Food landscape keeps changing

No, Virginia, there isn’t a quick way to master your DS!

I think before surgery I figured it would take a matter of months (six – maybe eight?) before I had Life-as-a-DS-Patient nailed, but the real truth of the matter is, the learning curve is much longer than I ever anticipated. I’m not the best student of the DS out there, but I’m solid – say, a B+ -- and at almost 13 months out, I’m definitely still learning, big-time.

For one thing, in the first year, particularly the first six months, what and how much you can eat changes dramatically. What was true for you in Week 2 won’t be true by Week 6, and the same thing goes for the months as they pass by.

Okay, on some level I was at least intellectually, if not actually, prepared for that. People post often about such changes in the online discussion forums devoted to the DS, so it didn’t come as a complete surprise.

But what I’m finding now is a little more subtle, and I certainly never anticipated this little factoid. Now that I’m no longer morbidly obese but the size of the average American woman, I have different reactions to various foods than I used to as a fat person, and those reaction have specifically to do with the issue of size rather than surgery. And it’s actually my husband who pointed this out to me the other day – it took a comment from him for me to figure it out.

I’d been scaling back the white flour and sweets that had crept in to my diet over the holidays. Scaling back was a good thing, but it didn’t mean that I hadn’t been trying to get away with some Carb Shit. For example, for the past three weeks I’ve had this thing for potato chips. Too many of them (goes waaaaay back to my childhood, but I digress …). Somehow in my warped little mind I justified this in recent days by telling myself that, although potato chips constitute major carbs, at least they don’t involve white flour or sugar. I need a certain amount of fat to keep my innards functioning smoothly, and so I defended the fat intake that way.

I conveniently forgot about the SALT.

Oh. My. God. Can you say Bloat City?

Now, in the past I’ve heard all manner of people, particularly those who are dieting, talk about how this food or that was high in sodium and pushed their weight up the next morning, thanks to water retention – and I understood this in theory, but it wasn’t actually anything I’d ever experienced. Hell, at 280 pounds, two pounds up or down meant nothing to me, and it could have been caused by any number of things. Salt? Sure, but how was that different from any other feeling of bloat? I was used to the feeling of being bloated, for heaven’s sake, and I certainly never really attributed it to the sodium content of foods.

Now, however, I find that I’m vastly more sensitive to certain things (spices, for example), and salt (which might qualify as a spice, I suppose) is one of them. Mind you, I totally over-indulged in chips the other day over a 2-3 hour period, eating probably two shallow cereal-bowls’ full. I felt terrible the next day – not because I made endless trips to the bathroom, because I didn’t; I just felt rotten and packed into my clothing, and … yucky. Not only had I overeaten in terms of actual amount and calories, but I’d consumed way too much sodium. I was complaining aloud to my husband, and he quite sensibly pointed out that I’d probably eaten as many potato chips the previous day as I would when I weighed 280 pounds, but now they’d gone into a 167-pound body, and that smaller body can’t process all those chips very well anymore.

I looked at him, open-mouthed. “Wow, you’re right!” I said, after a moment. It quite simply had never occurred to me. Hello??? Wake up! Brain, catch up with body!

What was left of the chips went into the garbage that morning, and if I buy any more (because one day, of course, I will), it’s going to have to be either the single-serving size (thank you, Weight Watchers, for the tip) or the short stack of Pringles. (I was out later that day at a restaurant where I had a roast chicken, cheese, and bacon sandwich, and the chips that automatically came with the sandwich, unbeknownst to me, went directly into the trash.)

I feel much better today: no chips in the past few days, less bloat. I’ve been trying to get in more liquids since my fainting episodes of the last few weeks and I’ve been faithful to my new year’s commitment of being vigilant about vitamins and supplements. I’ve steered clear of white flour and sweets (though I’m still enjoying popcorn – for some reason that seems to do no harm at the moment in terms of weight loss, bathroom issues, and general sense of well-being). And my protein is high, which is great – that’s one thing I’ve never stinted on.

I find that I’m also beginning to cut back on fats as well – or, if not to cut back on them, to think about and moderate them more. For example, if I have a full-fat latte, then it’s going to be a tall, not a grande; if it’s a grande, it’s going to be non-fat. And if it’s flavored, it’s always going to be sugar-free (that’s been true since the DS, actually): there are enough carbs in milk alone as it is. I’m a little over a year out, and the general consensus is that DS patients begin to absorb fats more efficiently after a period of time. No one knows by how much – but malabsorbing fats at the rate of 80% probably doesn’t hold steady for most DSers the further away from surgery they get.

In other words, these days I’m beginning to pick and choose my fats -- the when, where, and what of them, and I think that's A Good Thing.

Comments

[Ann]

I hear you on the chips... I purchased some Pringle low fat ones for the family but ended up eating them. I was looking for flavour and found I tolerated them well. The sodium is the killer though. Sounds like your making some really wise choices right now...it'll be interesting to see how it pays off in terms of the weight loss (not that you have far to go anymore...yay!)

[Deluzy]

Thanks, Ann. At 13+ months out, my weight loss has slowed dramatically, of course, but I think that going back to basic eating and upping (or rather, ADDING!) exercise will make a significant difference and see me to goal -- hopefully by the "close" of my 18-month window. However, we can always lose more weight the conventional way -- diet and exercise -- and I think we WLS patients often forget that because we've had such an awful time of losing and keeping it off in the past!

[*S*]

Great tip about the sodium, Alison. Do you know of any long-term studies about malabsorption of fat for DSers? It seems to really vary with the individual after
2+ years, if the posts to the DS board are anything to go by. I have been told that I'll eventually have to cut back on my skim milk habit - I have 3-4 glasses a day - but it is such cheap, easy protein for the time being that it would be hard to give it up.

[Deluzy]

*S*, as far as I know, there are no definitive studies of long-term stats re: DSers and rates/percentages of fat malabsorption. As you say, though, anecodotal evidence suggests that we simply do begin to absorb more than we used to.

I'm only now, at over a year out, beginning to think about what fats I will and won't eat. I say keep doing what you're doing, as long as it works for you. As things change, you can tweak.