Vanishing Velez

Starting Weight: 267 lbs.
Current Weight: 253.8 lbs.
Total Weight Loss: 13.2 lbs.
Goal Weight: 140 lbs.
Pounds to go: 113.8 lbs.

I had my third nutrition meeting yesterday at 11am. I actually got there early, so expected that I would get out on time. Nope. Still 1 hour.

Today was the last of the nutrition information sessions. We focused primarily on carbohydrates today, but also talked about other things. To be perfectly honest, most of this was review for me. I have spent a long time thinking about macronutrients, and have done a lot of research as to how nutrition works in our body. 

Regardless of this, I’m going to still go over the main points. 

Fiber

• Fiber is an essential part of our diet. It fills our stomach and slows digestion. Because of this, it forces carbohydrates to metabolize slower, causing us to not get a spike in our blood sugar

• Fiber keeps us from getting constipated, which is something that many people deal with post bariatric surgery. Because we need to focus on our protein intake the most post surgery, some people need to take a fiber supplement. The PA suggests a fiber supplement like benefiber rather than something like Psyllium Husk. Psyllium Husk congeals in our stomachs, and benefiber doesn’t.

• It’s ok to eat natural sugars as long as you are getting whole fiber with it. What this means is that the amount of sugar in 1 apple is counteracted by the amount of fiber in said apple. However, if you juice that apple you lose a lot of the fiber but none of the sugar.

• I had a stupid question about whole fiber, but it was because I already had a thorough understanding of how fiber works, and the PA was explaining it to me like she explains it to people who don’t know about fiber. 

Natural Sugars

• We all know that we want to avoid any added sugars as much as humanly possible. But what about natural sugars? As I said previously, natural sugars are more OK when there is fiber involved. This means things like honey, agave, etc. are also foods to limit or avoid if at all possible.
• A tablespoon of honey has approximately 17g of sugar. That’s almost the same amount of sugar as a medium sized apple. However, you’re not going to be satisfied or full from 1 tablespoon of honey. You will be more satisfied with an apple.

Starches

• Starches are a form of carbohydrate, but are not quite sugar. However, they DO turn into sugar when digested. Basically starch needs to be digested before our body can use the sugar, and sugar is already in a form that our body can absorb.
• Starches in things like potatoes are fine. The issue is how we prepare the potato. If we are eating a plain potato, or even plain mashed potatoes, we are mostly eating starch and fiber. However, once we add butter, sour cream, cheese, etc., we are adding so much fat and other sugars that it negates the positive aspects of the potato
• Bread can also be a starch. But we want to make sure that we are focusing on whole grain breads or low carbohydrate breads (I love the Schmidt 647 bread line personally) and tortillas (Mission Carb Balance are my favorite).

Nutrition Labels etc.

• One of the things I kind of deduced during this session was that when looking at packaged foods, the amount of protein and fiber together should be close to or higher than the amount of carbohydrates.
• Kaitlyn was quick to point out that this should not be taken into consideration for fruits and vegetables because it’s harder to gage how much fiber and sugar is in a whole food and we don’t want to avoid fruits and vegetables.

Fats/Oils

• The last thing we really talked about was fats and oils-especially the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats.
• Saturated fats are solid at room temperature (things like butter, lard, etc.) and can be quite bad for you because they cause blood clots.
• Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. These are things like vegetable oils. These fats still have a TON of calories, but do not cause heart attacks the same way that saturated fats do.
• Because fats are so calorically dense, even if I am eating the ‘healthy’ fats, they don’t take up a ton of space in our stomach. For example, 1oz of almonds has 165 calories. 1oz of almonds is maybe 1/4c. Will that be satisfying as a snack? Probably not. It would take 23.5 oz of spinach to have the same amount of calories. That’s a tad bit less than 4 cups. What will keep you full longer? 

Drinking and Eating

• One of my big questions specifically about drinking and eating at the same time was things like soup. What Kaitlyn said was, if we are having soup for dinner, that’s OK. I still want to stop drinking my water a half hour before and not have any during my meal. Remember that we want to focus on protein, so if we are having a soup or chili, try to eat the protein first. However, you don’t have to strain it.
• Not eating while you are drinking is one of the few things you can prepare for pre-surgery. After surgery, you don’t know what your tastebuds will be like, you don’t know what foods you will be able to tolerate, etc. However, you can prepare yourself to not drink and eat at the same time.
• One thing that I will definitely need to start doing is setting timers during my day to alert me as to when I need to stop drinking or when I can start again. My meals are definitely going to have to be much more structured moving forward.
• The important thing to note about eating and drinking is just that water has very little if any nutritional value, but it also fills up our stomachs quite quickly. If we drink before or during our meal, we will not be hungry for our food. If we drink too close to the end of our meal, we will be prematurely forcing food out of our stomach. 

Moving Forward

Kaitlyn asked if I wanted to meet in 2 weeks instead of 4, because she thinks that I’m pretty close to done. I told her that I would rather do 1 month. This is because I don’t want to be in a situation where I have finished all my appointments and still have months and months and months until my surgery and nobody to keep me accountable. She said that that made sense, so that is what we are going to continue to do

Next time we meet, our topics will change. First, I will be taking a nutrition quiz to make sure I understand it all. Then, we are going to start actually reviewing what will happen before, during, and after surgery.

They are also going to send a psych referral to the psychiatrist that they use to make sure that I am of sound mind. They also got the contact information for my GP so that they can also fill out that I am fit to have surgery. Kaitlyn said we can schedule my endoscopy for whenever, and we talked about me seeing a pulmonologist. We decided that it was not necessary. My family history of blood clots is not genetic, and I don’t have sleep apnea, so I should be fine.

I will go over the endoscopy process in another post. I have a couple of others in the works, so hopefully I will be on a more regular schedule soon.