Filled Up

WOAH-ZER! My Band is tight! This is the first time I noticed a significant tightness early in the morning.

Also, you know how they always say eat your protein first? Well today is the first time I experienced that scenario. I went out of the office today to pick up my $1000.00 Gift Certificate for Sunglasses that a few friends and I won on Facebook (WOOHOO!) And I decided to grab a kids burrito bowl from qdoba instead of eating my normal tuna fish.

So the lady put rice in the bottom of the bowl before i could tell her to skip that part, then I just opted for the chips with the kids meal instead of turning them down like I should have.

So right before I got back to the office I popped a few chips in my mouth. Not a diet killer, but not the best decision. Well, I got to my desk took two bites of chicken and that was it for me. I was not overly stuffed , but I was full. And I knew if I took another bite bad things would follow. I didn't even get close to that rice that shouldn't be in the bowl! There goes my protein for the day! Dang it! I might need a protein shake for dinner.

Heck maybe this is what I need for a little while. Oh, or maybe I need to dial it back a bit and start eating my protein first AND eat it over a 20 minute time period like I was told!

Protein Review - Isopure Protein Drink

3 Words

Dis. Gus. Ting.

Designer Whey Review

Just wanted to throw it out there that French Vanilla Designer Whey tastes like garbage. And for 100 calories it only packs 18 grams of protein. Booooooo!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Protein Shake

My bff gave me a jar of simply fruit the other day because she didn't like it. It's been sitting in the fridge at work and today it gave me the inspiration to make a fab new shake.

The Almond Milk I've been using is really good. This week I have the vanilla flavor, but I honestly can't taste the difference in my protein shakes.

Here's the recipe  (I put ice in this as well)

Tip - if you use coconut oil make sure it is in liquid form and do not put it on the cold ice or milk or you'll end up with little waxy balls of coconut oil. First pour in the ice, then milk, jelly, protein powder and then throw the oil in last. If you stack it that way in the blender, the oil will mix in well and you won't have a weird texture.

Super Bowl Sundae

Do ya'll follow The World According To Eggface? I learned about her blog at my first WLS support group meeting. One of the doctor's mentioned that the blog featured amazing protein shake recipes.I love checking in on the blog weekly.

I love that she has millions of recipes for snacks that would normally be shunned, like donuts  and ice cream.

Lately I've been craving chocolate and/or ice cream something fierce. The other day I grabbed one of those tiny Hershey's Dark Chocolate bars at work. No big deal right? It's smaller than my pinky finger. 40 calories. When I'm eating 800 calories a day, 40 calories is too much. Especially for something that offers me about 30 seconds of enjoyment. So I decided to give the protein ice cream a whirl.

I whisked 2 cups of Hood Chocolate Milk with 4 scoops of Body Fortress Chocolate Peanut Butter and threw it in my ice cream maker.We took a few extra large spoonfuls to taste test just now and it was great.

I can't wait to have some later. I'm going to top it with a bit of whip cream later and have a little sundae. When I get a chance to go to the store I'll try some of eggface's ice cream recipes because they all sound delish.

Missing Diet Coke

Definitely sad about swearing off diet coke for good, but it's probably a really good thing.
Wanted to recommend a substitute in case anyone else out there wants the taste once in a while.

The Sodastream is another one of those halfway cool kitchen gadgets you really don't need. The actual machine carbonates a bottle of tap water and then you mix in one of their concentrates to make a much cheaper version of your fav.

Since carbonation could be a cause of erosion, steer clear of the CO2 and just use the concentrate. The taste is just OK. It's like drinking a flat Coke. But if you're really wanting the flavor, mix your favorite with water and serve it over ice.

The Diet Coke is the only one I've tried and it is a good imposter. It's probably full of all the nasty chemicals that the real stuff has. But once in a while it's a decent treat.

