Susan Maria Leach and the people at Bariatric Eating have started a new venture: bariatric vitamins. The line was represented at the ObesityHelp conference in Houston last weekend. Susan Maria was there herself, advocating Journey Vitamins as the end-all, be-all of bariatric supplementation.
Most of my time in Houston was spent at the BBGC table, where we were selling t-shirts, bracelets, and Andrea’s amazing lab tracking workbooks. But, on Saturday afternoon, I made an exception and went to a session called “The Supplement Jungle,” which was presented by Annessa Chumbley, R.D. Now, I had already had the “pleasure” of hearing Annessa, as she was part of the expert panel at Friday’s Q&A Session. That was where she stunned me by saying weight loss surgery patients should really be on chewable vitamins for life, and we should take brands like Bariatric Advantage or Unjury’s Opurity (“No China Ingredients!”) because brands like Centrum have no oversight. Nevermind that I’ve seen lab work from individuals who take Centrum (and not chewable Centrum), and their labs are just as good, if not better, than those who only take chewable Bariatric Advantage vitamins. There were some other choice tidbits from Friday that had me rather pessimistic for Saturday’s possibilities. Just ask Andrea:
I went in with such great optimism. Kaitlin Nelson did not. But I had hope.
Let’s just say her optimism was not long-lived:
Photo Credit: Shelly Lowery
Well, I just made it back from the Houston ObesityHelp Conference. It was a blast! But, of course, there a few moments that made me go, “huh?” During the Meet and Greet on Friday night, someone asked me if I had had the surgery … yet. Yeah. Apparently, at 179 pounds, I still look fat enough to undergo bariatric surgery. Nice. Later that evening, someone asked me how old I was. When I said I was 22, her response was, “Well, weren’t you too young to have surgery?” Again, thanks.
And it wasn’t just that people don’t know when to shut their mouths (If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!), some of the advice given during the sessions was just plain BAD. Apparently, the big craze right now in the bariatric world is eating your vitamins from whole food sources instead of taking vitamin supplements. Nevermind that bariatric patients cannot and do not absorb nutrients from food the same way that the unaltered population does. Also, one of the big name surgeons who presents at these events is now coming out and saying that bariatric patients do not need to use protein supplements because protein just isn’t that important. If our bodies do actually need any (yes, he said that), they certainly don’t need the 80-100 grams that many bariatric surgeons (including him until recently) recommend.
I’ll be adding more updated posts in the coming days, but I wanted to give a quick little report for now. And, to prove that it wasn’t all discouraging, here’s a picture from Friday night. Yes, that is a cupcake. Salty caramel to be exact. It was delicious!
