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How do the nutrients fit in with your dietary plan? Not just calories but sugar, fat, carb content too. What are the serving portions like? Many smoothies are high in sugar & carbs from the fruit content alone with many containing more fruit than you’d eat in a single serve but without the fibre & nutrients left in the pulp they toss out. There’s nothing wrong with splitting a meal over a lunch & dinner. I’ve done it. Did it two weeks ago with a middle eastern halloumi salad bowl I had at lunch. Took the left overs home & had them for dinner. Just added chicken as I’d eaten most of the protein component at lunch. Do your homework & then make an informed decision. Whether you indulge or not ultimately is your decision.

Has anyone ever been to one of these. Apparently they are all over. I want to go so badly. What’s good there? It all looks so good on their online menu. Also, if I get a smoothie to go and put in fridge will it be good later that same day? I am thinking if I eat food I obviously can’t do a smoothie too but I could have it later for a snack or for dinner if it’s a protein one. Maybe I will just get a smoothie and call it a day. I glanced at the calories and many things are a splurge as listed but I’m thinking I can get the sauce on the side or leave off the bacon, etc to make it doable. Just curious what others get there.

My biggest pet peeve is the American insurance programs. My goodness. (My second-biggest is the Stockholm syndrom the Optifasters undergo "no it was akshually good for me to drink Crystal Light for a year while singing Dolly Parton songs, except if on a Saturday before 4pm, then we jiggle our bellies and yell at the fat". And my third-biggest is dietitians having patients on 600 calories a day. What do they think the metabolism learns ... hmmm...) ANYWAY: you know what you've just been given? An e x c e l l e n t opportunity to practice 'living in the middle'. Which is what you'll do all the time at maintenance: Maybe there's a place between the shakes you hate and 'being fat forever'. Maybe that place is making your own shake and making sure it's sufficiently thin/fluid, and then tomorrow call your program and tell them you're not doing the gross shakes, period, give me alternatives?

I had a week of liquids (we don't discern between clear and full here, because your stomach doesn't care what color things are) and hated the shakes. So I made them myself - with program approval - out of high-protein, sugar-free yoghurt (skýr), whey protein powder, banana and OJ. I know, I know, I had triple-digit calories and that's not how you're supposed to do it. You're apparently supposed to starve and be miserable so you can really think about how fat you are. After all, after 6 months pre-op on Optifast and standing on your head to prove you want it, what's a few more weeks? In Europe, however, you'd be able to have the above.

For me, being realistic about the calorie amounts I'd allow myself in months 9-12 helped get to goal. I knew when I was trying to stick with 1800 cal/day as told by my plan, I'd still be hungry at night time. That's where bad strategy becomes bad execution. Because what do you then do? Most of us succumb at some point and think 'screw it!' and eat whatever. Being hungry is the first step to over-eating. Instead, I'm avoiding the sneaky eating by: Being honest with myself about what I need. Not being hungry is more important than weighing a certain number, because being hungry is how I got fat to begin with. Funny how that works. Having lots - and I mean lots - of less-bad alternatives on hand. Maybe that pesky bag of peanuts won't find its way to my cupboards if I have light popcorn in there instead. If I have nothing, the peanuts will arrive at some point. And that's really it.

All of these methods are great. I find it’s more of a head game for me, and I need to keep trying new activities to surprise my body into shirking pounds. The “game” is tricking my body. I also don’t expect perfection, Sundays are my relax day. I started 75 Hard. I modified it for real life, but the idea is to stick to eating plans, journal and do two planned exercise moments on top of the basic activities you normally do. I also found I burn more calories walking and weightlifting. I bought a rowing machine to mix things up even more. I just keep changing up my activities. Last fall I was very into yoga, now I go only once a week. I’m looking into a weighted hoola hoop, biking, and swimming for the summer. Stick to your eating plan and keep mixing up your activities. It’s even better when you include a social element like a friend or family member on a walk!

Personally I would track calories very carefully for a while to see how much I’m actually consuming and make changes from there. Then I would clean my kitchen and pantry. Put not so great choices further away and easy substitutes in plain view (reg calorie snacks vs 100 cal pre portioned snack bags, reg salad dress vs lite version, reg bread vs low carb bread) Next I would really consider giving up liquids with calories the majority of the time, except a slash of cream for coffee/tea or the occasional protein shake. Last I would begin to make simplified versions of my favorite meals with less calories but more flavor. (These are all things I’ve done for myself or to help friends) Good luck, you’ll do well!

