Hello,

I am having a hard time getting enough fruits and vegetables in my diet since having surgery. I am taking all my Vitamins but worry that I am not getting enough of the other benefits i would usually get from various fruits and vegetables. I am not sure what to do. I have started drinking V8 Vfusion to get some additional servings, but they are loaded with calories and sugars. USDA recommends 5 servings but after surgery, that seems next to impossible. Any information you can share with me will be greatly appreciated!

Drinking one of the V8 Fusions shouldn't be too bad as long as it's only once a day. That will help. I'm pretty sure we take the Vitamins to supplement what we lose out on by eating such small amounts of fruits and veggies now. It was also suggested to me by both my Surgeon and NUT that for at least one snack a day I eat some carrot and celery sticks. So every few days I cut up a whole bunch to keep in the fridge to snack on. They're really good dipped in Hummus.

Hope I was some help

I take Juice Plus everyday. I use the gummies and they really seem to help me. Let me know if you intrested and I can give you the website )

It is very difficult early on to get a significant amount of fruits and veg into our diets, even for those of us who ignore the low carb diet fad and seek to get as balanced a diet as possible. I used the semi-slider property of a lot of veg by having small salads with some leftover meat, a few berries with my greek yogurt, meat/veg stir fries and stews, etc. I found that combinations of meats and veg allowed for a fair extra volume of veg to be added to a meal with a small sacrifice in meat quantity. For example, my capacity for firm meats like steak or chicken is about three ounces, but if I cut that back to two ounces, I could fit in 3-4 ounces of misc. salad veg - chopped spinach, tomato, avo,green onion, bell pepper, snow peas, etc. Similar math applies to stews and stir frys (at least to my sleeve!) I somewhat lucked out in that Protein was never a big problem for me (doc was adding veg to my diet at day 10,) so I had some flexibility in my diet and not stuck with a protein only diet. Even at that, it was difficult for me to get in more than 2-3 fruit/veg servings per day during the loss phase, though now I'm happier being able to get in 5-6 per day in maintenance.

V8 is a good help in getting in some veg content. One suggestion on that would be to try their low sodium original variety as that has about a large a dose of potassium as anything that I have found (about 1100mg or 25% of RDA in a 11.5oz can) and potassium is very difficult to supplement to any usable degree without prescription - most everything else we can supplement and get by for the time when our diets are fairly restricted during out loss phase.

In time, you will be able to consume more and add more fruit and veg to your diet, but early on, it's best to concentrate on losing as much as you can while your restriction is maximized. Many programs want to limit fruits early on due to their natural sugar content and many docs discourage juices as they are too close to drinking calories, so those are things to be cautious about. But kudos for wanting to expand into the healty fare and not just cheat on chips and twinkies! Good luck with your journey - a healthy balanced diet is very workable with the sleeve, even if somewhat modified for a while with our protein emphasis.

I love my veges! I am someone who even when at my fattest loved whole foods, organic foods and fesh fruit and veg.

Everyday I add berries to my morning Protein shake and blend it all up. Sometimes I add other fruit that is in season (this morning it was tamarillo). It is easier to drink blended and doesn't remove the pulp like juice which means my fibre is up. I go for low carb fruits like berries, melon, peaches and tamarillos.

I make a Soup in the weekend using as many vegetables as I can, again the non starchy vegetables, and go for as many different colours as I can to up the anti oxidants. Last week it was cauliflower, broccoli, edamame, spinach, carrots (orange & purple), courgettes, and red and yellow peppers. I cook this up in stock and season well. Then I blitz it! I freeze one cup portions and strive to microwave one a day for a snack adding one to two wedges of laughing cow cheese which i stir through to make it creamy. With the cheese and the edamame it is a decent protein serve as well. Again, being bltized, it is easy to consume.

I also add spinach and grated carrot to chillis and minced beef dishes. My emily bites lasagna cupcakes and taco cupcakes both have 'hidden' spinich and carrot!

This isn't going to fix a lot but, try making ranch dip using a dry mix and Greek yogurt, then add a scoop of unflavored protein powder. Use that to dip fresh veggies in. 2 birds 1 stone.

I take Juice Plus everyday. I use the gummies and they really seem to help me. Let me know if you intrested and I can give you the website )

What are the gummies? Are they a vitamin supplement?

I try to "sneak" veggies into my diet at every opportunity.

I too am a big advocate of a balanced diet. So many people are doling out diet advice, especially telling people all about the evils of CARBS. What many people fail to realize is that fruits & veg ARE carbs. Starches, well that's just a different story

I find Soups a good way to get in a good veg/protein ratio. If I'm making meatloaf or any sort of casseroles I make sure to always add a good amount of chopped up veg. Zucchini is perfect because it really cooks down and is pretty gentle on our guts.

Have you ever tried a green smoothie? My favourite is 2 cups raw/organic baby spinach leafs, 1 banana (even better if it's really ripe and frozen!) with about a cup of non-fat milk. Blitz it in the blender and drink it up! There are tons of recipes out there for green smoothies (green monsters) and I'm sure you could even find a way to sneak in an extra serving of Protein in there via your favourite supplement.