alene

That must feel so great to hear that.

When I get hungry at night, I have a stick of string cheese. It helps me. :-)

I just had a coke with some poprocks and....just kidden lol!
I don't cheat often, but when I do, it usually involves a piece of yummy cake with lots of frosting or chips with guacamole :-D
I don't feel one bit guilty because 97% of the time, I'm a good girl.

Would love to join a support group in the west San Fernando Valley :-)

I'm far from done, but I basically lost a person from around my middle (32 inches). And I can finally wear prettier bras!

The gatorade G2 saved me from getting dehydrated.

A bird just told me we are supposed to have separation on the current threads between the two... So hopefully that will be fixed within the week? Until then? get the popcorn out and start clutching your pearls

I'm in puree stage... but I'm screenshotting this page. Great ideas for the future!

I bought a bento box also and went on Amazon and ordered longer toothpicks so I could skewer cheese cubes with olives, sausage slices, fruit etc. I also like to take olives, caprese salad, grilled chicken slices etc. Eggface has some wonderful ideas. If you google bento box ideas you should get even more ideas. I love mine!

Thanks guys, already I have a bunch of ideas!! I'm a little over 4 months out and cleared to have raw fruit & veggies:-)

(I'm struggling to find stuff GG hasn't mentioned....)
Taco meat (ground or shredded beef or chicken cooked with taco seasoning). If you can handle lettuce, add it to salad for a taco salad with a tablespoon of shredded cheese, a spoonful of light sour cream and a tablespoon of guacamole.
Cold tofu marinated in soy or other Asian seasoning.
Gazpacho (if you can have raw veggies)
Hardboiled eggs and deviled eggs
3 bean salad
Garbanzo Beans in a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt/pepper
Open face PB sandwich made with one slice Ezekial bread and either reconstituted PB2 or Peanut Butter or almond butter, with sugar free fruit spread if you desire
Quesadilla made with one low carb tortilla, low fat cheese and some hot sauce or green chile inside.
Chili

I work from home so I don't "bring" lunch but I do travel and have to carry food for that day on planes etc. Here's what works for me for travel and also some things i used to carry for work:
1. Jerky. Never spoils, can eat for snack
2. lunch meats. I know they can be high in sodium and nitrates but they're easy to eat and portable.
3. Baby bel cheeses of different sorts
4. Edamame
5. Little chicken or beef meatballs that have been cooked so you can reheat at work.
6. Leftovers from dinner. When I used to work in an office outside, instead of putting away leftovers in the fridge, I'd pack two lunch boxes and we used to eat those for lunch the next day.
7. Hummus with veggies (if you can eat veggies now, I'm still not there)
8. Omelette made the night before and rolled, cut into slices.
9. Boiled shrimp
10. Boiled eggs with some mayo on the side
11. chicken salad
12. Egg salad
13. Greek yogurt
14. Almonds if you're allowed nuts
15. Egg quiches made in muffin tins
Hope that helps!

The World according to Eggface blog has a zillion bento box lunch ideas.
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=010161925482818458409%3Avag5alwlnvy&q=a+day+in+my+pouch&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=a%20day%20in%20my%20pouch&gsc.page=1

I ordered the big book. By Alex!! Can't wait to check it out! !

Oh and I did a YouTube blog about my journey so you can kind of see the the ups and downs. Newlifemelissa is the channel name

You may want to judge me from a distance or on the day when my socks are on day one.

Makes alot of sense. ..I didn't have this surgery to constantly be on a diet. My little new tummy is handled with care and if I want to eat anything, I will, but in much smaller doses and only once in a while. I feel so much better now that I've lost 40 lbs, can't wait for the next 60 to go away forever. I got this. :-)

I just had a coke with some poprocks and....just kidden lol!
I don't cheat often, but when I do, it usually involves a piece of yummy cake with lots of frosting or chips with guacamole :-D
I don't feel one bit guilty because 97% of the time, I'm a good girl.

