Review: VitaminWater Zero: Squeezed

Live-blogging a review of the VitaminWater Zero: Squeezed lemonade-drink. Bear with me - this is my first live blog.

I picked this up at Royal Farms. I have to say I am pretty impressed! Usually prepackaged lemonade will have that bite that almost demands you water it down, but Squeezed is refreshing and sweetened enough to remind you of the sugary concoction it always will be. Plus, vitamin count! Vitamins A, B6, B12, C, E, Calcium, Niacin (aka Vitamin B3), Pantothenic Acid (aka Vitamin B5), Magnesium, and Zinc. And a lot of those are 100%s, so that's nice too. Definitely a do-over! Very refreshing.

Review: Superfruit/Vitamin Drinks

More reviews! Sorry to barrage two in a row, but they're on my mind, so...out it goes, before I forget.

bai5 Sumatra Dragonfruit Antioxidant-Infused Beverage
So, I picked this up at the 7-Eleven on a lark. Dragonfruit? Sure, what the heck. Overall the price was about average for a 7-Eleven "fancy drink" ($2.49), but the taste was...odd. The flavor, in addition to the coffee fruit, is dragonfruit (maybe?), pomegranate and strawberry. So overall the taste was good, but there was an odd muskiness that I felt was related to the coffee - and this is before I read that it was the fruit that surrounds a coffee bean, so it couldn't have been psychosomatic. (Follow-up note: I don't like coffee, period.)

Truly, I was more enamored with the sudden realization in my little naive coffee mind that the beans didn't just come by their ownsome - that they were inside wee cherry-looking fruits. (Look! LOOOOK!!) I drank the whole bottle, and the juice was nice enough, but for the price and the odd taste of it, it's not something I would seek out with relish.

Vitamin Water Zero: XXX (Acai-Blueberry-Pomegranate)
So, this isn't anything new on the market - but it's mostly to say that yes, I've tried it, yes, I love it, and yes, it got me through a nasty stretch of food poisoning with amazing grace and aplomb. It's widely available, relatively inexpensive (usually $1-$1.50/bottle), though you may have trouble finding the Zero version. So this is something I will buy again. The vitamins contained in the drink are Vitamins A, B3, B5, B6, B12, Vitamin C, and Manganese, especially Vitamin C.

Propel Zero: Berry
This "nutrient enhanced water beverage" is pretty darn tasty. I picked it up after I ran out of VitaminWater with the food poisoning, and it's pretty nice. The main vites it's got are B&E, but it comes with Vitamins C, E, and B6. There aren't significant amounts of any of these vitamins (no more than 25% of any one of them).

Review: Protein Bars

So, I thought I would start doing some food reviews, since lord knows I am trying tons of new and different things to see how they do. So I'll do this review on protein bars - and I'm sure I will do one also on different protein drinks (or similarly vitamined/superpowered drinks) and protein powders and etc. There's a lot of new things I'm going to be introducing into my diet, so I'm definitely going to need to keep track - and why not share my experience with everyone else? Yup.

The main things I look for in a protein bar is that (a) should have a palatable consistency (I hate when they're gooey/fudgy and feel like play-doh in my mouth); (b) should be yummy; and (c) hopefully be relatively inexpensive. Now I know C is going to be the hardest, but A&B are my current actual concerns.

MET-Rx Protein Plus Bar: Chocolate Chocolate Chunk

So, pretty quickly you're going to realize a very real trend - I love chocolate. Which is going to be a slight problem, so where I can, I am sneaking it in like gangbusters. So, I thought, hey, check this out! Butt-tons of protein, and a wad of chocolate? Heck yeah man!

Heck. No. Man.

It tasted decent - definitely filled my chocolate quota. The consistency was ok, not great but not dreadful. However, this had me running to the bathroom faster than you could shake a stick. Remember that butt tons of protein? Butt tons. So, this is by far not a do-over for me.


Lenny & Larry's Muscle Brownie: Triple Chocolate
 Ok, so here's another one. Now, this one was pretty damn amazing. I really loved the texture (it was a brownie - but not so fudgy as you would think you would get as the fudgyness of a regular brownie combined with the play-doh-y-ness of a protein bar). I liked this so much that I would definitely buy a box of these in bulk to have as my dessert or one of my snacks that I'll allot myself in the day.








