Alex Brecher

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I hope to get to this over the next week or so. Thanks for the reminder!

Happy Valentine's Day!#subject#> body,div,dl,dt,dd,ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,fieldset,input,textarea,p,blockquote,th,td { margin:0; padding:0; } table { border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing:0; } fieldset,img { border:0; } address,caption,cite,code,dfn,th,var { font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; } caption,th { text-align:left; } h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { font-size:100%; font-weight:normal; } q:before,q:after { content:''; } abbr,acronym { border:0; } address{ display: inline; } html, body { background-color: #d8dde8; color: #5a5a5a; } body { font: normal 13px helvetica, arial, sans-serif; position: relative; } h3, strong { font-weight: bold; } em { font-style: italic; } img, .input_check, .input_radio { vertical-align: middle; } legend { display: none; } table { width: 100%; } td { padding: 3px; } a { color: #225985; text-decoration: none; } a:hover { color: #328586; } div.outer { margin: 0 auto; padding: 14px; } table.wrap { max-width: 800px; margin: 0 auto; } td.logo { background-color: #0f3854; padding: 8px; } td.content { background-color: #fff; font-size: 14px !important; color: black !important; line-height: 150% !important; padding: 8px; } ul { margin-left: 25px; } Hey BariatricPal Members! Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s a day to celebrate love. This day may involve a romantic dinner with a special someone, or it could involve some time with friends or a little quality time with yourself. However your Valentine’s Day shapes up, you have the power to make it a healthy and happy one. Maybe this newsletter will help inspire you and give you a few ideas. Here’s what’s in store in this newsletter. A Romantic Dinner: WLS-Approved Relationships and Weight Loss Surgery: Complicated at Best Love Yourself on This Day And if you find yourself needing a little company or a lot of love on Valentine’s Day, just logon to BariatricPal. There’s nowhere better to get an extra boost of motivation and ideas than our friendly community. Enjoy the day! Sincerely, Alex Brecher Founder, BariatricPal A Romantic Dinner: WLS-Approved Take a standard Valentine’s Day dinner. For example, you could start with lobster bisque with breadsticks, move on to a filet mignon with mashed potatoes and buttered asparagus, and finish with molten chocolate cake. Wash that down with some wine, and you could be looking at a couple thousand calories. That’s not going to put you in much of a romantic mood for later! A Better Idea What’s better? You can easily trim down each course. Just focus on lean Proteins, vegetables, and portion sizes – just like you already know how! To keep it special, place extra emphasis on high quality ingredients and a beautiful presentation. Here’s a menu that’s low-calorie, high-Protein, and love-inspiring – being so much lower in calories, saturated fat, and carbs than some alternatives, it’ll keep you from feeling guilty about yourself, or too sluggish to enjoy the rest of the night with your sweetheart. Starters: A triple aphrodisiac salad with arugula, pomegranate seeds, and pine nuts. Add some herbed olive oil with basil and garlic, and your salad has five ingredients known to support love. Main Course: Lighten up a carb and calorie-laden Pasta dish by using a spiralizer to make zucchini and carrot noodles. Toss with lobster and some truffle oil for a nice balance of protein, veggies, and healthy fat. Serve it with a lightened-up version of potato croquettes made with pureed sweet potato and cauliflower, and baked. Dessert: End on a sweet note but not an overpowering one. For around 100 calories a serving, you can top mini crust-less cheesecakes made with fat-free cream cheese with strawberry slices and a drizzle of sugar-free chocolate syrup. Décor: a Calorie-Free Treat Today is as a good a day as any to practice some good habits that will help you succeed with WLS. In addition to eating slowly (remember, shouldn’t you be focusing on your company more than your plate?), you can pay a little more attention to your eating environment and a little less attention to your food. To make the setting a little more romantic, try eating off of nicer dishes, using some festive holiday napkins, or eating by candlelight. It really makes the meal more special without adding more calories! Relationships and Weight Loss Surgery: Complicated at Best So much changes when you get weight loss surgery. Your diet clearly changes, but that may be only a small part of many more changes in your life. Along with diet, your daily schedule may change. You may add workouts and become more active. Your entire attitude towards yourself and life may change – and those are the factors that can have the biggest effects on your relationships. Sometimes the changes are positive. Those near you may see how happy and healthy you are, and love you all the more for it. You may find it easier to keep up with other people, and easier to be genuine with them because you are more comfortable with yourself. Other times, relationships can become strained because of WLS. Reassure them that you’re not planning to leave them. Let them know that you don’t think any less of them or think you’re “better” than they are. Invite them to join you on your journey and let them know you’ll support theirs. Do not let anyone devalue you or undermine your efforts. Often, the people who are initially negative will come around. Be patient and accepting of them. Sometimes, you will occasionally lose a friend because of your new healthy commitments. That’s a hard thing to accept, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Try to think of what you’ve gained, such as new friendships, extra self-respect, and new opportunities. Love Yourself on This Day It goes without saying that Valentine’s Day was intended to celebrate your relationship with your significant other. We’re all for it, but we don’t think Valentine’s Day should stop there! Whether or not you have a significant other in your life, you can use Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with yourself. Respect and Love Yourself Relationships with others can be rocky, but your relationship with yourself may be even tougher. It can take just as much effort to be satisfied and comfortable with yourself as it takes to establish a solid relationship with someone else. You need to work every day at finding what you love about yourself, feeling the joy in being yourself, and showing yourself that you’re worthwhile. When you’re a weight loss surgery pre-op or post-op patient, there’s the potential for a lot of negative self-talk. You may see physical imperfections, or get mad at yourself for slipping up on your diet. But there is just as much room for positivity. There’s the pride when you make a healthy choice, the joy of participating in new activities, and the excitement of new adventures. You just need to look for the positive signs in yourself, just like you look for the positive things in your loved ones. Treat Yourself – You Deserve It What better way to show yourself a little love than with a treat? No, it doesn’t need to be a box of chocolates. There are plenty of other ways you can treat yourself. What about a new workout top, a few sessions with a personal trainer, or a day at the spa? No worries if a food treat is really the only “treat” that excites you. Invite a friend over to go for a walk and then cook a healthy meal with you, or buy yourself a new spice or foreign ingredient to cook with. You can even invest in some perfectly portioned bariatric dinnerware to help you eat right and remind yourself how far you’ve come at every meal. Valentine’s Day is a day set aside to celebrate love, and there’s no reason to be chintzy! With so many healthy ways to show love to yourself and the close people in your life, there’s no limit to how far you can take your Valentine’s Day festivities, while losing weight at the same time. Happy Valentine’s Day!