I just stumbled on your post and wanted to recommend the best breakfast I make - Slow Cooker Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal There are a few more ingredients than most other oatmeals mentioned here but holy cow it's delicious! And the nutritional stats are really good too. You will need the following: 2 apples, cut in approx. 1/2 inch chunks (with or without skin, I prefer without) 1.5 cups of milk (regular or almond/soy - I use vanilla almond milk) 1.5 cups of water 1/2 tbsp of butter or margarine (I use Country Crock) - if butter sticks, cut them into a bunch of cubes 2 tsp brown sugar 1 tbsp ground flaxseed 1 cup steel cut oats 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp salt Mix everything into your slow cooker, cook on Low for about 7 hours. That should give it a nice crisp around the edges. Depending on your slow cooker it could end up getting burnt edges which aren't fun. If you want to avoid that use the double boiler method of slow cooking and add an hour or more to the time. Either way, make sure you coat the inside of the pot VERY WELL with cooking spray. Let it cook overnight and in the morning it will smell AMAZING in your kitchen and taste delicious. Put any leftovers in the fridge - to reheat put some milk in and microwave for a minute or so. I calculated that I made about 48 ounces of food, which was 8 servings of 6 oz. each. Here are the nutritional stats per serving (of course you can modify this up or down depending on your serving size, and your own ingredients): 159 calories, 29.4 carbs, 3.4 fat, 3.8 protein You can also add optional toppings after it's cooked such as walnuts, raisins, syrup, etc., that's up to you. Enjoy!

Welcome back @rking. Go back to the basics. 60g protein, 64oz fluids. Watch portion size. Reduce your carbs, sugar & fat intake. Measure, weigh, track. You can start of slowly & make one change (swap a food to a more nutritious or lower calorie choice , drop a food choice, increase a food type like protein or vegetables, etc.) each week & see how you go. You can always get back in contact with your dietician & get them to review your current diet & make suggestions too. All the best.

I had gastric bypass in July 2020 and I constantly worry about slipping back into my old ways. I feel like I can eat way more (volume-wise) than I should be able to. I see people posting on the Food Before & After Pictures thread and saying, "I ate two bites and was full for the rest of the week," or "I merely looked at this salad and was stuffed," but I can eat a "normal" size meal at this point. However, I think back to what I used to eat and realize I am still eating far less than I used to, and I'm eating foods that are much healthier and lower in calories than what I used to eat. A few things that have helped me: I shop almost exclusively online - grocery pickup or delivery. This makes it easy to avoid impulse purchases because I order in advance and don't actually go into the store. I start with my favorites list, and search for anything I need that's not on my list. My point is that I'm not browsing all of the products in the store, but targeting what I want to buy, so I don't even see or look at junk food, and I don't bring it into my house. I eat a lot of vegetables. Every week, I buy and prep carrots, celery, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and sweet peppers. I prepare a container for each day and I pre-add a saved meal in My FItness Pal each day, so I snack on the veggies any time I want during the day (I use Walden Farms zero-calorie ranch dressing as a dip). It's a lot of food for very few calories (not to mention healthy and full of vitamins), and it helps me avoid snacking on other things. I almost look at it as an assignment to eat the veggies -- I have to eat them, so I better not fill up on other stuff first. I find healthy and delicious recipes on Pinterest. I've found so many great recipes that I don't even want things like pizza and fast food. I eat healthy(ish) treats every day. My favorite thing is sugar-free meringue (whipped pasteurized egg whites with 0-calorie sweetener), which I eat raw as a whipped cream substitute, frozen as an ice cream substitute, or baked as a cookie substitute. 25 calories worth of egg whites makes about 1 cup of meringue or 20 small cookies. Other favorites include protein bars (Built Bars are my favorites, and they're lower in calories than most protein bars), sugar-free Jello, protein mug cake, and plain rice cakes sprayed with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and sprinkled with brown sugar Swerve and cinnamon. I think these treats help me stay on track and not get tempted by real ice cream and high-calorie cookies.

I agree about the protein bars. I've never heard of these. I don't consume any protein bars, so I'm unfamiliar with them. There's a "10:1 ratio rule" and it is a guide to use to determine if the calorie to protein ratio is bariatric friendly. For every 1 gram of protein, you should have no more than 10 calories. So in the almond butter Perfect Bar there's 320 calories, but only 13 grams of protein. For a food that has 13 grams of protein per serving, to be bariatric friendly it should have no more than 130 calories per serving. Sent from my SM-G991U1 using BariatricPal mobile app

