Hello,
I'm preparing for my surgery on 2/28 and as far as vitamins go... There are so many options! Does anyone have ones they love?!? I'm worried about having to swallow a lot of pills as I tend to chug water when I do.
Soooo
What your favorites? Which ones did you hate??
Hi Annie, you'll probably be on a liquid vitamin, and I don't know anything about those, since they weren't available when I had my surgery 17 years ago. But you'll have to start sipping water, which was really hard for me, as I'm a chugger too.
I went to chewables and that's a really big market and really, it's a matter of taste. I use Trader Joe's Women's High Potency chewables with additional vitamins and minerals in them. To me, they taste kind of citrusy. But I got tired of the taste pretty quickly, so I started breaking them into small bits, then pulverizing them in my mouth. I swished the particles around with water and swallowed them in small sips. I still take those today, along with TJ's chewable Vitamin C.
Let me underscore the sipping thing. You shouldn't be chugging water at all, ever, just like you shouldn't be taking in big bites of food and swallowing them without much chewing. This type of eating and drinking is something that you probably won't want to do, but it's a big part of the problem a lot of obese people have that leads them to morbid obesity.
It's also important to eat each bite slowly and chew each bite 30 times, or as many as you can possibly manage. I can't emphasize that enough. It's absolutely a major contributor to slowing food consumption and digesting for maximum nutrition.
Most people become obese because of these habits of cramming as much food in their mouths, or drinking huge amounts of soda or dairy until you can almost hear the sloshing around of the meal in your stomach. They usually get ahead of the digestive process and have trouble with feeling uncomfortable, but it's just one of those things you need to change mentally. The bad eating leads to problems in the digestive tract like colitis or in the anal cavity, leading to hemorrhoids.
Obesity, especially morbid obesity that leads to the surgical cure, is something that needs to be dealt with on many levels--self-esteem, defeating obsessions, affirmations that lead to better habits, etc.
It's good that you're already thinking about supplements. You should discuss it with your nutritionist and search the internet for groups like this one where people share their obstacles and successes. You have an eating disorder, and those aren't limited to anorexia and bulimia. The more time you spend on your inner voices, the critics, the coaches, the scientists, the less you may be obsessed with what you plan to eat next.
How do others in this group deal with nutritional supplements or eating habits? What do you all think about your vitamin/mineral routines?