Just wanted to share an awesome NSV I experienced last Friday (9/27) at Disneyland.
To start, the basics: At my heaviest I was over 300 lbs. I was 302 lbs as of July 26th of this year, lost about 20 lbs on the pre-op diet, and was sleeved on 8/19. My current weight is 249.
I decided to attend Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland on opening night, September 27th. It's a fun family event where there is special entertainment, fireworks, trick-or-treating for kids, etc. Also, it's the only time of the year that adult guests are permitted to enter the park in costume!
The thought of being in costume made me pretty apprehensive, because I hadn't dressed up for Halloween since 2005. Dressing up for Halloween, for me, always meant the possibility of more fat shaming. I didn't want people to look at me and think that I was the "fat version" of whatever I as trying to be. So I never dressed up. This year, with my new attitude and weight loss, I plunged into the lost art of creating the perfect costume. It had to be Disney (natch)...it had to be relatively easy...it had to be completely fabulous. There was only one obvious answer: Mary Poppins.
On the evening of the party, I put the whole outfit on for the first time, and was really pleased with how it turned out. After meeting up with a friend inside the park, I noticed a Disneyland employee standing (quite literally) right next to us, watching us. Just standing there. No talking. It was very awkward. When I turned to the cast member and asked if I could help her with something, she hit me with the following:
"Um, yeah, I was just wondering, you have a great costume, and I was wondering if you'd like to be in our Halloween parade tonight. I've been on the lookout for some of the best costumes of the night, and yours is really fantastic."
Wait. WHAT?!?!
I was shocked. Of course, I agreed, and was scheduled to be in the parade at 10:30pm that night. The best part, though, was the realization that here I had been scared to dress up for Halloween for the past 7 years. Afraid of how I would look. Ashamed of my body and the thought of being a laughing stock. And once I finally faced that fear, and embraced a costume, not only did I feel great, but I was chosen out of hundreds of people to be one of nine people in a parade cavalcade in my most favorite place on Earth. Now that's pretty cool.
Needless to say, being a part of the parade was an absolute blast. I felt like a celebrity. We got to see the backstage area and watch the dancers prepare and the floats get ready. We were driven along the parade route in an antique fire truck, with a place of honor right before the grand finale float. The cast member in charge of wrangling all of us told us that Disneyland hadn't asked guests to be part of a parade in over 10 years. Even cooler.
Just a reminder that breaking out of your comfort zone can have some pretty amazing results...and I couldn't be happier with the change in my attitude, confidence, and of course, with my sleeve in general.

I've had cheese toast the last 2 mornings for Breakfast. The bread is high Fiber, and the cheese will clog me up so I look at them as balancing each other out.

So last night, my bf really wanted to order a pizza for delivery. I suggested Hawaiian style (ham and pineapple) on a crispy thin crust. He thought that sounded great. So when we sat down for dinner, I found that I got full after only ONE piece!! I was sooo happy!!
Normally, I could eat 4 or 5 slices of regular pizza. He took the rest to work today.

I just had a coke with some poprocks and....just kidden lol!
I don't cheat often, but when I do, it usually involves a piece of yummy cake with lots of frosting or chips with guacamole :-D
I don't feel one bit guilty because 97% of the time, I'm a good girl.

Yes u do! :-)

Makes alot of sense. ..I didn't have this surgery to constantly be on a diet. My little new tummy is handled with care and if I want to eat anything, I will, but in much smaller doses and only once in a while. I feel so much better now that I've lost 40 lbs, can't wait for the next 60 to go away forever. I got this. :-)

Makes alot of sense. ..I didn't have this surgery to constantly be on a diet. My little new tummy is handled with care and if I want to eat anything, I will, but in much smaller doses and only once in a while. I feel so much better now that I've lost 40 lbs, can't wait for the next 60 to go away forever. I got this. :-)