Okay Denise - here I come bouncing to your house :D I just finished cleaning and organizing my walk-in and the in between closet thingy. Whew! What a job!!!!! it's almost 1pm and I just finished that - nothing else. So I guess the rest of the room will have to wait until tomorrow. My doc didn't get my lab orders faxed until later this morning, so I'm getting ready to leave here in a bit and run up to the hospital to get those done. Everyone doing okay this afternoon? Nancy - did you try those pork rinds? Seriously, they aren't bad. 80 calories per serving, 5 grams of fat (0 grams trans fat), 9 grams protein and 0 grams carbs. For a crunchy snack for us post-ops, I really think it's a good choice and that little bit of fat, combined with the protein and crunch, seems to satisfy me somehow - much more so than some salty, carb loaded chips. Believe me - we could eat a whole lot worse! Traci

Nancy - have you ever done the cottage cheese test to see how much your pouch holds? Maybe it's holding more than it should. I'll paste it below from one of my WLS email groups - they have it in the files section. COTTAGE CHEESE TEST How big is my stomach pouch? Just about every patient asks this question on occasion. It is expected and appropriate that the stomach pouch will enlarge somewhat as the months pass after gastric bypass. Some of this enlargement is an actual increase in size, and some represents a softening (regaining of elasticity) of the pouch and its outlet. The real answer is that the FUNCTIONAL size varies with many factors such as time of day, the amount of time taken to eat, mood of the patient, other medical issues, and (most importantly) the type of food eaten. It is expected and appropriate that the pouch will handle a much smaller amount of solid food (chicken) than mushy stuff like mashed potatoes or soup. The cottage cheese test is a technique that was presented at the June 2000 meeting of the ASBS (and many times before that) by Latham Flanagan, MD (website is at The Oregon Center for Bariatric Surgery). It is meant to be a standardized, reproducible measurement of the physical size of the stomach pouch in a person who has undergone a gastric bypass procedure. Purchase a container of small curd low-fat cottage cheese. Begin the test with a full container, and perform the test in the morning before eating anything else (this will be your breakfast on that day). Eat fairly quickly until you feel full (less than five minutes). Note that the small soft curds do not require much chewing. The idea with the rapid eating is to fill the pouch before there is much time for food to flow out of it. After eating your "fill" of cottage cheese, you will be left with a partially eaten container that has empty space where cottage cheese used to be. Start with a measured amount of water (16 ounces, for example), and pour water into the container of cottage cheese until the water is level with the original top level of the cottage cheese. Voila - the amount of water poured into the container is the functional size of the pouch. If this is your first time doing the test - DON'T PANIC. You are likely to find that the "cottage cheese" size of your pouch is way bigger than your surgeon told you he/she made it at the time of surgery. Dr. Flanagan's data indicates that the average size of the mature pouch by cottage cheese test is 5.5 ounces. He has also found that sizes ranging from 3 to 9 ounces have NO IMPACT on the person's success in weight loss. Traci

Morning everyone How are you all doing? I'm good here. With my renewed energy I've been going through my house room-by-room and cleaning. Feels good. I'm going today for blood work to see how well the iron infusion worked and to see how well my mega doses of Vit. D are working on those levels. Then it's back home to tackle my bedroom - more specifically my closet. Have a great day everyone! Traci

Traci - I just feel SO guilty when I eat pork rinds. They just seem so bad for you being deep fried and all. What kind do you get? Maybe I'll try them again.

Hi all of my July friends! I had a good day yesterday. I was really busy, so it kept my mind off of mindless eating. I did the treadmill for about 1/2 hour, then had an hour tap dancing class last night so I feel good about the exercise. I was down another pound today, so of course, that is very motivating! I'm trying to have a protein shake for breakfast and lunch, then eat a regular meal in the evening. I've been trying for years to lose the urge for crunchy. I've decided to just allow myself some Herr's Whole Grain pretzels in the evening as a treat. Hey, if I can keep it to that I'll be happy! What are you all up to today? How are you feeling Traci? Are you hanging in there Denise? Monna, how are you doing on that protein powder? Michelle, what's going on with you hun? C'mon all of you July babies, check in and let us know how you're doing!!! Hugs, Nancy