It’s Friday again.. time for another new lunge. I first have to admit that I didn’t do so great this week. I got my 60 lunges each day on Sunday and Monday, but since Tuesday I’ve been fighting a head cold. It’s been a back and forth battle between a sore throat and sore sinuses. Either way, I seem to be on the losing end. I am feeling a bit better today and will try to get some lunges in yet today and tomorrow… but not sure if I’ll hit 300 for the week. Maybe I’ll break it up in to two smaller sessions each day? The ones I did do though, yea, they were working very different muscles than the last couple weeks.

Anyways, starting Sunday it’s a new week, and a new lunge… one called the Curtsy Lunge. Based on the name, I’m not sure that I, as a dude, want to be doing these in public. Check out the video below to see what they’re all about.

And of course I have to give a shout out to Alysa over at Inspired RD for inspiring the whole lunge club thing in the first place.

First off, I feel the need to apologize for the picture of today’s chicken dish. See, one of my goals is to find some ways to “like” avocado. They’re chock full of healthy fats and other good nutrition type stuff… but the green color they lend to something like this dish… well I just couldn’t figure out a very appealing way to photograph it. But despite how it looks, I gotta say it was pretty tasty.

I suppose I could have called this guacamole chicken salad too, as the base of this is basically a guacamole variation. I took an avocado, mashed it with about 1/4 cup of plain yogurt, added some lime juice, little salt, cilantro but also added some celery seed and cayenne pepper. I mixed it all with some finely chopped celery, radish, green onion, shredded carrot and the last 3 or so ounces of chicken I had left (diced up).

I suppose I could have done a wrap with this. Originally I was thinking in a pita.. but the last half of a pita I had in the fridge had been there longer than I thought and was rather stale. So, it was time to just grab a fork and enjoy it as is. I didn’t actually eat it with the kale as pictured, I plated it like that simply for the photo then put it in a dish to take to work for lunch.

The avocado does lend a nice creaminess. I hear a lot of people talking about using it instead of mayo to spread on bread for sandwiches. I don’t really use much in the way of mayo these days anyways. And when I typically make a “salad” type sandwich I tend to use yogurt. I have a partial jar of mayo still in the fridge that I used to do a mix of yogurt and mayo, but I don’t really notice a difference anymore so the jar tends to stay where it is, way at the back of the fridge. Not that I have anything against it, I’m just at the point where it’s not the first thing I think of when I’m preparing something like this.

A lot of people talk about putting slices of avocado on a sandwich or chunks in a salad… I think it will take me a while to get to that point. It’s a texture thing. I’m not crazy about tomato slices on my sandwiches or chunks in my salads for much the same reason.

So there you have it, six different ways to use up a batch of chicken. It could be a couple pounds of breasts as I did here or maybe you grab a rotisserie chicken form the deli… the point is you don’t have to get stuck in a rut if you just use a touch of creativity. And I don’t think any of the things I threw out here are “gourmet” or anything that any of you couldn’t pull off yourselves. Even some of the additional things I made from scratch like the hummus have store-bought alternatives you could easily sub in there.

Let me know if you tried any of the things I threw out here, or maybe you made your own variation, or maybe you had an idea for another meal you could do along these lines that’s a favorite of yours! And… if you liked this whole series of stuff, let me know that too and maybe I can tackle doing similar posts using other items in the future.

I started thinking of soup when I first started this whole “six ways” thing. I did a similar “single-serve” soup a couple weeks back, using broccoli slaw. This time I wanted to have a bit of noodle action – I keep a bit of multi-color rotini on hand just for times like this. I figured I would throw in some veges, let it all simmer and I’d be good to go.

I started with what in the cooking world is known as a mirepoix – a mix of carrot, celery and onion. After starting about 2 cups of the chicken broth simmering, I lightly sauteed the onion, then celery and shredded carrot. After tossing the diced up chicken and 1/2 cup of the noodles in to the broth I had an idea… I have a bunch of roasted buttercup squash that I cooked up over the weekend so I cook about a cup of it and pureed it with some of the chicken broth, then put it along with the other veges back in to the pot with the chicken.

Once it was almost heated up I seasoned it with a bit of salt, garlic powder and fresh ground pepper… once in the bowl I garnished with a bit of green onion.

I’m sure I probably read about doing something this somewhere before, pureeing the squash to make a creamy soup without all the cream and such – this wasn’t an original idea, but it was tasty.

