FluffyChix

Woke up to a hankerin' for chaffling this morning. I tried the original (whole egg and cheese) in the photos below. And while I wanted to love them, the bottom line is that there is probably a learning curve to find your favorite and learn the timing on your waffle maker. Cuz even though it looked good and was crunchy, I still tasted the "browned egg" flavor that I'm not a huge fan of. So then I made a different version--a riff on my fluffychix "cheese bread" from my super old blogspot.com blog. And was too thin. Then I added a tbsp of almond flour and 10g of protein powder and accidentally created quest protein chips. ROFLMAO. They are dry like quest chips, but very light and crunchy (and too dark). I went from cooking 7minutes (totally shambolic) to cooking 4 minutes! Oy! So more learning needed, but I made a total of 7 chaffles this morning between 2 recipes. So there's gonna be lots of chaffle eating this week! I'm already calling MOM. LOL. IYKWIM and I think you do! hehe. Oh btw, they are SUPER filling. No way could I eat a whole recipe! I ate one and I'm just on the border of whoa and crap (too much fat/cheese). We'll see how it shakes out in the coming hour. I am hopeful that I can use one on my turkey hatch burger as a bun! Here's the basic chaffle nutrition. This makes 2 chaffles, splitting the ingredients between the two: Here's where the recipe is for the original griddle bread from Atkins. http://fluffychixcook.blogspot.com/2012/04/cinco-de-mayo-tex-mex-vittles-and.html (This was my very first blog back in the day that was replaced by the newer version at fluffychixcook.com

Move up in increments and do it wisely. Fill it with protein. So move to 3/4c food = 3oz dense protein + al dente veggies with whatever space you have left in the 3/4cup. If that still doesn't satisfy, see how much of the 3/4c is taken up by doing 4oz of dense lean protein. Do that for the next couple weeks to see how you feel? Also, add 1/2oz avocado and 1/2oz grape tomatoes. Eat them at the end of the meal. They are total sliders and very wet. A 3/4 cup meal would look about like this: 3oz grilled chicken, cut into dice the size of pencil erasers 1oz steam broccoli, al dente + molly mcbutter sprinkles (or 1/2 tsp butter) 1/2oz avocado + 1/2oz grape tomatoes cut into 3 sections per tomato

yes. I'm hypo. I've lost 157lbs from my recent high of 287lbs. I'm in normal BMI and weight range and am my final Goal #3.

Ok, tonight's dinner meeting outfit. Tuck or untuck?

My chaffle maker came today. It's stinking cute!!! But we have a dinner meeting...so no chaffles for us today. Wah. Wah. Wahhhhh.

I replied to you, because food never gets stuck and because I have a large tool. Glad you're eating healthy. My journey is in my signature. I'm trying to explain (not very well) that to control hunger you have to do one of three things: 1. Eat VERY low carb, dense lean protein 2. Eat more at a meal 3. Eat more often By your time frame, I was eating 1 cup of food by volume per meal. I can readily get about 4oz of protein into that cup by weight if that's all I eat. Cuz I'm limited to 1cup of food by volume at any meal. And cuz 1oz of diced protein by weight = 1/4c of volume (or pretty close). So I choose to eat 3oz dense protein per meal + 1 to 2oz of al dente veggies=about 1/4cup by volume + 1 serving of fat = 1 tsp of oil/butter or 1/2oz nuts or 1 tbsp nut butter or 1 oz avocado. My satiety and meal satisfaction is directly tied to how dense the protein is and how under cooked the veg is. Fat also affects satiety. It makes me full longer, but the trade off is, too much fat makes me nauseated. And it also adds cals. So if I'm sticking to 650-850/day for weight loss, then it uses those calories pretty quickly without a lot of satiety or protein needs met. You have to play with what works for you. One thing I do is the "Cottage Cheese Volume Test". Google it and WLS and try it out. I found I can eat 9oz by volume of cottage cheese as of 12 months. I need to do an update for 18 months. That weighs a completely different amount than 4oz. Right? Cuz cottage cheese is dense.

Your diet composition and how frequently you eat determines how hungry you are for the most part. If I eat CRAP and carby stuff? I want to eat every 2 hours. It's hell for 2-4days to break that cycle. If I have a weekend of grazing and "treat" type foods with higher carb items and any alcohol? I want to eat like a beast for 2-4 days after. But if I eat my plan, work my plan, and do what I know to be true for my body and lifestyle and health status? I have "appropriate" hunger. At this point in your recovery, you should be able to make 3 hours between meals IMHO or longer. Missing a meal is not an emergency for me anymore--now that the initial phases of healing are finished. I regularly go 4-6 hours between meals or longer and I do IF for 16-20 hours on selected days without a great deal of hunger. But the more and more often I eat of very deeply pleasurable foods? The MORE of them I want to eat.

