Anyone doing low carb high Protein diet. I am about 3 months out and my insurance wants me to lose 15 pounds. Had scrambled eggs with cheese. My biggest problem is what to have for lunch. Anyone having success with this?

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The only diet that has ever worked for me is a lower carb diet. Lots of Protein low carbs. For lunch I have been known to eat ground beef maybe green Beans on the side. meat, zucchini green beans bell peppers red bell peppers dipped in blue cheese. If you go to a fast food place go through the drive-thru and you can order a hamburger without a bun. They call it a lettuce wrap or whatever. I've even been known to eat eggs with like fried eggs with a salad for lunch. chicken sliced up lots of cheese. Fish. Coleslaw. remember a low carbohydrate diet can have a higher level of fat. By the way I've not had my surgery yet, I'm just I'm in the middle of the process. And I'm going to have to low carb it myself to get my weight down. But honestly the only thing that ever ever worked with low carb for me it's staying on the wagon that is hard. I boil a hard-boiled eggs and putting mustard on them. Tuna fish salad with celery eggs mayonnaise and tuna on cucumber slices is a great lunch to. Make sure you drink a lot of Water so your body doesn't get confused. And think you're hungry when your really thirsty. It's never ever worked for me to count calories counting calories only makes me starving and overweight!

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I don't even pay attention to carbs. Yea it's not popular but I've lost over 100 pounds. I adapting a more Mediterranean diet. My grandparents came from Italy. Ate pasta almost daily with their olive oil. Lived into their early 90's. Had no idea what a carb was. Italians have one of the highest life expectancies in the world and are one of the heart healthiest people in the world and yet they eat the pasta with the dreaded carbs. It reminds me of the anti egg craze when I was a kid. My family was told by doctors we would all have heart attacks if we ate eggs. Egg beaters were spawned by this anti egg craze. Now eggs are considered a super food. My downfall was always having too large of portions and eating a lot of food that was fried. I know I will get scolded, but I eat a Lean Pocket for lunch. Little high on calories but on pocket has 13 grams of protein which is almost about the same as the greek yogurt I was choking down. It's quick, has good amount of protein, and tastes good.

Even with the sleeve I've had to stay low carb to lose. I can't tell you how frustrating it is. At a year out if I eat carbs (even a few) I gain like 5 pounds in one day. Yes it's Water weight, but then it takes me 2 weeks to re-lose it. Talk about maddening!

I was low carb before surgery, but my stomach was a bottomless pit, so I couldn't lose enough.

For lunch, I had/have a salad pretty much everyday. I pre-cook chicken breasts on Sunday and then eat them everyday with a combo of veggies and a lite dressing. It's not exciting, but it gets the job done.

For a low carb lunch, get some of those 8 oz plastic gladware type containers. Chop up some chicken breast and green veggies, add a small amount of salad dressing, shake, and there you go.

I usually make my lunch in the morning and use frozen chicken breast and veggies (I live alone and can't get through fresh chicken breast or vegetables in large enough quantities -- they would go bad first). I get frozen grilled chicken breast from Trader Joe's. Frozen green veggies such as grilled asparagus, green beans, and artichoke hearts work well. I defrost the chicken and veggies about halfway, put them in the container, and add dressing. I do not refrigerate -- by the time lunch rolls around, everything is completely thawed and delicious, and the lunch took me all of about 3 minutes to make. My lunch is usually under 125 calories and 5 carbs for 3 ounces of chicken + 1.5 ounces of veggies and about a half tablespoon of Trader Joe's champagne vinaigrette dressing.

The most weight I lost on my own was following the south beach diet.

I'm a new post op, but it looks like Paleo fits nicely with the new diet guidelines. I've been looking into that.

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Learning to eat low carb is a great thing to do now during the pre-op days.

It's exactly how you'll be asked to proceed once post-op.

Getting acclimated now will help.

I suggest buying the Atkins Diet and/or South Beach Diet books and getting started with them.

Bufflhead, I go to Trader Joe's all the time. Are you talking about the frozen uncooked chicken breast or are the ones you use cooked?

