Pandemonium

I LOVE Think! bars. They're 20g of protein in a very wide variety of flavors. The Brownie Crunch, Lemon Delight, and both Peanut Butter ones (Creamy and Chunky) are my usuals for protein bars. I just tried the Chocolate & Cream Cupcake one (18g of protein) this week and fell in love with it. I also use Built Bars, which I really enjoy and find so much different than regular protein bars. It's almost like eating a candy bar.

You know your body best, but if it were me, I’d opt for a hotel near the hospital and then drive home the next day. Without knowing what you’ll be prescribed/dosed with for pain meds, it could be a recipe for disaster with that long of a drive. Better to spend a little money to stay somewhere overnight and then head home the next day.

Woohoo! Congrats on your surgery date! Some of the best advice I can give is to start sampling protein shakes and powders now and find a few that you like. It absolutely SUCKS to try doing this post-op when it becomes imperative to start getting protein into your system. Finding a few options to work with also helps in the event that you find your taste buds have changed post-op. That way if one of your liked shakes/powders suddenly grosses you out, you have others to fall back on!

Responsible socially distanced bread party at GreenTea's House!

AWESOME NEWS! So glad to hear that they worked everything out! You're almost there!

I don't know that it'll have quite the same heat kick as Flamin Hot Cheetos, but there are some Jalapeno Cheddar Protein Puffs out there: https://www.amazon.com/Allergy-Friendly-Protein-Jalapeno-Cheddar/dp/B078YF26BT/ Plus there was a recipe posted for homemade "Fritos" chips using chickpea pasta got posted. Could do it up with your own spice blend for seasoning to get the heat going!

It definitely does get easier as your progress through the diet phases and have more options available for protein. That said, it ultimately depends on your doctor's diet program and what those protein goals are. For my program, it simply is not possible for me to achieve my protein goals without protein shakes. Technically I could hit it with protein bars, but that would be heavier on carbs and calories. Have you looked into Fairlife High Quality Protein? It IS a shake, but almost across the board people say it tastes nothing like the protein shakes everyone is used to. It really tastes more like chocolate milk (unsure of the vanilla version). Beyond that, Fairlife also makes an Ultra Filtered Milk that has a higher protein content than normal milks do. It might not get you quite to your goal, but it could help. You'd want to stick to the 2% or lower in terms of fat in order to keep the fat and caloric intake reasonable, but it's an option and I have never been able to tell the difference between Fairlife and regular milk. At 2.5 weeks, you're no doubt on the cusp of moving into purees, which will most definitely give you access to other ways to get more protein in. You're doing great already and you will continue to do so!

I've tried doing audiobooks in the past when exercising. It never worked for me as I found I would end up not fully engaged with the books and thus would end up having to re-listen to chunks of the book because I realized I missed key details. Music works great for me as it helps keep my body moving if I focus on the rhythm and try to keep my pace to match it.

I still eat the pureed chicken salad that I made when I got the "all clear" for pureed foods. I use canned chicken breast that I run through my food processor until it is almost the consistency of sand and then mix it with greek yogurt, hummus, salt, pepper, and a little garlic powder. Okay, I also throw in a tablespoon of gochujang because I like and can tolerate spice, but that is purely my preference. It comes out with a creamy consistency and went down fine for pureed phase.

Ha! Well, with that particular recipe, the fact that they're using sage in it means that they are trying to replicate the tastes of our Thanksgiving dinners: Turkey, stuffing/dressing which usually contains sage, and then cranberry for the cranberry sauce. I can't explain the gruyere cheese other than cheese just makes things better.

Oh, I am sorry that you had to deal with that today, but am glad that the outcome was positive. I had to say goodbye to my 18 year old cat earlier this year and I'm still heartbroken from it.

I am dying to make these! I just have to make a dent in all of the prepared meals I made and froze before I add to that stockpile. https://bariatricbits.com/cranberry-sage-gruyere-turkey-meatballs/

So, I threw together a Spotify playlist to listen to when I do my mostly daily walking for exercise. The songs range ALL over the place, but generally are tracks that I consider to be high energy or have a strong rhythm to keep me moving. I decided to open it up as a Collaborative Playlist the other day and asked friends on Facebook and Twitter to add stuff to it to hopefully increase the variety. And well...hey...I spend a decent amount of time here. This is a type of a social setting with people who are also committed to their weight loss journeys...so why not throw it out there to another audience to see about getting some more songs on that playlist. I am trying to keep it to one song per artist, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Please feel free to add onto my playlist or maybe use it as some inspiration to add to any playlist you might use! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tt03Hl9KA3evSxNr3iTmF?si=Ml8TUQnDQ1ihnDlHyhg0mA

Not gonna lie, I am chomping at the bit for you to get your order (they seem to only ship the 1-carb orders every 2 weeks) to hear what you (and anyone else who ordered them) thinks of them.