I’m sure I’ll do something like this again and I’ll try to formalize a recipe for it to share, but in the mean time… do what I did and just play with it a bit.

It didn’t feel right calling this a chicken pot pie when I cooked mine in a pan. A sauce pan for part of it and a cast-iron skillet for the baking part. So yea. But whatever you want to call it, this turned out rather well I think.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of “pot pies”. I’m really just not a huge fan of pastry type crusts in general. So I have no idea where the urge to make this dish came from. But what I did know is that it wouldn’t be a traditional type. I’ve seen similar dishes where instead of a top crust, you use drop-biscuits or dumplings of some sort. But alas, I’m not a huge biscuit fan either.. and I’ve never made dumplings (which aren’t they just “boiled” biscuits anyways?) So what to do?

Well, I asked for ideas on Twitter… and someone suggested corn bread (which I do love), or the “cheesy pizza crust” I was talking about a couple weeks back. Ding! I think we have something there. It’s such an easy recipe too… 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, 1 egg, and a 3oz block of cream cheese. And I knew I had all the stuff on hand. So we had a topping. But then what about the filling?

I had the chicken, the reason for this whole idea in the first place. I always have a few certain vegetables on hand… carrots, frozen peas, onion. That would work. When getting out the carrot I found some sweet potato left over from another meal. I had some celery too but option to skip that for this dish. Another thing I keep on hand is a can or two of evaporated milk. I use this in place of cream in making sauces to get a bit more depth than just milk (especially since my milk is soy milk), without as much of the fat. Oh! There’s also a can of mushrooms. Yea, I know… they’re slimly lil suckers, I would never use them on a burger or to top a steak, but I keep a couple small cans on hand just for occasions like this where they go in to something and offer just a bit of that mushroomy flavor.

Like I said, I’ve never made this sort of dish before, but I know that it’s basically the chicken and veges in a thick cream sauce. So I started out by basing this on my stroganoff recipe, in particular using a roux as the thickener. I did a video of this for BTV about a year ago. I chopped up some onion and lightly cooked it before adding the butter and flour. I used a small can of evaporated milk and about 1/2 cup of the chicken broth I had from cooking up the chicken. The veges I added were a medium carrot and some sweet potato about the same size as the carrot that were shredded and about a cup of frozen peas. I shredded the carrot and potato instead of dicing because I figured they would cook faster that way. In hindsight, I had some roasted squash and beets in the fridge that I forgot about and would have loved to add some of those in there.

I had two of the chicken breasts left, both just over 7 ounces, so I chopped one of them up, leaving me with just enough chicken left for my last two meals in this experiment. Then after I got the veges in, it was still a bit thinner than I wanted, especially since I wasn’t going to use a bottom crust, so I mixed in 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed. So this not only added some fiber and some omega 3s, the flaxseed sucks up moisture and helped thicken the whole thing up a bit more. I seasoned mine with liberal amounts of garlic powder and fresh ground black pepper and a few pinches of kosher salt.

I poured this in to my 9inch cast iron skillet and dropped spoonfuls of the “pizza crust” batter on top. I didn’t do the greatest job when it comes to even distribution, but you get the idea. The whole thing went in to a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, till the topping was lightly browned. Scroll back up to the top here to see what it looked like coming out of the oven. When I went to plate it, it held together very nicely. I don’t know if it was because of or in spite of the addition of the flax… but no matter the reason, it worked great.

It plated up wonderfully, I didn’t need a soup bowl to serve it in. The cheesy topping added a nice touch of sweetness overall… and it was very filling. I was figuring I’d get two servings out of this, but I think for a post-op, you’ll easily get three or four servings. I recently wrote a piece for my nutrition blog about being flexible in the kitchen, and this is a great example of that I think. It would be a great way to use some some left over vegetables. You could use various kinds of meats in here… season it to your own tastes, savory or spicy. And there’s many different ways you could top this, biscuits, corn bread, potato dumplings, etc.

So yea… it was a success. I got a dinner a lunch and an additional side dish out of this for me…. and I could see doing similar versions of this in the future. Also, you could easily double this and bake it in a larger pan.

Wraps are pretty basic overall, and I know I said I wanted to be trying some new stuff with this series, but I had a couple slices of some wonderful pepper-garlic bacon (no nitrites/nitrates) left and since bacon makes everything better, So for lunch yesterday, I whipped up a fairly basic club style wrap-sandwich. It sure looked good, right? But of course I have a few twists in here.