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@@northstar9148 I get the frozen grilled (cooked) chicken breasts. I am way too lazy to spend my mornings cooking chicken! You can also just use the fresh grilled chicken breast in the deli area -- very tasty. I stick with frozen because in addition to being lazy, I am cheap, and the frozen is cheaper.

Thank you, Bufflehead

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What I've found to be ideal for me is to have lower carb meals and Snacks rather than a strict low-carb diet. I tend to log in anywhere from 50 to 90 grams of carbs a day, with most of it coming from fruit I put in high-Protein yogurt smoothies and vegetables. I've always lost weight on the strict low-carb diets, but always gained it right back. For me a lower carb diet has been more sustainable.

One of my favorite summer lunches has been to make an open-face sandwich using crispbread as the base rather than bread. Trader Joe's recently started carrying one that I think is terrific. http://www.traderjoes.com/digin/post/whole-grain-crispbread It only has 7 grams of carbs, and a very satisfying crunch. My mother-in-law is Swedish and introduced me to crispbread sandwiches years ago, because it has long been a staple food for them, but until recently I didn't find as many brands that I liked as much in the US. If a Trader Joe's isn't near you, the Wasa brand is readily available in most grocery stores. IKEA also carries crispbread. I don't think they're as good as Trader Joe's, but I was content with them for a long time. I'll also have the crispbread as a snack, topping it with goat cheese and cucumbers, peanut / almond butter, or just having it with a little Kerry Gold butter. In the morning I'll sometimes top it with scrambled eggs.

Atkins has a diet plan called Atkins 40 where you are to eat 40 net carbs per day, and one of my colleagues had success with it.

The only way I've ever been able to successfully lose weight is by adhering to a strict low carb diet. If I eat anything more than 20 carbs I actually gain weight. I'm hoping that after surgery I won't need to be so strict on the carbs, but I'm not holding my breath.

@ WitchySar 20 grams carbs is very low. What do you eat in a day to stay that low? It would be close to pure meat. I would have assumed your calorie count would have to be lower than 1000 to stick below 20 grams carbs, but it must be much higher if you are maintaining a weight high enough that you need WLS.

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to figure out what your food log would look like in a day.

Edited July 25, 201610 yr by BCs 1000

@@northstar9148 unfortunately for me, carbs breed more carbs. So if I start the day with carbs, I go into a downhill spiral carbathon.

If I eat high protein/low carb for Breakfast, I have much greater control over my eating for the day.

I don't eat them everyday but the Adkins frozen meals are good in a crunch.......other than that I like to make enough at dinner time when I'm cooking so that there are left overs I can have for lunch the next day.

@ WitchySar 20 grams carbs is very low. What do you eat in a day to stay that low? It would be close to pure meat. I would have assumed your calorie count would have to be lower than 1000 to stick below 20 grams carbs, but it must be much higher if you are maintaining a weight high enough that you need WLS.

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to figure out what your food log would look like in a day.

I should have clarified, I have to eat less than 20 NET carbs if I want to lose weight. Net carbs = total carbs - Fiber and sugar alcohols. All the carbs typically come from veggies, nuts, and fruit. Green Beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peanuts, almonds, strawberries, raspberries... to name a few. And on the low carb plan I followed you don't count calories, you count fat, Protein, and carbs. Since it isn't a low fat diet I didn't have to stick with only lean meats. I can tell you I definitely wasn't getting in less than a 1000 calories a day on low carb. When I followed it strictly I lost almost 150 pounds in about a year. Unfortunately I got pregnant so I had to stop the low carb. Gained back about 75 in a year. The rest have come on slowly over the last 7 years. Got back up to where I was when I started low carb the first time. Unfortunately not I'm older, my metabolism is shot even more than before, and so even when I follow strict low carb I don't lose as fast at all. It's still the only way I lose though.

As for maintaining a weight high enough for WLS, well I definitely didn't get this high by following a low carb diet. When not dieting I would make horrid food choices and basically eat junk all the time. If I followed low carb strict for the rest of my life I COULD lose the weight on my own. But now it's coming off too slowly and my health has declined too much for me to have time to lose it on my own.