@@dietbelle, Hang in there…it only gets better from here! The first week can be pretty bleak. Don’t worry about the scale now. Your body is so out of whack from the surgery and infection that anything can happen – your fluids can be completely out of balance. Just do what you can to stay hydrated now and that will help. I hope things get better soon, and I am sure they will!

Good luck to everyone! Have fun! I can't wait to see how everyone does!

@@melyssafaye, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. It is awful to be dependent on someone who’s clearly not on your side. I agree with the others to go find someone else who will both sign off in a timely manner and consider giving you the help and support you are so reasonably and wisely asking for. Hopefully she will appreciate you freeing up some of her time. Good luck!

You must submit your week 3 pledge by NOON EST/9 a.m. PST, Monday February 15! Happy Valentine's Day! And welcome to week 3 of the Bariatric Foodie Pledge, sponsored by Bariatric Pal! It's time to pledge your week 3 goal! Use the link below to go to the pledge form. Good luck - and keep conquering those goals! Take me to the Pledge form!

Good topic, @@needtorecover! I think fat-shaming is terrible. Nobody should be humiliated because of the way they look, and typically that’s what fat-shaming is about. It’s about judgement based on looks and nothing else. The problem that I see about the anti-fat-shaming movement, as you’ve all pointed out, is that it seems to get confused with sound messages about the true problems with obesity – unhealthfulness and interference with regular daily life. @@Djmohr makes a great point that fat-shaming is always wrong, that there’s a better way to deliver the message. Back to the original question, I do fear that the backlash against fat-shaming is leading people to possibly have one more excuse to put off getting healthy.

@@Daisee68, Interesting question! I can definitely see your nutritionist’s point. She apparently sees your patterns at that meal as being similar to patterns that got you in trouble in the first place. And I think there is research to back up that the more variety you have at a meal, the more you are likely to eat. On the other hand, you didn’t have THAT many foods – you had 5 at the first, and 2 at the second. (By the way, my concern would be the Bloody Mary). I would ask if you were in control. If you were completely in control of what you ate, you made a sound decision, and you stuck to it, I don’t think it’s a problem. If you start with a chip and turned it into a two-course meal with alcohol, that is more of a problem.

Josey, Thanks so much for this article! I think it is really important to remember, as you said, that everyone deals with head hunger. That makes it easier to actually face it and conquer it instead of thinking that we’re unlucky if we have it. It’s also important to take it one day at a time. There’s no way I can think about fighting food cravings for the rest of my life. But if I think about just today, the answer is usually yes, I can fight them today, or at least right now. I don’t have to worry about being perfect next year or next month or tomorrow. Thanks for the great advice!