Over the last maybe 6 weeks, though, I’ve lost nothing. OK - are you panicking and thinking - oh well, if I'm not losing weight whilst sticking to my plan, I might as well buy crisps and chocolate and SCREW THE PLAN - IT ISN'T WORKING ANY MORE!? That's happened during pretty much every diet I've ever done - all fab while the weight is coming off, but total catastrophe and throwing my toys out of the pram, when it stops. If there's a bit of this going on inside your head then maybe you need to work on that. How rationally you can talk yourself through it I don't know - there may well be a place for a discussion with a therapist if you can find someone suitable. It may be that you are approaching your new set weight - not all of us make it below a BMI of 25 after WLS. If so, you might be entering your maintenance phase. And it's perfectly OK to experiment with different foods - even chocolate and crisps - as long as you make allowance for that. I don't know whether you track food or calorie count, but it might be worth having a think about it if you don't. I’m worried about my portion sizes going back to normal and gaining all the weight back You will absolutely not do that if you're sticking to the plan you were given by your surgeon. If you start with protein and then have your veg you shouldn't gain significant amounts of weight. If you start with crisps and chocolate then you very well might. So don't start with crisps and chocolate if at all possible - use that tool you went to so much trouble to get. You have done so very well with this surgery, this tool - you've clearly made the most of it over the last 9 months. I think from reading here lots of people experience significant stalls, I can see that it's really worrying when you do, but lots of people come through those too and lose more weight, so you might be about to do that. You'll have read advice here about switching things up - increase protein, increase exercise or try building muscle as opposed to pure cardio, etc. I think your loss is amazing and an inspiration. If you can embrace that and be kind to yourself then you'll be absolutely fine.

Love all these mashed potato accented meals! Yum! Do you all make them from scratch? Always find them a lot of work to make home made. Traditionally whipped kind, that is... Lots of salad + soups this week. Find salads so refreshing and soups satisfying calories with savory tender meats...

Each shake is 15g. They don’t give us a choice on shakes since they need the 75g of protein and 800 calories so the Atkins shakes work perfectly with the 5 shakes a day so that is what my program requires.

I am 3 months out and have 3 small meals and 2 snacks. Breakfast - 75 gms low fat Greek yogurt and some berries or passion fruit Lunch - 1/2 cup soup or meat stew Snack - 25 gms ham or some deli meat rolled with cheese or cream cheese Dinner - 50 gms fish or seafood in a homemade sauce Snack - melba toast or thin cracker with pate or blue cheese or 20 gms cashew nuts I drink milky coffees and am mostly getting up to 60 gms of protein. It took me about 10 weeks to get to this goal. { I also detest protein drinks. } I am overestimating my calories because I don't usually manage to eat all my food. I estimate it to be 600 - 800 a day. Hope this helps

I have to do 5 shakes a day with nothing else. 800 calories, 75 g of protein is what the shakes equal. Round three of doing this liquid diet. Day three of this round.

Same here, I see a lot of people just have to drink liquid only. We had a choice of 2 plans. 1. Shakes and calorie free drinks only 2. Shakes and a pre set menu with pre set serving sizing which you could eat up to 6 times a day. Both approx. 800 cals a day. I definitely choose option 2! It's not much but I feel like chewing something would help. I start Monday. Wish me luck!

Hi. I'm not in your target demographic, but I dislike seeing posts asking for help that don't get a response. At 3 months my program was 3 meals a day, no snacks. Meals consisted of 3oz protein, 1oz veggies, sometimes with a smidgen of a starch. The protein was usually chicken, pork, beef, often with a touch of flavorful sauce, but in a pinch things like cheese, beans. While I didn't do snacks, if I got hungry I would do SF popsicles, this way I had flavor and 5 calories to give my stomach something to do. SF popsicles were a life savor for me early on, so I tended to lean on them a bit later too. Gosh, I think I'll by a box next grocery trip. There was a time at about 2 years post-op that I was binge running (about 90 miles a week) where my plan was increased to 6 meals per day plus a protein shake. I hated it, I felt like you that I was constantly eating, about the only time I wasn't was when I was running. Oh, I'm not saying you should do my plan. Many people I knew back in the day did 3 meals and 3 snacks. Many did protein drinks for a meal or even two. I think the primary thing is they ate to plan to be successful, just as you're trying to do. You have a good goal working to conform your eating to plan. keep at it. Good luck, Tek

Beef brisket chilli atop mashed potatoes with cheddar, sour cream and pita chips: 321 calories for the bowl contents + 3 cals for the green onions I missed lol. Could barely finish half the chilli (but ate all the pita chips) it was unbelievably filling. Must’ve been the potatoes. Mr. ate my leftovers.

