In Review: Did you do the 5 Day Pouch Test in January?

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Did you take five days in this first month of 2017 to reset your dietary and lifestyle habits to align with our weight loss surgery guidelines? You are not alone. January is the most popular month of the year to do the 5 Day Pouch Test. We all want a fresh start that shows promise for self-improvement. As the month closes let's take a moment to reflect on what we accomplished in our five days and how we can keep the momentum in favor of forward progress.

5DPT is about Learning, Not Perfection

If we complete the 5 Day Pouch Test having learned a few things about our self, our weight loss surgery and our capability in managing life and weight loss surgery in relationship to one another we have succeeded: we can deem the 5 Day Pouch Test a success. Here are some things to consider while treating the 5DPT as a learning experience:

What can I eat that gives my pouch a feeling of fullness? What do I eat that fails to give my pouch a feeling of fullness?

Have the liquid restrictions become automatic to me? Do I have heightened awareness of how I consume liquids with my meals and snacks?
Refresher: Lots of Water & Liquid Restrictions

Am I eating protein in a ratio of 2 bites protein to 1 bite complex carbohydrate? (2B/1B Rhythm)
Article: Why 'Protein First' helps us lose weight

Have I found time to include physical activity in my daily routine?
Inspired Encouragement: No energy? Walk Toward the Light

Am I allowing myself to feel empowered when I make choices that nourish my body and respect my weight loss surgery? Read this: New Year's Resolved: Five Strategies for Success

Am I forgiving lapses in compliance with my guidelines and moving forward to make better choices the next time?

Download Free 5 Day Pouch Test Journal

5 Day Pouch Test: Are you prepared?

http://www.5daypouchtest.com/index.html

There is no doubt about it: the 5 Day Pouch Test is an enthusiasm generating phenomena. More people have done the 5DPT after hearing by word of mouth how someone else took back their WLS tool and lost some weight too, in 5 easy days. If we are struggling and don't know how to "get back to basics", if we have lost all hope, and suddenly we learn about someone just like us who got back on track in five days, it is easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm.  Just like the young child eager to ride a two-wheel bicycle without training wheels we are prone to crashes when we take off too quickly without learning the rules.

I don't consider this over-eagerness a failure: it is simply misdirected energy leading to an  unsuccessful execution of the plan.  There are four errors of over-eagerness that I see frequently, but can easily be avoided:

• Not understanding the plan
• Restricting caloric intake
• Poorly scheduling the 5DPT
• Lack of Planning
• Pursuit of Perfection

Let's take a look at each point of over-eagerness and consider ways to harness the energy and excitement while taking intelligent and reasonable steps to work the plan.

I'm starting the 5DPT tomorrow, what do I need to know?
Official 5 Day Pouch Test Website
I am surprised at how often I'm asked this. Usually the question comes in an email time stamped 11 p.m. the night before! I know there is a perception that the 5DPT is just about a 5-day eating plan and I've read, "easy-peezy, just do liquids, then soft food, then protein and that's all there is to it." When people take this approach they may lose a few pounds (and quickly regain them), but more damaging, they do not return to the early post-op behaviors, diet, and lifestyle that contributed to weight loss in the beginning thus putting obesity in remission. A successful 5DPT needs to be scheduled, planned, and done with mindfulness and intent. Grocery shopping and meals should be prepared in advance when possible. There is as much mental work as kitchen work in preparing for the 5DPT and transitioning back to your post-WLS program. Use the free downloads (5DPT Free Download Tools) and make sure you fully understand the plan. I understand when enthusiasm and hope strikes we need to take quick action to harness that energy. The key to sustaining that energy is knowledge. Read all you can about the plan, don't just dismiss it as "easy-peezy," -- doing so leads to disappointment. Use the official website. Get the books if you like, or download the 5 Day Pouch Test Express Study Guide: Find your weight loss surgery tool in five focused days. (LivingAfterWLS eBook Shorts 1) the quickest way to get a grasp of the plan as it is intended to be done to enable your success.

