Smye

Weekly Recipe: Apricot Smoked Ribs

Hi all, Apologies for the hiatus last week - I've just started a new job and the blog took the back seat for a week. Coming tomorrow to make up for it though - Apricot smoked ribs - my favorite recipe yet - and somehow low fat and low carb... curious...

@@OneDollarBill, This one wasn't me - though I do indeed wish I'd come up with that, it sounds great!

@@Stevehud, way to rock it, man. I have a similar issue with most starches (slice of bread = weeklong plateau), though for whatever reason lactose doesn't slow me down at all. Keep up the good work and I'm glad to hear you're well.

Another quick comment - many of those dannon and yoplait products aren't actually fermented milk (yogurt), but are thickened soured milk with xanthan gum and other thickeners. I'm not saying don't eat them, just be aware that you may not be getting the probiotic cultures you assume. Nothing pisses me off more than large food companies (yoplait, for example) marketing things like GoGurt to kids and assuring mom that it's "yogurt" so it's good for your kid. Then you actually read the label and voila - just skim milk and corn syrup with some fillers, no yogurt whatsoever. That's much of the reason we have an obesity swell in our country, not the damn lactose in real yogurt. Thanks for reading my rant - my apologies if any of you work for yoplait/dannon/etc. Most big food does this - even whole f-ing foods. I trusted you guys!

@@Stevehud, you're dead on that we need to be careful with sucrose (and all sugars in significant doses). But do keep in mind that in order for your liver to be able to process all that Protein successfully, you do need some amount of carbohydrates. Anything under 100g is considered 'low carb' and under 50 is 'very low carb.' Staying under 15 is 'dangerous.' I keep mine at about 40g after working with my NUT to figure out how many I need to stay healthy based on RMR, VO2 and a few other metrics. Just be careful and make sure you're working with a NUT to determine your 'low carb' goal rather than taking a 'lower is better' approach. There's a reason folks on the Atkins Diet tend towards liver failure young (see The Lancet, May 2014, I think). There's also the fact that all carbohydrates (except some fibers like cellulose) - especially the starches found in things like zucchini (great for us), cauliflower (central to caulibread), heck, even lettuce are broken down by the amylase in our mouths as we chew into, what else, sugar! So although these foods are 'sugar free,' by the time they exit our pouch and start being absorbed, many are just as sugary as unsweetened yogurt (and actually higher in sucrose [white table sugar], believe it or not). And all of that sugar is produced through an enzyme action, not any sort of "i have to digest it so it cancels out' sort of mechanism (unlike the sugar that our bodies convert even steak into so we can use it for energy - THAT is a deep metabolic mechanism that absolutely cancels out the sugar I don't say this to say 'don't eat zukes - they're secret sugar' (in fact, eat them a lot!), just to say that - Yes, we need to be careful to monitor and keep our carbs low. And yes, sugar is one to be particularly careful of. But when we demonize any food (except trans fats, those things are straight-up Satan molecules:) we run the risk of actually harming ourselves and/or missing out on a fully nutrative diet. All that aside, if your NUT says I'm a nut, do what your NUT says. I am neither a doctor or a nurse, just a well-educated former med student, chemist, and concerned bari-citizen who doesn't want to see anyone's liver go. It's a hell of a way to die.

Forget the BMI, forget what others say you look like. 1) Do you feel good? and 2) What does your Dr. say?

@@steph_anie, WHOOP WHOOP!

5 months out, 1200 cal/day and still dropping weight rather quickly.

@@Michelle920, Congratulations on having your surgery and being 5/5 weeks post-op! I hear you regarding S.O.'s and pets rejecting our food - cooking and eating together has always been a big part of my relationship with my partner and when she first saw the suggested meal plans my NUT offered, her first reaction was "I guess we'll be eating separately then." Ouch. Yes, there is a blog you can go to without going here first: www.barideliciousfood.blogspot.com will take you straight there and you can 'favorite' or 'bookmark' the blog. Do let me know what you think of the recipes you try, comment on any of the posts that intrigue you, and let me know if there's something you are wanting/missing that you just can't find a simple way to prepare bari-friendly and I'll see what I can do. The meatballs, spaghetti, catsup, waffles, and pastrami sandwich are all from reader requests. I've got a post coming up that's all about fat - whether it's a necessity or a villain post-op. Take care! And keep us posted on your progress.

@@steph_anie, absolutely! And try not to stress too much about sugar-free everything, you need some amount of carbs in your life to keep your liver healthy. It seems most surgeons/NUTs recommend anywhere between 25 and 100 g carbs/day once you're post op, I know a few who recommend 200 - it's can be patient specific. For now, just focus on getting to surgery and talk with your NUT. If you have a food and/or foods you really love that's a carb bomb, talk to your NUT or post them here and we'll see what we can do to help you adapt them to a lower-carb higher-protein form without losing taste/texture. OR, feel free to have a treat every once in a while. There's no reason to say goodbye to cheesecake forever, just for a while (while you heal) and then to only have a couple of bites every once in a great while etc etc. Not to mention the fact that post-sleeve, you're body is going to feel different and food is going to really taste different. I think you'll be impressed with how much your body gravitates towards 'healthier' things anyway.

@@Stevehud, what kind of sugary yogurt are you looking at?

