Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You » Recipes

A quickie breakfast idea

Rachael Keilin, MD — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:42:41 +0000

Mornings in our house are a bit of a zoo, what with two surgeons having to be in the O.R. before 8am and two elementary school students who suddenly decide that their chosen outfit is no longer good enough – three minutes before they need to head out the door (ahh, the drama of girls). So it’s not a shocker that breakfast for the grown-ups often needs to be made ASAP, superfly fast. That’s why I was so happy to find a breakfast idea from a nutrition program that lets you make a great breakfast in absolutely minimal time!

Oats get a lot of great press for lowering cholesterol and having lots of fiber. But these benefits really only come from oats that are not super-processed, i.e., not instant oats in a packet. “Real” oats are called steel cut or Irish oats and can be found in any health food store, and maybe even some groceries. But they take 20-30 minutes to cook, otherwise it feels like you’re grinding down your teeth with little pebbles.

So here’s the trick: the night before, combine your oats and water and bring to a boil (you can do this while you’re cooking dinner). As soon as the water boils, cover the pot and take it off the heat. Now leave it on the stovetop overnight. In the morning, put the pot back over heat and bring it to a boil. As soon as it boils (about two minutes), take it off the heat, add some protein powder, Splenda or stevia or whatever other flavorings float your boat and voila! Nearly instant oatmeal with all the benefits of whole oats.

Which reminds me: another trick I’ve learned is that protein powder tends to gum up into little balls if you add it immediately to something super hot (like coffee). Wait until the oats are a little cooled off, then add the protein about a 1/3 of a scoop at a time instead of all at once, stirring after each addition. That way, the protein melts into the food instead of glomming up into unattractive, unappetizing blobs.

Amy’s Quick and Dirty Dinner Tricks

Rachael Keilin, MD — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:38:33 +0000

If your house is like mine – first thing you hear when you get home, “What’s for dinner????” Even as a dietitian and with probably over 100 cookbooks, I sometimes still struggle to find something for dinner that is healthy and quick. Here are a couple of ideas – I have added comments for you if you are also preparing for a family that does not have to limit certain foods with meal times (i.e. your non-banded family members).

Quick and Easy Supper Ideas:

Cheese toast and fruit

1 slice whole grain wheat toast 80 cal

1 oz reduce cal Laughing Cow cheese 50 cal

1/3 cup fruit cup 40 cal

170 cal

**for the family, tomato soup

“Taco” Salad

2 oz ground turkey or chicken 100 cal

1 oz grated low fat cheese 40 cal

1/3 cup pinto beans (chili powder optional) 60 cal

1/3 cup tomato or salsa 15 cal

215 cal

Tuna noodle casserole

3 oz tuna 105 cal

1 cup cooked noodles 160 cal

1 cup steamed carrots 50 cal

2 oz grated skim mozzarella 160 cal

¼ cup skim milk 25 cal

Mix and heat until cheese melts.

Serving size for band = ½ cup ~166 cal

Also, they have some great frozen skillet meals at Wal-Mart. They are quick and easy. The only caution I have with some “ready-prepared” meals is that you must watch the sodium content. Sometimes they are high in sodium.

Bon appetite!

Amy

Lap Band Eating Outside the House

Rachael Keilin, MD — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:18:11 +0000

In my last post I talked about food choices that were really bad and not so bad at Sonic. But when I got to talking to Betty May about it she brought up a really good point. Why should you have to eat out unexpectedly at all? Unless you’ve been called out emergently because a family member is ill or has been in a car wreck, very little about our lives is so unplanned or unscheduled that you couldn’t see ahead and plan a to go meal to bring with you. Especially during softball season, I hear a lot of my parents-of-ballplayer patients telling me that they couldn’t lose weight because they were on the road all the time and “had” to eat fast food. But that’s not really true if you think about it. The schedule is set ahead of time, the playoffs are set ahead of time, even if you win unexpectedly in a tournament and have to advance and spend more time at the ballfield than you planned, you can still plan for this contingency. If you’re smart enough to remember you purse/cellphone/foldout chair to bring to the game, you can be smart enough to pack a small cooler with “travel” foods: yogurt, protein shakes, carrot sticks, fruit, slimfast – you name it!

While you may still have to go through the drive-thru for the teenagers, you don’t have to eat anything from the fast food joint if you’ve packed ahead. Is it fun to nibble on rice-cakes with cottage cheese or peanut butter when everybody else is eating fries and burgers and that greasy smell permeates the car? No, it’s really not so fun. But it all depends on WHAT YOU WANT. Do you want to satisfy the craving of the moment only to have regrets for every minute thereafter (especially when you come in the office to weigh) or do you want to continuously lose weight and get to your goal within a year?