The Complete 5 Day Pouch Test Owner's Manual on Kindle

Restricting caloric intake. Do not restrict food or caloric intake on the 5DPT. You can have as many liquid meals as needed in response to hunger or cravings. Some people are inclined to restrict food intake during the 5 Day Pouch Test: this is not encouraged because it leads to increased hunger cravings and frustration. Do not restrict food intake: less is not better. Pay close attention to the signals your body gives and when you are hungry eat something from the approved menu for the day. Soups are measured in 1-cup servings and protein drinks are measured as the recipe or package directs. Stick with these portion sizes and eat what you can in 15 minutes. After 15 minutes discard what is uneaten and take pause to experience your pouch noting feelings of fullness and satiation. Wait at least one full hour before your next serving of liquid meal. Use this time to be mindful of your body; to get in touch with your pouch. Learning to feel the pouch and listening for authentic biological hunger signals is essential to your successful weight management. If you are truly hungry after waiting one hour then have another serving of one of the approved meals. Again, take only 15 minutes to eat and continue to be alert to the signals your body sends.

Recipes: Days 1 and 2

Poorly scheduling the 5DPT.  Mark the date. Set a date and mark your calendar. Make sure you can follow the plan without the disruption of travel, social events or hormonal cycles. Enlist the support of family and friends. It is fairly common for people to schedule the 5DPT to begin on Monday and end on Friday. But many have found that scheduling Day 1 for a Saturday works more favorably for them. On Days 1 and 2 one generally needs frequent bathroom breaks, which may be uncomfortable in a workplace. Consider that as you schedule your plan. Additionally, many of us have made the mistake of completing the 5DPT on Friday only to celebrate with weekend binge eating come Saturday. If our plan starts on Saturday and concludes on Wednesday we can more easily transition to a Day 6 lifestyle on Thursday, thus avoiding the weekend binge phenomena. Consider all of this before scheduling your 5 Day Pouch Test.  Scheduling it for the right time significantly improves our chance for success.
Get Answers! Review the FAQ's

"You already know how to lose weight using your surgical tool. So let's get back to those basics the smart way."

Featured Article: 3 Keys to Back to Basics After WLS

Lack of planning. You must plan ahead to have the prescribed foods available once the plan begins. You must also take the necessary steps to remove trigger foods from your environment as much as possible. Before the plan begins, please make preparations: this will ensure your success. Plan your meals for all five days and do the grocery shopping before starting the 5DPT. We all know that the supermarket is temptation alley, do your best to avoid going there for these five days. Many people are surprised at the relief and empowerment they feel upon making their food plan for five days. With the menu choices made there is little to dwell upon and we have spare energy to focus on getting back on track.

5 Day Pouch Test: Download Free Tools

Pursuit of Perfection.  At least once a day I receive this question, "I messed up on Day 1: Should I start over to get it perfect?" I have never done the 5DPT perfectly and I do not know anyone who has. Rather than make the five days about perfection make this time about learning. Little mistakes will not stop the world from turning. So forge ahead doing your very best and forgive little mistakes. Learn from each day, review the key learning points and make notes on your 5 Day Pouch Test Journal. Emerge on Day 6 knowing more about yourself and how to work your tool. You can do this! One of the biggest dietary mistakes we make is thinking we must be totally perfect or totally imperfect. We do not have to manage our plate with an all or nothing strategy: this has never worked for keeping our obesity under control. Start thinking about doing your best in the moment and on the day and celebrate the little moments. Our LivingAfterWLS motto embraces this: "Stop for a moment. Look where you are: You Have Arrived." Now is everything.  Never forget that perfection is not the goal in anything: doing our best on the day and in the moment is always the goal.   5DayPouchTest.com

New Year's Resolved: Five Strategies for Success

 Happy New Year Dear Readers!

Are you resolved to make this year -- 2017 -- your healthiest year ever using your weight loss surgery tool? If so, then join me! I am ready for this fresh new start and I'm eager to go the distance to take advantage of my WLS and make this my healthiest year ever. I know it takes work to maintain a healthy weight and healthy attitude after bariatric surgery -- after all, I've been at this since my gastric bypass in 1999! So with your interest and mine at heart I'm pulling out some great advice I've accumulated over the years and adding some new nuggets of wisdom to this knowledge base so we can all be inspired and motivated to do our best in 2017.

Let's begin today, January 1, with 5 strategies for success. They work. I know they do. Give them a try and find out how attainable success can be for you.

Thanks for joining me today! I look forward to spending a meaningful year with you on this crazy journey we call LivingAfterWLS!

CHEERS!
Kaye

Five Strategies for Success

1. Preparation
The 5 Day Pouch Test is most successful when there is considerable preparation done in advance of Day 1. First, learn the plan completely. Next, plan your meals and do your grocery shopping to avoid a stop at the store during the 5 days. Finally, create a storm of enthusiasm as you embark on this experiment. Get excited about being in control of your health and nutritional wellness. Anticipate that you will succeed with the 5DPT, that you will emerge on Day 6 with renewed confidence in your pouch and the excitement that comes from taking control over the Carb Monster.