@@Sajijoma, I couldn't agree more - that's why I went ahead and did it. It's just hard when money is so tight in the meantime - I'm between jobs at the moment (transitioning from teacher to principal and in the heat of interviews with no end in sight).

@@steph_anie, I think you'll do fine. It seems those few who can't make it through the pre-op phase, liquid or not, make a choice to cheat, just a little, several times a day. Stay away from that sort of self-sabotage and you 're golden. And congratulations on not having liquids-only! It's easy post-op... you won't want anything as solid even as broth for the first little bit

@, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My wife can't stand the ketosis breath, 5 months out and it's still there...

I eat quite a bit, but it's homemade from my goats' milk and I usually do a savory yogurt topping rather than sweet. I'm a HUGE fan of parsley, pickled onion, and beef.

HW (pictured): 415 SW: 395 CW (pictured): 280 GW: 220 StretchW: 185 Holy cow, we've still got a ways to go, but how far we've come...

My family is supportive as hell. The only guilt I feel is over the $17K that surgery put us into debt, alongside grad school, and I'm nervous that the debt is going to come back to haunt us sooner than later. I guess better poor and alive though, than debt-free and nearly-dead.

Do you have no pre-op diet at all? Or just not the liquid. If the latter - check out these for some ideas of pre-op friendly foods (assuming you're allowed solids).

You're welcome to do so, but there's no need to stick to protein drinks exclusively - try some of these. And good luck and keep us posted!

Celebrate man, I'm a high school teacher and, as Jess suggested, a 16 year old who cooks for himself is gold. AND he's legal to earn money to replace the pan - go for the anodized aluminum while you've got someone else buying

@@Joymarie333, no problem. Good luck and do keep us posted! Let us know if there's every anything you need.

I know I'm a man, but happen to have quite a bit of training on this one - I was practically raised in an IVF clinic, abused my needs-based scholarship in college to take graduate medical coursework for free, and am a research obsessed data nut. That said, it depends... According to the literature, there does not appear to be any reason to believe your surgery will negatively impact your ability to become pregnant, it will just mean extra care will have to be taken during pregnancy to make sure you're eating sufficient amounts of all the right things, even when you're nauseous and it's 10pm and you've only had 300 calories so far Women who are classified as obese generally do have a harder time becoming pregnant, particularly if their BMI is above 40 - so it's possible that the weight loss will help your body reduce it's excess estrogenic production (yay fat cells, they make estrogens, lots and lots of them!) and regulate/stabilize your cycle/fertility. There are a number of cases of women experiencing regular 'spotting' and thinking their cycle is A-OK when in reality they're just spotting and not even ovulating and/or ovulating erratically. It's worth noting though that women are most fertile just a smidgeon overweight. All in all, the weight loss should help your fertility UNLESS: Something else entirely is going on. If you've tried for a few years with no success, I recommend seeing your OB and/or a fertility specialist. It's possible you have something else altogether going on that will continue to plague you and prevent successful pregnancy. Maybe it's something that's easily fixed laparoscopically (a blocked tube), something that can be fixed in-office (an issue with a blocked os, I once worked with a pathologist and help him dissect a woman's uterus [which had been removed due to excruciating periods] only to find that the cervix had no os whatsoever - no wonder she was in pain), it could be a hormonal imbalance of some sort, or it could be something bigger requiring IVF. I figure it's better to know sooner than later, but that's entirely up to you. You also could just have historically had bad timing. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Taking Charge of Your Fertility as an entry-level, yet sophisticated and thorough look at all of this, and explains the science clearly how to get your timing down. Mrs. Smye and I, having read this resource and each bringing our own backgrounds to the table, were able to determine her fertility, get pregnant first try each time, and time out our children's births closely enough to have them land during the beginning of summer break to maximize my paternity leave with summer. We know we're incredibly lucky to have managed this, even with all of the resources we brought to bear, but couldn't have managed it without the book. Sorry for the novel, I hope this is helpful!

A quick clarification: My last post was not in any way shape or form intended to encourage folks to drink soda or other carbonated beverages. We need to follow the advice of our NUTs, and I agree that it's dangerous to drink soda. It's just important to place the blame for the horror stories (which are very real and very useful anecdotes) in the proper place to give context, relevance, and better meaning to them and to, ideally, prevent folks from just drinking flat soda and then being shocked when something terrible happens (the acids in the syrup don't evaporate out with the CO2).

Diet coke may well have caused those ulcers, but carbonation itself cannot and will not do so. Ulcers in stomach lining from soda are largely from the corosive effects of the mass amounts of phosphoric acid in coke. Phosphoric acid is a triprotic strong acid, battery acid is sulfuric, a diprotic. That said, phosphoric acid is one of the few common acids even stronger than battery acid, and we all know how evil that stuff is. There's a reason that both Coca-cola and PepsiCo have special licenses from the feds to transport their syrups on public roads - they're so hazardous when undiluted that they require hazmat if any of the tanker trucks carrying them spill. The carbonation, however, is not itself the cause of the ulceration. Don't make the mistake of drinking flat soda to avoid the 'evils' of carbonation or so religiously avoiding carbonation that you go thirsty on a hot summer day when sparkling Water is your only option.