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Hey I am right there with you. I am on day three of my two week liquid pre-op diet and yes I cheated as well. I had a broiled fish and salad (italian dressing) from Captain D's. At first I felt guilty, but I feel sooo much better and I have been continuing my sugar free drinks and yogurt. I feel I can now do it! I know you can as well! Good Luck!

I had been constipated about 4 days when I went to see the Nurse Practitioner this past Thursday, and she recommended chia seeds in plain greek yogurt..IT TOTALLY WORKED!

I tried to stay away from sugar stuff but my full liquids included sf pudding, Greek yogurt and thinned cream of wheat and I put Splenda on it. I was mostly Afraid of how sugar would make me feel - possible dumping but it doesn't bother me much if I have a little ice cream or a cookie. But I try to stay away. I moved to puréed food at wks 3 but was disgusted at that by second day so just started eating reg food chewed Alot! At 5 wks now I can eat Anything in sm portions! Good luck

Funny how our diets are all different. I CAN'T have puddings or yogurt on my full liquid diet. I can after 3 weeks. I was told my liquids must flow easily through a strainer.

I was sleeved 12/19. On full liquids until 1/31. My liquids as in drinks are all supposed to be sugar free. I am also only allowed sugar free puddings and no fruit pcs yogurts. Lowest Greek preferred. I also had a hiatal hernia repair so I don't know why so long on the liquids unless that or if just that my surgeon is really conservative. He did tell me I had a great looking small sleeve. Don't know. Good luck!

Try some GENEPRO (available on Amazon). It is a powder protein that you can put in Soup, milk, juice, yogurt, etc. It is 30 mg of protein in just one tablespoon. The shakes do get old...

I eat breakfast at home, and I would get up earlier to do so if I was at work at the moment too. I love my breakie! DH eats at work and keeps a couple of different cold cereals (decent ones like Weetbix and organic muesli), instant oatmeal (but its so much less satisfying than proper rolled oats) bread and basic spreads there. He also occasionally takes yogurt - but not horrid thin artificially sweetened ones - the good gourmet greek yogurt that's really really thick and has fruit on the top that you stir in - those do fill you and you can always stire some muesli in. But he gets very bored. You could also eat good muesli bars (not crappy kid ones) or take some nice cheese, like brie or a fruit and nut cheese and have that with crackers.

I've been using Okios, Chobani, Dannon, and even tried the Kroger brand of greek yogurt, but today the Fage was on sale and OMG. I am in love with this stuff. It does have 8 grams of carbs, but 17g of protein. I can't eat it all in one sitting (it's a 7oz container) but I split it up and had it 2 times today. Here is what is SO nice about it. The flavor is sooooo mild. I've had to add splenda to my greek yogurt (or sometime SF Torani syrup) just to get over that BITE of sharp flavor. But the Fage is so mild, and creamy, I am in love. Too bad it doesn't go on sale very often. I bought every last container they had (which was exactly 6) at King Soopers today as they were on sale for $1 each. It's so good I might even break down and buy it when it's not on sale.

You pretty much can't find yogurt with that low of carbs, Greek Yogurt has less carbs and more protien. a lot of people like carb master that you can get at Krogers. I think it's tasteless. I like Chiboni yogurt the best. I also like Brown cow that I get at walmart.,

So how much yogurt are you eating at one time

I'm feeling great today :wink2: I'm 8 days post op and I woke up this morning suddenly feeling a little jump in my step. I must be pretty well healed up now. Today is my post op appt with my doctor in Dubai. I'm looking forward to asking him some questions including why I have such achiness around the front and back of my ribcage area. I have learned that I have to eat something right when I wake up so I don't feel so sluggish and icky in the morning. I was never like that before but it's necessary now. I just have some yogurt first thing. I found yoplait has a "baby" yogurt so I found that is nice a light and makes me feel better in the morning. Later I will go to "breakfast" with friends. I'll just have some soup. Thank goodness I have always been a soup freak! It makes this pureed diet thing not such a hard thing to handle :wink: I have a friend that has done the same surgery (6 years ago) and she has been wonderful. Thank God for her and her advice! Take care everyone and have a nice day :cool2:

I use a little plastic sandwich bag and then I use a hammer to crush them. I use apple sauce, yogurt is awful and pudding isn't as good.

King Soopers/Kroger makes a low carb yogurt. I ate it while I was healing.

Milk products contain milk sugar (lactose), so they will not ever be completely sugar-free. In yogurt, most of the lactose has been converted to lactic acid, which is what gives it the characteristic sour taste...the carb count stays the same but metabolically, lactic acid does not cause as much of an insulin increase. As long as you are staying away from added sugar (i.e. stay with plain yogurt), you are fine. Most folks here go for greek yogurt for the added Protein. I mix berries and a little splenda in mine, however, fruit has natural sugars as well.