Review the Plan: 5 Day Pouch Test

2. Find a Friend
Do not travel alone. The power of friendship and bonding breathes life into our heart and soul. In the Day 6 book  I wrote, "Ask for help. Often I receive letters from Neighbors who have gone missing from our online community. They start, "Sorry I haven't been around the Neighborhood, I've been struggling lately." It is an odd thing that at times when me most need help we retreat. Let me assure you, there is always someone doing well in the Neighborhood who has strength to spare. When you are struggling don't retreat, come to the safe haven circle of friends and let the collective strength buoy you in your time of need. Ask for help. In the karma of life your turn will come around to give back in a friend's time of need."

Official 5 Day Pouch Test Facebook Group

3. Pot of Soup
Never underestimate the comforting power of a healthy well-made soup: it is your best weapon in the battle against the Carb Monster. Use any fresh vegetables that you like. Saute them in a scant amount of olive oil which will help your body absorb the nutrients and then simmer in reduced sodium chicken, beef, or vegetable broth until nice and tender Serve yourself some delicious goodness one cup at a time and feel the love.

Try These: Carb Monster Soup Recipes

4. Practice Kindness
It simply breaks my heart when I read the self-loathing talk so many of us express when we feel we have failed at weight loss surgery. I think because we are encouraged to set goals we think there is a finish line. But in this effort we are in the race for life; there is no finish line. Sometimes during the race we are full speed ahead and other times we are one foot in front of the other trudging along. I believe on most days we are doing the best we can to make it work in a world where it is much easier to be fat. So please, be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with the compassion and respect you show your dearest friend. Stop the self-loathing dialog and replace it with the generosity in your heart that you so willingly give to others. Be kind to yourself. Please?

More about the role of self kindness: Day 6: Beyond the 5 Day Pouch Test by Kaye Bailey

5. Focus
Practice mental presence during the 5 Day Pouch Test. Be mindful of all you eat, how you move your body and observe your energy levels and patterns. Be completely aware of yourself and identify the things that are working and helping you to feel refreshed and alive. Use the 5 Day Pouch Test journal to record your experience and focus on learning about yourself. Awareness is not selfish, it is part of the process of understanding so that we may improve our health and wellness. Carry this focus forward to Day 6 and continue to treat your body in a kind and healthy manner and avoid stepping back into the the self-loathing and unhealthy behavior that brought you here.
Download 5 Day Pouch Test Journal

Are you due for a Post-WLS Check-up? Use this tool!

The 5 Day Pouch Test: Express Study Guide

The LivingAfterWLS Self-Assessment is a proven tool to enhance and motivate your ongoing efforts with WLS.

The LivingAfterWLS “Quarterly Personal Self-Assessment” tool is a worksheet of questions we can ask ourselves in a sincere effort to assess our present state and make an action plan for the next three months. This worksheet should be used as a private tool with the intent to keep your eye on the goal. It is a contract with yourself; a contract of honor and self-respect because you deserve to treat yourself well and engage in appropriate long-term behaviors in pursuit of your healthiest life. Please accept this invitation to join me in the Quarterly Personal Self-Assessment. Take some quiet time to evaluate where you are and where you are going. Put your WLS goal back in sight. Pre-ops, Newbies and Old-timers can all use this tool. You can do this.

First Step in Self-Compassion: The Self-Assessment Worksheet

Download Free LivingAfterWLS Self-Assessment

In our LivingAfterWLS Weekly Digest delivered yesterday to your email Inbox and available HERE in our archives we encouraged our community members to take some time to exercise self-compassion as a positive step toward improving our health and weight loss surgery experience. As part of your self-compassion we invited you to download and complete our LivingAfterWLS Self-Assessment worksheet. Stats from the  newsletter show that many of you clicked the link to the download worksheet! This is exciting because we know that the LivingAfterWLS Self-Assessment is a proven tool to enhance and motivate your ongoing efforts with WLS. It has been part of the LivingAfterWLS curriculum for over eight years and still one of our most requested documents.

Use this tool to recall your original goals, find out where you are today, and map a plan for the future. Do this every three months, make a date with yourself to pause and reflect. When you know where you come from and where you are, then defining where you want to go is invigorating.

You can find this worksheet and more free downloads on our website:
LivingAfterWLS Downloads  and also on our Project 2014 webpage.

