My surgery (sleeve) is scheduled for 8/9, and I’m starting to get a bit stressed about cooking for my family post-op! I have 2 small children at home (7 & 4) plus a picky husband so I’m looking for ideas/insight about cooking for your family.

This surgery isn’t just for me, it’s so my whole family can begin making healthy changes! I’m not looking to make a “healthy meal” for me, and sticking junk into my family’s face! I want to BREAK THE CYCLE!

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. Bonus points if you can provide website links/Pinterest boards ?

There are a ton of great bariatric cookbooks out there that can easily be doubled for a family. I would say get a few and start introducing new/healthier meals now. No need to make super drastic changes, simple swaps add up over time (low fat cheese, lower carb options, more veggies, etc.). I also did Dinnerly for a while - its one of those meal prep services but it was the cheapest I could find and had lots of family friendly options. I would look for ones that were aligned to my goals and fit my needs but would still feed my family without complaint. My kids are older, and my husband is very easy going, so it wasn't terribly hard for us to make some changes. But honestly, even if it had been, I would have simply sat them down and explained that this is for my HEALTH and my LIFE. We are doing this as a family or they can eat cereal. I'll cook what I cook and they can eat it or not. Again, maybe not an option for every family, but in the end, they will need to suck it up and support you.

I agree with starting now. If you have a handful of meals that you cook regularly ask for suggestions of calorie cutting tips or healthier options for those meals. Like for instance using frozen cauliflower crust for making pizza and topping it with chicken and veggies instead of pepperoni and real crust cuts calories and adds protein. Tacos can be made with ground Turkey and fat free cheese or made fresco style.

I recently posted recipes in the recipe section for chicken and black bean nachos that I made with baked Tostito scoops and low-fat cheese and also for zucchini pizza stacks that were delicious. The pizza stacks are a little more calorie dense because of the pepperoni but you could try Turkey pepperoni to cut calories even further. I don’t recommend leaving it out alltogether I tried that and didn’t get the pizza flavor without it

Little swaps, though, like Using low carb wraps anywhere you can instead of bread cuts calories. And finding sugar free and lower calorie dressings and sauces will help cut tons of calories. Also using spray Pam instead of oil to cook with or just measuring your oil and sticking to a smaller amount.

During your weight loss phase you will probably have to cut down even further leaving some things off your plate but Once you get to maintenance things will get back to your new normal. I would just make a few swaps here and there to start and then a few more once those have been accepted by the family. Some things you will find don’t taste bad in lower calorie options and they are pretty painless changes. Others you may get a little grief about. ?

Go on pintrest there's loads of recipes for biatric patients

Just now, Jue said:

Go on pintrest there's loads of recipes for biatric patients

I agree. Just pick a menu item that your family likes and research it a bit. Just type low calorie blank, or low carb blank and see what comes up. That’s how I found the lower calorie nachos because someone on here posted nachos and made me want them so I searched for a lower calorie option. Then I made them even lower by using the baked chips and the reduced fat cheese. And how I learned about the sugar free bbq sauce is I was craving baby back ribs so I searched for low calorie ribs. And I found out about sweet baby rays hickory sugar free sauce on this site. It has to be the hickory one though. The original sugar free isn’t as good. I just got some ribs from my local bbq spot that are DRY and I am having them for dinner tonight with my sugar free sauce.

Lots of recipes here: https://theworldaccordingtoeggface.blogspot.com/