Here is a list of flavors

ProtiZyme Protein Review

I've mentioned MyBariatricPantry.com before because they have really great prices on protein and I am really impressed with fast shipping and rewards program.

It's hard to commit to a 2 lb container of protein powder if you've never tasted it. The sample packs are right up my alley because I can have a variety of flavors and if I don't really like one I'm not out very much.

Last week they had a sale on sample packs and I was able to try another really great tasting protein powder. I was intrigued by this one because it is specially formulated for bariatric patients. Check out the description from the website:

Specialized Designed Protein Protizyme from Metabolic Nutrition is a premium pharmaceutical grade engineered protein that is ideal for pre and post bariatric patients.

It is designed to increase protein absorption and that is a very important feature to bariatric patients. In scientific terms, the secret lies within the unique manufacturing process of Protizyme, which differentiates from all other regular proteins in the marketplace. Protizymes 10x ultra-microfiltered process preserves the essential protein-peptide structure which delivers greater concentrations of amino acids, glutamine and BCAAs. Each gram of protein in Protizyme is coated with only the most potent digestive enzymes dramatically increasing digestion and absorption, therefore eliminating gas and bloating. What does this mean to you? It means you can absorb more protein per meal. More protein absorption means increased protein synthesis, thus faster results than other regular proteins!"

 

 

The peanut butter cookie powder mixed with  8 oz of skim milk and some ice made a killer breakfast! Definitely a must try!!

 

Do Yourself a Favor

People - This whole meatless thing is blowing my mind. WTF!? Tonight we had Meatless Buffalo Wings. I mean, they didn't taste like chicken wings, but they were a great tasting soft protein and the calories are ridiculous.
The normal serving size is 4 wings, but I was craving some broccoli so I only had three wings.

Look at the calories & Protein!

These meatless products are definitely making it into our weekly rotation. This is the brand we had tonight. The website shows quite a few different varieties.

Chicken Stack and 2 Types of Chicken Salad

 Tonight I picked up a rotisserie chicken at the store and premade 4 different meals with it 6.5 total servings!  (I use my foodsaver like it's going out of style. The cool thing is we have plenty of pre-portioned meals for lunches or quick dinners)

I learned how to throw together tomato sauce from my beautiful Italian mother. She used to start with tomato paste and go from there but when they came out with Ragu Robusto sauce, she would start with that as the base and add all the goodness. I love making my version of that sauce, but I'm just not there yet. I can't make it first, because it makes WAY too much sauce, but that's one thing I like to taste and taste and taste as I make it. Not worth it right now.

Well, recently I found this little jar of Wolfgang Puck Vodka Sauce that is really wonderful. It comes in a smaller bottle and I still doctor it up with garlic, onion, mushrooms, and a bunch of seasonings. But I have to admit, there is nothing wrong with that sauce right out of the bottle.

Tonight i just threw a plate on the foodscale and stacked the following on it:

2 oz of shredded rotisserie chicken
2 oz of vodka sauce - warmed up with a couple of chopped mushrooms and garlic
Topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese
(spend the 5 bucks on a big hunk of parm, keep it wrapped tightly in your fridge - it's so worth it)

I pulled the rest of the chicken and divided it up. I didn't want the chicken to dry out too much, so I decided to dress it up a bit. Here are 2 different chicken salad recipes that I came up with:

Mexican Chicken Salad:
4 oz shredded Chicken
2 tablespoons of plain Greek Yogurt
Tablespoon of Taco Seasoning (more to taste)

Mix up the yogurt and taco seasoning to make a paste and mix with chicken until coated.
Tomorrow, I plan on serving 2 oz of this salad with cubed avocado and some of my favorite tamed jalapenos. Maybe even a touch of salsa.

