count to be higher than my protein count, so here is a good example of why food journaling pays. I just started it this week and I think I am going to stick with it. It has really helped me understand how to meet a good protein and liquid goal each day. BTW - the fatigue and dizziness when standing up and lack of overall energy that I have been dealing with have really improved this week and I think it is all because I have been doing better with my diet. So if you haven't tried it, please consider it...and like Amy said, if you enter the foods you commonly eat as a custom food it makes thing so much easier, faster and accurate. It only takes the food label or the website for the food disributer and about 30 seconds of data entry to set up a custom food and from there it is easy. So for today here is what I ate: pre-breakfast - 8 oz coffee with splenda, and sf french vanilla creamer Breakfast - 1/2 cup of Southwest flavor egg beaters, 1 tbsb low carb ketchup, 2 tablespoons colby jack shredded cheese, 1 beef sausage patty with all the grease squeezed out and blotted off Lunch - Chick-Fil-A Chargrilled Chicken Salad with FF honey mustard dressing and croutons finished about 80% of it including all the protien packed chicken Dinner - Leftover extra lean white turkey meatloaf from last night - about 2.5 ounces and 1/2 cup of pasta salad Snack - Whey protein shake made with water instead of milk because I was watching my carbs, I did add some coffe creamer powder though with little impact on the carbs, some SF FF choco pudding powder and instant coffe crystals - it was pretty good Totals for the day: 1070 calories, 34 g Fat, 92 grams of carbs (kind of high), and 94 grams of protein...Got in 75 ounces of water too not including the 8 oz of coffe and 16 oz SF energy drink that I had in the early evening... Now the weekend is here, always tough for me, but I will try to keep focused...

That is so true about FF, which is why I gave up on FF dressings.  The thing is RNY post-ops malabsorb fat so when you eat full fat dressings you're not absorbing enough fat to make a difference (this is not a go ahead to eat mayo out of the jar, it is just an okay to eat regular dressing).  My nutritionist told me not to worry about fat as long as my protien and carbs were in order.  We need fat - it helps keep your skin healthy, keeps your hair from becoming overly dry or falling out and it is actually a better source of prolonged energy than carbs (simple carbs break down first, then fats, then protien).   And yes! You discovered a huge help and dangerous fact about dumping.  If you couple a high sugar food with fats and protien you slow the absobtion of the sugar so you are less likely to dump.  I am hypoglycemic so I have to be careful about surgary foods, even fresh fruit, because they cause my blood sugar to spike and then crash at sometimes dangerous levels (it is not uncommon for me to get down to the low 30's on a bad day).  So to allow me to eat fresh fruit and not crash my nutritionist taught me to pair it with full fat cheese (like cream cheese), full fat yogurt (no sugar added though), or with fiber rich foods (like carbwise oatmeal or dry bran cereal).  That way the other things (full fat is good at this and so are complex carbs like the fiber-filled salad you had) slow the absorbtion of the sugar in the fruit so I can enjoy it without putting myself in danger. The opposite goes when you combine sugary foods with other simple carbs (take cereal and low fat/skim milk for example - lots of post-ops, myself included, can eat cereal plain and milk plain but together it is dump city because the white flour/sugar content in the cereal combined with the low fat content and higher lactose/sugar content in the skim milk is a lot of simple carbs to flood your system with at one time). And you learned all that just by paying attention to what you are eating - AWESOME!  I hope others follow your lead and start taking advantage of fitday. As for eating..hee hee hee... I'm eating through a tube until I can get the corrective surgery I need.  Yup, a feeding tube.  I can try to eat orally but my surgeon wants me to gain some of the weight I have lost back (it was 19 pounds lost since last Friday as of this morning - yesterday it was 17, but I was puking a lot from the flu yesterday so I imagine with the tube and no more puking I'll be gaining soon) and since eating has been a real struggle lately he just wants me to make sure I'm getting enough so I do protien shakes (the only way to eat them in my opinion - where you don't have to taste them), pedialite and liquid vits and pain killers through the tube 4 oz every 2 hours.  So here is my exciting diet.... 4am - 2 oz vanilla atkins shake followed by 2 oz pedialite 6am - 2 oz vanilla atkins shake followed by 2 oz pedialite 8 am - 2 oz vanilla atkins shake followed by 2 oz pedialite 10 am - 4 oz muscle milk  12 am - 2 oz pedialite w/ pain killers and liquid vitamins 2pm - 2 oz vanilla atkins shake followed by 2 oz pedialite 4pm - 4 oz muscle milk 6pm - 4 oz water to clear things out of my tube 8pm - 2 oz vanilla atkins shake, 2 oz pedialite 10pm - 4 oz muscle milk Midnight - 4 oz pedialite That make for a grand total of....790 calories, 59 grams of carbs and 60 grams of protien *Muscle milk is a powder.  I mix 2 scoops of it with 12 oz skim milk so I am getting calories/carbs/protien from the milk and the supplement.  Thank goodness I don't have to taste any of this!

Hey guys. My problems are weekends. It's the only time i actually do things besides work so i always forget to eat! It is one of my goals to be more focused about eating on the weekends as i am during the week. However Yesterday wasn't the best! B: 3/4 SB diet bar (15) S- .5 oz of beef jerky (i need to buy more!), 1/4 cup of zesty bbq soy nuts (18) L: All the chicken and about 1/2 of the other stuff from a lean cusine i think it was the tastiest one i've had! (20) and vitamin S- about 10 whole grain wheat thins with SF PB (10) I should of ate dinner:( But i was getting ready for a concert and then i had the concert and you know how it goes. Today will be a better day! Totals: Protein: 63, a little low but only 5 to little from dr's order Calories: probably only about 600 Water: about 86 ounces ( i did good on something!) And i didn't have my juice! I just noticed. Oh well today is a new day. Speaking of which i should get breakfast! I just woke up:)