Hey y'all:

Since I'm so close to goal and have been sort of bouncing around here for a couple of months, I have begun to focus on eating for long-term health. I'm interested to see how others eat for optimum nutrition and energy--eating for health and sustenance rather than necessarily for weight loss, although I absolutely do NOT want to gain anything back!

Here's where I am:

Breakfast: coffee with milk, shot of chocolate syrup (yeah, I know, but...), whole-grain Breakfast cookie (physician recommended since I'm thiamine-deficient)

Snack: 1/4 c. almond/cranberry mix and finish the coffee

Lunch: Small mixed salad with dark greens, tomato, cucumber, 1/4 avocado, feta cheese, vinaigrette

Snack: Low-fat cheese or yogurt, fruit

Supper: Varies a lot--includes dairy or vegetable Protein and veggies

Snack: Corn chips and salsa (max of 6 chips or so), cheese, low-fat sour cream; OR a couple of crackers with cheese

I also supplement with Multivitamin, calcium/vitamin D, Vitamin C, super B complex, and I'm about to add an Omega fatty acid supplement since I don't eat a lot of foods that contain those.

(Note that the above sequence of 5-6 mini-meals is what my sleeve is comfortable doing--I can't eat a lot of volume at one time, and sleevie still doesn't tolerate meat, most chicken, eggs, and flour products other than the occasional cracker.)

So, is anyone else already eating with an eye to nutrient density, or do you have recommendations for resources I could check into?

I have been working to optimize nutrition pretty much throughout this whole process, within the limits of our restricted volume/calories and high Protein requirements of our sleeve – to me, the popular ketogenic diets leave too much nutrition behind to be worth whatever benefit they’re supposed to provide. From relatively early on I have regularly had small salads with a couple ounces of meat, mixed in an ounce or so of raspberries with my greek yogurt, frequently along with some almond and oat or wheat bran for added Fiber. I averaged a 2-3 nominal fruit/veg servings per day (against 7-8 pre-op). Potatoes were frequently present as an efficient source of potassium and mid-way thru the process some whole grain bread was added strategically as a complex carb source for fueling extended workouts.

Now, in the transition to maintenance mode for the past month or so, I’m getting in 4-5 fruit/veg servings per day and my stretch goal is to minimize supplements long term. A few days have avoided Calcium supplements (2000mg per day is my target) and I sometimes see 80- 85% of the potassium RDA (that’s a tough one to supplement without Rx.) I have added back the morning snack that I dropped early on in the loss phase and sometimes have two small afternoon Snacks as needed to boost the calories and nutrition.

Today’s menu as follows –

B: 3 turkey breakfast sausage, with wheat toast/butter (good pre-workout profile for morning personal trainer session.)

S: non-SF instant breakfast (the moderate sugar dose aids in transport of protein to muscle cells: SF version used where appropriate. I used to use Protein shakes for this but don’t need that much of a protein load anymore.)

L: salad with chopped turkey breast, spinach, avo, tomato, snap pea, carrot, broccoli, yellow pepper, green onion, cheese

S: can of low sodium V8 (great source of potassium), greek yogurt w raspberries and almond granola

D: pot roast, roasted potato, broccoli

S: protein loaded pudding on a piece of eggface protein cake.

I have been evolving my practices of high density nutrition for several years, since my wife when thru her WLS journey with a DS several years ago and worked toward beating her down the scale (only partially succeeded, but did attain good weight stability prior to going with the sleeve to finish the job.) There’s no particular single source that we’ve used but a combination of various nutrition (as opposed to “diet”) books and the tracking software we have long used (an offline program called Nutribase, which is a slightly lightened version of what is marketed to the professional trade, as we weren’t satisfied with the online resources such as Fitday that were available at the time,) along with continued fiddling with recipes and personal preferences.

As I had already worked out healthy dietary practices (other than the volume problem solved by the sleeve,) I was rather averse to the idea of doing any of the fad diets, medically supervised or not, which have such a low probability of success instead of WLS (and certainly wasn’t too keen on doing any of them post-op, either – thankfully my doc hasn’t gotten caught up in any of those fads.) With the lower volume available with the sleeve along with the general protein and caloric restrictions involved (I averaged 1000-1100 cal per day) I was able to adjust my pre-op dietary practices to my post-op needs by emphasizing the protein and dropping some of the less nutrionally dense items off the menu during the weightloss period, but generally still maintaining a reasonable nutritional balance within the remaining calorie allotment. Now, in the maintenance phase, I can add back some of those less nutritionally dense items as I work to optimize things, and don’t have the problem of having to wean off of a special deficiency diet back to normal practices – the downfall of most of the special ultra low cal type diets. I never needed to make major philosophical changes to my diet to make the sleeve work, nor to move into healthy maintenance practices.

Good luck in your efforts,

Thanks, Rick, for your reply and for sharing your menu--I'm glad to hear that a bit of sugar helps transport the protein; now I don't feel so horrible about the shot of chocolate syrup that I put into my iced coffee, as it's helping transport the milk Protein. :-)

I'm still looking for nutrition books, too, and am coming across a lot of "diet" books, too. I'm definitely not interested in a low-carb diet, which would not be practical for me with a sleeve that can't tolerate a lot of animal-based protein other than dairy, BUT I am interested in upping the Vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that can be consumed in fruits and veggies. And I agree that it's a lot easier to transition back into "regular life" or maintenance if one hasn't gone too far off the type of eating one plans to continue--we won't really have the bounce-back effect when we add things back, since we're not going to be adding too many things, or different things, back into our diets.

So thanks-- you seem to have a good handle on all of this. I'll look into Nutribase--my husband is a computer geek who can probably round that up for me--and see if that's something I want to incorporate. I definitely want something in which to keep up with nutrient consumption, because I've already been diagnosed with both thiamine and Iron deficiency simply from not eating enough foods that contain those nutrients, and I'd like to get a handle on everything to head off any other possible deficiencies.

One good book that we used in establishing the foundation for our efforts when we started our journey several years ago is:

Sports Nutrition Guide: Minerals, Vitamins & Antioxidants for Athletes by Michael Colgan

http://www.amazon.com/Sports-Nutrition-Guide-Minerals-Antioxidants/dp/0969527284/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330465262&sr=1-3

It provides a good rundown of the various nutrients, how the body uses them and appropriate levels for them. In contrast to the standard govt RDAs which have been established primarily to avoid deficiency disease, he has tried to understand and present what levels are needed for optimum health and performance, which can be quite a range given the differing demands of various athletic activities, but you can also get a good idea of what's needed for us less demanding types. It's certainly worth having in your library.

The Nutribase program (we use the "Personal Plus" version) is availabe from Cybersoft at dietsoftware.com and can be downloaded for a free trial so you can compare it to some of the online diet trackers that are available, and decide if it's worth its' cost. I don't know how it compares to some of the popular programs like myfitnesspal, but when we got started in all of this it fit our needs better than the online programs available at the time.