Black Bean & Corn Salsa Chicken Salad:
2 heaping tablespoons of Black Bean & Corn Salsa
1 tablespoon of plain Greek Yogurt
Dash of Chili Powder
2 oz of rotisserie Chicken

Mix the salsa, yogurt and seasoning, pour over chunks of chicken and lightly toss (I just put the lid on the container and shook it up) This is what is pictured. 1.5oz of avocado, 2 oz of chicken and just a touch of sour cream, cheese and jalapenos

Syntrax Nectar Roadside Lemonade

I'm still working my way through those delicious Nectar protein packets! Today I mixed Roadside Lemonade with 2% Milk and ice.

It was so delicious. If you are a lemon dessert type of person like me, this protein powder is so good.


So far out of all the flavors I've tried, I would buy a 2lb jar of Roadside Lemonade and Chocolate Truffle.

Tomorrow's breakfast is Vanilla Bean Torte. Omg. I can't wait. :)

Trader Faux Nachos

I'm very excited that we were able to add some crunch to our diets with some crackers this week. Tonight I had a delicious dinner that had 330 calories and 12 grams of protein and it replaced an old junk food favorite.

I threw a paper plate on my food scale and added the following ingredients

1 serving of Trader Joes Savory Thin Mini Crackers (about 34 crackers - next time I'll do half a serving)
2 slices of Sargento Colby Pepper Jack Cheese
5-6 Merzetta Tamed Jalapenos
1 oz of sour cream (greek yogurt for even more protein)

The crackers and cheese weighed in at 2 oz, I popped that in the microwave and then topped with 1 oz of jalapenos and 1 oz of sour cream.

It was so delicious and even though it was only 4 oz of food I gave quite a few to MS and I threw a couple out.

Next time I'll do less crackers and beef them up with some chicken or ground turkey

Nectar Chocolate Truffle Review

Two Words:

AHH MAZING

Mexican Beefless Strips

MS and I are meat eaters. The atkins diet has always been a little heavenly for us because we both love all types of proteins. So when our nutritionist mentioned Tofu as a good protein source I just kind of brushed it off... no thanks. I'm not against it, it just has never been appetizing to me.

Well, MS has been researching foods with the most protein and today he stopped by the meatless section at trader joes to check out the nutrition labels. He found these beefless strips that have 20 grams of protein per serving. I was reluctant, but agreed to try them. For dinner tonight I dressed them up with taco seasoning, cheese, sour cream and tamed jalapenos and I must say, I think they were outstanding.

I'll definitely try the other meatless varieties they offer. At this stage of our diet, we would not be able to eat strips of steak like that. The beefless strips were softer and easy to chew.

Check them out for sure, I was truly the biggest skeptic.

1/3 package beefless strips
Cumin
Taco Seasoning
small amount Olive Oil or Butter
Tamed Jalapenos
Shredded Cheddar
Sour Cream
Salsa

by the way, these are pretty amazing too!

Saute the strips in heated pan and oil or butter. Generously coat the strips with taco seasoning and cumin. Just heat up the strips, do not overcook. Plate the strips and garnish with cheese, jalapenos and sour cream or salsa. Guacamole would be great too!


For meals like this I just put the plate on my food scale and layer ingredients until I reach 4 oz.

Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Turkey Meatballs

Man we ate a lot of great food today. Even though I made 10 servings of pulled pork yesterday, I didn't feel like eating it today. Since MS and I had to go grab him some smaller pants at the mall, we stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home.

I've read a lot about their frozen Turkey Meatballs so I knew  I definitely wanted to try them. Today they were giving out samples of Tomato Red Pepper soup so MS grabbed one. Neither of us really care that much for tomato soup, but holy crap, you need to try this soup.

It doesn't have enough protein to have by itself, so you could add protein powder. Or... duh... put some pre-cooked meatballs in it.

This is going to be one of my favorite go-to easy meals for a while. In fact, I don't think I'll go very long without having these two ingredients on hand for the next year.




For 1 serving, Place 3 Turkey Meatballs in a deep bowl and cover with Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup. Cover and microwave for 3-5 minutes until it reaches the desired temp.

