Counting calories after weight loss surgery

Recently I started using a popular fitness journal app to help me keep track of what I’m eating and how many calories I’m burning. The first thing you see when you log in is your calorie count for the day: how much you have consumed, how much you’ve burned, and how many calories you are still allowed to eat.

At a recent support group, I was reminded that we (bariatric patients) are no longer dieters. We have undergone a drastic lifestyle change, one that no longer binds us to diets. Our new lifestyle requires that we follow a few simple rules:

• Eat 3 meals and 1 planned snack a day
• Do not drink for 30 minutes before, during, or after a meal
• Take your vitamins
• Eat 64 grams of protein
• Drink 64 ounces of water
• Plan your meals ahead of time

Calorie counting is nowhere on the list. And yet, I found myself drifting back to this old way of thinking—thinking like a dieter.

At first I really didn’t think it was such a big deal. I was just tracking what I ate and keeping an eye on the numbers. But eventually I found myself logging my fourth meal and noticing that I still had calories left on my daily allowance. So I’d eat a little more before bed. Then it became another snack in the middle of the day. Eventually I was standing in front of the refrigerator thinking about how much more I could eat before I hit my calorie quota. 

I was grazing. That dreaded behavior that we all know if the saboteur of all of our hard work.

I had fallen back on my old habit of eating whenever I felt like it, as often as I wanted. I didn’t know what I would eat next and it was oddly exciting. Possibilities.

Mindless eating, thinking about food when I wasn’t eating, going out to eat because I hadn’t planned my next meal. All of these things were old habits that were being thrown away after surgery. And slowly I had let them creep back into my life because I was focused on counting calories.

I haven’t lost a pound in nearly a month and have noticed, ounce by ounce, a slow movement upward—a terrifying thought!

So I’ve walked away from that support group discussion realizing that my focus needs to shift from calories, back to the basics. I was eating more than the 3 meals and 1 snack, the rule that I had completely disregarded was to plan ahead.

So, I stopped trying to squeeze in as much food as I could to reach a calorie limit, and instead logged all my meals for the day before I even had breakfast. In so doing, I logged 600 calories less than I had the day before! And I still had plenty to eat and felt satisfied.

Return to the basics. They aren’t flashy, just effective.

** Current weight loss: 95 pounds in nine months.

Week one following vertical sleeve gastrectomy

I’m not going to lie, the first week after the sleeve surgery has been a hard week. Not only does it include healing up from the surgery, working through some pretty intense gas pain (who knew gas could make the muscles in your shoulders feel torn?), and experiencing new sensations in the gut, but the first week is a clear liquids only diet.

The good news here is that the hunger hormones are gone so there are no real hunger pains. Instead, now I can feel when my guts don’t have anything in them. You know that your innards are always massaging and moving so that food and water are always being worked through your system. It’s strange that now I can actually feel some of that. My insides are so empty that sometimes there is this slight pain that feels like my intestine trying to process air like food.

Week one foods (plus my little Adipose, Doctor Who fans)

But the most trying thing for me is that this stage is super boring and the liquids are almost all sweet. One week ago during the pre-diet, all I could eat were protein shakes, which were a whey (or milk) protein. In the shakes I can use pudding mixes, jello mixes, syrups, and even fruit. Doesn’t actually sound too bad, but the reality is that every single food that went into my mouth was sweet. (I developed thrush mouth that week because of the disruption to my ph levels). And now a week after surgery, almost everything is still sweet tasting and lingers on the palate.

Week one after surgery consisted of the following foods:

• Ensure Active Blueberry and Pomegranate Protein Drink
• Popsicles
• Beef and chicken broth
• Flavored water
• Decaf tea
• Powerade Zero
• Regular water
• Jello

With the exception of the broth, everything tastes the same.

Tomorrow I begin stage two of the recovery diet, as I call it. I could not be more excited to taste something different. I went shopping for soups, puddings, cream of wheat cereals, yogurt, soy milk… I could not be more excited to taste these foods than I am right now. Variety makes a world of difference.

I know that this will all be worth it. I know it already just from seeing my weight change in the last three weeks beginning with pre-diet.

My stats

Beginning weight: 281

Current weight (three weeks): 258