The basics of this are … well, pretty basic. There’s a couple different wraps I get, depending on what store I’m at and such. The South Beach Whole Wheat wraps are pretty decent. 110Calories, 5G protein, 17g net carbs (25g-8g fiber) and 3g fat from non-hydrogenated soybean oil. first ingredient is 100% whole grain whole wheat flour. The other one I get sometimes is Joseph’s Flax, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas. These are much lower in carbs, just 5g net (11g – 5g fiber). They’re also lower calorie at 70, slightly higher in protein at 7g and have just 1.5g fat. The first ingredients though are water, wheat gluten and corn starch. So I dunno, overall they’re sort of a toss up. The SB ones are “heartier”, the Joseph’s (pictured above) are softer and lighter.

The insides are pretty simple.. spinach, a bit over 2oz of chicken cut in strips and a couple slices of the bacon I picked up at a local co-op. The ranch sauce though is homemade, sorta. Instead of a ranch dressing I used about 1/2 cup of yogurt and mixed in 1.5 tsp of Penzys Italian seasoning. I’ve used this seasoning on everything from seasoning breadings and coatings for chicken or fish to making different sauces and dressings. If you don’t have something similar you can mix your own by using a mix of dried parsley flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and maybe some dill or oregano. Grind it all up in a blender or food processor and mix in to the yogurt. Or… buy some ranch mix or pre-made dressing. But if you do that, please… skip the fat-free. Your body needs some fat. Ok, the bacon counts as a bit more than some, but still, fat-free dressing make up for the lack of flavor from the fat by adding sugar and chemicals and crap. So please?

Alright, I used some of the sauce I made on the sandwich and the rest as a dip for some carrot and celery sticks (they were my afternoon snack) and I had some left over refried beans as well.

Stay tuned for last night’s dinner in Part 4 – a potless, chicken pot pie.

There’s a recent video interview and slideshow video out about a girl name Betsy. A couple years ago, at the age of 12, Betsy had a gastric sleeve procedure done by Dr. Alvarez of Endobariatrics. Dr. Alvarez also happens to be Betsy’s uncle. This first video is the slideshow… showing Betsy as an obese child up until where she is currently, a very fit looking teen. It only takes a few minutes… take a look, I’ll be here when you’re done.

So what’d you think? Me, I have to quote Beth on this one (I found the video above initially on her site).

Torn.

For those of us who were obese as kids… we know the cruelty that other kids can inflict… both intentionally and not. In middle school I was called “porky portinga” by a few. And I can remember the mental anguish I put myself through over things like how tight the 8th grade school uniform was on me. And I wish I could say it’s something that the kids grow out of… but when it comes to how the obese are treated there’s way too many adults that are as bad, and worse.

So on the one hand, I can understand the desire to put a stop to that sort of thing in any way possible. And generally we can’t change others, so it can be easier to change ourselves. But then again, there’s noting truly easy about bariatric surgery. And the changes that it not only imposes on a person, but the ones it then also requires of the person in order to maintain a long term success… cripes, I know I wasn’t ready for something like that at 22… or 32… let alone 12.

Based on the video above, the later photos shown, I thought Betsy had to be in her late teens at this point and I was heartened to see she’d been able to keep things going so well for what seemed to be a number of years. Then I watched the video below… here, go check it out, again, it’s just a few minutes long.

In this one, we find out Betsy is now 14. She’s two years post-op. There’s no denying she’s doing great… but at the same time, she’s barely out of the honeymoon phase. So I’m very much back to being torn.

Now, Betsy may do very well long term. I’m not trying to say she can’t do this. But she also has an advantage over most folks, let alone most kids – her uncle is the one that did her surgery. She has someone that will (hopefully) be there for her for the long haul when it comes to continue support and education. I’m also more than a little curious about who paid for her procedure as I believe there are few, if any, insurance companies covering bariatric surgery for kids.

And it’s important to point out, she’s still barely a teen, and while I have no kids of my own… I’ve got plenty of friends who do and if my little glimpses are any indication… well, sure, the whole rebellious teen thing may get overplayed at times, but these sorts of things are always based on at least some bit of truth.

So yea. I’m torn.