@@1Cor2:9, I’m sorry you’re down, but I bet there’s a lot to be hopeful about and super proud of! I think it is extremely exciting that you were able to eat right this week even though you had some stressful events. I’m not sure what you mean by failing this week, but it sounds like you didn’t hit your weight goals. Sometimes that happens, even if you eat right. Is there anything you could have done differently to make sure you got in your workouts? Maybe go to bed a little earlier, or get your workout clothes ready the night before, or take your walking shoes to work? As others have suggested, I would suggest setting some additional goals that aren’t just about weight. I’d also make sure they’re things you can control. While you may not be able to control losing a certain amount of weight or fitting into a certain size by a certain date, you CAN control behaviors like hitting your calories, eating a certain number of servings of vegetables, working out a certain number of times per week, and taking a few minutes each day to think about what you’re proud of. Everyone worries they won’t hit goal, but it takes time and patience. You’re doing fine!

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I'm a Sashimi lover. We have some really great joints here in NYC. If I ever crave a Sushi roll I ask them to make me a Naruto roll which doesn't have rice and is wrapped in soy paper or cucumber. I do have regular sushi rolls once in a while but I've been in maintenance mode for over a decade now.

We carry all the Patches in the BariatricPal Store at http://store.bariatricpal.com/collections/patchmd Sent from my iPhone using BariatricPal

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This feature is built-in to every modern day browser and operating system. I can't comment on anything else lol

The Super Bowl is starting now…how are you celebrating? Are you one of the nearly 200 million people who tune in – whether it’s for the game, for the half-time show, or for the commercials? What kind of Super Bowl traditions do you have…or are you starting some new ones this year? And, what kind of food is at your party? Do you go to (or host) a party where have to face “the works” – chili, wings, pizza, brownies, Cookies, chips, dip…and everything else? And how are you planning to deal with it? Can you pass up the junk food? Of course, one of the best ways to avoid caving into the temptations and overeating junk food is to bring your own healthy foods. It could be as simple as sticking a Protein bar or a small bag with almonds in your pocket. Or, you might have some delicious, healthy recipes for dips, veggie trays, and turkey chili. Share your Super Bowl recipes and memories here…and don’t forget to check into this thread if you need a distraction from the tempting food near the TV!

The weight loss surgery journey involves challenges, triumphs, and change. Hopefully, the positive experiences far outweigh the negative ones. You might enjoy gaining a new taste for healthy foods, having more energy to hang out with friends and family, out-of-the-blue compliments from strangers and colleagues, and fitting into cute clothes. You might not like nasty comments from friends, family, and colleagues; giving up certain foods; and the occasional sick-to-your-stomach feeling, especially when you’re with a crowd. We already asked about your best and worst weight loss surgery experience with regards to your medical service (Check it out here! The Best and the Worst: Your Weight Loss Surgery MEDICAL SERVICE Experience). Now, what are your best and worst weight loss surgery experiences outside of the clinic?

Many experts suggest logging your food to lose weight. When you log, you know for sure exactly how much you are eating. Logging helps hold you accountable. Also, when you know you’re going to log your food, you may be less likely to sneak in an extra bite or choose a high-calorie treat. Probably for all of these reasons, research shows that people who log are more likely to lose weight and keep it off. Still, not everyone does. You may find it boring or time-consuming or inconvenient. You may feel as though you don’t need to. Or you may have started off logging, but now find that you’ve gotten into a pattern where you eat pretty much the same thing every day. So, do you log? What stage of the pre-op or post-op weight loss surgery journey are you in? Was there ever a time when you stopped logging and went back to it? Please share your experiences – and also the program you use for logging!

This issue has been resolved. Your surgeon should be added in a few days at most. @@Alex Brecher My surgeon still hasn't been added. Fifteen days. I'm losing patience over this. "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau You shoud be good to go now.

The BariatricPal Store also carries sample protein variety packs - http://store.bariatricpal.com/collections/variety-packs

WLS is a pretty strong tool! Whether you’re just gaining restriction (as with the lap-band), or you have the added benefit of changes in hunger hormones (as with the gastric sleeve), or you have have nutrient malabsorption thrown in, too (as with the bypass), the surgery plus some careful eating on your part is theoretically enough to give you “success” – lose weight and keep it off. But in real life? A lot of other things are helpful, too! Having ready-to-heat high-Protein meals, Protein Bars, and Protein shakes, for example, helps you stick to the diet plan. Having a gym membership – or even a personal trainer – can keep you motivated and focused as you get fit and burn more calories. Or maybe you just need (or want) more information – maybe you appreciate the forums, or you are lucky enough to have healthcare providers who are available to answer your questions so you can be absolutely sure you’re on the right track. Or maybe you love having a meal-tracking app to hit your calories and protein every day. What I’m wondering is what you feel are the best tools you have to improve your success in the WLS journey – whether they save you time (such as meal preparation kits), make you lose weight faster (such as having an exercise buddy), reduce stress, or help in any other way. Share them here – and maybe you’ll get some ideas from other members about other fantastic tools and tips!