A Post Gastric Bypass Day In Food

I recently had a great message sent to my Melissa Loses It Facebook page (the link is on that button up there to the right) requesting I do a post about what a normal day in food looks like for me. This lovely ladies hubby is going to be having a gastric bypass soon and she wanted to know how it might change the way she cooks for the family in general and what a usual day in food looks like for me now.

One of the main things about post gastric bypass life is the golden rules you need to live by in terms of how your eating and habits around eating change and I’ve already done a post about that here. Basically, I have three meals a day and shouldn’t have a need to snack. Sometimes I do but it’s not the norm and it’s a habit I’ve tried to stay away since my bypass. If I do snack though it tends to be something like yoghurt or something that at least has a bit of protein in it because if it’s going to go in it needs to be worth it.

I am a creature of habit and I have the same breakfast every day. Because I work full-time, look after my little guy, try to be a good wife, keep my household running and have to manage my blog I’m quite busy and mornings during the week are no exception. I have a protein shake for breakfast everyday and I’ve posted the recipe for it here already. My dietician would not recommend this as a daily breakfast for everyone this far out from surgery for various reasons but for me it works and because it has such a hit of protein it helps me meet my daily protein goal.

Quite often for lunch I have dinner leftovers because they tend to be protein rich and I can eat the same things over and over and not get bored. In terms of organisation this makes my life easier if I’m eating the same things all the time too. Salads that have a big meat component are easy non dinner leftovers lunches that I can make easily if I don’t have dinner leftovers.

The picture immediately above is one of my easy lunches. I only recently discovered these tortilla boats (that’s what I’m calling them anyway) and I fill it with beetroot hummus, finely shredded iceberg lettuce, capsicum, chopped ham and top it with a tiny bit of grated Edam cheese. Depending on the day I can’t always finish this lunch but if I do it has an average amount of protein. The main image of this post is pretty much the same lunch but using leftover nacho mince in the boat rather than ham.

For dinner I tend to make things that the family can and will eat but I will generally only have the main protein component and just skip the carbohydrate part of the meal since I don’t eat many carbs now. This is by choice because I don’t have the same physical response to them and I don’t find them satisfying to eat but also because they fill me up quickly and I then tend not to be able to get enough protein in.

As an example I have included a picture of my version of tacos. I make actual tacos for my hubby (three-year old won’t eat these yet) and I just have the salad, mince and a small bit of cheese and sour cream on top. We’re still both having the same dinner but I just tailor it to my needs. This was good in the soft food stages too because I literally just had the mince and it was soft and moist enough that it went down a treat. Other things like spaghetti bolognaise, nachos, lasagna, etc I do the same and just don’t have the parts I can’t/don’t want to eat.

When I was working back up to a ‘normal’ way of eating and going through the puree and soft foods stages I was a bit more picky and wouldn’t have necessarily been able to do this with most meals but in hindsight it was a relatively short period of time and now its much easier. When I was in the earlier stages I always made sure when I made something I could eat that I would make far too much and either freeze or refrigerate portions down for me so that I always had something on hand for myself if what I was cooking for the rest of the family didn’t suit me. I really recommend you do this because it means its much, much easier to make sure you stay on track with what you should be eating and it will lead to less issues with food.

Now, 18 months out from my surgery, I know my teeny tiny tummy pretty well in terms of what it likes, doesn’t like and what it just plain wont tolerate. This is good when I go out and to other people’s houses to eat because I can easily make decisions around what is the best thing for me to eat from whats on offer. I do always carry a protein bar around with me just in case too. That’s what a normal day in food looks like for me now. It’s usually lots of leftovers and whatever my current obsession is (at the moment beetroot hummus is my thing!)

If you have had bariatric surgery do you find it easy to prepare meals for yourself and your family or are you cooking different things for different people? How far out from your surgery did you find a new normal around food and have your families eating habits changed with yours? Comment below and tell me I’d love to know how it worked for you.

*To give you some idea of scale all of the plates used in the photos in this post are side plates.