Don't try this at home!

The subject is liquid.
Now pay attention! There will be a quiz!

Bariatric patients have to pay attention to liquids. We have rules. Lots of rules.

• We can't mix food with liquids.
  
• We have to drink 15 minutes before a meal (if we are thirsty, that is!) or no less than an hour after meals.
• We can't drink liquids during the meal unless we want to dump, suffer, or embarrass ourselves!
• We shouldn't drink alcohol because it gets us way too drunk, way too quickly.
• We can't drink carbonated beverages unless we let them go flat first. Beer included!
  
• We can't drink anything with sugar in it. Remember, wine has sugar in it even though it's much lower in alcohol than hard liquor. Yes, the sugar is a "binding" sugar, but if you want to chance feeling lousy for a sip of spoiled fruit juice, be my guest!
  

Now, did I forget anything?
Oh yes, we have to drink a lot of liquid every day. The equivalent of a half gallon of liquid every day.
Well that sounds like a lot until you consider that a half gallon is 8/8oz. glasses, or 64 ounces.

The fun part:

This is why you don't have to drink all that liquid every day.
You get a lot of water in your food!

Don't try this at home!

The juicer machine became popular through the TV infomercials. I bought one, and hated it. It made juice that was oh so good. But, it left behind a ton of "pulp" which was a royal pain to clean out of the machine. And, it wasted all that good fiber. How can you throw it away?

Now, imagine you take everything you are going to eat today, and run it through a juicer. How much liquid would you get?

• If you eat oatmeal, you get the small amount you add to the oatmeal. The stomach extracts that liquid and adds it to the total. You don't have to eat the oatmeal dry and the drink the liquid separately, silly goose!
• If you eat an egg, you get some liquid.
• If you eat veggies, you get liquid. Veggies are liquid with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and dirt!
• If you eat chicken, you get liquid.
• Fish? Come on!
• Fruit?

You get the idea?
So, you add all that liquid to the mix, and you get enough to drop the total number of glasses of liquid a bit.

Personally, I don't worry about the amount of liquid I take in because my diet includes it every day. I drink an extra large Dunkin Donut decaf coffee every morning. What I don't finish, I add to a container with my protein powder mix for extra flavor. I always have left over coffee, so I refrigerate it for later in the morning. Add soy milk with a scoop or two of protein powder, and a bit of sweetener, and it's like drinking a milkshake. Yummy!

I always have a gallon of Crystal Lite in the fridge, and I will take a large shaker bottle of it where ever I go to nurse it all afternoon. I make sure I don't drink too much, however, because I can't just stop the school bus when I need to.

It's funny, and tragic at the same time, but the super size drinking containers (extra large Dunkin Coffee) are about half of our needed liquid every day.

So, if I drink one container of coffee, and another of protein powder, I am finished for the day!
For most non WLS people, when they add all that (liquid) with extra sugar to their diet and then can't figure out why they can't lose weight, well you can figure out the rest.
If I drink anything else, my eyeballs float!

A side note:
I have an old friend who is trying to lose weight by taking in less food. They are walking around hungry most of the time, and feeling run down, and can't figure out why they can't lose weight. When I tried to explain how to eat using the WLS diet, they wouldn't listen. They thought it was crazy to eat this way.
I will eat this way for the rest of my life, and although I am going slowly crazy anyway, I won't gain much weight, and I'll be much more healthy and happy than them.
Gloat, Gloat, Gloat!