Hey everyone!! I’m 6 months post op this 23rd and have lost 107 lbs since surgery! I’m ecstatic for my progress so far and need to lose about 40 more to be at my goal weight (fingers crossed). But lately I’ve been seeing myself being able to eat more that usual. I’ve went from 2-3 ounces to eat 4-5 ounces of food. Most of the time it consists of a good diet such as chicken salads or eggs, sausage , yogurt fruit and etc and I do keep up with my fluids. I just want to know if it’s normal to be eating this amount at 6 months post op? Also I don’t eat any carbs if it isn’t a pretzel here and there. I just want to be consistent and I’m scared that I maybe eating too much and my pouch has stretched !!! Any advice is appreciated Here’s a before and after pic!!!

I eat a lot of fish lemon sole - sauteed in butter and lemon chile - burgers (just the patty 10% lean) I havent' made my staple chicken breast marinated in olive oil, lemon and oregano Veggies usually portobello mushrooms grilled. Have done baked eggplant w/ the greek garlcky yogurt.

I love adding chia and flax to my oatmeal, yogurt, and shakes. YUMMY

Strained soups, water, choked down the protein drinks, milk and milk diluted yogurt.

I have had a few disastrous weeks myself. I think for me, I have to go back to eating proper meals, I've been picking and of course when you pick, you can eat a lot. So this morning, I"m having a big Breakfast, which is a proper breakfast. I might have Cereal and fruit AND then have yogurt. I know if I eat that lot, its a good healthy balanced meal but it will keep me stuffed for hours. Once I break a cycle I'm pretty right. That's what I'd suggest. Eat well at meals, dont try to eat too little, and make sure you have enough in your tummy to get by on so you dont pick.

7/24 - 10 weeks out, 30.5 pounds down, from 271 to 240.5 Well, I'm truckin' along, and although it SEEMS slow to me, I just realized it actually hasn't been all that slow since I got my first fill. I just looked back at the calendar, and my fill was 2 weeks ago, on 7/10. On 7/10 I weighed 249, and I now weigh 240.5. So, that's a little less than 10 pounds in 2 weeks!! That's actually fantastic!! Wow, all of a sudden I'm counting how many weeks till we go to the beach for our summer vacation, and calculating potentially how far down I COULD be if this restriction holds out!!!!!!! I could be a svelte 210 pounds by then if I play my cards right! Ahhh!! Can't even let myself hope for that, because I don't want to end up feeling discouraged. I've been telling myself that I'd be happy if I could be somewhere in the 220's by September 6, which is the day we leave for the beach. Haven't seen the 220's in several years. Haven't seen 210 since I met my husband in 1999. Under 200 - haven't seen Onederland since I was in college in the early 90's!! The last time I was able to squeeze into a woman's size 12 was when I was in either 9th or 10th grade, and I was able to wear one specific pair of my mom's jeans. They were a size 12, and I have no idea why she had them, because she has always been a size 8 her entire life. But for whatever reason, she had these jeans that were a size 12, and I BARELY fit into them, but I could button and zip them, and that's all that mattered to me. It made me feel so good about myself for that brief period when I could wear them. Funny how you remember things like that. So, getting into a size 12 again someday is going to feel like a HUGE milestone for me. Anyway, so since I got this fill 2 weeks ago, I have noticed that I experience what many other bandsters have described on LBT - my restriction seems to fluctuate day by day, sometimes hour by hour. It's weird, there doesn't seem to really be any rhyme or reason to it? Some days I can eat breakfast and lunch, albeit carefully, but with no problems whatsoever. Some days I can hardly get yogurt to go down without a whole lot of gurgling and noise and burping (non-productive) and other fanfare. On most days, I've found that it's much easier to eat dinner than lunch, and breakfast, forget about it. By the time I get all my pills and vitamins down in the morning, I'm full and don't have any time left for breakfast anyway. That makes me feel guilty, because I know it's bad to skip breakfast, but I really can't help it. Sometimes I'll bring a yogurt along to work with me, and I can eat that at my desk, although it takes a while. Several times I've tried to eat lunch and ended up having to throw it away. I know that SOMETIMES it's because I take too big of a bite right off the bat and don't chew it enough, and then whatever it was gets stuck, and then I'm just done - can't put anything else on top of that bc that will just make it worse (learned THAT the hard way) so I just have to give up and wait till the next meal. But sometimes even if I'm following all the rules and being very conscious about it, even the smallest most chewed-to-liquid bite won't go down easily at lunch time. It's very strange! Every few days I find dinner is challenging as well, but most days dinner is easier than lunch. Mind you, I'm measuring my food intake in bites now, not cups. Lord, I never thought I'd say that. I'm amazed at how my sense of portions has changed. I still have food envy when I watch my husband take a gigantic bite out of some big juicy cheeseburger, or gobble down a bunch of crispy crunchy salad vegetables. (never thought I'd say THAT either! LOL) But when putting food onto my own plate I've gotten very, very good at taking the smallest possible servings of things. And then after I eat, I'm constantly worrying in my head that I've eaten too much, that I'm ABLE to eat too much, that I'll never lose any more weight if I eat this much, etc. And then I remind myself that I only ate, for instance, one tablespoon of mashed potatoes, or something like that. It's weird how your brain processes this phenomenon. Mostly what I've read on LBT is from people saying that they are still ordering the Extra Large Value size of everything, even though they can only eat a small fraction of it. With me it's been the opposite. I automatically order or plate-up the smallest portion, but then have some sort of dysmorphic thing happen where I panic I've eaten too much. I think part of the problem is that I never really feel hungry anymore - and I also never really feel full. That is to say, I never get the feeling of full that I got pre-band.....which was a sickening, oh-my-God-all-I-want-to-do-is-unbutton-my-pants-and-lay-on-the-couch sort of feeling. I regularly ate up until I felt that way at dinner time, almost every night. Not so much at lunch, because I had more distractions from food during that time of day, I guess. I wouldn't say that I MISS that awful stuffed to the gills feeling.....but maybe psychologically I miss having a full belly feeling?? I don't know. And I can't really say that I have ever really recognized true stomach hunger - certainly not pre-band, bc I ate all the time. And not so much post band either. I don't know, maybe I'm just not skilled enough to recognize the feeling yet? So, without being able to discern those specific feelings - hungry vs. full - I think I have a tendency to panic and to STILL think that this surgery is not going to work for me after all (present evidence disregarded) and that I'll end up sabotaging myself, despite my best efforts, as I have always done in the past. I know I've got to work on that. In my ideal world, I wouldn't have to think about, worry about, panic about, plan endlessly for, or obsess over food a-n-y-m-o-r-e. I dream of a day when I can just live my life - and eat whenever it's appropriate to do so to feed my body. Period. I think I'm on my way. I'm amazed to no longer be compelled to nightly binge sessions in front of the TV. I'm incredulous that leftover cookies or bbq chips from weekend cookouts will stay in my pantry, unmolested for weeks. Pre-band, these foods would have literally called out to me over and over again, every time I was in my house, until I either devoured them, or in a fit of fortitude stoicly dumped them down into the gargage disposal so that they couldn't torture me any more. Now, I FORGET that they are even in there. Now, that's not to say that I don't still have a weakness for junk food, and believe me, if it's in a basket somewhere at a party, I'm definitely going to eat some of it. But I don't feel like it has a power over me anymore. That is really quite remarkable. This band certainly requires it's share of sacrifices, but so far, I'd say I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Thirty pounds, no longer weighing me down, gone forever. Amen!

