LivingAfterWLS Project 2014 - Our FAQ's this week

Question: Do I have to be in the Facebook group to participate in the Project 2014?

Answer:  Project 2014 is a guided learning program in support of your weight loss and weight management goals with surgery. As we are a diverse community the Project is structured so individuals can participate in any manner that suits them. For some this means active participation in the Facebook group, for others quiet self-study is profoundly effective. Minimum participation requirements are simple: sign-up for our free email publications to get weekly updates that include the Unit download files. You take it from there to enjoy the Project and make 2014 a health-minded year.

Question: Can I join anytime?

Answer: Yes. Jump in anytime. Our group is off to a late start but we are self-guided. Winter Season (January-March) includes 13 Units. They are posted under the files tab. Read each unit in order and do the assigned exercises as you go. Participate in the group or follow silently on your own. You decide your level of participation.

Question: Do I have to buy anything to participate?

Answer: No - This is a free shared experience and we are glad you are here. Joining this group and/or being an active subscriber to the LivingAfterWLS Newsletters grants you full access to all of the Units for each season. The units are provided in PDF format for your personal use to download, organize, and copy. They may not be redistributed.


Question: The downloads aren't working for me. Is there somewhere else to get them?

Answer: Yes, all of our lesson Units are posted as PDF files on this web page at LivingAfterWLS.com:
Project 2014
        
They are in PDF format and should open automatically open in a browser window. You may also open them if you have a PDF reader installed on your computer or device. You can get the free Adobe Reader here:
Adobe Reader

Project 2014: Unit 6 - Sensational Soup

Thank you for joining me in today's Project 2014 newsletter, one to warm your body and soul. Today it is all about soup! We explore the health benefits of comforting soup and the role this long-standing comfort food serves in the weight loss surgery diet. A good cup of soup can be a life-line on a cold day or when the stomach needs soothing. A soup rich in vegetables will tame any carb cravings and keep us full for hours. The Unit assignments are easy and rewarding: make a list of your favorite soups and add one new soup recipe to your weekly menu.

Jump to the Download: Unit 6

Speaking of assignments, how are you progressing with Units 1-5? By now we should all have our binder prepared and Units 1 through 5 printed and organized. We should have completed our Winter Season LivingAfterWLS Self Assessment. In addition, we need to be taking a moment each day to celebrate a "Today Inspired" moment. Assignments from Unit 4 include comparing the standard Four Rules to our specific post-surgical guidelines and noting how they fit with our weight management plan. The Unit 5 assignment has us list our vitamin supplementation and answer key  questions about our current vitamin protocol.

Visit this webpage to find all of the previously issued Project 2014 learning Units for Season 1: Winter  LivingAfterWLS Project 2014

Emotional Eating: Consider this

Many of us come to realize we tend to eat in the face of certain emotions like stress, anger, sadness, loneliness, happiness, jubilation, etc. It is common to make unhealthy food choices when driven to eat for emotional reasons over biological reasons. (Probably any of us would confess to dipping into soft carbs like crackers or sweets when succumbing to emotional hunger.) What if, having acknowledged that we are emotional eaters, we prepare an emergency food kit with four or five foods that we enjoy and that also meet our WLS high protein, low-carb nutritional prescription. When emotions strike we grant permission to eat from the emergency kit. This can be quite effective because we are responding to our emotional craving for food comfort. At the same time we are nurturing our health and sparing us the inner self-loathing for our lack of control or will power. The key is to have an emergency kit and allow yourself to use it.




Many of you already know I always have hard-cooked eggs in the fridge for when I hit meltdown. My rule is to have an egg in response to emotional hunger, wait 15-20 minutes. If after waiting the emotional craving is still there I can have a bite of something else. In most instances by the time the 20 minutes has passed I don't recall being hungry, that's how this rule works for me.

"We cannot take the emotion out of our diet, but we can put nutrition into the emotion."

Humans have evolved to be emotional eaters - can you think of any occasion happy or sad or exciting or mundane at which food is not present? We cannot take the emotion out of our diet, but we can put nutrition into the emotion. We seldom have control of the emotions in the ebb and flow of life, but we always have a choice of what we put on our fork.


We have a terrific conversation on this topic in our Facebook Group: LivingAfterWLS Project 2014. Please join us!  Link Here:  Project 2014


Here is one of my most favorite to-go protein recipes ever, from page 145 of the 5 Day Pouch Test Manual:

To-Go: Cranberry Turkey Roll-Ups

This is a terrific recipe to use on Day 3 and a great method to keep in mind when preparing portable meals to support your weight loss surgery diet. Experiment with different meats, cheese and condiments to add variety and interest to portable meals.