The lap band is not magic, it will not exercise for you it will not make good food choices for you. If you tell me that “I just can’t” – can’t stop drinking cokes and sweet tea, can’t exercise, can’t not eat at fast food places – then I’m going to tell you what the band can’t do – it can’t help you lose weight. You’ve got to commit to Betty’s “rules of the box”, you’ve got to exercise, you can’t cheat every day. In your heart of hearts, you know that. And the band will always be here when you’re ready to commit.

Lap Band Smoothie Recipes

Rachael Keilin, MD — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:53:25 +0000

One of my favorite kitchen discoveries has been the imersion blender. I’ve always loved smoothies and in the last few years have become addicted to protein shakes. But it’s kind of a ginormous pain in the you-know-what to have to clean a blender every day. Protein powder and fruit tend to gum up in the bottom, discouraging me from ever wanting to come near the thing. The immersion blender is much easier to clean, smaller, fits in a drawer instead of taking up valuable counter or cabinet space and can crush ice in milliseconds. So with that said, here are some of my recommendations for immersion blender smoothies “Reece’s Smoothie”: 1 cup skim milk, 1 tablespoon peanut butter, 1 scoop anywhey protein powder, 1/2 scoop (use the protein powder scoop) of sugar-free, fat-free instant jello pudding mix chocolate flavor, 2-3 ice cubes. 300 calories/29g protein “Good morning sunshine”: 1 bottle Starbucks mocha latte (from grocery store), 1 scoop chocolate protein powder, 2-3 ice cubes. about 300 calories/almost 40g protein “Eggnog Delite”: 1 cup skim milk, 1 scoop of anywhey protein powder, 1 graham cracker (approx. two squares), 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp.cinnamon, 1 scoop of vanilla sugar-free, fat-free jello instant pudding mix, 2-3 ice cubes. 280 calories, 26g protein. “apple pie”: 1 apple (peeled, cored and sliced), 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder or anywhey, 1 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup of vanilla or apple pie flavored yogurt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 2-3 ice cubes. 280 calories/29g protein.

Recipe – Healthy burger

Dr. Ron Hekier — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:41:50 +0000

Dr. Keilin and I find that we don’t eat that much meat. Instead we use a lot of soy products. We do this I know it sounds gross but a lot of the soy stuff tastes great. And it is much healthier. Less fat and a good amount of protein. There are soy ‘crumbles’ which taste pretty much like ground beef, soy ‘chicken’ nuggets, and soy burgers. Check out your grocer for some soy products. The two that we usually see at stores such as Walmart are Boca and MorningStar Farms. Check out the freezer section.

Here’s a recipe for a soy burger with Boca Burgers:

INGREDIENTS
1 Boca Burger (there are many flavors to choose from)
1 hamburger bun (toast it well to help it go down)
1 Tablespoon Light Miracle Whip
Lettuce
Tomato
Onion
1 Tablespoon ketchup or Tablespoon mustard

This burger gives you the following nutrients and calories”
Calories: 260
Fat: 5.5 grams
Protein: 18 grams
Carbohydrate: 40 grams
Cholesterol: 5 mg
Sodium: 1000 mg
Sugar: 9 grams

Foods I Like

Rachael Keilin, MD — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:37:28 +0000

So by now most of you know that I have a personal vendetta against bacon, sausage and sweet tea. But what, you may (or may not – I could just be talking to myself here) ask, do I approve? Is my life all about rice-cakes and celery? As the French would say (and a shout-out to my Arkan-Paris friend Martine) mais non! But especially with proteins, I try to choose wiiiiiisely as the crusaders said in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

[Let me first re-iterate that bacon and sausage have almost no protein and lots and lots of fat, so they are a treat, not a protein source.]

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, great sources of protein are:

2% cottage cheese with a couple of tablespoons of sugar free jelly mixed in on top of Ezekial bread toast

A can of tuna mixed with a ton (about one whole) chopped onion, miracle whip light +/- hard boiled egg and salt and pepper

Smoothies made from skim milk, protein powder, ½ scoop of sugar-free/fat-free pudding mix and some ice blended in a blender

Part skim string cheese sticks

Veggie burgers with a slice of low-fat cheese melted on top

Scrambled egg whites mixed with tomatoes, onions and a ¼ cup of cheddar cheese

Beans, beans, beans! As chilli, with rice, in salads