Thursday, March 10th

121.0. No exercise yesterday, a co-worker on maternity leave joined us all for lunch so we could see her new baby. So sweet! The rest of the crew ordered in Jimmy John's but I ate the other 1/2 of my seared Ahi tuna salad from the day before. Didn't feel deprived at all.

I'm still staying clear of the GS cookies. I think I will resume yoga and maybe even boot camp today. If the ab work bothers me, I will just skip that part!

Paula

Good morning, my skinny friends!

122 on the dot.

Great job on the GSC's!  Sort of like your own WMD.  Well, perhaps not for you, but that is how I would feel if they were in my house.  However, they could live in my garage and I wouldn't think about them.  Its all about location.

Kairk is right about the GSC's sleeve being a defacto portion size.  There is probably some sort of biological reason why some of us perceive it that way. 

Personal training tonight!  I haven't seen my guy for 2-3 weeks during lymphedema storm.  I am really looking forward to getting restarted!

Have a great day! 

Shel

WMD - yes! I really don't have a problem unless the "forbiddens" are in my face. I divided up the cookies that I didn't put in the freezer into bags for my boys so they each get an equal amount (otherwise I have one son that will eat way more than his fair share). I wish they could make them last days but like me, they usually have to gobble them all up in one sitting. I was that way as a kid too. Oh I wish I was one of those people that could take it or leave it - take a few bites, be satisfied and hen leave the rest.

I'm so happy that your lymphedema is under control now. Have fun with the trainer!

161.4 (so at least down from yesterday!)

Up and fighting the good fight again today.  

I think maybe I mentioned in the past that I have, and continue to be a snacker.  My theory was this:  I want to protect my sleeve and not stretch it out, and if I know that food is coming in just a few hours, I am less likely to overeat.  I had also always heard that small meals or snacking was good for your metabolism--and my metabolism can use all the help it can get!

But now I am beginning to question that route.  If I try to stick to, say, 1200 calories a day, and let's say I have two very modest low calorie snacks around 100 calories each (and that's about as low as a snack can go), I'm left with 1000 calories for the rest of the day.  It is doable, and I have tried very hard to do it.  But it doesn't leave much room for mistake.  Even with a small sleevie stomach, 330 calories per meal doesn't go far.  When I was trying to order my eating this way, I would try for 300 calories at breakfast and lunch, 400 calories at dinner, and two 100 calorie snacks (hard boiled egg, piece of beef jerky, piece of cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc.).  My breakfast are pretty similar each day, and run an average of 300 calories.  But lunch and dinner is where it gets tricky.  Dinner is a little easier because I normally cook it myself, and I split the sides--but even to get in enough protein, hitting the under-400 is a little challenging.  It leaves little room for cheese or sauces, or all those goodies.  And lunch--well lunch is by far the hardest.  I really like to eat out for lunch.  It's so nice to get away from the desk and have a change of scenery.  But it's hard tabulating the calories when you can only guess at how it's prepared--how much oil went into it, etc.  And even though I'm good at splitting my portion or sometimes even less, it's not hard to imagine that whole plate of food being well over 600 calories.

So it's not the big picture that's hurting me.  It's that when you add the fact that maybe my lunch was over the coveted 300 calories, and perhaps I needed a ****tail that night, and then there were those few jelly beans at the office--you get the picture.  It's easy to feel like you're dieting but suddenly you're way over allotted calories.  

My husband is not a snacker.  In fact he doesn't even eat breakfast.  (With God as my witness I will not give up my breakfast!)  He gets hungry but that's okay because you should get hungry before lunch and dinner.  And when he's done, he tells himself "no."  I think there could be something to that approach as far as coaching yourself to only eat at certain times.  I think it might be hard to get all my protein in, but then again maybe filling up on protein at those main meals will squeeze out the extra calories that have been going toward potato or veggie.  Just cutting out the snacks gives me an extra 200 calories to play with.  Certainly half a plate of (most) lunch out should not be over 500 calories!  And I can just keep breakfast and dinner the same.  I might try it.  I dunno.  Hunger really strikes fear in me.  It was something I was tortured with for so long, that I prefer not to be hungry now.  But it's almost getting silly how I react to hunger--like I will surely die if I don't eat right THEN.

In other news, I had a salad with my lunch yesterday and spent the rest of the afternoon clasping my stomach in pain.  Do raw veggies, more specifically greens, do this to anyone else?  A lot of foods bother my stomach and I cannot tell if it's attributable to VSG or just me.  Thinking about seeing a gastrointerologist soon.  I almost cannot eat veggies unless they are WELL cooked to mush.

My surgeon doesn't want us snacking at all except for having 2-3 protein shakes a day between meals and he wants us to limit meals to 300 calories. I find my meals are often < 300 calories, especially breakfast and lunch. I do snack some, but snack on things like nuts, sargento balanced break packets or perhaps a rare piece of fruit as well as having 2 protein drinks per day. Veggies (even raw) don't bother my stomach at all. I have always had a stomach of steel and the VSG hasn't really changed that. The only time I have run into trouble is with eating dense proteins too fast and/or not chewing them properly, especially pork.

I think it would be very hard to control calories eating out daily. I try to limit eating out to 1-2 times per week and I always look up the nutrition information if possible.

How far out are you?

I don't know that my surgeon talked very much about protein shakes, and he's no longer with us if I wanted to find out now.  But in general I think his idea was that dense protein was better than drinkable calories.  Or at least that's the idea I get from my support group.  I know that personally I'd much prefer to eat "real" protein than drinking it.  But whey protein really hurts my stomach.  And years of trying to do "shake diets" leaves me with a gag reflex lol.  That being said, it can be pretty hard to get protein when so low calorie unless you supplement with shakes.  Even when I try to really really focus on protein, 80-90 is the most I do.  And that's when I feel like I'm eating nothing but and snacking on it.

I'm not really sure how much protein I get.  I strive to get a minimum of 60g. per day, and usually I fall somewhere between 70-80, but that's at eating my current calorie level, which will have to be adjusted down.

I will be a year out on April 1st. My surgeon feels snacking on "real foods" leads to grazing which leads to weight gain. He wants us to do the protein shakes instead of food snacks forever. This is different from what other surgeons recommend. In practice, I do a combination of the two. I have 2 protein drinks a day (which helps me keep my protein numbers high) and a few healthy usually protein forward snacks per day as well.

Interesting approach to snacks. I really think it has merit. 

I never stopped using protein drinks myself. I had not thought of using them as snacks, but the idea intrigues me. I start my day with a shake after having coffee. I'm not a big breakfast person, so a shake really works for me. It allows me to get some protein in early in the day and actually holds me until lunch. I can certainly see having an extra shake instead of eating post workout. I may give this a try for a while and see how I do with the change. thanks for sharing.

I'm pretty new into maintenance so unlike you in that regards.  However, I aim for 1100-1200 per day which is close to what you are thinking of.  I don't use protein shakes/bars because I am not personally a fan, plus, they aren't encouraged by my office.  I am still very protein forward.  I would guess I average about 80-95g protein per day.  Usually