share your tips please
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Lori_Pensel
Posts: 34 Member
For those of you who are further in your journey can you please share some of the things you have learned along the way, some tips for success and what you have learned to help us newer to the journey be as successful as you have been. Your success is so inspirational!!
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Hi Lori_Pensel - One of the simple changes that I did in my house, was to use smaller plates. I got rid of the larger plates. Also, I bought 1 cup glass pyrex bowls. This way after dinner, I can put left overs in the bowls and my lunch is now made for the next day.5
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I agree with the smaller plates. I've been using my son's old toddler plates and it keeps me from wasting food that won't be eaten.
Here is what turned into a huge list of other things:- Explore recipes. Don't bore yourself into bad cravings by being afraid to try new things, especially since your taste buds can and do change post-surgery.
- If you find a trigger item, eliminate it. There's a difference between something you can indulge in now and again and things that trigger old, bad habits. The problem is those items are often different post-surgery as well, so it can take a while to identify them and it's easy to fall into that trap. For instance, I have no problems eating a small amount of sweet things (cake, donuts, etc.) from time to time. I just take a VERY small slice, eat it and move on. Ritz Cheese Crackers, of all things, are a huge trigger for me and I won't allow them in my house anymore. They are evil. Go figure.
- Start exercising now. Even if it's just walking, get used to getting yourself moving. You're going to WANT to move after a while - I get antsy if I'm not up moving around at least once an hour.
- Gauge your personality and make decisions that won't self-sabotage accordingly. For instance, if you know you're the type of person who goes crazy with normal weight fluctuations, think about not weighing every day. If you will go crazy if you don't have that daily weight, invest in a good scale that measures weight/BMI/body fat/water percentage/etc.
- Speaking of weight, you'll have stalls. This is pretty much going to happen to everyone. Grab a tape measure when it does and 9 times out of 10, your weight is going nowhere but your body mass is getting smaller.
- Don't buy a great deal of post-surgery food in advance. Buy one or two things and then go from there because you may loathe the taste of things you love right now.
- Try protein powders by investing in samples. Had I done that, I would have saved hundreds of dollars I wasted when I realized that I was allergic to all of the ones I tried.
- Don't spend a ton of money on new clothes. Thrift stores/Goodwill/consignment shops will be your new best friend. There were literally times I bought a new pair of pants for work and before I even had them washed and ready to wear, I had dropped another size. It seriously is like buying baby clothes - half the time, before you can even wear them, you're out of them again. The only things I was willing to buy new were bathing suits and undergarments and I cannot tell you how much money I saved. Now that I'm at my weight goal, I'm still wary of buying anything new and I'm sticking to buying cheap (Ross, Dirt Cheap, etc., my thrift stores) at the moment.
- Be prepared for people to act differently around you. Some people will greatly encourage what is going on with your body. Some people will not know how to handle things. Some people may even respond negatively. Remember that how THEY react is THEIR business, not yours. Just be you and let the chips fall - your real friends will be there when things shake out.
- Be honest with yourself when things start getting off track. Find someone in your life that you can talk with about that, someone that is a good enough friend to bring it up/encourage you if you have a hard time getting back on the wagon. My husband is that guy - he will tell me pointedly to go to the gym or go for a walk if he sees me start slacking on exercise.
- Seek out a support group if there's one locally. It's great to pay what you learn forward, and it's also a way to help encourage people who may be frightened of what's to come. Even better is the benefit of the experience of the people who came before you and the medical experts that are usually guiding the conversation.
I know these seem fairly generic, but they're things I wished I had known or paid better attention to from other people when I started my journey.16 -
I second everything here!2
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I wish it had been stressed to me to take advantage of the time that you are loosing easily, go to the gym create as many good habits as you can. Once the honeymoon period of weight loss is over loosing becomes hard, easily frustrated and fall back into old bad habits. Be thankful for the nausea, the dumping, not wanting to eat, as bad as you think it is, I wish that time period would have continued. Get in your protein, water and vitamins and the rest will take care of itself.4
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Everything @cmchandler74 said.
Find a non straw water bottle you love, and hopefully is dishwasher safe. 15 months out, I still use one nearly every day to have water when I'm out running my kids around.
Be prepared for your tastes to change, and I'll echo the sentiment to not buy much before your surgery for after. The protein powder I used for my prep time was great pre-surgery, but made me sick after my surgery, so I had to find another brand that sat better for me. Be ready to need to prepare food differently. It was a LONG time before grilled chicken sat well with me, and I still have to be careful with grilled beef or pork at 15mo post op. But it wasn't long at all before I could handle chicken slow cooked in the crockpot. Soft and juicy protein was key for me especially in the early months.
Invest in: a digital food scale, and ideally one you can set a plate or bowl on and then zero out again to get an accurate food measurement.
An immersion blender- so helpful during the liquid and puree stage, and I still use one to mix protein shakes or smooth out soups.
Soft cooler lunch bag and gel ice packs for it. I still need to bring food many places with me, and especially in summer, being able to take cheese, lunch meat, chocolate protein shakes, cottage cheese, greek yogurt, etc is really nice when I know I'm going to be in a hot car/pool/playground/whatever with my kids for several hours. Also makes it easy to bring them healthy snacks
Take before pics, AND take your measurements. I begrudgingly took pics, and really regret not doing measurements before my surgery. Sometimes the tape measure is a better indicator of loss than the scale, and can show losses when the scale is stalled.6 -
I echo the sentiments about taking pictures and measurements...I regret not doing it! To be honest, I think a small part of me thought I would fail so I just didn't bother. I haven't taken a "fat pants" picture yet because I have an irrational fear that they won't actually be too big!
I was a strictly weight every day (that I could) sort of girl for the first year or so of my total journey. As I approached a normal weight, this became more frustrating than motivating and now only record once a week. Note I said record...lol...I don't weigh every day but sometimes I like to get on the scale after a good run and see what the future COULD be.
For all the changes you'll have to make, choose 1 or 2 things to focus on at a time during your prep period. I am a very thirsty person so not eating and drinking at the same time was a tough habit to break; also, having to sip instead of guzzle and still get in my gallon a day. I felt parched for months after my surgery just because it was physically impossible for me to drink enough.0