Ingredients:
1 pound deli-style turkey, reduced-sodium, sliced
4 ounces cream cheese spread with chives and onions
2 tablespoons cranberry sauce, no-sugar-added

Directions: Place two slices of turkey on a cutting board and spread with 1 teaspoon of cream cheese spread, and 1 teaspoon of cranberry sauce. Roll tightly, and secure with a toothpick and place in refrigerator container. Repeat with remaining ingredients, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Nutrition: Serves 4. Per serving: 232 calories, 27 grams protein, 10 grams fat, 5 grams carbohydrate.

More great recipes in the 5 Day Pouch Test Owner's Manual. Learn more: 5DPT Manual

Project 2014: Units 4 & 5. Download & Do Tasks this week!

Thank you for joining me in this second newsletter for our LivingAfterWLS Project 2014. We apologize to those of you who received this email on Sunday (2/16/2014). A technical glitch caused the coding to overwrite itself and many received a cryptic letter mixing words and code making it illegible. We hope the glitch is fixed now and you are seeing a clean letter! (My fingers are crossed!)

Today we look at Units 4 and 5 of Project 2014. Unit 4 covers the universally accepted WLS Four Rules and Unit 5 takes a look at vitamin supplementation. They are summarized here, but be sure to click the download for the full articles and your Unit Assignments.

Jump to the Download: Units 4 and 5
By now we should all have our binders prepared and Units 1, 2, and 3 printed and organized. We should be near completion with Unit 2 assignment, LivingAfterWLS Self Assessment. In addition, we need to be taking a moment each day to celebrate a "Today Inspired" moment. In case you missed Units 1, 2, and 3 we've included a quick look at each Unit and links to the download.
 

Project Mission:

Empowering individuals to harness their inner strengths for life-long weight management with weight loss surgery. Personal empowerment through education, thought, community support, and validation. We are LivingAfterWLS.

Our dedicated Facebook group has more than 350 members now! It is not required that you join the Facebook group, we have many silent participants in Project 2014. But if Facebook is your thing come on over and join us. For convenience all PDF files issued in association with this project are located under the FILES tab within the group. I wish to say Welcome and Thanks to everyone who has already joined our LAWLS Project 2014 on Facebook. The group is off and running pursuing our collective goals: please join us follow the link below:

LAWLS Project 2014 Facebook Group

 
If you are eager to join us please click the link above through your Facebook account and request membership in this group. Once your membership is accepted please take these steps to begin your engagement in this supportive and empowering group:

1. Read the Code of Conduct (under Files) and initial your agreement.

2. Open the file Winter_Units1_2_3.pdf and learn the project structure. Print the .pdf file for your personal use. (Hint - print on 3-hole paper if available!)

3. Dedicate a 3-Ring binder to the documents and worksheets (suggested binder tabs are listed on page 6). Do the tasks assigned in Units 2 and 3. Share your thoughts, experience, and encouragement with the group.

Let's get this project started! I look forward to sharing 2014 with you!

CHEERS!
Kaye

Healthy Heart Month: Heart-Head Connection

Shared with permission and back links to the American Heart Association.

What helps your heart can help your brain, too. Following a heart-healthy lifestyle can lower your chances of having a stroke, and it can also make a big difference in your mental abilities as you age.

In fact, getting plenty of physical activity, eating a healthy diet and other behaviors that strengthen your heart can have a profound effect on the way you think, how you act and what you remember.

“Most people don’t understand the connection between heart health and brain health, and as doctors we’re learning more every day,” said Ralph Sacco, M.D., chief of neurology at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami and past president of the American Heart Association. “New studies have shown that the risk factors that can lead to heart disease and stroke, such as physical inactivity and obesity, also contribute to dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss and cognitive dysfunction.”

Here’s what happens: Those unhealthy behaviors can lead to narrowing of the blood vessels. That reduces blood flow to the brain, and leads to hardening of the arteries of the heart and the brain.

When your brain doesn’t get the blood flow it needs, it can begin to malfunction. As a result, Sacco said, you could experience problems thinking, trouble with memory, difficulty finding your way from place to place and deterioration in cognitive function. If blood flow to the brain is abruptly blocked, you could even have a stroke.

“People often associate memory loss with Alzheimer’s disease, and they think it can’t be prevented or treated,” said Sacco, the first neurologist to serve as president of the American Heart Association. “But controlling your risk factors for heart disease can make a difference in slowing its progression.”

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America. Stroke ranks fourth, and it is also a leading cause of severe, long-term disability. 

