I had a hard time narrowing it down to only 10 recipes. I have so many to share with you.
Who loves a snack? Who loves to have a snack instead of a full meal? I am guilty of this. My snacks turn into meals. Especially when I am busy working… I have a hard time breaking for a real sit down meal. I think for most of us we have a “grab and go” mentality and we sit down for a proper meal maybe one time a day. For most of us, this is at dinner time
What if we could take a snack and turn it into a healthy meal? Wouldn’t that make life a whole lot easier?
Depending on where you are on your bariatric journey, it may be easier to just prepare a few snacks with the idea that they have the nutrients of a proper meal. Let’s call it a “full-sized snack”. This is one that replaces your regular meal and is more on the “snacky-side”. You can eat it sitting at your desk or in the break-room or sitting in your car. As long as it fills you up.
Post-bariatric surgery, you need to be using your tool. I know a lot of clients who never eat until they are full. I call this “eating around your sleeve”. What this turns into is full-on GRAZING and this is a bad habit to get into. The bariatric tool is meant to be filled until you are satisfied. I see a whole lot of bariatric clients walking around not feeling satisfied because they do not eat enough food for the stomach to signal the brain to say “stop, I am FULL”. The food needs to push against the stomach walls for the stomach to send the signal to the brain to “stop eating”.
If I am grazing all day long, I am never full. It looks like this – a protein shake for breakfast, some almonds in the car while on the way to work, some cheese cubes at my desk, some hummus and veggie sticks for an additional snack, a half low carb wrap that I packed for lunch, a coffee shortly after lunch, a protein bar for mid-afternoon, some cheese sticks, and olives while prepping dinner, a glass of wine while cooking dinner, a dinner of a small piece of fish and some pureed sweet potatoes, a chocolate avocado pudding as a snack, some berries and cottage cheese before bed ….. on and on and on and on it goes.
I teach my clients to eat/stop/ eat. NO GRAZING PLEASE. We can get into so much trouble if we are following the grazing patterns from above and so many of us are guilty of this. I find myself doing this all the time. Then I wonder why my weight loss stalls? It is stalling because I am overeating. It’s hard to calculate the amount I am eating because I never feel full. My hunger signal is out of whack when I have this eating pattern.
I aim now to eat my meal or a large snack. I stop eating and then drink fluids between meals. I don’t “snack” but when I eat I will eat enough to compensate for a meal. Instead of just a handful of nuts, I will have a handful of nuts, a half avocado, some cucumber slices and I will feel FULL. I won’t play around with the “just a bite here and there” any longer. It gets me into trouble.
They can turn into a full meal instead of just a snack. Don’t just eat the avocado, add some low carb veggies and a handful of nuts and you have a “full meal deal”.
Here’s to the long days of summer still upon us!
Sheri Burke RHN specializing in bariatric nutrition.