I like the pure protein bars, The EAS Advantage Carb Control protein drinks only have 100 calories and 17 grams of protein and taste great. Light and lively Greek yogurt is really good too and turkey or beef jerky. I find all of these to be a good snack for protein.

Give up the granola, and probably the yogurt and have dense protein or a protein shake in the morning. Give up the fruit until you have lost your weight. Fruit is still sugar, even if it is natural and comes with some fiber. Granola is a starch if it has oats in it. The granola and fruit is probably slowing your weight loss, give it up for 2 weeks and see what happens.

BREAKFAST I HAVE YOGURT WITH GRONOLA SNACK PROTIEN SHAKE LUNCH GRILLED CHICKEN MOST DAYS SNACK FRUIT LIKE APPLE OR SOME GRAPES DINNER SALMON OR CHICKEN GREEN VEGGIES NO STARCHES WHAT SO EVER NO CARBONATED DRINKS OR CAFFINE JUST WATER PLAIN OR WITH CRYSTAL LIGHT

I just bought Special K Low Fat Granola. It has 6g protein. Not high protein but it's better than cereal and I'll mix it with yogurt and fruit. Simple and Quick. I get plenty more protein throughout the day.

Hi, I think beef is very difficult to chew properly, and frankly I think it may be even too early for you to experiment with steaks. You may want to get comfortable with the soft foods first. If you really crave beef then try the meatloaf or Salisbury steak instead. You will need to cut it into very teeny-tiny pieces like a green pea, if you want to eat a beef steak. I have been also worried for a long time that I ate more than I should have. people have reported that they can only eat one cup of food at a time. However, I could always eat 2 cups of food. As long as they are low calorie options (fruits, vegetables, low fat yogurts etc) you may be just fine. For me when I eat my lunch, (I still finished it very quickly, in 10 min), I have to sit and wait 5-10 minutes - I try to browse the internet or read a newspaper until I feel that my stomach is full. Usually, it takes 10-15 minutes for the signal to go from your stomach to your brain and let you know that you are full. If you can manage to wait 5 minutes between "meal courses" you may eventually feel full at some point.