MacMadame

I have an ice cream maker. I bought it to make protein ice cream. But I find I don't use it much. Not sure why, but one reason is because my ice cream often comes out kind of sorbet-ish. Plus my recipe makes *way* too much and it doesn't taste the same when I freeze it and eat it later.

They all do it slightly differently. My surgeon doesn't do clear liquids. He does "thin" liquids. That isn't an official medical term though. His list looks like a clear liquids list mostly. But we can also have milk, protein shakes, protein drinks, etc. In the hopsital they called it "bariatric clears". The difference between "thin" liquids and "full liquids" is that we can't have yogurt, cottage cheese, pudding, etc. These are things that a lay perons wouldn't consider liquids, but are part of the official full liquid diet.

For me, cravings are tied to my carb intake. Which can be difficult because I need carbs to do my endurance sports. But I have to be careful with them and I'm constantly cutting back as I feel the cravings coming on. I didn't think about the ice Water thing... I often can't eat much in restaurants and that's also pretty much the only time I drink ice water.

Protein is so individual. Lots of stuff that the majority love, I can't stand. :thumbup: Some stuff that lots of people like: Syntrax nectar (I liked it at first and am going to try it again) Oh Yeah! RTD EAS RTD Atkins RTD Lean Dessert (I thought it tasted like garbage) I can't do *any* of the RTD ones. I think it's a texture thing. I did Champion Nutrition for a while, but I never really loved them and now I can't do theirs. I tried soy protein powders and an egg Protein powder too. Couldn't stand them. But some people can't deal with 100% whey and find those to be excellent. My favorite is Chike. It has mostly natural sweeteners (but some sucralose) and claims to be gluten free. I think it has some soy in it but it's mostly whey. Sometimes I think it has a weird after-taste, but most of the time I don't taste that. (And it might be from the Davinci/Torani syrups I sometimes add.) With the others, the after-taste would start out acceptable, but there, and then, over time, I'd notice it more and more! I think I'm just very tuned into artificial flavors and a lot of these shakes are full of additives.

I think you are making sense... leaks are scary and sometimes all you can do is give them time. My aunt had a partial gastrectomy for stomach cancer and, when it came back, they operated again and she got a leak and, in the end, all that worked was to take it easy. Sorry you had to go through that...

UHC used to be great. I have some friend who all work at the same place and they all got a sleeve with no hassles and no 6 month supervised diet. Then, UHC had some personnel changes and now no one is getting a sleeve at that company! One of the newer folks who was denied got Obesity Law on her side and they found out that UHC had done all sorts of things wrong in her case, too. So I think she'll get her sleeve in the end. But she's been fighting for MONTHS now. It's kind of sad. Especially since my company changed their insurance companies all around and now I have UHC too. :thumbup: But we have a weight loss exclusion and our insurance is self-funded, so it doesn't matter what insurance company we have in a way. They are all just administrators of our contract.

Yeah, that cracks me up too. I never lost more than 5 lb. in any one week and mostly did 4-5 the first couple of weeks and then settled into a steady 2-3 lb. loss. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating to see people dropping major poundage, but I figured that the main thing was to get there in the end. And I got to goal in 6.5 months so all my angst over people who seemed to be losing faster was for naught!

Exactly! Normally I'm against telling other people's secrets, but not telling them she had the lap band and letting them use her success with WLS as a weapon against you is really, really, really wrong and I think it's time the truth came out.

Well, no complications are fun. But this one is much better than a leak. It's probably worse than my kidney stone though because it generally goes on for a while before you realize what the problem is. Though having a kidney stone feels like you are trying to pass a baby through your urethra so it wasn't particular fun at the time. Just relatively short.

I would love a surprise party too. Never had one.

