Liquid Diet

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope you all have had a wonderful week, and are looking forward to the weekend. Yesterday was my 6 month post op check up at my surgeon's office. They were very pleased with the progress I have made. I have lost a total of 27 pounds in 3 months. They didn't have my lab results when I went in, so not sure if I have any vitamin deficiencies or not. They are going to call me later today with those results.

Today is the last day of the liquids phase of the 10-day pouch reset diet, and it could not have come soon enough. I have been battling with the mental hunger all week, and have broken the diet a few times. This liquid phase was so much harder than the 2 weeks of liquid diet immediately following surgery.

Following surgery, your surgeon puts you on a very strict diet as your new stomach is basically relearning how to be a stomach. They liken it to a newborn baby's stomach. This is what a typical post op diet looks like:

Week 1- Clear Liquids:
-Broth, water, juice

Weeks 2-4 - Full Liquids:
-Protein shakes, smooth soups, melted jello

Weeks 5-7 - Soft Foods:
-Cottage cheese, canned tuna/chicken, pudding

Weeks 9-11 - Transitioning to Hard Foods:
-Slowly introduce hard foods to your stomach and see how the sleeve takes it.

I remember vividly taking 2 hours to "eat" a coffee mug of broth immediately following surgery. The stomach is so swollen after surgery, that the opening inside is no bigger than a ballpoint pen. As the swelling goes down, the opening inside increases, ending up at about the size of a banana.

Not surprisingly, the liquid diet phase has its limitations. There is only so much variety that you can get from liquids, and you quickly get bored of having the same thing. A lot of the liquid diet is trial and error. You find what works for you and what doesn't and move on. One of the things that I quickly learned was how drastically smaller my portion size was. As I prepared for surgery, I must have purchased every flavor of broth/soup base I could find, and a good few of those are still in my pantry.

Here are some of my Liquid Diet tips:

1. Only buy as you need. You may feel like you want to stock up on all of the soups you find (there are a surprising amount of broth options available once you find a store that has them), but you won't be able to eat them all. Only buy one to two soup cartons at a time. This allows you to not only save money on soup that you will never eat, but to keep your options open as well.

2. Where to find the best soups: Trader Joes has some really great creamy soup options. Some of my favorites were their Creamy Tomato soup, their Sweet Corn & Red Pepper soup, and their Chicken Broth with just a sprinkle of garlic salt. Another brand of broths that are really good are Pacific. These were somewhat harder to find, but I ended up finding them at Central Market (a local Seattle Town & Country Market chain). Some of my favorite of those were the Mexican Tortilla soup base and the Chicken Pho soup base.

3. Get your protein in. Right after surgery, you are going to have a VERY hard time making sure that you get your minimum 60 grams of protein in, but it is essential for the healing process. This doesn't have to mean that you are only drinking sweet Protein shakes all day for 2 weeks. One of the things I did was to add unflavored protein powder to the broths that I was eating. This is a good way to keep your protein up without having to sacrifice taste. Another option is Unjury protein broth, which is a chicken flavored broth protein powder. I wasn't a huge fan of this because it couldn't get too hot or it would clump up.

I hope you find these tips helpful not only for post-op gastric sleeve liquid diet options, but for anyone wanting to go on a liquid diet for a few days. It is a great way to quickly shrink your stomach without starving yourself.

Have a great weekend!
Jenelle