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.