Yes, that's the main purpose long term. Short term, you also want to make sure you are getting enough food so that's another reason to not drink right with the meals. But waiting is to make sure the food doesn't flush through. We have a pylorus valve, so it's not like having a band or RnY and being able to literally flush it through easily. But the pylorus valve opens when liquid/mush hits it. So drinking with meals makes our food mushier faster and when the mush or liquid hits the valve, it opens because that's a sign the food is ready to move on. This means if you eat something like dry meat, taking a few sips of Water to help it get down is not going to totally derail you. Adding a few sips of water to dry chicken doesn't turn it into mush. It turns it into moister chicken. But when you add a lot of water to a meal that is already turning nicely into mush on schedule, you get a much thinner mush that leaves the tummy sooner. This is true pre-op too. My son always give his dh a hard time about drinking with meals because he says "the only reason to drink water with your meals is to fit more in."

It's scar tissue. When it's somewhere that interferes with food going down, it's called a stricture. Usually, they expand the tissue and you are fine. Sometime you have to go back and have it expanded a few times before it goes away.

My surgeon says we can drink right up until eating. I looked up how the stomach empties and I think he's right. I found nothing to suggest that drinking up to 0-5 min. before eating would hurt us. But 45 min. after is a minimum time, from what I've read. The stomach hardly empties at all for the first 20-30 min. after you eat and then it start emptying rapidly so that 90 min after you eat, it's emptied half it's contents. Which means programs that say to wait only 30 min are really pushing it IMO.

Yes! I have some links here to threads on another board from people one, two and three years out. People talk about their metabolism like it's a thing, another organ. That makes my anal, engineering-oriented head hurt. :001_tongue: Your metabolism is a measure of how many calories you burn over a period of time; it's just a rate. Your rate can be average, below average, above average, excellent, poor, etc. But it can't be broken, messed up or dead. Yeah, I know... no one cares. :lol0: I do think that a lifetime of yo-yo dieting can slow down your metabolism. But it's not fixed in stone. We can influence our metabolisms for the better or the worse. I have definitely seen that I can't eat as many calories as the formulas say I can. But that's always been true. It just seems more true now that I'm older. Is my metabolism that much worse? Well, in my 30s, I lost weight eating 1200 calories a day and doing aerobics 2x a week. I lost about a pound a week until the last 10-20 lb. Now, in my 50s, I was eating 800 calories a day and training for a triathlon. And losing 2-3 lb. a week until my calories went up. I'd have to do math to figure out if I'm losing slower or faster or the same as when I was in my 30s. It feels slower, but I suspect it's about the same.

My sleep started getting disrupted pre-op. Probably from nerves and excitement. I'm still not sleeping well at night, but it's rather late out to be blaming it on anesthesia in my case. :001_tongue: I did start dreaming about binge eating on food. I started eating an entire chocolate cake in my dreams! And it was one we have at work sometimes that I do not like so it was even more bizarre. I decided this was a sign I needed more carbs and had two bites of potato for dinner. It seemed to work.

The way I look at it is that all calorie are fuel. However, all fuel isn't equal. A good campfire uses embers -- low heat but steady fuel that keeps the fire going -- these are kind of like the fats. Fats aren't readily available as a quick fuel source and a little goes a long way. You also use tinder to get a campfire started. These are the carbs. Carbs provide quick energy, but they burn out pretty fast. You can down a gel during a run and get a burst of energy, but then it's gone. A fire made from all tinder needs constant replenishment and an enormous quantity of fuel. In between, we have the logs on the fire and these are the heart of the fire. These are the most like Protein. They are there, providing heat and energy all throughout the day. They can be used when other sources are not available, such as carbs. Plus, they last a lot longer. It's not a perfect analogy because, once you get a fire going, you don't keep adding tinder, but you should be eating carbs to fuel your workouts. But you need to eat the protein the rest of the day to give yourself a base of energy to pull from. This is especially true if your job is sedentary -- carbs aren't the kind of energy you need to do a desk job!

Did an Open Water Swim today. For some reason I kept getting Creature from the Black Lagoon vibes, which I didn't the last time I swam in that lake. Followed by a 4 mile run. So I got in my 3 planned runs this week plus one extra. Yeah!