Don't throw away all the eggs

Featured article from today's 5 Day Pouch Test Bonus Bulletin!

Continuing our LivingAfterWLS August theme of "Back to Basics" - We are pleased to say our 5DPT BONUS Bulletin was delivered to your Inbox today and live in our Archive right now. Click Here to the archive and enjoy all the great content this bonus publication has to offer. Something to inspire everyone!

What if I mess up?

Dropped Eggs Happen!

As a lifelong person struggling with the disease of obesity the all-or-nothing mentality of falling off the wagon is something that continues to perplex me. Do you know what I'm talking about? I will have good intentions to have an omelet and tomato slices for breakfast but for some reason I chose instead to have a toasted bagel slathered with cream cheese. Naturally the high carbohydrate and high fat breakfast makes me feel sluggish and miserable so I think, "To hell with it" and continue to make poor dietary choices the rest of the day. Now you know what I'm talking about, I see you nodding your head. (This still happens to me once in a while, I'll be honest with you.)

Years ago in one of the many diet programs I was following, and I am not sure which it was, a counselor talked about dropped eggs as the theory applies to the scenario above. She asked if any of us, while in the kitchen baking, had accidentally dropped an egg on the floor. We all nodded yes. She then asked if we said, "To hell with it" and proceeded to drop the remaining eggs on the floor. We all nodded no, of course not! "Then why, when you drop the metaphorical diet egg do you say to hell with it and break the diet for the rest of the day?" Great allegory!

Dropped eggs happen. We are human. We live in a difficult world. So the next time you drop the diet egg visualize getting a paper towel, wiping up the spill and moving forward. Dropped eggs happen and a great deal of life and living is all about cleaning up messes.

Shared with permission from "Day 6: Beyond the 5 Day Pouch Test" by Kaye Bailey. Copyright 2012 - LivingAfterWLS ~ All Rights Reserved. Pages 26-27.

 

 

5 Day Pouch Test Bonus Bulletin

The Science of Success: 5 Consistencies

by © 2008 Christine Carter, Ph.D.Link to the Original Article by Dr. Carter

People who rise to greatness tend to have five things in common:

1. They practice hard, in a really specific way. Nobody makes the list of true greats effortlessly. Accomplished people devote hours upon hours to what researchers define as "deliberate practice." 

2. They practice consistently. K. Anders Ericsson, author of a landmark study on this topic, says that "elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends." 

3. They gain experience over the long haul; researchers call it the 10-year-rule. Most successful people average ten years of practice and experience before becoming truly accomplished.

4. Most greats have had significant failures-it goes with the territory. 

5. They believe persistence leads to success. Great performers have been shown to believe that their persistent effort will lead to success; researchers call this self-efficacy.

Read the Expanded article in our July 5 Day Pouch Test Bulletin

The Secret to Lasting WLS Success

Shared from the:

July 5 Day Pouch Test Bulletin

The Weight Management Secret
We haven't heard before

This will change how you think about WLS

 

I hope this message finds you well and thank you so much for selecting this correspondence from the many that fill your Inbox, I appreciate the time you share with me.

In this Bulletin I have taken the liberty of exploring an idea that came to me during a research project I was involved with recently. What if getting WLS surgery right wasn't about the goal weight or my favorite Four Rules or any other little list of instructions.

What if WLS living is about dedication to an ideal goal that, like any other worthy pursuit, requires practice?

What if we put ourselves in training for healthy living? Forget relying on intuition or instructions alone.

What if we take each day as a new training session for healthy living and practice what we know in the pursuit of improvement.

What if daily practice is what makes the difference between hopelessness and thriving?

Is that the secret of making WLS work for us and work for life?  Please take a look at the feature article "Take a Tip from the Professionals" and consider how you can employ the theories of practice into your WLS lifestyle. I've found some really great quotes and shared them throughout this newsletter - they are inspiring to me and I hope you will also find them inspiring.  While you are here please enjoy one of my favorite recipes shared from Cooking with Kaye: Sweet Italian Sausage with Veggies and Pasta. It is delicious and makes practicing this high protein diet satisfying.  I've also shared a terrific piece by Dr. Christine Carter on the Science of Success.  You guessed it - it's all about practice.

Thank you for joining me this month for our 5DPT Bulletin. I wish you the very best today and always!

CHEERS!
Kaye

Note: In case you missed it last month, we published our mid-year Special Edition of the 5 Day Pouch Test Bulletin - the most commonly asked questions so far this year. Check it out in our archive: 2013 June Special Edition Bulletin