Much in the same way I am torn on the lowering of BMI requirements for gastric banding surgeries. Is broadening the eligibility, be it through age or BMI, really help those who would now be considered on the fringes? The merits of helping people in these situations turn things around before they become much worse, before the “damage is done” so to speak (both mentally and physically) outweigh the risks of these folks not taking the procedures as serious, jeopardizing the long-term success?

I don’t have the answer… do you?

I’m sure I’ve used this “joke” before… but this type of meal is something I’ve come to call the Mother & Child Reunion… and yea, I’m just weird that way. An egg scramble with chicken… among some other things.

This doesn’t show up terribly great in pictures, but this is scrambled eggs with chicken, spinach, green onions, and a light sprinkle of cheese.

Tossing a handful of spinach in the pan and “wilting” it before adding your eggs is such an easy way to add some great nutrients to your breakfast. And with using the pre-cooked chicken this only took a few minutes. I grabbed about 3oz of meat, roughly chopped it and started heating it up in the skillet while I chopped up a green onion and a handful of spinach. Threw those in the pan with a sprinkle of salt and stirred it up as it cooked for about two minutes then poured in the scrambled up eggs.

You could do this as an omelet by pulling the meat and stuff out of the pan, cooking the eggs then folding that stuff back in, and it looks better, but … well… I’m a dude… I’m not worried bout that much. I threw the cheese on after I plated it just because I had a touch left over from last nights pizza. For those counting, with two eggs this was over 30grams of protein in this plateful.

A quick note about portions… where I’m at with things, I can eat meals that I feel are “normal”, that are of size that I think most folks “should be” eating. Maybe a touch smaller. And while there are some days that are the exception to this, by far I seem to be able to eat more than many bariatric post-ops. I’m probably in the 1800-2000Calorie a day range overall, and I seem to be able to maintain my weight there at that level. It’s when I indulge in too many treats that things get out of hand on me. But I realize many post-ops that are as far out as I am, or even further, still tend to each much less.

Most of what I have been posting here is flexible enough that hopefully you can make it work. For example you can easily do half of what I did here… but on the flip size it’s also easy enough to bump something like this up in quantity if you’re cooking for other family members or something. And even the pizza I cooked last night would be great for families… let each member of the family top their own pizza, and if they have a much larger appetite add in a nice tossed salad to keep things healthy for everyone.

So yea, I get comments here and there regarding how much I can/do eat sometimes so figured I would throw this out there.

Coming up next is a lunch, I’ve got a couple slices of some garlic-pepper bacon, so I think a club sandwich wrap is in order. Look for that to be posted tomorrow!

Cooking when you’re single can suck sometimes. Then toss in the fact that I’m a surgically altered freak and it throws a whole ‘nother level of fun in to the equation. Generally when I cook, I try to cook just enough for a dinner and a lunch… but sometimes when you make something there is no easy way to make a limited quantity… like chili. So I end up eating it nearly every day for like a week.

Well, I had some chicken that needed to be cooked up, so I thought I would see just how many different ways, how many different meals I could get out of this one batch of chicken… and maybe it will give some of you some ideas on new things to try. Some of these will be sort of standards, but I’m also challenging myself here to try and come up with some new things too… like the white/green pizza I made last night.

Ok, fine. I realize there’s not much new, especially in the bariatric community about a tortilla pizza.. not even one with chicken. But… if you look close, that’s not tomato sauce… and no… it’s not alfredo sauce… it’s hummus. Hummus I made with green onion and some ripe olives to be precise.

I call it white green pizza because the chicken, the hummus, and the cheese are white. There’s green onion, jalapenos and cilantro for the green. And no, I’m not going to call it white-green-black because of the olives. Just pretend they’re green olives or something if it bothers you that much.

The point of this is, trying something just a little difference can give you a very different spin on something you might be getting tired of. The nice thing about this is that I didn’t have to crack open a jar of sauce just to use a few tablespoons worth. If you use store bought hummus, you shouldn’t be downing the whole thing in one sitting so having some left over for later is no big deal. And really, even if you copy my idea of using the hummus, you can top it with whatever you want. I’m using chicken here cause .. well… did you not just read the whole first part of this posting?

Oh, to back up a bit. I picked six ways because I had roughly 1-1/2 pounds of cooked chicken breast. (It started out just over 2 pounds). I cooked it by simmering it some chicken broth on the stove. Simmering it like that can help your chicken breast from drying out, a big plus for anyone maybe just a few months post-op. So yea, if I figure on using 3-5 ounces per meal I should get six meals out of the chicken I have here. There’s actually only about 2 ounces of chicken on the pizza, but I did eat about another 1-1/2 ounces on the side.

