Good Evening my fellow sleevers. I am 8 days post op. I feel great, almost no gas problems. I'm able to tolerate food a lot better. My problem though is consistency of the food. I'm a weird person and food are appeal if the consistency is right. Therefore as you guys would tell the puree is not going so well haha. Taste great, but the graininess and or chuckiness literally makes me want to throw up. Due to this I don't feel like I'm getting adequate amount of protein. All that I've been eating is hummus; which gets me and doesn't get me, eggs, fish, and today i was able to tolerate chicken breast baked and cubed. The protein shakes does a number to my stomach and sends me to the bathroom. With that, i am scared to try it again.

Does any body have alternative high protein option?

Also does any body have raging cravings for thing that we are not suppose to eat? Me i crave fast food, carbs; lots and lots of carbs, and cheese weirdly enough? Any suggestions?

Sorry if I'm rambling, but i can't sleep and you guys know what I'm dealing with. My friends try to help but they think its as easy as telling yourself "no you can't have these things". I guess my eat problems are really an eating addiction. So I'm extremely scare of reverting back to my old ways and looking like the biggest FAILURE there is.

when i was did puree week, i found that adding a "flavourless" (i mean, it's NOT flavourless, but it's alright) protein powder (at least 30g protein per serve) to yogurt really helped me.

that and protein powder with low-fat milk and fruit blitzed to smoothie consistency.

proud of you, you can get over the hill!

4 hours ago, aubreyj said:

when i was did puree week, i found that adding a "flavourless" (i mean, it's NOT flavourless, but it's alright) Protein Powder (at least 30g Protein per serve) to yogurt really helped me.

that and protein powder with low-fat milk and fruit blitzed to smoothie consistency.

proud of you, you can get over the hill!

The protein powder + yogurt + some PB2 is an EXCELLENT high protein option. Got me through like 2 weeks when savory foods weren’t appealing!!

You’re doing GREAT Laurent (you too Aubrey)!! You will NOT fail! You’ve got this!! You’ve got a support system here. A lot of people (including me) lose their support systems after surgery because people suck, so this community is super helpful and important in recovery. I’d you need anything PM me. I’m a newb (8 weeks out) but since you’re behind me, I can give you some tips and tricks that got me through the first 2 months!!

4 hours ago, BayouTiger said:

The Protein Powder + yogurt + some PB2 is an EXCELLENT high protein option. Got me through like 2 weeks when savory foods weren’t appealing!!

You’re doing GREAT Laurent (you too Aubrey)!! You will NOT fail! You’ve got this!! You’ve got a support system here. A lot of people (including me) lose their support systems after surgery because people suck, so this community is super helpful and important in recovery. I’d you need anything PM me. I’m a newb (8 weeks out) but since you’re behind me, I can give you some tips and tricks that got me through the first 2 months!!

Omg thank you so much. You and Aubrey have given me such great information.

Yea, people suck haha.

Have either of you dealt with cravings?

9 hours ago, aubreyj said:

when i was did puree week, i found that adding a "flavourless" (i mean, it's NOT flavourless, but it's alright) Protein Powder (at least 30g Protein per serve) to yogurt really helped me.

that and protein powder with low-fat milk and fruit blitzed to smoothie consistency.

proud of you, you can get over the hill!

Thank you thank you. I've been afraid to add things because they were so strict on this stage being straight about protein.

On the purée stage the baked ricotta dish many on here talk about really saved me. https://bariatricbits.com/single-serve-baked-ricotta/ some people add egg to it for extra protein. It tastes very similar to lasagna but without the noodles.

18 minutes ago, ShoppGirl said:

baked ricotta 

No lie, I start week 8 today, and have made no fewer than 6 ricotta bakes so far (I wasn’t on purée til week 3.5!) it really is the BEST! I added an egg to the recipe and increased the protein by 2 g per serving. When I feel like the WLS foods are getting yucky and monotonous, I pretend that I’m eating a fancy lasagna and honestly it’s so filling that I don’t miss the noodles at all! And I’m a BIG pasta girl!

I’ve moved on to more solid foods now, but you can betcha bottom dollar we have a giant pan of freshly made ricotta bake in the fridge as we speak. It’ll honestly probably be in my dinner rotation permanently when I’m done with these stages!

Admittedly I do add some low fat mozzarella to the recipe to make it more rich and protein dense. That does add some fat and calories, but when broken down over the 6-9 servings, it’s not much at all.

My NUT has actually said to add low-fat/skim cheese (in moderate amounts) to meals to increase the protein as long as I wasn’t completely out running the calories and fat. And like I said across my recipes, once you portion it out, it’s only +15-30 calories and a gram or so more of fat. But then 2 added g of protein. So that’s my tradeoff!!!

How do i keep a food diary? See I've never done that. I hated counting calories and I always had an issue especially when it came to when I personally cooked food. Like do all foods have the same nutrition facts no matter the brand. Like if I buy generic chicken versus perdue chicken, do they have the same nutrition value? How do I account for fat content and etc?

I'm a haitian american growing up on haitian food. I never had to really worry about nutrition facts so its not something I really taught myself. So hope you guys can understand my frustration.

I use the app Cronometer. Let's you add custom recipes and stuff too. And if a food is NOT in their database you can just scan an item via your cell phone camera with their app and it auto adds all the nutrients/info.

Edited April 8, 20215 yr by SummerTimeGirl

I ate a lot of chicken in the early stages. I baked the chicken breast and then ran it through the food processor to get the consistency I wanted and needed. The variety came from how I seasoned it. Comfort food=a "sauce" of thickened chicken bullion and a tiny bit of mashed potato. Mexican=taco seasoning+plain yogurt in place of sour cream. Italian=a little red sauce plus mozzarella or parmesan. Other options included soy or teryaki sauce or Cajun seasoning. I think you get the idea. I was able to satisfy my taste buds.

When I first started preparation for WLS, I was of the mindset that I was not going to weigh food or track intake. Although I already had a pretty good idea of what portion sizes were supposed to look like, tracking and weighing have made a huge improvement in making sure I'm getting the suggested amounts of food. I use Lose It for tracking. The basic version is free and used it for months. I upgraded to premium during a sale but I don't really use the extra features. I think you'll get many opinions on what people choose to use. It's just a matter of what you like.

On 4/8/2021 at 1:00 PM, LaurentSyl621 said:

How do i keep a food diary? See I've never done that. I hated counting calories and I always had an issue especially when it came to when I personally cooked food. Like do all foods have the same nutrition facts no matter the brand. Like if I buy generic chicken versus perdue chicken, do they have the same nutrition value? How do I account for fat content and etc?

I'm a haitian american growing up on haitian food. I never had to really worry about nutrition facts so its not something I really taught myself. So hope you guys can understand my frustration.

So, I use myfitnesspal.com and you can set that up pretty easily, but it does sometimes feel overwhelming because they have such a huge database so when you look up "boneless skinless chicken thigh" there might be 30 options. They're all about the same, just different brands, but if it's a single ingredient, the differences are so small it doesn't really matter. Just enter in the ingredient by weight in grams or ounces, or if it's like a banana or a cucumber, it might say "1 medium banana" or "1 8 inch cucumber". You can also enter that you eight 1/2 or .25 of the banana or cucumber.

If you have a brand name ingredient, like you bought " Dannon light and fit greek yogurt" you can just type that in and up it comes! And it usually doesn't matter what flavor you chose, because almost always all the flavors have the same nutrition. However if you actually got Chobani greek yogurt, that might have twice as many calories/carbs because that's sweetened with sugar instead of artificial sugar.

Hope that helps!