Ok, great response. So you should try to follow your doc. But you need to make notes for yourself. How does a "meal x" make you feel. Do you get hungry quicker? Do you feel tempted to eat off plan afterward. Does it interfere with your weight loss goals? How quickly are you losing per week? In general post meno women will lose much slower than others. How many calories are you eating per day and what macros are they suggesting? You need to switch over to My Fitness Pal (free). You will just eat your carbs then mentally subtract out your fiber. It allows you to track up to 5 macros. I will post a day of food below for you to see. I just mentally know if I eat around 40 total carbs with most of the carbs coming from veggies/dairy/eggs/nuts-seeds/a bit of fruit, then I will be between 15-30g of net carbs roughly each day. I don't stress about anything in my diet (except getting in enough calories with higher fat foods--cuz I don't do well with them). Ditch the powdered sweeteners and replace with liquid stevia drops. I use some flavored and the original. I like Vitacost, SweetLeaf, and Better Stevia brands and our HEB brand is also pretty decent. But I keep the use of these pretty low cuz of the cephalic insulin response. You MUST do something EVERY DAY to move!!! This isn't negotiable in my estimation--especially if you are in a hormonal deficit/challenge and have PCOS. It's hotter than hell here. I walk in my house. Seriously. I walk laps around the interior of my house. I walk/run for 1+ hours a day everyday. (if at all possible). I do miss some days, but it's a big deal if I do. I only lost on average 1-2lbs per week. In the early days I lost 3lbs per week but that didn't last long. There WILL be stalls. The are inevitable. I had to be between 650-850 (towards the lower end of that range) to lose those amounts each week. I had very few treats or cheats during the super active losing phase. And I didn't believe in everything in moderation when I never had moderation before. So you will have to decide how many carbs and how many cals you're gonna follow from your doc and how it actually nets results for you.

Breakfast this morning! Homemade eggwhite delight (made with egg whites, HEB blackforest ham, 2% kraft deli deluxe cheese) and 1 cup of arugula spinach blue cheese salad. There were no survivors. ring. ring. Hello McD? There's a new clown in town who ain't messin' around! All this gorgeous and filling food for 121 cals, 15g protein, and 5g of carbs. I swear it's my super power... Ooops! I lied. I couldn't finish it all. Here are the afters. I will just add them to lunch.

OMGosh! Love that dress! You look fabulous!

Good luck! Thanks for the update.

I like the top outfit best. I'm not sure I care for the second. It's too big looking on your, especially through the bust/arms and waist area? But looking awesome otherwise!!!

Is this for your fancy schmancy meetin'? You look FABULOUS! Love the dress, the shoes, the toenail color! It all works girl!!!

Congrats! Awesome report. Thanks for the update!! (Also, your diet will help you go through the pre-op liquid diet so much easier and will make your post surgery 2-6 week period SO much easier!!) Cudos!

Oh thank you SO much for saying this!!! I meant to bring up this point in my preaching above!!! That there are SOOOO many in the IF thread who have walked the walk for months now!!! Any one of us will be happy to help. And that the best thing is to jump into the thread, and start posting and asking questions!!! We'll all be thrilled to help! Not singling anyone out, but especially peeps like @GreenTealael, @sillykitty, @matt, @sheribear68, @AZHiker (don't know why these aren't highlighting) and so many others!!

Gosh no idea, but how miserably scary!!! Be sure to go back a stage for the next couple of days to allow your body to heal. No more pulled pork or salad for a couple of weeks. Ok? ((hugs))