So stick around and see what over ways I come up with to use this chicken up. And don’t think you have to do single servings of stuff like this. These are all ideas you can apply to a meal for two or more… just you’ll need lots more chicken than I do if you’re doing all six is all.

It’s Friday, time for another new lunge for the upcoming week of Lunge Club! This coming week is the Side Lunge – as shown in the video below it’s great for the quads, hamstrings and glutes.

So how are you doing? I’ve been doing 60 per day and it’s going good for me. I can definitely feel those last 15-20 in a set, but in a good way! And I thnk they are helping with the soreness I had been having the previous few months. Leave some comments here or over on FaceBook. And if you’re just starting… go back and check out the first week…

And of course I have to give thanks to Alysa over at Inspired RD for inspiring Lunge Club in the first place.

I think anyone who has had kids, babysat kids, has had young kids as nieces or nephews, whatever… we all know that kids reach a certain age and they go through the “why stage”. Where it seems like the only word in their vocabulary is “why?”. I don’t need to give examples, you know what I’m talking about. And I think we all get to that point where we break down and answer “because”. “Because it is.” Because I said so”, and so on.

Well, I think we all need to revert back to childhood a bit and start asking “why?” a lot more.

If you’re a pre-op, you are going to be getting a ton of information thrown at you as you prepare for bariatric surgery. Please, don’t ever be afraid to ask why. Why can’t I can drink with my meals? Why do I need to focus on protein first? Why do I need to take so many supplements. Ask away! Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more prepared you will be. What other cliches can I throw at you here?

I’m serious though. Ask questions… of your doctor, your nurse, your surgeon, your peers. Especially your weight loss surgery peers – most of us never get tired of helping others down the wonderful road we’ve taken ourselves.

But asking “why” doesn’t stop there. Last year I took a bit of flack on a forum out there for asking “why”. See, someone had posted a question asking how soon after surgery before they could start drinking wine again. There were the usual answers.. “at least a year”, “what does your surgeon say”, things like that. But I felt there was a key question missing there. “Why?”

With everything we put ourselves through in order to prepare for, get through and survive this surgery…. why… why would you want to even consider alcohol in those first few months after surgery? Alcohol has absolutely no nutritional value, it is nothing but liquid calories at best, and an activity that can have much more severe consequences post-op at worst. And I’m not even going to get in to possible addiction issues.

Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you not to drink, we’re adults. I’ve drank. But I was about 16 months post-op when I had my first beer and I had been at a pretty stable weight for 5 months at that point. And in the nearly two years since… I probably haven’t had enough to fill up a case yet. So yea… I’m not saying abstain entirely, but c’mon.. during that time when you’re losing… just… why?

And with some of the recent hub-bub going on regarding my doing the 5 Day Pouch Test, I was reminded of this simple word, why, once again.

Kaye Baily, the author/founder of 5DPT left a nice comment for me on my most recent posting and she basically (intentionally or not, I don’t know) reiterated my own feelings that it’s not the test itself… but rather why. Why are you deciding to do something like that… something that to many is no better than any number of the crash diets so many of us tried time and time again before surgery.

Just like we all have different reasons for having had surgery in the first place, we can have varying answers to a question like that… and I while I have my opinions… like the above one about drinking after surgery…  and even these answers are not always absolutes. Given the popularity of that funnel video one would think I’m the king of not drinking after meals, but I’ll be honest here – there have been times where I break the 30-minute rule.

Shocking, right? But for me it’s not about the what, it’s back to the why. Simply put, I was thirsty. I made a conscious decision, knowing I would likely have to be extra cautious of impending hunger because of that decision to take a drink of water. I wanted to take a drink, I was a aware of the why behind it, and can live with that decisions – no regrets. That’s not to say asking “why” gives you a free pass to breaking the rules, but I think for many of us, being more aware of not just what we do, but why, it keeps us so much more in the game than we ever were before.

So yea, while I have to say my answers are generally pretty damn good ones, I also can’t forget that they’re not the only ones. And what “works” for me… may not work for you. But to never ask the question, to never look at the why, is to continue to blindly stumble through things, never learning to make better decisions.