Whether you’ve had weight loss surgery already or you’re in the contemplation stage of taking this big step – it’s valuable to take advantage of all the free or low cost resources out there to help you along the way. The recommendations listed below are not specific to any one procedure, and can be helpful for all types of weight loss surgeries and stages within your weight loss journey.
Recipe Ideas:
Meal recipes for all stages of your bariatric surgery journey:
- https://bariatricmealprep.com/bariatric-recipes/
- https://www.bariatriceating.com/blogs/recipes
- https://www.gastricsleeverecipes.com/recipes
- www.Bariatricfoodie.com
Use the following recipe indexes to narrow down what you’re looking for when cooking a meal.
- For example: you can filter low carbohydrate, 10 ingredients or less, meal prep
- Fit Foodie Finds
- Eating Bird Food
Use this recipe index to filter by ingredient:
Cookbooks:
- The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook by Sarah Kent
- The Easy 5-ingredient Bariatric Cookbook by Megan Wolf
- The Complete Bariatric Cookbook by Megan Moore
Bariatric Meal Delivery Service: BariBox Meals
- The first bariatric meal delivery service tailored to your weight loss surgery needs
- BariBox meals are designed by trained chefs and Registered dietitian, Jana Wolff
- Visit https://www.baribox.org/shop-2 to learn more
Helpful apps to download:
- Track your food and nutrients & weight loss
- Access top bariatric forums to learn from the experiences of others
- Click here to watch a tutorial on how to use the app: https://www.baritastic.com/app-overview/
- Diet assistant that provides you with insight guidelines and a platform to track your intake.
Water Drink Reminder or Water Logged
- It’s very easy to become dehydrated when you’re losing weight quickly
- These are apps to assist with water reminders
- Bariatric Meal Timer is an application for people who keep constant time intervals between their meals and drinks or want to keep track of their meals/drinks.
Other Meal Timer apps:
- Time Your Bites!
- 20 Minute Eating
- Allows you to quickly scan almost any barcode at your grocery store to find out what’s really inside the food you’re buying
- Set the app to specifically tell you about certain warning signs, such as being made aware of protein, sugar and other ingredients.
- An accountability app to help you get to your weight loss goal
- Provides a positive perspective on things to keep you motivated when the going gets rough! Change the way you think about your progress! Use the moving average progress tracking options to see steady progress every day!
Apps for mindfulness, meditation, and mental health:
- Insight Timer: The world’s largest FREE library for sleep, anxiety and stress
- Sanvello app: help with anxiety and depression
- Calm: guided meditations for calming anxiety, gratitude & mindfulness as well as sleep sounds, nature sounds, and breathing exercises
Apps to help with mindful eating:
- Am I hungry? is an app designed to help you eat more mindfully and less emotionally.
- Simple Habit: on the free version, choose “Meditation”, choose “on the go”, choose “Taking a break”, and choose “Eating”. Here you will have access to a mindful eating exercise to help with slowing down your pace of eating to being awareness and satisfaction back to your mealtime.
Books:
- The Complete Guide to Weight Loss Surgery: Your Questions Finally Answered
- Written by Registered Dietitians Lisa Kaouk and Monica Bashaw
- Available on Amazon
To help heal your relationship with food and body image:
- I recommend completing the 30 day The Intuitive Eating Journal prior to surgery
- Written by your very own Dietitian, Cassandra Golden Sampson!
- Now available on Amazon
How to use The Intuitive Eating Journal:
- Set aside just 20 minutes in the morning to focus on each of the 30 mindful and instinctive thoughts to start your day.
- As the day goes on and you begin to marinate on the concept, you’ll have the opportunity to answer each thought-provoking question and complete the relevant tasks. This practice allows you to connect the principles with your own real-life experiences.
When to reach out to your Dietitian for post-op nutrition support:
- Weight loss is slower than expected
- Your weight plateaus
- Weight regain
- You are not sure what you should be doing/eating
- You have other factors that are affecting your success: Stressors, temptations at home, family not supportive, injury: seek appropriate referral
*Please don’t wait to reach out for help! Contact Cassandra through email: NutritionNibbles@gmail.com to set up a post-op nutrition follow up appointment.
