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I'm 5 weeks out tomorrow- I can eat about 1-2 ounces a sitting. For instance 3 medium shrimp or half a roll up of one slice deli turkey with hummus spread and a thin slice of swiss cheese rolled up- or 1ounce shredded chicken with cream soup sauce but I can eat 3 ounces of chobani yogurt. I tend to eat something about every 3 hours. It does seem like this week that I can eat a bit more at a time- I'm not sure if that means more swelling has gone done and I'm healing or if my sleeve is just relaxing more.

Milk and yogurt. I am fine with cheese and the whey protein sits fine too.. It was terrible you could hear my stomach from across the room.

Hi everyone...I've been reading all of these people struggling with the liquid diets pre and post op and I'm right there with you! Not only was it physically TOUGH for me, it was as equally mentally excruciating for me. I guess getting banded was cutting off my drug of choice...FOOD. So when all of a sudden, I had to go to a pre-op all CLEAR liquid diet, I about couldn't make it, but I did. Now I am 5 days post op and feeling really well. Except for the longing for palatable food! So i called the dr. office today and she said I could reintroduce creamed Soup..like cream of chicken, pudding, yogurt, icecream and cottage cheese as long as a chewed really well. Well, I started with some cream of broccoli soup that was heaven...ate almost the whole can with the added Water, then 1/2 cup of Mcdonald's soft serve ice cream with an added teasppoon of Peanut Butter added in...then later I was able to eat a cup or so of won ton soup WITH the noodle chewed up really really well. Then to top it all off, my kids were snacking on some ritz crackers and I ate about 10 of those...again, chewed up until they were like soup in my mouth, but still...the whole time I was worried I was screwing up! ANy thoughts on this? I seemed to tolerate everything fine. Is it strange I can consume that much soup in one sitting without it bothering me? Should the crackers have bothered me? Thanks for any thoughts...you don't know how much better I feel to have finally had some food. I felt like a real person again. My dr. didn't really give me guidelines for calories during this 2wk period. Lisa

That sounds really challenging. What about bean based dishes? They won't smell bad heating up. I have been living off them right now, as it's the only thing that has been tasting good. Or, Greek yogurt or soup with protein powder? Good luck!

Well my surgery date is Aug. 29th and I have started changing my eating habits as of Aug. 1st. I want to give my self a chance to drop a few pound before the 10 pre-op diet which I think I will be starting on Aug 19th when I go to see the Anesthesia person and have my consent and nutrition teaching. I am really excited but it is really hard to keep those danger foods away from me. I am a sweet and junk food eater and I know they are not good for me. I have been OD'ing on crystal light and it helps with the need for something sweet but I still attend functions where they are eating all the things that will be off limits after this surgery if I want to see success. I have been dealing with a lot of stress so I have been working on a new way to deal with it besides eating and having a cocktail. I don’t have an issue with liquor but every so often I like to have one when I want one. But I have been having them a lot more before Aug 1st. My mother in law lives with me and my husband and she is a junk food eater and Snacks all day. So, it’s really hard not to have those foods in the house that are a sore spot for me. She also is an older lady so it hard to say that it’s not good for me and she remembers that. Her memory is slowing leaving her so its going to be hard for her not to have those things and for her not to eat the things that are for me. She eats my yogurt now and does not even remember even eating it. It’s crazy for me but I am trying to work around it. I think this would be a good place for me to get a few things that are on my mind in a journal of my journey. I am thinking about this surgery day in and day out. I can’t seem to think about anything else. I think about what its going to be like after, how will I feel about food?, how will I look?, will I be able to keep it up?, will my husband be able to accept the changes in me? He fell in love with the heavy me and will I still be as attractive to him? He always tells me that he loves me no matter what I look like and I really believe that but he has never had to see me look different. I feel really good about this surgery and what it means for me that I will be able to walk up and down stairs and not feel winded or my knees hurting soooooooo bad. My ankles won’t hurt so much either, I feel at the end of the year and twisted both ankles and tore ligament in both. They are not able to heal complete because of all the weight they have to carry. Not to be nasty or anything but I want to be able to see my lady parts without looking in a mirror but look down and say "hey there your are!" I am looking forward to having an active sex life again. I don’t have much of a drive anymore and I know it’s because I don’t like the way I look and I don’t feel attractive anymore. Now my husband does not agree with this statement but I told him it’s about how I view myself. I want to wear clothes that are visual pleasing to me and fit nice. I will be able to stand and not have lower back pain and be able to lay on my back because my behind will be smaller. These are just some things that I am looking forward to after the surgery. Ok, I will come back in a few days after I have gotten my scale to see if I have made any changes on the scale since I have tried to change my habits. More to come.