Congrats on making the decision to fast. I will come back to this in a minute. I'm actually considering going back to school online to get a certification as a Health Coach. I'm looking at programs right now and really like Mark Scisson's Primal Health Coach program as a jumpstart. But I'm not at a level where I could charge for my services at this time. Thank you for your offer and belief in my knowledge. Ok, now I'm about to tell you things you don't want to hear right now. But for every thing there is a season. And this is not your IF season yet. But it could be your preparatory season for IF. You are too young in your surgery. I would wait until I was at least 7-9 months before beginning any sort of IF. Let your tool ACTUALLY do the work it was meant to do. And more importantly, before you can IF, you need to be able to EASILY get all or almost all of your daily protein in with very little problems. For most of us, that means we can eat at least 2-3oz of protein at a meal. And you must be EASILY able to get 100+ oz of fluid in you. Most of us IFers use 1 protein drink per day as a supplement, not because we need it, but because it frees us up to eat meals that have more veggies in them, or to eat in a shorter window. But we could theoretically get everything in and satisfy our protein needs with only food. You MUST be able to do that. Without feeling overly full or stuffed. You can help your tool and help prepare for IF by adjusting and dialing in your diet. Get as "clean" and "kiss" as humanly possible. You've heard me preach about it...here's what that means: 1. FOLLOW your doc's and RD's plan for you and the stage you're eating at. You MUST be able to easily get the required protein in per day that they prescribe for you. And the amount of fluids you're told to consume. 2. Follow the rules of WLS. No eating drinking 15/30 or 30/30 depending your doc's plan. 3. Get ALL of your daily vitamins in without skipping a single dose. 4. Get to walking. And maybe even get to doing core strengthening exercises. 5. Protein first at every meal/snack >> al dente veggies >> a tiny bit of healthy fats (and that's it) 6. Cut out ALL C.R.A.P. (google it)--that means no sugar, grains, starchy root veg, starches, refined products, fake stuff, "treats" such as protein bars or water drops. Severely limit the use of sugar substitutes. 7. Start drinking green tea now (I use decaff) and look into Earl Grey Tea. 8. Try to keep your carbs to <30g net per day (subtract fiber grams of carbs from the total carb count to get net carbs. 9. No "snacking". Eat 3 meals + 1-3 small mini meals per day in order to limit meal portions to the volume recommended by your doctor and to reach your protein totals each day. A mini meal is an organized, orderly, planned event. Snacking is not. Snacking is hedonistic and reckless and it's possible to do a lot of damage with a single snack event. 10. Aim to get 2-3oz of protein per meal (lean dense protein, no casseroles, no deeply satisfying gooey cheesy high reward meals. Keep is simple: grilled chicken, sauteed chicken, poached or sauteed fish, etc. No meat lube or stuff that adds to the pleasure of the food experience. **** When you follow these rules, you are stripped down to bare bones. And you are able to really look at your relationship with food and how it controls you or you control it. You realize that you can go hours without eating and that skipping a meal is not an emergency. Around the 7-9 month mark, your hunger reawakens for many and you also hit a doldrum where you start to get bored and lose focus and life seems worth living and you may start to want to break rules and play. That is the time to knuckle down, double down, and begin to exercise your IF muscle. Until then, I DO encourage you to start at the front of the IF thread and start reading. use these next months to go down the rabbit hole. You must learn and understand it, to practice it safely. ***** So sorry to hear about your melanoma dx. Regardless of stage it's a scary dx. ((hugs)) You are correct to be concerned about the quality of your diet. The best thing you can do for yourself is to get and keep your blood sugars low and keep from spiking insulin. You do that by controlling your carbs (and fats believe it or not), and by only eating to adequate protein for your body and surgery type--but that must come from your doc!

You need to either go to the ER or call your surgeon right now. This could potentially be serious--especially if you are not able to hydrate any longer. Quit eating salads right now. Eat easy foods, soft, well-cooked. If you eat anything at all. Don't eat til talking to doc.

Woohoooo! Work it girl!! Work it!!! You are officially in shrinkydink mode!

I was low carb coming into the WLS program. I believe it really helped me lose and also helped control my PCOS. It also kept me full longer. Post op, my RD/nor doctor gave me instructions about carb consumption--only about protein reqs. They also gave me samples of the diets for each phase. I made the decision to continue with my low carb plan. Very low fat keto--more like the Dukan diet. It's helped me get to goal with very little hunger respectively.

Super job! Congrats and welcome to the boards! We have a great group of people here who all help each other and encourage one another towards successes our docs' never dreamed about for us!

This is a myth. Dietary ketosis is COMPLETELY different than metabolic acidosis. The body is a very resilient organism. It will maintain (in the absence of acute and overwhelming diseases or difficiences) a pH balance in blood and tissues within a VERY narrow margin. That is part of why they test CO2 and O2 and K (electrolytes) and Ca, balance in the blood. It shows what state your blood pH is in (in an average). And it regulates the pH balance primarily through the kidneys and lungs--keeping your blood from going into metabolic acidosis or even respiratory acidosis. Both of these states are an extremely critical emergency situation--like you are dying. Osteopenia can be caused from many different things. We as bariatric pts take a crap ton of calcium. But taking calcium out of balance (which we do) CAN contribute to osteopenia--as can quick weight loss. ADEK and K2 (metabolites) are necessary to build bones by sending the calcium to the bones rather than the soft tissues or pulling minerals from the bone. I've been low carb (in and out of ketosis) for the better part of 20 years. I do not have osteopenia. I also am on Femara which can also cause osteopenia/porosis. So...I would tend to really look at the studies that are "proving" acidity because of ketosis. Just my 2cents. Sorry you are dealing with osteopenia girl!!!

Don't do cheese right now. Stick to super soft or pureed. If soft carrots start coming back up, then puree your soups and stick to liquid phase. Then test again in a few days. It's probably inflammation. In my experience with a stricture, even water was pretty impossible to get down and stay down. Glad it's better today! Also, when you have a rough day, then the next couple of days afterward, you should go back a stage and take things easy cuz your anatomy will still be inflamed from the original problem.

Congrats! I had great results too. I was only nauseated immediately post surgery for about an hour. Then I got a scapolamine patch and zofran in the iv and that took care of things!