3 meatballs has 18 grams of protein and 150 calories.

MyFitnessPal.com

Yesterday, on Lapbandtalk.com, I asked what the best web based food tracker was and I had two main responses. Myfitnesspal.com and Sparkpeople. Being the serial dieter that I have been, spark people is old news to me. But MyFitnessPal.... now this is something to write about.

Pros: The mobile app is awesome. I can read a bar code on anything I'm eating and it will add the nutritional information for me. No bar code? The database is crazy. I mean they even have every kind of kroger brand cheese the place sells.

You can track your food and fitness. I still like having Endomondo for the GPS in case I walk outside.

At the end of each day it tells you your calorie count and gives you a message that says something like "if every day were like today you'll weigh XYZ by this date" I think that's cool

Cons: It doesn't let you track what you want to track like Spark People. For instance, I want to see how much protein I've had on my phone. But it only shows calories. I have to log into the website to check my protein.

On that same note, Myfitnesspal figures out what calories I need. My nutritionist told me to try for 800 a day but not to worry so much about that yet, and just too focus on getting protein from real food. Myfitnesspal says I need 1400+ calories and keeps giving me a warning for eating too little. I think it would be cool if these sites let you pick your weight loss method.

All in all I'd say it's pretty cool!!

Single Servings

In the past I would actually scoff at the high price of these single serving foods. The price was entirely too high for 2  people who could easily eat 2 or 3 of these in one setting.

Well, not anymore. These little pre-portioned gems bring happiness to my new life.

We are at the point where we can try some crackers to see how they go down! Another perfect lunch.

This is perfect for 1 lunch - The whole package has 25 grams of protein!

I don't know how I feel about the premixed chicken salad, but I'll try it once.

30 Grams of Protein Per Can

Add a little protein powder - I get 6 servings out of this cup! Ridiculous.

Crock Pot Pulled Pork

I found a pretty simple recipe for Crock Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches on Pinterest and tried it yesterday. We obviously skipped the bread on this one, but I did serve 3 oz of the pork with 1 oz of mashed potatoes

Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce is my absolute favorite out of a bottle, but I normally make homemade BBQ sauce to lower the sugar for MS. This recipe was great, but I did  doctor it up at the end and make a thicker more flavorful sauce out of the juice.

Here's the recipe inspired from Sweetandsavoryfood.com:

Boneless Pork Butt
Can of Diet Coke
1/2 Bottle of Sweet Baby Rays
Seasoning Salt (I only had Tony Chachere's Creole so I used that)
Cook on low all day, pull the meat with a fork, remove pieces of fat and return to the sauce for a bit.

If you want a thicker sauce:
take a cup or two of sauce out of the crock pot and place in a large bowl. Wisk in Mustard, Ketchup, brown sugar, garlic salt and pepper. Return to the pot or just pour over pork and serve.

We liked it, the meat was very juicy and easy to chew up. This whole recipe cost about $11 and I was able to get 10 - 4 oz servings from it.  I wrapped up most of the servings in my foodsaver so we'll have pre-portioned lunches and dinners that can be heated in the microwave.

Fast Foods For Bandsters!

Check this out! I just saw on the news that Chick Fil A is offering a healthier kids meal option and it looks like a really fabulous option for anyone with bariatric surgery. Yay!

Even in our soft food stage all of this food would be acceptable. Heck if the chicken is too dry, even a half container of chick fil a sauce would be fine.. I looked on the website and can't access the nutritional information yet. But I did see that you can order this meal with a lot of other options.

Of course there is White Milk and Chocolate Milk, you can choose from 6 grilled nuggets or 4 along with . The healthy  sides are Buddy fruits or a Fresh Fruit Cup.

While I was looking at the Chick Fil A website, I noticed a few other great options for us if ever caught in a bad situation.  Or heck, if we just want to go out for lunch with our friends.