For full liquids you can eat unsweetened Greek yogurt (I put splenda and cinnamon in mine), sugar free pudding made with skim milk and Protein powder mixed in; pretty much anything that would fall between the tines of a fork. Your fullness will happen after about 6 weeks out. You're doing good not to search for the full feeling! Just stick to the prescribed volume of food and you'll be just fine.

Low carb yogurt, cheese sticks, meatballs, tuna, salmon, eggs.... Cook yourself the "meal" and immediately freeze portions and label them. I rarely have "meals"- I'm past 3 months out. We have a big family so I will have a serving of what ever it is I have made for everyone. Protein first, then if I have room a bite or 2 of veggies. The first 2 months I focused on the Protein shakes and then would nibble on "real food". Now if I'm short on protein I will add in a shake.

I have been taking those meds for a year, but I figured it out, it was me putting sugar in my plain yogurt lol something as small as that makes a difference

My doctor told me I have to crush all my meds before I take them. I have tried everything I can think of to put all these nasty crushed pills in to make it easy to swollow like jello, pudding, yogurt , and a liquid vitamin. I am having a hard time with this. Does anyone have any suggestions to make this easier. Please help.

Egg salad, Greek yogurt with applesauce, refried Beans, tuna salad, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese with spices Sent from my VS986 using the BariatricPal App

You can carry a small 6-pack cooler with cheese sticks and yogurt and freeze a couple of Water bottles before you travel. As far as non-perishable items, you can carry almonds, small tuna pouches, bananas and peanut/almond butter. There's always the option of stopping at a convenience store along the way. Happy travels!

I'm kinda curious what type of protein shakes you're drinking that would even need the ice cream added to it. Thats a new one I haven't seen people doing. Like Premier Protein already tastes like melted ice cream to me. I hope the low fat ice cream is also a low sugar/high protein one (like Halo Top) otherwise you're just adding unnecessary calories. My breakfast is either eggs or Oikos Triple Zero yogurt. Lunch is usually a P3 and raw veggies with hummus or a dip made from greek yogurt. I'll have a Quest protein bar in the afternoon as a snack. Dinner is lean meat like chicken or ground turkey. Before bed I usually have a rice cake with PB2.

Firstly, lapbandtalk pooped out for three days! I'm not sure what that was about, but it certainly put a kink in my plans to post on my progress daily. I thought it was just here in Kuwait, which is understandable because the government censors our internet and the internet isn't of particularly great quality to begin with, but some friends in others countries weren't able to get on either. Thus, it was not a Kuwait thing; it was a lapbandtalk thing. So, to catch you up on the goings on... (And in no particular order) To add to the wonderful pleasures of post-op recuperation, my period decided to make an appearance. Granted, it wasn't early, it wasn't late, I just forgot it was coming. Yay! I guess the most interesting thing that occurred over the past few days was the pop. Tuesday night riding home from rehearsal, my carpool chica told me I could adjust the thermostat and radio as I like. So when a horrid rappish song came on (I say rappish because it was attempting to be rap and failing miserably) I reached to turn off the radio to prevent my ears from being assailed by the (ahem) musician's attempt to modernize and secularize a classic Christmas song ("Do You Hear What I Hear") into a song about DJs. Upon reaching, I felt a pop right mid-torso followed by a spreading warmth/burning sensation. Since that evening, any time I cough, sneeze, or get up from laying down it HURTS there. I told my bandster friend C and she said it sounded like I popped one of my stitches. So I called my doctor, who wanted to know how soon I could see him. By this point I had moved beyond the worry of popped stitches and onto the worry of an incisional hernia. As it was my planning period, I rushed right across to the hospital (the convenience of working so close) and he checked me out. The good news is that nothing has popped and I have no hernia (he actually said that was highly unlikely) and apparently just angered one of my muscles and should, therefore, take it easy. In the same visit, they removed my plasters (what they call bandages here). This is a celebration because I'm moving along in my healing process. But I wanted them back! The shirt I was wearing was empire waist and kept rubbing up against my incisions! It didn't hurt, but it was so annoying! When I popped into my apartment between work and grocery shopping, I practically ripped the thing from my body and swapped it out for a shirt with absolutely no waist definition whatsoever. And breathed a sigh of relief. After the removal of the bandages, I was contemplating not going grocery shopping because of said material annoyance, but the changing of the shirt and the pondering of what soups might be available at the distant Lulu Hypermarket motivated me to go nonetheless. Thus, I went, without my recyclable grocery bags as I was only going for soup. Well, they had Greek yogurt. As stated in an earlier post, I'm not a huge fan of yogurt. However, I like Greek yogurt. Thus, I stocked up. Then I moved on to the produce section. I spent, no exaggeration, a half hour in the produce section. One thing Lulu's is known for is it's produce section. I had no idea. I got ingredients to make mashed parsnips, mashed turnips, creamed cauliflower, more stock, and two kinds of soup! And left Lulu's with what for me is a full cart of groceries. Which brings me to my next P: pureed foods. Yes, reader, I have moved on to pureed foods. And for those of you who have been there, you know what a glorious day it is when you get to stick that emulsion mixer into a container of food and whip the crap out of it to make your own baby food. Not because pureed food has such an interesting texture (because it doesn't) but because it offers so many more flavor options than broth-jello-juice days. By the time I was halfway through my second week of clears, and though I wasn't hungry, I was craving new flavors. Like cheese. And tomato. I got home from the grocery store and immediately chopped up vegetables and picked one of my newly acquired chickens to make the stock. Then I chopped up a butternut squash and used said stock to make butternut squash soup (which is amazingly delicious) and while that was simmering I roasted a crapload of tomatoes to make creamy tomato basil soup (which is heavenly). So, while I am still not hungry and must therefore remind myself to eat, I am eating good food. My final P for this post is pounds. I am apparently losing just over a pound a day. As of today's jump on the Wii Fit board I am down 15 pounds in fourteen days. If I continue at this rate, I should reach my first weight loss goal (to see a number lower that 274 - my lowest weight in nine years) some time this week. This is amazing. I told my husband (he's not really my husband; we call each other husband and wife because he played Thenardier opposite my Mme. Thenardier for "Master of the House" in the theater's sixth production of Mad Musicals) and now he wants to go on a clear liquid diet. The man is thin, but whatever floats his boat. I would post a picture, but LBT says I'm not permitted to here, so I will change my profile pic so you can see what I mean. And while I'm on the topic of the theater, my wonderful friend T said to me prior to the surgery that this weight loss is going to open up so many roles for me at the theater. He knows and acknowledges my acting and singing ability and loves me dearly. However, there aren't that many roles out there for someone my size (fat). Thus, by next year's casting calls I should be equipped to beat out less talented thinner people! Coming from a director, this is awesome news. I love my band.