Oh, my goodness. I am so behind! I've been getting the emails when people post and didn't realize I wasn't coming up to read the posts in between the emails! Anyway, life is pretty good for me. Still hate my job. Still training for the next tri. MacBoy is trying to get his license and looking for a job. Mini-Mac may have whooping cough, but it's unlikely. I think she has allergies.

My calves spasm when I swim. It's probably from not properly fueling -- since I don't tend to do anything but drink water when I swim -- but it can also mean you need more potassium. I do have problems keeping my potassium levels up sometimes.

And, if you must take carbonate for some reason, take with something acidic like Vitamin C. But you really shouldn't...

Hunger is tricky. There is hunger, there is "hunger" and there is appetite. Hunger is your body's signals to you that you need fuel. You very well may feel these and, IMO, that's a good thing. I have felt them and most times upping my daily allotment of Protein and not going more than four hours without eating takes care of it. Some people don't seem to have strong signals this way though and can go for hours without eating... like eating Breakfast and not eating again until dinner. Personally, I think that's a bad thing, but that's me. "Hunger" is when you think you want food but there is no physiological basis for it. Head hunger is another name for it, but I think it also has other forms that maybe don't play out like the traditional head hunger. Such as experiencing any body pang as "hunger." Appetite is what ghrelin gives you. It's not just regular hunger. It's a DRIVE to eat. In normal people, the drive to eat and the real hunger go hand-in-hand, but for us MO people, that drive to eat is often there 24/7 and it drives us to overeat. You shouldn't really have that after surgery because your ghrelin levels are so low. So even when you have hunger and even "hunger", it should be easier to control than it was pre-op. If it's not, then there is usually some sort of psychological stuff going on and counseling can help. Oh and lots of people experience hunger while on liquids. It can just be head hunger, but I was only consuming 450 calories a day during that time. So I suspect at least some of it was hunger, too. My body needed more fuel than it was getting. But liquids pass through you so they don't trigger the satiety mechanism like solids do. So it was also head hunger.

I get Water too. Then I drink it. :lol0: Having a glass of water to drink gives me something to do while everyone else is having appetizers and bread and all the stuff I can't have if I also want to be able to eat my meal. The admonition to not drink 30 min before or 10-15 before (depending on what your program says) makes no sense when you know how the digestive system works and how your stomach empties. Our program booklet says 10-15 min. but our surgeons tell us we can drink right up until 0-5 min. before we eat. I've also looked it up online to see why you'd want to wait longer and there is no reason. liquids signal the pylorus valve to open. So they don't sit in the stomach. If you drink really fast, you can get a backup, like when you pour liquids too fast into a funnel. So sometimes you do have to wait a bit for the backup to clear. But there is no way it's going to take 30 min. or even 15 except maybe in the beginning when you are still very swollen so you have a much narrower funnel. But that whole "pylorus valve opening when liquids hit it" thing is why we shouldn't drink with our meals. Even with a pylorus valve, the liquids will help flush the food out of our stomachs faster. Most of us have experienced this pre-op as well.

Wow, those prices are crazy. My guy is the #1 sleeve guy in the US (done over 1200 of them, really low complication rates) and he's charging much less. But the interesting thing is that they charge a program fee to people with insurance. The insurance companies just don't reimburse enough for the surgeons and hospitals to really cover their costs. So someone with insurance can be paying them as much as $8000 over and above their deductible/copay. Some people think THAT is outrageous. I used to until I saw how reasonable their self-pay prices are. Obviously, they aren't trying to gouge us or they'd charge the self-pays that much more. Because clearly, they can and people do it pay it. Health care in this country is so messed up!

AM: long run, 7.5 miles PM: Bike ride, 22.5 miles

I love salads too. Plus veggies and fruit are sweet. I hate that people tell you "oh, if you have a sweet tooth, get RnY". I don't think it's that simple. I have a sweet tooth in that I prefer sweet to salty, but I can eat 1-2 bites of a chocolate and be fine and my tastes have definitely changed since surgery as well.