PLEASE HELP - Diet after gallbladder removal

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Sabriel_25
Sabriel_25 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I had my gallbladder removed recently. I'm looking for realistic advice about what to eat now. I also need to lose weight. I've read that my new diet should be lean protein and high fiber but I don't know what that means in terms of grams per day or percentages.

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  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
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    What, if anything, did your doctor tell you?

    I had my gallbladder removed in 2005. The only difference now compared to before is that high fat meals, like a hearty American breakfast, go straight through me.
  • Sabriel_25
    Sabriel_25 Posts: 2 Member
    edited October 2019
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    The doctor told me there isn't any special diet I should follow; just to avoid high fat, high carb, greasy food, sugar and dairy. Unfortunately my diet consisted of a lot of those types of foods which lead to needing my gallbladder removed in the first place. I would like to use MFP to track my food intake and make sure I'm eating "healthy" but I don't know how to set the macro nutrient settings.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
    edited October 2019
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    Ask your doctor for specific macro percentages, and if they can't tell you, ask for a referral to a dietitian (or maybe just ask for that first.)

    Or just use the MFP default macros - 50% from carbohydrates, 20% from protein and 30% from fat. Maybe take 5% from fat and give it to protein, so 50% from carbohydrates, 25% from protein and 25% from fat.

    The diary will only show 5 nutrients, but tracks more. You can swap out something you are not tracking, perhaps sugar or sodium, and replace it with Fiber. https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

    See where you are now with fiber, and if you need to increase to hit your target, do it slowly, or you will be sorry ;)

    After you've hit the default fiber target for a while with no adverse effects, you can increase your goal here: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my_goals
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,102 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Ask your doctor for specific macro percentages, and if they can't tell you, ask for a referral to a dietitian (or maybe just ask for that first.)

    Or just use the MFP default macros - 50% from carbohydrates, 20% from protein and 30% from fat. Maybe take 5% from fat and give it to protein, so 50% from carbohydrates, 25% from protein and 25% from fat.

    The diary will only show 5 nutrients, but tracks more. You can swap out something you are not tracking, perhaps sugar or sodium, and replace it with Fiber. https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

    See where you are now with fiber, and if you need to increase to hit your target, do it slowly, or you will be sorry ;)o

    After you've hit the default fiber target for a while with no adverse effects, you can increase your goal here: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my_goals

    IMO, this is excellent advice.

    I'd suggest, prior to seeing that dietitian, that consuming nutrient-dense carbohydrate-containing foods (veggies, fruits, legumes) is not the same nutritionally as eating nutrient-poor carbohydrate or carbohydrate/fat combos (fried potatoes/crisps/chips, cookies, pastries, candy etc.) that are less filling for most people, so easier to over-eat. Preferring the former over the latter is likely to result in overall lower carb consumption, better nutrition, better satiation, and therefore is likely to make it easier to stick to a reasonable calorie goal.

    Calories are what count for weight loss, but nutrient-dense foods are (obviously!) more nutritious calorie for calorie, and for many people are also more filling.
  • cheryldumais
    cheryldumais Posts: 1,907 Member
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    I had mine out years ago and as others have said I just have problems with super high fat meals as I can't digest them. Eating to MFP standards has worked for me.
  • theowlbox
    theowlbox Posts: 912 Member
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    plenty of people have no issues at all post surgery. it might depend on how much bile your gallbladder was bringing to the digestion of your food. if lots, the loss of it can change your digestion of certain foods. but while many people have no change, there are those of us (like some posting here) who have often immediate NO votes from their bodies on certain foods or meals.
    the advice you've gotten on macros is great and everyone (hopefully) knows about keeping to your calorie goal, but the one difference i might see is that while you moght be within your calorie goals to eat certain meals, your body might have a problem depending on how much you eat of something at a time. you'll figure out through trial and error how many taquitos is a recipe for emergency. one of the great things about logging food outside of weight loss goals is knowing how you respond to foods in terms of reactions and sensitivity. so keep logging and you'll have the data you need. :smiley:

    good luck and hope you feel better soon!
  • Hopehaswings97
    Hopehaswings97 Posts: 38 Member
    edited October 2019
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    I had my gallbladder removed a year ago. I don't eat greasy foods like pizza or any red meat like beef or pork. I eat only turkey or chicken for meat. I can have other foods as normal, for me anyway. I eat cereal, chicken strips, fruit, and yogurt most days. I hope this can help. :)

    Also, I lost 30 pounds since my surgery and removing the red meat and greasy food was a big help in that process. I still have difficulty eating these foods and it has been a little over a year now.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,102 Member
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    FWIW:

    My surgeon recommended that I follow a lower fat diet (not eliminate all fat, but keep it on the low side of healthy) for a while after surgery, then, if I chose to do so, to carefully and gradually reintroduce higher-fat foods.