“Most of the time, like heart disease, it takes years of uncontrolled, unhealthy habits to wreak havoc on your brain, so it’s important to think about healthy habits as early as childhood and maintain them through adulthood and middle age,” Sacco said. “Many of these unhealthy behaviors translate to high blood pressure, diabetes and elevated cholesterol by the time you’re in your 50s.”

Continue Reading: American Heart/Stroke Association

LAWLS Project 2014: Living Inspired After WLS

Check out the first issue of our Project 2014 Newsletter

I am so happy to invite your participation in LivingAfterWLS Project 2014: a program dedicated to life-long weight management and healthy living made possible by optimizing our weight loss surgery tool and harnessing our internal strengths so that we may thrive. This project has been long in the making, starting in 1999 when I underwent laparoscopic gastric bypass (RNY) to treat my condition of morbid obesity. 2014 launches my tenth year of blogging about weight loss surgery and the eighth year I've worked for LivingAfterWLS in support of the greater weight loss surgery community.  In that time I have learned with complete certainty that weight loss surgery is not, as the public may perceive, an easy means to weight loss. In fact, this is a challenging and difficult path we travel in the name of weight management and the pursuit of improved health, wellness, and longevity. I invite you to join this project because you understand that. As diverse individuals, unique and beautiful in our own right, we come together united in the common cause of managing metabolic disease (obesity) and through improved health we enjoy an enhanced quality of living.

In this newsletter we outline the structure of Project 2014 and release Units 1, 2, and 3 for your use as a participant in the project. The structure of the project is supported with weekly newsletters, free printable PDF files that include informative articles and practical worksheets, and numerous links to sources of further reading and empowering information. Additionally, Project 2014 is supported by community in a Facebook group dedicated to serving the membership as a support satellite to Project 2014. 

Project Mission:

Empowering individuals to harness their inner strengths for life-long weight management with weight loss surgery. Personal empowerment through education, thought, community support, and validation. We are LivingAfterWLS.

Last week we opened the group inviting members to join and share introductions. For convenience all PDF files issued in association with this project are located under the FILES tab within the group. I wish to say Welcome and Thanks to everyone who has already joined our LAWLS Project 2014 on Facebook. The group is off and running pursuing our collective goals: please join us follow the link below:

LAWLS Project 2014 Facebook Group

 
If you are eager to join us please click the link above through your Facebook account and request membership in this group. Once your membership is accepted please take these steps to begin your engagement in this supportive and empowering group:

1. Read the Code of Conduct (under Files) and initial your agreement.

2. Open the file Winter_Units1_2_3.pdf and learn the project structure. Print the .pdf file for your personal use. (Hint - print on 3-hole paper if available!)

3. Dedicate a 3-Ring binder to the documents and worksheets (suggested binder tabs are listed on page 6). Do the tasks assigned in Units 2 and 3. Share your thoughts, experience, and encouragement with the group.

Let's get this project started! I look forward to sharing 2014 with you!

CHEERS!
Kaye

LivingAfterWLS Publications in eBooks for you

LivingAfterWLS is pleased to offer our quality publications in eBook format for your convenience. Just $9.95 for each title.

 

From our Store:  LivingAfterWLS Digital publications are provided in widely favored ".ePub" format. You must have an eReader on your device or computer to open and enjoy our .ePub books and publications.

The format can be read by the Kobo eReader, Blackberry Playbook, Apple's iBooks app running on iOS devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, BeBook, Bookeen Cybook Gen3 (with firmware v. 2 and up), COOL-ER, Adobe Digital Editions, Lexcycle Stanza, BookGlutton, AZARDI, FBReader, Aldiko, Mantano Reader, Moon+ Reader and WordPlayer on Android, the Mozilla Firefox add-on EPUBReader, and Okular. Several other desktop reader software programs are currently implementing support for the format, such as dotReader, Mobipocket, uBook. Please ensure that you have installed a compatible reader on your download destination device. Shipping and Handling charges do not apply to our eBooks - save $5.95! Items purchased in addition to eBooks will be subject to customary Shipping & Handling charges.

For laptop or desktop computers we highly recommend the free eReader from Adobe: Adobe Digital Editions

Trouble with your purchased download? Link to our eBook Assistance page.

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In addition to this store you will find our eBooks listed with our partners:

Amazon Kindle ~ Barnes & Noble Nook ~ kobo ~ iTunes ~ Google Play ~ Primedia eLaunch

Please Note:

For Kindle, Nook, and Apple users we highly recommend you purchase our digital products from your preferred App store for ease of product download and management on your various devices. Shop with our digital partners by clicking the links above.