I was going to call this Break On Through To The Other Side (thank you Doors). But I figured I'd get sick of it after a while. I'm going to use this space to keep track on the 2 week march toward surgery and then to keep track of the recovery and progress. That way I can keep it all together and if I just do one thread, it's all in one place without clogging up the Blog Area. I'm sure it's gonna be excruciatingly boring to everyone--me included! I'm a list and minutia kinda gal. I like tracking and counting--although I can be equally lax about crap. So I stop just short of OCD town (not that there's anything wrong with that).

My official 2 week liquid diet starts tomorrow. I decided to jump on it today because Sunday feels like a great place to start and because it's hard to do better than yesterday as my last food day before surgery. I'm a Texan, born and raised, and yesterday we had a fairwell to my ass and thighs via a Texas BBQ tour through Houston and Tomball. I ate so much brisket, sausage and ribs, I can honestly claim to be over it. Growing up in a BBQ family, slow smoked meats is almost in my blood. So it was only natural that I would choose that as the last rights.

I'm having RNY on February 20th and as I understand it, moist (fatty) brisket might not be my friend post surgery. Supposedly high fat foods (which moist brisket is) might cause a sort of "dumping" in the poop department. So I figure my future, once healed, might only include lean cuts of brisket and smoked meats. It's a choice I will readily make to lose weight and get my health back.

So the morning Day 1 hasn't been very difficult--a little hunger and growly tummy, but nothing that makes me feel anxiety. Protein drinks on board and this afternoon will shop for SF popsicles, SF jello and bone broth. I think I'll stick to packaged bone broth so I can get the actual nutritional information from a certified source. There's no real way for me to tell how many calories and carbs are in the bone broth I make here at home.

My Pre-Op Plan includes: 80-100g of protein; low fat; 60g carbs and somewhere around 1000cals per day.

4-5 Protein Drinks containing a minimum of 15g of protein per serving. They must be low fat and low sugar and can't contain over 4g of sugar per serving. I can have clear low sodium broths, sugar free drinks, sugar free jello and sugar free clear popsicles (no fudgsicles or ice cream based pops).

I will do this from now until February 20th.

I'm pretty sure I will be doing plenty of the following:

Edited February 4, 20188 yr by FluffyChix

Day 3 is in the bag! Boom! Done, baby! It was hands down, the hardest day so far. I think maybe it's because I expected it to be the toughest day--since that's what I so often read? But it's done. And I've made progress. Thanks to my fairwell tour of BBQ, I was up 4-5lbs on Sunday morning--so I started the liquid diet 1 day early, to see if I could mitigate damages. Yeah--it was TOTS worth it. This morning I'm down to 228.2lbs (-5.8lb loss). Yay for me! Thah crahps ah sayuved!!!

I heard back from my RD. She will allow me to add up to 28g (1oz) of condensed cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup to 1 of my daily meals, as long as all the other meals/snacks fall strictly into my guidelines. That's good and bad. It's good cuz I now have a tiny bit more variety. It's bad because it means that psychologically, I'm still saving my "best meal of the day" for dinner, rather than eating it earlier in the day. Often "best meals" contain more calories/carbs/fat, "fill in the blank" and often, they are bigger and heavier. And it gets eaten around 7:30pm...so, just sayin', that may be a behavior I need to visit and revise post surgery.

I found an intriguing recipe for Banana Joe Smoothies yesterday on another site. As I "understand it" Banana Joe refers to mixing banana protein with coffee. They made a smoothie, but last night I was too hangry to care, so I just made it into a super quicky iced coffee. I'll post the recipes below:

Creamy Beef and Mushroom Protein Broth (Pre-surgery Approved by My RD)

Makes 1-2 servings
29g Isopure Unflavored Protein Powder

2fl oz Fairlife Milk, fat free

28g Campbell's Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom Soup

8fl oz Beef Stock, unsalted (Kitchen Basics)

1 pckt Herb Ox Beef Bullion, sodium free

8fl oz water

1/8 tsp granulated garlic

1 pinch dried parsley

pepper/No Salt to taste

Mix unflavored protein powder with milk and condensed soup until it makes a paste. Nuke the beef stock, water, and spices until burning hot. Slowly pour protein mixture into the hot soup, stirring constantly. Make sure everything is dissolved and well combined. Enjoy as 1-2 meal replacements.

Nutritionals: 211 cals; 39g protein; 2g fat; 10g carbs; 0g fiber; 10g net carbs; 3g sugar

Banana Joe Iced Coffee

Makes 1 serving (HEEEEEUUUUUGGGGEEEEE)

11fl oz Premier Protein, Bananas and Cream flavored RTD shake

12fl oz brewed decaff coffee

6g whole psyllium husks (optional)

4-7 drops liquid vanilla stevia (Vitacost)

ice (and lots of it)

Mix it all together. Make sure there's a crap ton of ice. Add a straw and enjoy. This should occupy you for a LONG while!

Nutritionals: 160 calories; 30g protein; 3g fat; 5g carbs; 2g fiber; 3g net carbs; 1g sugar (counts do not include the psyllium fiber since I omitted it last night)

Here's MFP food log for Day 3. What I'm finding is this early out, I'm just not feeling deprivation. I feel like I have "enough" variety and a wide enough array of sweet to savory that my palette isn't getting jaded by a bombardment of sweet. I will tell you, it's odd how satisfying a cup of broth with a bit of granulated garlic is feeling. Between meals, it really keeps me satisfied--as did the sf cherry popsicle yesterday afternoon. It's the little pleasures. Right?