I know that body dysphoria is not something that everyone experiences after losing a substantial amount of weight, but it is something that I experience what I would consider minor bouts of on a somewhat frequent basis. I know that it's exacerbated by the fact that my weight loss was pretty rapid so that I had less time to grown accustomed to the changes as they happened. I also know that there is a very good chance that once I reach whatever my maintenance weight ends up being, that these bouts of dysphoria will diminish as time goes by. If you suffer (or suffered) from bouts of body dysphoria, how did you handle it? What were your triggers that brought on those episodes? For me, it's my face. I can look at my arms, my legs, and my stomach and see the changes from my weight loss and it doesn't impact me. Yet almost every time I look in the mirror, that's when it hits. I carried a lot of fat in my face and neck and so looking into the mirror often messes me up because it sometimes doesn't feel like it's actually me looking back. I've gotten to the point that I've given into the COVID Beard trend because at least the facial hair "bulks" up my face to an extent so that the differences aren't so severe. Except I really have no interest in having an unruly full beard all the time because I don't find it comfortable (plus it messes with my mask seal for my CPAP). For the past week I have told myself every day to just shave it down to my usual goatee...and every day I have avoided doing so. It's that lingering anxiety of seeing the stranger looking back at me in the mirror.

I'm pretty sure that GreenTea was simply offering you that glass of champagne you had mentioned by way of Leo Dicaprio as Jay Gatsby.

I know that the Premiere Protein Clear is 100% whey isolate. So far that is the only protein water I've tried.

I made sure that all of my friends knew my birthday was really going to be in October or November this year because of the timing of my surgery. When they called me in June to schedule and said that July 7th was the earliest date, I ALMOST asked to schedule later in the month. Except with COVID, it really wasn't like I had any way to do anything for my birthday, so I grabbed the open date and charged forward with it.

Bowel prep is one of the many things that varies from doctor to doctor and program to program. May the Bariatric Surgery Gods bless you with not having to go through THAT particular experience. The worst part for me? The first of two days of bowel prep was on my birthday. Crappy Birthday to me! Literally.

Definitely make sure that you talk with your surgeon about it prior to surgery. Now knowing that you are still pre-op, I suspect the issue is that the Protein Water is only 20g of protein in 16.9 ounces of fluids, where as protein shakes are generally 30g of protein in 8 ounces of fluid. It's much more densely packed and is much more key for the immediate weeks post-op when you'll be limited in how quickly you can drink liquids. In the first week or so post-op, it would take me 3-4 hours to drink 16 ounces of water. That's a long time to get 20g of protein when I was able to get 30g in around 2 hours. Protein water is still a great resource though, once you move into other diet phases and liquid consumption is easier.

Yes, those first 3 or so days are the absolute worst and I wish I had some magic trick to make it not be so bad. I focused on just keeping fluids going into my body so it at least felt like I was consuming something to try and fool the head hunger (body hunger was not as much of an issue). It mostly worked, but I was most definitely one grouchy jerk for a couple of days. I quarantined myself to my office when my boyfriend was cooking or eating. If I didn't do that, there might have been bloodshed. Then after the 3rd day, my body just kind of accepted that this was what was happening and it went more smoothly. Up until the point I had to do the bowel prep, but that's a whole other thread.

Your list most definitely hits the majority of the reasons I experienced the weight gain I did. When I first started having weight creep back in, I ended up ashamed of it and after a bad visit with my bariatric team about it, I left and didn't go back to them. Which sure the heck did not help matters! Those, though, are the main pitfalls for bariatric patients to look out for!

I would add in "Stop checking in with your bariatric team"

I really don't have any insight as to why your nutritionist would say that. It seems very counter-intuitive to me. The only possible thing I can think of is that because it's not a thick liquid like protein shakes are, that it would go through the system faster and thus you wouldn't have as much absorption. But that doesn't sound right to me. My recommendation would be to contact your nutritionist and have her clarify this for you so that you understand the reasoning.

I've flown First Class a handful of times, but it's only been Boston to Atlanta, which is only a 2.5 hour flight, so no meals served. Unless you count vodka and cranberries as breakfast. It's fruit and potato! Totally counts!