I am at almost a month post-op and starting solids. My question is to those bandsters with a little time under their belt, what do you eat for protein. I am nervous about chicken, turkey and beef as they have a tendancy to be dry. Do you have any problems with these particular foods?

In a normal day I will have dairy foods - usually yogurt and about 2 cups of milk a day for tea, coffee, cereal plus a skim milk latte or similar most days. I usually have something like tuna or cheese at lunchtime and dinner normally includes a serve of meat, chicken or fish - plus there's the smaller amounts of protein in cereals, breads, soups etc that you might eat in a day. I will sometimes snack on nuts and most days for breakfast cereal means muesli - with nuts, dried fruit, oats etc. I dont count protein and I dont supplement it, I seem to do OK.

It's amazing to me--I always hated white meat (chicken and turkey) but I now find the dark meat stringy and hard to break down into miniscule pieces for the stoma. The white meat now is just so much easier to dissolve.

Jacqui is right about nuts, beans, milk, and dairy products becoming a part of daily existence. (And I haven't tried beef yet, because I've never been a big beef eater--I'm just one week on solids myself).

I do make sure I get two protein shakes / supplements in each day--because 60-80 grams of protein a day is hard to get in from the amount of food we can eat. (I'm still 1/2 - 3/4 cup for each meal...) :scared:

Hi there!

I've been mainly eating Egg Beaters, occasional egg salad, cottage cheese, yogurt, string cheese, tuna, fish such as salmon and tilapia, Morningstar Farms veggie patties, and refried beans.

I do eat "solid" proteins, but I do better with them if they are not dry (pork, chicken, turkey, beef). I try to add chicken or beef broth to make sure it is moist enough without adding fat.

Check out the Food thread, too, for more great ideas (see link below)!

http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f9/

I hope this helps!