I am 5 months post-op and this is my abbreviated meal plan: Log my food & any exercise daily 900-1,100 calories per day 60-80g of Protein At least 64 oz. of Water No bread, rice or Pasta No dried fruit or hard, raw veggies Eat protein first and have protein at every meal/snack Avoid high fat foods (5g or less per serving) Avoid high sugar foods (14g or less per serving/25g or less per day) Avoid high sodium foods Take my Multivitamins Exercise 5 hours per week Typical Breakfast is a smoothie (Protein shake, 1/2 banana, PB fit) or Fiber Cereal w/milk, lunch is 1/2 c. refried Beans with cheese & ff sour cream or a salad with grilled chicken and low-fat dressing, dinner is chicken breast or shrimp or lean beef with steamed veggies or a baked sweet potato. Snacks are string cheese or triple zero yogurt or cottage cheese or almonds. Sometimes I will make chicken salad out of canned chicken and snack on that over a few days with a couple wheat thins crackers. I've been craving cuties lately, so I've incorporated one a day this week.

I’ve experienced a few times where I need to rush to the bathroom after eating. It was very obvious last night it was due to eating a small amount of nonfat (but w/sugar) frozen yogurt. I guess I thought dumping syndrome was super painful? My experience is not painful but it does involve the need to immediately go to the bathroom. Is that one type of dumping syndrome?

I just had an endoscopy with dilation this past Wednesday. My symptoms were fairly frequent vomiting, trouble eating some solids, and strangely enough trouble with water. The only things that I could keep down consistently were smoothies ( Greek yogurt, frozen strawberries, ice and diet cran-grape juice) and protein bars. Seems to be a little better. May have to go back for a second dilation but the procedure was very easy, no pain and minimal discomfort afterwards.

I'm sorry you are going through this. I have had issues with constipation and now I take Miralax if I don't go within 2 days. I also use Benefiber in my yogurt every day. I had two days of the worst constipation of my life and i keep an enema bottle for emergencies in my bathroom in case the Miralax doesn't work. I was taking a vitamin with 45 mg of Iron and switched it out to one with 18 mg, I also have added a bit of fruit and beans to my diet and things seemed smoother. Things will get better once your fiber intake increases. Good luck I'm sure you will be fine.