    My surgery was part way through weight loss (need for surgery not caused by weight loss; it wasn't stones/sludge). At that point, my fat intake was already fairly low as a result of reducing calories. I forget what the intake recommendation was, but I was within it while eating around the MFP default fat percent (for me at 5'5", averaging about 60g daily +/- ). Therefore, I made no changes after surgery, vs. what I'd been eating in the few months before.

    Post weight loss, I've occasionally eaten very high fat foods/meals without incident, such as a whole basket of beer-battered fried mushrooms, or very cheesy pasta with cheese sauce. So far, so good.

    This is not everyone's experience, but it works out this way for some of us, so you can hope to have a fairly flexible diet in the long term.
  • LAT1963
    LAT1963 Posts: 1,375 Member
    edited October 2019
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    First--if you can get any more specific info from your doc, follow that advice. If the doc is vague, ask if you can have a consult with a dietician to go over it with you, that should be a reasonable thing for them to let you access since you are post-op.

    The basic biology is your liver makes bile. Bile goes through the bile duct to the duodenum, which is the first section of your intestines after your stomach. Bile is used to emulsify fats in your digestive system--that means it breaks fats down into tiny manageable globs so that the rest of your digestive system can interact with it more easily--its easier for digestive enzymes to get to the center of a small glob than a big one. Well shaken oil/vinegar dressing is an example of an emulsion. Bile also carries cholesterol out of the liver into the gut, most of which is re-adsorbed later. If you eat a lot of fiber, the amount of time food is in your gut is reduced, the opportunity to reclaim cholesterol is reduced, you are less efficient at reclaiming cholesterol, and your cholesterol level goes down, which is why high fiber foods make claims to lower your cholesterol.

    The gallbladder is a storage reserve for bile. In some people, the stored bile can crystallize (for various reasons) creating gallstones or gallbladder 'sludge', which makes the gallbladder prone to pain, injury, inflammation, and infection. This can lead to needing to have the gallbladder removed, the way an appendix gets removed except that the gallbladder still has a function. The bile duct remains in functional form, which is important because protein-digesting enzymes from the pancreas feed into the same duct on their way to the duodenum where they will digest proteins.

    Without your gallbladder your liver is still making and releasing bile, but your body can't store it up for use after a heavy-fat meal. This means that your ability to deliver bile to your digestive tract to deal with fat is only as much as the liver can make on the spot. If you eat too much fat in one sitting, you won't get enough bile in your gut to emulsify the fat so you can digest it, the microbes in your gut will make a mess of it instead, and you'll wind up pooping it out and having diarrhea.

    But you can and should still eat moderate fat levels. You might consider experimenting by eating low fat meals and then gradually increasing the fat content in meals until you find the level that makes you uncomfortable, then back off by what you feel is a reasonable safety margin, say 10 or 20%?
  • StephanieLWS
    StephanieLWS Posts: 22 Member
    edited October 2019
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    This is a great thread for me.

    I haven't had it removed but I had the first-time experience of a severe gallbladder attack coupled with chest spasms (we initially thought I was having a heart attack), a night in the ER, all the testings, and with results that my gallbladder has sludge, no stones visible (unless just passed), and possible removal in the future. The following week after I had no more than 10g fat/day and now I have up to 30g/day and no more than 10g at one sitting.

    As a precaution. I'm not going through that again by my own choices.

    My food is so limited now, though, that it's becoming a little boring. I was losing weight by calorie counting, eating anything within cal limits, but now I also eat mostly vegetarian/vegan via the circumstances. And I happen to love meat and cheese, so it's been a little sad for me.

    I appreciate the information above.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
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    I had mine out a couple of years ago. I was already losing weight so I didn't have to change my diet because I was eating less fat already. I was eating 1600 calories which included 55 grams of fat and didn't have any issues after the first 2 months or so as long as I did not eat a high fat day.

    Easy ways to reduce fat: buy leaner meats (I get 93% lean ground beef for example), use cooking spray instead of butter or oils when sauteing or pan searing meat, get reduced fat dairy (as long as it tastes good to you. I get fat free Greek yogurt and skim milk but go with full fat cheese).

    Can your doctor refer you to a Registered Dietician? That would be a great way to start so you can get all your questions answered.

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