Fiddleman

I like shakes every day even though goal was a few months ago. They not only taste good, but help in eating enough protein to build muscle. Latest favorite is light muscle milk cake batter, but am also a fan of cookies and cream by nectar and GNC.

Nicole-in addition to yoga and other techniques I listed above in this thread, have you tried a roller on your core area? You do not need a fancy expensive one, just a cheap foam roller from Sports Authority will do. I know that this REALLY helped me get over hip pain that I kept getting from running week after week. The roller really helps you massage the heck out of your hip flexors and buttocks. I think hip pain is sourced from lack of muscular support either from the buttocks or from the lower back. Hip pain is no fun. I hope you feel better soon.

Good job girls! I cannot tell you how much your happy attitudes are wearing off on me (and others?). Reading your posts is always a joy.

It is really good, but do make sure you have the desire to eat it often because it is bulk from Costco. More then once, I have had to throw out a 1/2 eaten container because I did not remember to eat it often enough. Overall, I highly recommend it for the tastiness!

This bad breath is ketosis from a diet of low carb and high protein. It generally will go away once you start eating healthy carbs again, but that will take a few months. For now, you can try brushing your tongue and gargling mouthwash every day. Sorry I do not have any better options, but it is just one of those minor inconveniences you will have to go through as a post op.

I really like seaweed as a post op. it is the first time I have eaten it. There are a few different seaweed preparations I have tried : seaweed wafers, seaweed salad and seaweed topping. My favorite is the seaweed salad and can be found at Costco. It makes for a great side vegetable with your 3 oz of lean protein. The wafers and topping are more for snacking on. They are a little sweet and very "light" in texture and in calories, but high in superfood properties and iodine. Trader joes has a good selection of seaweed snacking food and Costco has seaweed wafers in bulk. I bought a package of seaweed wafers (12 individual packages of different flavors) 3 months ago and I am still only on my 4th package. I guess I do not eat them too often, but they are a very tasty way to get the superfood properties from a food.

M2g- Your experience with the secret menu at Panera sounds like you were a little unlucky or perhaps the clerks were not trained right. Usually, I ask them what is on the secret menu and they recite it for me. You can tell it is not printed anywhere because they always recite it from memory. It is bizarre why they will not even give the workers a menu to refer to! Maybe someday these healthier menu options will make it up onto the visible menu. The sooner the better. My favorite item has been the chicken, spinach hummus one, but it is still too much food to eat at one time. It comes in a huge bowl so do not even try to eat it in one sitting!

Chia seeds do not have any flavor and tend to take on the flavor of whatever they are added to. For sample, I add chia seeds to my cake batter or cookie and cream Protein shake. The seeds take on the same flavor. I like letting the seeds gel for between 30-60 minutes in order to make a really thick shake that requires a lot of slurping. Lol. Almost need a spoon to drink it up. I can tell the seeds are ready to be mixed if after shaking them around in my Blender Bottle they do not move. This definitely takes at least 20 minutes for the seeds to reach that state. Keep in my that blending together gelled chia seeds and Protein powder requires a vigorous shaking for 10-20 seconds to properly mix everything. You can also use a regular blender to avoid the mini arm workout, but shaking the blending bottle vigorously is kind of fun... Since I use chia seeds every day for their amazing super food properties, I buy 2 lb bags of it from costco. The price is not too bad at 12 dollars. I also have ordered them from Amazon online before Costco started carrying them. Online I was paying about 25 dollars for a 2 lb bag from a small grower. Good product, but I like being able to buy them from Costco now. As stated above, Chia seeds are a wonderful super food. They also a wonderful BM regulator that keeps things flowing daily. Ah the small miracles in life.

Thanks a bunch for posting this very interesting approach to strength training Amy!! I spent a while and read through the material yesterday and think it is a very sound approach to a full body workout with compound movement strength training. How can one not get a hot rock in' body after following these basic 'pioneer' type exercises? Rhetorical question. I told my wife about it last night and she also thought this is a great idea. She did wonder if these should be performed only outside in case you drop or otherwise fling the sledge hammer. It reminds me a lot of kettle ball swings, but with more compound movements. Hence, more effective I would think. One concern I have is the potential to mess up your back if you over extend the workout or lose good form. I need to research that question some more. I read some warnings about it on his information page. As a boy growing up, we used to cut our own firewood and one of my jobs was to split the rounds into quarters using a sledge and wedge. Let me tell you- it was a workout back then and built strength. We would do this every year for a few weeks in he summer time to prepare for future wood burning seasons. I am going to look into these exercises sometime soon and determine if it is something that makes sense integrated with my workouts during the week. Maybe I could replace some of my push and pull upper body workouts with these sledge hammer movements? Are you going to try this approach out?

Depends on what you are going to order. The wraps and subs should wait until you can comfortably eat bread again, maybe never. I bet you will be comfortable with eating wraps from subway after month 5. They also can make salads out of any sandwich type. I personally used to enjoy the sweet onion chicken teriyaki and a salad made out of this would be pretty tasty. Everyone is different, but a lot of post ops require a number of months until they can eat the raw veggies in a salad. Again, this might be month 5 or month 6. Did you know that subway just started to sell a dedicated chopped chicken salad option? These are fairly good and you can double protein it if you desire. Like the sandwich salads i described above, you can pick and choose which toppings to add to he chopped salad. There is enough salad to last you 3-4 meals. The only negative is the chopped salad is a bit pricy at 9 dollars. Too much in my opinion for what you get.

