Playing the food game.

At around 1.5 years after surgery I still haven’t got the hang of that eating thing. This annoys me.

And when something annoys me, I go fix it.

So, the food-plan! I’ve probably said it before and tried it before, but I’ll just do it all again, because one of these days it’ll stick.

In Perfect Diet Tracker¹ I can track my caloric intake, as well as protein, carbs, sugars, sodium, fat and fibers. I mostly care about the caloric intake, the protein and the fibers, and I make sure to keep an eye on the rest as well.
Because of the surgery I don’t absorb protein (and some vitamins and minerals) as well as before. Some people do, however, I don’t.
This means that I have to take in more protein than other people with my age, weight, lifestyle and gender. I aim for 60 grams per day, I have a fairly slow life.
I also like to eat enough fiber, because I noticed my tummy gets very happy with that, so I aim for 35 grams of fiber.
My total caloric intake currently doesn’t do it. I want to get around 1600 kcal per day, which still doesn’t qualify as ‘good’ in my book, but I have to start somewhere, and seeing how now on most days I float around 1000-1200 with an occasional 1600+ day in between, I’d say I better not overdo it. I might explode.

I eat about 6 times per day, sometimes a little more.
I’ve done some calculations and decided that I need to go for meals that contain roughly 150 – 250 kcal per meal. I’ll come in too short, but I do also drink and can add (mostly) kcal with that, yay!
Chopping the Big Plan into smaller pieces makes it all less daunting. Also, I do really have to eat about 6 times per day, so it makes a lot of sense to approach each meal somewhat separately.

I say somewhat, because with tracking my meals the way I do now (logging everything right after I eat / drink it) I can adjust the following meals. If I notice after three meals that I come in short on the protein side, I can toss in an egg or some extra cheese. If I notice I need more fiber, I’ll toss in some more vegetables. This does mean a near constant adjusting but it also allows for some more flexibility per meal.

Right now I mostly track my meals to see what things I eat, what I like, what goes easy and what stays in and / or causes no issues.
I had to eliminate all bread, pizza, cookies, pasta etc (wheat) and that does provide me with yet another challenge. However, since I did, I feel much better and have had a lot less tummy issues than before.

From tracking I’ve discovered that the following already obeys my ‘rules’:

• one portion of mashed potatoes (instant), with a little grated cheese and a hard boiled egg
  this qualifies as a pretty serious meal to me, and clocks in around 260 kcal, score!
• two rice-crackers with black-olive tapenade (or peanut-butter)

pretty salty (not the pb), so can’t have it too much (makes me thirsty), but tasty, and around 150 / 160 kcal. as an extra bonus, easy to make, woohoo!
• one portion of Quaker’s oatmeal, prepared with water, no extra additions
  around 150 kcal, so if I add some dried fruit, it’ll go even higher, yay!
• one portion of yoghurt and one high fiber OJ drink

around 160 kcal, added bonus of extra protein and extra fiber, good breakfast :D
• one glass of Soya macchiato (drink)
  around 150 kcal, has protein and I can spread drinking it easily
• one hand of mixed nuts and dried fruits (about 1oz)

around 120 kcal, so not entirely sufficient but it does really well on the fiber and protein part

I’ve only got a handful so far, so I want to spend more time trying out things and looking for easy snacks on the internet. When I find something that works, I’ll experiment with it some more so I’ll have variation and add a bit more oomph to it. For now I make the instant mashed potatoes with water, adding some cream to it will boost the kcal and the protein (and hopefully not the bad fats too much because I don’t want to clog up my arteries…)

It feels like juggling most of the time, keeping everything tracked and in the right amounts and seeing what works and finding out it doesn’t. Food high in calories usually also as either a lot of fat or a lot of sugar, and both make me ill in large enough amounts (not so very large, really).
I don’t think this will ever really become routine, though I do hope that eventually I don’t have to track as much and check as much and try as much. I’d like to do more on a day than ‘dealing with food’. For now, I’ll stick with it though.

If all else fails I do have few recipes for that Christmas dinner…

¹ Last year I got a license for Perfect Diet Tracker which, apart from running on multiple OSs (woohoo!), helps track food-intake. I briefly flirted with HealthNut and though I still like that program too, it didn’t offer me enough data / settings / feedback. At least, not now, I need all the info I can get basically.