UPDATE: So I had my meeting with my dietician this morning. She said based on the log I provided her from the Baritastic app for the last two months she did NOT see that I was eating anything that I shouldn't or in quantities that I shouldn't. She still seems to think I was/am still being a little inconsistent when it comes to protein. She said that based on a few missing days and some days where it may have been lower. But I tried to tell her overall, I think I HAVE been pretty consistent regardless of those few days/logs. Anyway, she said at one time the 800 calories a day was probably good enough for me but now that I'm working out more regularly that maybe now I should up my calories and protein. Calories to around 1000 to 1100 and protein more than 80/90. I feel like she's guessing, in a way, on what could be wrong too because of the fact that she said she does not see anywhere in my food logs or workout routine where I'm doing anything wrong. She also mentioned body composition. She said maybe I have actually gained more lean muscle over fat and whatnot and that I should pay more attention to that. I told her I DO have a scale like that and, even though I weigh regularly, I DO NOT log the actual weigh ins unless there is a loss so I can't or haven't seen if there has indeed been a change because it doesn't log it on the app unless I allow it to. So, I need to start logging those slight gains too in order to MAYBE get a better idea of what is going on. My husband and I were talking last night and we still think that my cut in Metformin dose still may be playing a part in this long stall. I had my dose cut in September and October was my last real loss. Also the last time my period was normal. So, I brought that up to her and she doesn't seem to think that's the reason. She said it was right that my dose was cut because my sugars have been improving and warranted it. Like the doc said, she also said the weight loss itself could be causing the irregularity in period and stall. That there is no way to know for sure if it's due to the weight loss in general or the Metformin. But I don't know. Just awfully funny that it was cut down and suddenly I stop losing weight and my period has been jacked since too. Anyway, I think I'm gonna go back to my old dose for the next few weeks and see if anything changes. If it does I will then discuss that with my family doc who I see in two weeks. Because, if the scale starts moving again, then just maybe I need to go back on it for now. I know my goal and point of having the surgery was to GET OFF this medicine but who knows. Maybe I still need it for now. I still feel so confused. She said she understood but that I DO seem to be doing everything right and that I should stay the course. Anyway, that's that.

It is just water weight and your body adjusting to the lack of food. It is hoarding both water and calories for now. Keep the faith, it will start to come off. I know it is frustrating, it was that way for me too....it actually still is frustrating when I plateau for a week or two....I am down 93 pounds and I still get frustrated after 6 months. Hang in there.

You're very welcome. Honestly, bariatric surgery - even just being a person who needs that - was such a big thing pre-op, and it's such a minor thing in my life 15 months out. Do some digging into obesity studies. You won't doubt it afterwards. Check out (citing from memory, but it's a start for your googling): Harvard Health Biggest Loser study (shockingly, people's metabolism slows and is still much slower even after regaining all the lost weight) Studies on rat populations that have their calorie pool reduced (lowest social hierarchy rats do not starve as predicted, they get fatter!) Studies on how childhood stress and trauma alter your body's idea of a weight set point (trauma or stress = your body stops wanting to maintain a healthy weight, but wants to add weight constantly) Overfeeding studies (it turns out feeding people 1000 calories per day in a 100% controlled environment does not, at all, mean a similar weight increase - so calories in, calories out is dead as an absolute concept. Obesity is a chronic disease. It's one we have tools to manage. But we need to get rid of the idea that bariatric surgery is capitulation, an easy way out, or for losers. You two's feeling of We Can Do This! is spot on - but why do it without using the tools we know work? Best of luck.

It is a difficult decision, and I can understand going back and forth. I certainly did, and I was very worried about all the things that could go wrong. Honestly, I wish I did this years ago now. The time I spent telling myself I could do it on my own could have been spent losing weight and living life happier. Having said that, I wasn't in the right place mentally before, and I certainly wouldn't have been ready to have success. I'm still in the honeymoon period right now, and I know things will get harder as time goes on, but I feel a sense of hopefulness which I rarely felt any other time I've been losing weight. I don't obsess about food, other than worrying if I will get to my calorie goal or not (when have I ever had to work to eat more, vs less?) It is also ok for you to be ready to do the surgery, and for your husband to not be ready. He may still be in the "I'm not sure stage." That's fine, but you are different people. You have to do what's right for you, whether that is doing it now or waiting and seeing what happens.

I’m 5 months out and occasionally il have a wee teaspoon of mash or three fries …. Alongside some protein and veg items. I never order it as it’s a waste just steal a little taste from my other halfs plate … it kills the craving and it doesn’t dominate my calories for the day ! Each to their own … find your path x

From my experience, after the surgery, I was not hungry for a couple months. I was eating the amount the doctor recommended and could not even get one drop more in me. I get hungry now but I make a conscious effort to not eat. I see the weight that I have lost over this past 6 months and I do not want to go back. When I eat something I always determine if the calories, fat and carbs are worth it. I eat only to nourish myself and rarely treat myself because that is a slippery slope to overeating. I still reach my restriction pretty quickly so it is hard to over eat without feeling like hell or getting sick. I really focus on water during the day to keep myself hydrated and full. If I drink a lot of water then I don't have the urge to eat and even if I did, there is very little room for food. I was a big eater, multiple portions of the main course and snacks before bed. I stick to my portions and if I do eat a snack it is nuts, sugar free pudding or some other lean type snack.