Edited February 7, 20188 yr by FluffyChix

You should write books on this stuff, Fluff. You are crazy detail oriented and creative and I bet your nutritionist loves you. LOL:)

Edited February 7, 20188 yr by Creekimp13

1 minute ago, Creekimp13 said:

You should write books on this stuff, Fluff. You are crazy detail oriented and I bet your nutritionist loves you. LOL:)

Ha! It's a blessing and a curse for her. She calls me "her little rule follower" cuz I try very hard to know the borders of my parameters and explore to find out "is this in or out of bounds"? LOL. I'm sure I drive her crazy!

And I have written books. I used to keep my low carb keto blog. I just haven't posted to it in about 2 years (or more) cuz my lymphedema has gotten so bad in my left arm, that doing the meal prep, photography, and then the recipe development and blog posts were just too much and made my arm, side, back, and neck swell too much. So I quit. Hanging out here is ok, cuz I can sit in my recliner with my left arm on pillows and type on a lap top, one handed. It allows the arm to keep the fluids more drained. I'm stage2 so that means, that gravity will still allow partial drainage.

Here's my old blog Fluffy Chix Cook http://fluffychixcook.com/

There are a lot of low carb recipes that would be good for us, but sadly, the quantities are all wrong for post surg and you'd be eating some of the recipes for years. LOL. But some of the fiber "bread-type" stuff would/might be good.

Here are the books I've written. I specialized in recreating low carb analogs of food I grew up with--particularly for "feast" or celebratory meals. http://fluffychixcook.com/fluffy-chix-newsstand/store/

I'm super impressed with the variety you're getting! I confess I hadn't given much thought to the liquid diet except the nasty fake sweet protein shakes. I'm taking notes!

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1 minute ago, MrsGamgee said:

I'm super impressed with the variety you're getting! I confess I hadn't given much thought to the liquid diet except the nasty fake sweet Protein Shakes. I'm taking notes!

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Thanks. Variety here is the key for me. Since there is no variety on texture (or very little anyway). LOL. I don't like overly sweet stuff, so I tend to dilute my protein drinks and smoothies a LOT. I can always add sweetness back to it using stevia drops or sf DaVinci or Torani syrups.

I love cutting the sweet with the peanut butter powder, unsweetened coconut milk, and I got the approval to have 1 shake a day that could have 1oz of frozen chopped spinach and 1oz of frozen blueberries, but honestly, I'm trying not to move that far off plan.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around bananas and cream PP and decaf coffee -- I am at once horrified and intrigued. Going to try it tomorrow morning!

Fluffy Chix its me. We seem to have attracted a pervie troll with the handle of Eddielarry. He' s all over the lady posters, he just told Chrystal727 she had a pretty smile, told others he wanted to be in their lives. I don't have good feeling about this, should he be reported to Alex?

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2 minutes ago, Apple203 said:

I'm still trying to wrap my head around bananas and cream PP and decaf coffee -- I am at once horrified and intrigued. Going to try it tomorrow morning!

Bahahhahaha! I know RIGHT??!!! I was screaming "EWWWWWWW GROSS" at my screen yesteray. But last night I was on my last nerve. I'd waited too long for my "dinner" cuz Mr. F. was still working. I was so starved I couldn't even make his chicken! LOL. So out came frozen leftover potroast and I nuked him some broccoli, and cut up some avocado and tomato and called it done. But by that time, I was about to throw myself on the floor and have a meltdown. So I just grabbed the pot of leftover coffee from the morning and some ice and one of my room temp (they weren't in the fridge yet) banana and cream RTD Premier Protein drinks and stirred. Holy F&ck! I'm like F*ck Me (sideways real hard) cuz this is fan-f&cking-tastic! Can you tell I was hangry? I had the potty mouth from hell. Try it and let me know if you like it. It made 2 huge glasses for me, cuz I split the bottle into two drinks. I even added a little unsweetened coconut milk to the 2nd one cuz I didn't split it evenly. I was drinking those drinks from about 7:45ish to 10pm! Wahhhhoooo! F*ck you hunger!

5 minutes ago, kakatlady612 said:

Fluffy Chix its me. We seem to have attracted a pervie troll with the handle of Eddielarry. He' s all over the lady posters, he just told Chrystal727 she had a pretty smile, told others he wanted to be in their lives. I don't have good feeling about this, should he be reported to Alex?

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Hmmmm. I haven't gotten to those threads yet so I dunno. (It's not my day to watch the kids. ) You should ask @Creekimp13!!! But, um, just sayin--I'm probably not the right person to ask, since I inherently LOVE and look forward to reading the real meaty drama threads. So a perv might be a fun break from monotony!

Look at what he said to Nancy Gohegan in the January bypass buddies, she was just talking about post surgery fluid weight. I think it's uncalled for.

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7 minutes ago, FluffyChix said:

You should ask @Creekimp13!!!

What the hell? Am I the local Pervert Whisperer?

And resident. ***kicker. He's making a good forum into something nasty and vile. He has issues.

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@Creekimp13 No but I thought you had Wednesdays? My bad. I just know my day is Thursdays. And I believe @Apple203 has Fridays (sucks to be her).

1 hour ago, FluffyChix said:

She doesn't have a problem with tiny amounts of condensed cream soups as long as I'm not sitting down to bowls of the stuff and eating multiple things like that each day. She said one meal a day will be okey dokey.

That’s a good RD! I’m all for moderate intakes. That’s why nothing is off limits to me at this point in my journey. Enjoy your soup! I’ll add some mushrooms. Yum!

OK, now I have to go look. Kakatlady, we need to teach you to post links.