The Early Stages After Surgery: What are you going to eat? Why are you going to eat it?

The two big questions with weight loss and changing your lifestyle come into play:  What are you going to eat?  Why are you going to eat it?

(A very basic summary of dietary changes that happen in the few few months following surgery)

And these questions at first may seem easy.  Support groups prepare you with great meal plans for the first month.  Everyone discusses their favorite brand of protein shake, protein jello recipes, etc.  Protein is stressed as it's a building block of healing.  You learn read nutritional labels to make sure you get in that protein. It's so heavily stressed you feel like you're turning into a body builder with the amount you're buying.

Yes I love my protein mixed with a coffee concentrate, that's a growler of concentrated coffee from Revolution Coffee Roasters.  I love it with two scoops of EAS Lean 15, which was recently discontinued so I'll be finding a new powder that I like soon enough.  That's one of the things about protein powder, companies are always changing their product lines.  Initially I love, love loved Designer Whey, however the product was discontinued.  When you've been supplementing with protein shakes for 9 years these things happen and you learn to take it in stride. There's the scavenger hunt to find a new shake you find palatable, nutritious and easily digestable.  The great members at Bariatric Pal have composed a list of companies offering free, discounted or inespensive samples of their protein powder so you don't have to commit to a whole pound or two of something that isn't going to work for you.

The Initial Post Op Stages, Liquid First My Dears

And in the beginning people follow the plan, a meal every 4-6 hours, get in X grams of protein a day, progress through the liquid stage, the mushy stage, the soft food stage and finally the solid stage.  Those are the easy days as the pounds fall off and your hunger is completely gone.  It's amazing, wonderful and no one around you seems to mind that your lifestyle has completely changed as they're seeing the incredible shrinking you.  You're going to your support group, have a good support system of friends and family who are hopefully happy you're getting healthy.  And you're following the plan of your whole bariatric team most of the time.  And soon enough you're done with the liquid stage and get to move onto the purees.

Purees

You move into the mushy/purred stage.  The food processor is your new best friend, of course you buy a small one because you're only going to be eating a very very small amount, at most 1/4 cup of a baby food consistency of whatever protein you puree.  And happily you slowly eat it.  For me this stage came around Thanksgiving in 2007.  I was so very happy to have mashed potatoes with yogurt.

Soft Foods

On soft foods you get to cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, scrambled eggs or egg whites, fish, beans that you don't have to puree.  You're glad to be able to chew food again.  But at this point you still have to supplement with those protein shakes as it's hard to get in enough protein.  My nutritionist recommended 60 grams of protein per day, with a maximum of 30 grams consumed in at once.  It was difficult to get this in so I still supplemented with a protein shake once a day.

Solids

Then the solid foods, slowly, slowly you cut your meat, chicken, pork, duck, mammal protein into tiny pieces about the size of a single dice.  And you chew chew chew until you break apart all those bonds between the proteins so that your stomach will better be able to accept that hunk of meat.  Then it hits your stomach. It sits there.  For some digestion is easy, others it's a nightmare.  I started to opt for a vegetarian diet around bariatric surgeries and very different experiences digesting food.  So everyone varies here and what may digest easily for one person may not for the other.  All surgeries and all stomachs after surgery are not the same.  And any complications along the way have to be taken into account.  It's this point when you begin to realize the exactly how much you have to commit to this new lifestyle.
this time.  

So you're finally though the initial process and eating normal food again, however with a new mindset.  And that's when things start to get complicated.   You may be closer to a normal size, now just class 1 obese or maybe even overweight.  And now, Boom! Welcome to a whole new lifestyle.  Stay tuned...