In the beginning it is helpful to rely on protein shakes/ drinks to get to your protein goal. You may also have to add protein powder to soups, cereal, yogurt. As your tummy adjusts you will be able to acheive your goals more easily. I think I was at about 10 weeks before I could finish a whole protein drink without diluting it.

Try Fage greek yogurt with 7 blueberries, 2 frozen strawberries, and about the size of your pinky banana with 1 splendia sugar and enjoy. I hate yogurt but it taste like a smoothie you would get from jamba juice I buy the 6 oz fage and use half of it one container is 18 gm of protein so half is 9 or you can use the whole container just use 2 splendia and an xtra strawberry and 2 more blueberries.

Wow, only 20 pounds doesn't sound possible if you are carefully following the instructions from your surgeon. You should be eating so much less now that your stomach is so much smaller. That alone should have meant weight loss of more than 20 pounds. I know everyone is different, but if you stuck strictly to the healthy eating and eating habits prescribed by your doctor or bariatric program, I would think you'd be experiencing more weight loss. You should check with your doctor. Something doesn't seem right. Have you included exercise since your surgery? What are you eating on a daily basis and in what portions? Definitely food log if you are having issues with eating. See what quantities and portions your eating on a daily basis and adjust where necessary. I was sleeved August 27 and I've lost about 75 pounds so far. I have a Protein shake and Chobani 100 greek yogurt for Breakfast, the only about a 1/2 cup of food for lunch (because that's about all that will fit without making me feel very uncomfortable). I eat a half cup of cottage cheese or have a meat and cheese stick roll-up of dinner. I would estimate that my calorie intake per day is right around, or just less than, 1000 calories...mostly protein. Are you also taking Vitamins?

touch down taco dip! bottom is a can of refried Beans with a couple of cloves of chopped garlic and some cheddar cheese. top layer is some cream cheese and about 6 ounces of sour cream blended with some taco seasoning and spread on top of the bottom layer in a medium size baking pan. top with shredded mexican and bake about 20 minutes at 350. my family eats it with chips, I eat it with a spoon. We have salsa on top when it is served. very tasty and filling. or some greek yogurt with seasonings - or a purchased one like the kind with feta and dill and raw veg if you can manage the veg.

I have chobani yogurt for breakfast with a large coffee everyday than a piece of grill chicken with some salad maybe about a quarter then for dinner i have something similar, i have peanuts or almonds in between my meals :-)

Yes and No. I think the answer totally depends on how you ate before. If you ate a lot of fast food and junk, then the answer would be no, you need to change. If you ate healthy foods before, but way to much, then yes, you could eat the same things. For me, I still eat many of the same things, but with modifications. Like if I want a hamburger or hot dog at a cook out, I eat it, but without the bun. I tend to get stuck on the bun. I don't eat french fries anymore, one because they aren't to healthy and two because they get stuck. I still eat baked and bbq chicken. We do eat a lot more fish now, it's yummy. I don't eat steak anymore due to getting stuck. I've never been a big sandwich eater, so I don't eat those. While I use to make a lot of Desserts, I don't now, so that is a change. If I do make something I eat one small piece and bring the remainder to my work for co-workers or send it to the hubby's office. In the place of Pasta I often use spagetti squash or if in a pinch I will use whole grain angel hair pasta. I still eat my veggie pizza- but one slice instead of a whole or half of a pizza. Breakfast use to be a biscuit or two from McDonalds- now it's a cup of light and fit 2x Protein yogurt with fresh berries. My weight has been a slow steady decline, which my doc is happy with. Of course I would like it to be better. I will be meeting with my nutritionist next month with lots of questions and my food diary. So, basically I think the answer to your question is totally subjective.

They have a line if syrups (regular and sugar free) that a lot of coffee houses use to flavor specialty coffee. They are a sleevers best friend! Here is their site... http://www.torani.com/ There are other brands too, but this one is most available to me where I live. You can order directly from them, or on Amazon I think. I use them to flavor shakes, in Protein ice cream, to flavor plain greek yogurt, you name it! I used it in place of oil in the popcorn recipe..sweetens as well!

Have you tried just a regular cup of milk? Fruit tends to be really acidic. Milk is a buffer and can be soothing. If milk works, then stay in the dairy isle... yogurt, cottage cheese, soft cheeses.. work your way up that ladder. If dairy doesn't work, then try beans. Soy milk, thin refried beans, split pea soup, lentil soup, tofu.. The meat ladder: homemade broth, gently poached white fish, tuna with mayo, chicken thigh. Just keep on trying.. start with more liquidy foods and work your way up. Fruit doesn't have protein, and if you can't stand protein shakes then you need to find food with protein that you can tolerate.