Chicken Tortilla soup looks amazing, just skip the tortilla strips if you can't have those yet. I don't know how many ounces are in the medium cup, but we can probably get two meals out of it. There are 230 calories and 19 grams of protein in a medium serving. Looks like this one is a limited time offering.

There's also chicken salad that is available in a cup. The whole cup has 28 grams of protein! It is a bit high in calories (350) because of the mayo... but if you split it into two meals, it's a great option.

I'll make sure to update this post when I know what the serving sizes of the soup and chicken salad are.

I'm guessing both are 1 cup, which would be 2 meals for us now, but after a year or so that would be a perfectly portioned lunch packed with protein.

This is great if you're busy shopping and realize you really need to eat something. Or you just feel like going out to eat with your family or friends.

Special Delivery

I'm so excited!!!! Remember how I was saying I was sick of chocolate protein powder? The other day at the store I saw 2 lb jars of  a brand of  protein powder called Nectar but it was close to $40! Now i don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for packaging. This is what the description says on the back of the jar:

"Gone are the days of low quality whey protein. Gone are the days of those blah-tasting protein drinks that promise much but deliver little. Nectar once-and-for-all breaks the mold by combining Promina, the highest quality whey protein isolate ever developed, with a flavoring system that is so fruitilicious that you will never drink another whey protein shake ever again. If you like the refreshing taste of fruit juice, you'll love Nectar! With its mouthwatering fruit juice flavors, Nectar is truly a protein drink you will look forward to drinking each and every day. Whether it be Chocolate Truffle, Roadside Lemonade, Caribbean Cooler, Strawberry Kiwi, Lemon Tea, Fuzzy Navel, Strawberry Mousse, Vanilla Bean Torte, Twisted Cherry, Apple Ecstasy, or Cappuccino Latte. Nectar will keep you coming back for more. What's more? Well, Syntrax did something totally amazing by engineering Nectar to be so delicious that you can eat it right out of the container. Imagine putting a protein powder in your mouth and it tasting like candy. Imagine this protein powder having zero carbs and zero fat."

Are you kidding me? Is that not the best sales pitch for protein powder you've ever heard in your life? I wanted to buy one so bad but my inner cheap skate kept telling me it was a rip off. So instead I bought something I didn't want for less. boo. (that's getting returned of course)

I've come to realize that you should price shop protein powder. Like I said in an earlier post, we paid $26 for the same 2lb container of body fortress powder at kroger that was $14.99 at wal mart.

When I got home I searched for Nectar online and not only found 2 lb jars for $26 but I found this fab little variety pack for $16!!!! Reviews on a few Bariatric websites were all excellent, so I ordered my variety pack.

The package arrived today and it was like christmas all over again. I can't wait to try them

Look at all these flavors!

Just as I was typing this, I searched for that packaging message, and found this sample pack for $3 less than what I paid. Go figure! Here's the cheaper link:

http://www.mybariatricpantry.com/SYNTRAX_NECTAR_PROTEIN_POWDER_SAMPLES_p/nectar-sample.htm

Check In!

Hi! I've been a little quiet the past two day, MS and I are still doing good, we just got slapped in the faces with some bug that's going around. Have been taking the work outs easy because we're feeling so crappy. Hopeful we'll be back on track in a day or two.

I had my first panic feeling today. I cut a Tylenol in half so it wouldn't get stuck so I had four small pieces. I took 3 of them a little fast and I felt like i was going to projectile vomit those things right back out. I stood up and walked around my office just kind of dealing with that weird feeling that everyone talks about on forums and blogs. Nothing came up, it ended up settling after a few minutes. Close call :)

Also wanted to let anyone who is interested know that there is a coupon out there right now for slimfast premixed low carb shakes Buy One Get One Free!!! Brings the cost down to less than 75 cents a shake!
There are also $1.00 off Atkins shake coupons as well. If you don't get the Sunday paper you can get them online just look up printable coupons!