Special K Protein Meal Bar: Double Chocolate, Strawberry, Chocolate Chip

So, I have tried a goodly amount of these flavors - I believe the only flavor they have that I have not tried is the chocolate peanut butter, because I don't like peanut butter. (Cue the obligatory "you don't like peanut butter?!?!" comments.) I have actually LOVED these for a long, long time. I used and continue to use them regularly for diets and general breakfasts. They are relatively inexpensive, very easy to find, and tasty. They have a nice crunchy texture, the flavor is fantastic, and...yeah. They meet and exceed all of my concerns, which makes them a standby and consistent favorite. (I also love their protein shakes - but that's for another day, another post.)

That's all I can think of and/or have recently had. I will make this a recurring thing, unless people tell me to bugger off. In which case, I will only cease under violent protest! So if you want me to stop, make sure you break out some sort of pitchfork or other medieval farming implement, kthx <3.

Food Poisoning =/= Post-Operative Dietary Woes?

I am slowly recovering from my first (and hopefully last) encounter with food poisoning - brought on by what I believe to be some of the Nutrisystem frozen french toast and pancakes I scavenged from my parents' freezer (that was probably x months old - but they were frozennnn!). After I was able to tolerate anything, I was just drinking water and Vitamin Water Zero, and have slowly moved onto the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast). However, I'm wondering - will any of these agonizing things that I went through with the food poisoning occur similarly after my surgery? In addition, will I be as weak and sleeping all the time as I have been doing? Will I have a hard time breathing because my abdomen is in pain? I am concerned actually more about the breathing issue. I can't laugh right now other than a small forced chuckle, which is dreadfully depressing.

In other news, I had to reschedule the secondary EKG I have to undergo - it was meant to be this past Monday, but I didn't have a referral... And I may not have a referral for my rescheduled date (this upcoming Monday). My first EKG came back with some irregularities, that there might be low blood flow on the right side of my heart. Not something you would think to see in a 27 year old, to say the least. The nurse that called me to give me this information told me that, most likely, if you have larger breasts (which I do), it can show up as dark areas on the film and give them inaccuracies. So, still - have to do it again. A bit concerned that my weakened state from the food poisoning will truly show some heart issues.

And lastly, on another food poisoning related note, I've dropped at least 5 lbs in the past 3 days. Which would be a nice bonus if I weren't trying to be very careful about my exact weight numbers. So it's a bit harrying. Hopefully everything will be fine at the next session, though.

Intro

Hello all, and welcome to my excessively alliteratively-titled blog, The Crafty Chubby Chronicles of Chow Curtailment. Which pretty much means, I'm a crafty fat chick on a life journey/blogging spree toward cutting back on food. And by cutting back on food, I don't just mean a diet. I mean, actually, that I'm pursuing a gastric sleeve procedure.

My name is Laura, I am a 27 year old woman living in Baltimore, Maryland. I live with my boyfriend Dave, who is the vice president in a catering-staffing company, and also is a rock star (in my eyes especially, but also he was in a 'rap band' and is working on a lot of musical projects as well). I also have two lovely cats, Disa and Luna, who I'm sure I will post pictures of eventually. As for myself, I work as an office assistant in municipal government. The pay is mediocre at best, the job itself is usually soul-sucking and unrewarding, but the benefits are fab, so this is what enabled me to even think about this whole thing. It gives me a lot of downtime to dootz around with crafts or what have you, and the coworkers that I deal with on a day-to-day basis are swell. They have also heard a ton about all this stuff - I am kind of an open book, truly. My "TMI" sensors are incredibly faulty.

I have very few friends where I live, though the friends of Dave's that I'm also friends with are cool and fun for the most part. 95% of my friends are in other states. So I have taken to talking about my surgery a lot with my friends in other states via text/facebook, participating in the forums on gastricsleeve.com, and talking to Dave and my coworkers. My parents and family are sort of supportive, but skeptical and cynical about it for the most part, which is disheartening.

The reason I decided I wanted to do a blog about myself, and this, was that I wanted to have a written record of all the things I am currently going through in regards to the gastric sleeve surgery, as well as be another resource for others considering the procedure who might be in a similar place that I am. Like I said, I'm 27 years old, I'm 5'6", and I weigh 275 lbs. My BMI is a 44. I have no "co-morbidities" - i.e., I have no diseases that are obesity related that could be deadly (high blood pressure, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, etc). I do have obesity-related problems (or problems exacerbated by obesity), though - depression, asthma, and early lymphedema in my right foot/leg. I have been actively doing diet and exercise plans/'routines' for the past 7 years, with losses and gains - and I've had enough of the weight 'coaster. I decided that I was interested in the sleeve operation because I am starting to experience health problems that will only get worse over time, and I want to be proactive and turn my life around now, so I can make the most out of living a healthy life.

I know that's a long introduction, but this is a journey, a chronicle - and who said there was anything ever short about either of those?