Good - I hope the experience gets better for you.

Thank you both!!

I have found the Chia seeds are most effective if you gel them before mixing them with a protein shake or anything else.

Great job to the both of you! I honestly think your dh looks like a different person now. Very nice and so much younger looking both of you. See you in support meeting soon!

Do you eat the chia seeds as packaged or do you let them gel in water for at least 20 minutes? it could also be that you are trying them out too early post op. My first experience was about 4.5 months post op. That is when I first found out about them. Now, 2 tbsp of chia seeds in my morning protein shake is a daily ritual. It makes my shake nice and thick, increases protein, provides omega 3 and hydrates me with water before an intense daily workout later in the day. The aztecs knew what they were during by eating a handful of these before running 100s of miles in the Andes mountains so long ago. They sit in your GI tract holding onto water,ready to release additional water,say, when you are in the middle of running a 10 k. Love them!

Thanks everyone for your kind and motivating comments.

Here are some before and after photos of me. Before (10-2011): 360 lb In Rome near the Colosseum. Surgery date (07-02-2012): 335 lb I started to lose weight in may 2012, 2 months before surgery. After (05-24-2013): 188 lb At home in the back yard. My lowest was 177 lb in February 2013. I have gained about 10 lb of lean muscle since then. "After" is still a work in progress as I am working on strength training over the summer months. No lose skin except for a little around the front of the stomach. It will probably go away by end of this summer.

To parent post - good comment. The body needs increased Water and Protein to heal properly from high impact stress placed on it. In your case, it is even more important then the average person that needs it after working out. You may try drinking even more water and high quality Protein Shakes that are designed for athletic recovery. You could source additional protein from food, but that might be challenging considering the small nature of our stomachs. GNC sells a good recovery shake called Amplified Wheybolic 60, but I am sure there are even better recovery shakes that others can recommend. I use this GNC Protein Shake as part of the recovery process daily. It is not the only shake I drink. I drink a high quality whey shake in the morning and a casein shake at bed. Consuming the long acting casein protein shake always keeps me at the low end of my maintain range and even helps drop weight, as in 1-3 lb overnight. If I do not take it, my weight stays on the mid to higher side of maintain range. My maintain range is +- 2 lbs centered on 188 lb currently. Consider casein for this reason, even if it seems too good to be true. You can google the positive effects that consuming Casein at bed and whey protein in the morning can have on your metabolism. You may consider getting your protein intake way up with shakes as the body heals faster with large amounts of protein especially when it is under stress and dealing with inflammation from your car accident. Your body is struggling with high levels of inflammation right now due the car accident. Such inflammation causes the body to hold onto fat longer. The fat traps toxins in your body which leads to water retention and an inefficient metabolism. You want to get rid of these high levels of inflammation as quickly as possible in order to create equilibrium in your body. You may consider taking a super dose of Omega 3 in the 6-9 g range to help your body eliminate the high levels of inflammation. The super Omega 3 dose is hard to source from the standard products found at most grocery stores or even stores like costco. The highest dose i have seen off the shelf is 1 g dose. most products contain 300 mg of the active ingredients. In order to avoid taking literally a handful of 300 mg fish oil capsules, you can look for molecularly distilled omega 3 in super dose size. There is a product made by stronger, healthier, faster that has 3 g doses of omega 3 per tsp: http://www.sfh.com/products/omega_3-oil I used this product myself about a month ago to help repair the inflammation caused by intense exercise. It really does help to reduce the high levels of inflammation in the body, but should not be taken forever because of long term side effects of super doses. it is also very expensive. I have since switched to taking 4 g omega 3 a day (2 capsules in the morning and 2 capsules at night) to save on cost. Product i take now is by avocare and I take it every day to combat inflammation from intense workouts, regardless of whether i feel the need to or not. I have not had a sore day yet after intense exercise encountered and my initial issue with high levels of inflammation in the back did go away after a few weeks on 6-9 g daily consumption. The sfh.com product is 60 dollars, but does have 60 doses in it. If you are taking 2-3 doses a day, you will use it up in 3 weeks, which should be enough time to reduce the inflammations levels. Additionally, BCAA chain powders (mix with water) have a good mix of amino acids for opening up the muscles and joints for repair. A lot of athletes take these in order for their muscles to recover faster. The increased water I suggested above will carry the waste from your body from the repair process. Lastly, rest. Your body likely needs some down time in order to help it recover in the absence of my supplement suggestions above. There is no reason to stress it out even more and cause a reoccurring inflammation issue. This are some good strategies to help your body repair faster and focus more on eliminating fat rather then fighting inflammation all the time. They are only suggestions. Use the information as part of your decision making process. Others might have som ideas as well.

We need a *susan* fog horn to get her attention.

I went through a lot of pain swallowing and in the stomach for a least a week after surgery. It was hard to even drink the Protein shakes and I was not hungry enough to do so. However, the doctor and his staff were very clear on drinking them to meet protein requirements in order to heal in the normal amount of time. I was not concerned about the hair loss, but did want to heal normally. One strategy that really helped me is to drink 1 ounce of Protein shake every hour. I could manage this through sipping. It was not until 3 weeks have gone by that I was even honking about 8 ounces at a time 3 x a day. Start small with the 1 ounce increments and see if that is helpful. It will get better as your stomach heals!

No protein for 2 weeks as a post op sounds really tough! Sounds very draconian. Most are allowed to have protein shakes same day or next day after surgery, if they do not have any complications or difficulty swallowing.