Feeling better after adding new foods.

I went to my facebook bariatric group and asked about my concerns about my eating being too focused on just protein and water. I was given some good suggestions and after going shopping and buying foods that are good for me, I am feeling much better:

Clearer in mind, less angry, less feeling like being cheated out of life. Calmer. And I dropped 4 pounds over the weekend, which was totally unexpected.

I even had a poo that was normal with no bleeding. Praise the Lord!

I swam today for 20 minutes at a good hard clip, swimming freestyle laps and plan a walk for later. I am going to walk 20 minutes, rather than the 45 minute death march that I had been doing.

I had been so worried that I would mess up my progress that I had forgotten that the main success of the sleeve is that even though we still eat, we eat much less. So I was able to eat a bit of cereal with some unsweetened cashew milk and a sprinkle of stevia and be ok.

I was able to have a Fiber one brownie and be ok.

I think that this increased fiber is why I had a decent experience in the bathroom without bleeding. 

Feeling Better After Changing Diet

I had been so down. I was eating pure protein for the past two weeks. About 100 g of pure protein. Now, keep in mind that I am not like your average Joe. I have diverticulosis, which is potholes in the colon, too much protein can kill me.

Yesterday I added the following to my diet at about 6 pm:

1. some fruit from a can (no syrup)
2. some raisin bran cereal with a little milk (I am dairy sensitive, but decided to chance it).
3. a couple of pork rinds (my first time eating them ever) with some spinach dip.

This morning I had the first natural poo that I have had since my surgery. The first one unassisted by miralax or stool softeners.

I had been so fried for the past week or so. Miserable, tired, cranky and my diverticular pain was back.

Yesterday I swam 30 minutes of hard freestyle laps and burned about 525 cals, but had only taken in 328 cals of pure protein for the day. I felt like I was going to die.

Eating some carbs, even thought they probably were not optimal really helped me. I took in a total of 884 cals and expended 525 on the swim.

And I was down today on the scale.

I decided to skip the morning protein shake and try to see how I do getting my protein from food, which is what my doctor recommended on Monday. She also told me to balance out my eating, but I was too afraid to stray from  the pure protein. She was the one who suggested the raisin bran.

So, this morning, instead of egg beaters (which have so much crap in them) I had Egglands Best Egg Whites with a sprinkle of cheese and some diced ham and about an hour before that, I had a fiber one bar and right now I am having COFFEE. Black coffee.

I decided to skip the morning protein shake and try to see how I do getting my protein from food, which is what my doctor recommended on Monday. She also told me to balance out my eating, but I was too afraid to stray from  the pure protein. She was the one who suggested the raisin bran.

What?

I hear Angels singing.

A new low! Weigh in before surgery.

Hi all,

I know you are out there, I see the hits, but seldom have any comments. Hopefully this post will generate some.

Today is TWO DAYS until my VSG surgery and I am really excited. I am so ready! I have run the gamut of emotions, but today I am just pumped.

My pool closed down for renovations, but I got a pass from a LA Fitness pool to swim until Monday and will get a pass from the Y for Tuesday, I plan to swim right up to my date, but here is what I am really excited about:

I have hit my second goal! I now weigh less than my husband. This morning I weighed in at 256. I have not been in the 250's since 2007! I started this journey at 298 pounds and went to the first weigh in and weighed 278. In the past six months on the required diet, I have lost 22 pounds.

I have learned:

How to slow down my eating.
How to chew more and eat without drinking.
Which vitamins to take to nourish my body after surgery.
To journal my foods and exercise with every meal/workout.
That overestimating workout and underestimating portions is a recipe for diasaster.

Bring on surgery.

My next goal is 220 pounds. I don't set time limits because my body doesn't work that way.

Getting off of Coffee

Today is the fifth day that I have not had any coffee. It has been a long weaning process. I used to drink it black and I would usually eat vanilla oreo cookies with it. Or toast with butter. Sometimes eight cookies or four slices of toast.

I wanted to stop the coffee because every time that I didn't have coffee in the morning, I would get a massive headache and since I know that I won't be drinking coffee immediately pre-op, I am stopping to coffee to avoid adding a headache to my list of post op issues.

Here is the funny thing: My carb cravings for bread and cookies has dramatically reduced!

That was unexpected!

I guess it's because eating cookies and toast was so tied to drinking a cup of coffee. Man. I am really happy about that.

I had a headache for three days. Now I am not even thinking about having a cup of coffee.

Here is how I weaned off of it:

1. I went from three cups of full strength coffee to one cup full strength and two cups of Green Mountain Half Caff
2. Then I went to all Half Caff.
3. Then I reduced to one cup of Half Caff and two cups of decaf.
4. Then I would use my kuerig on the small setting to fill a large cup half way. I would dump out a little of the half caff, I would then top off with a small setting of decaf, creating 1/4 caff.
5. A week after that I went to decaf for a week
6. I weaned back to one cup of decaf.
7. This Monday I had my last cup of coffee.

So this has really worked for me. It's like titrating off of medicine.

UPDATE From the Post Op Me: I ended up going back onto coffee full bore pre-op. I was afraid it would screw me up post op, but maybe it was the morphine or something...I have had no headaches and no withdrawals and it is nearly three weeks post op and I have not had any coffee. Why bother? I can't drink with meals anymore anyway. 

I used to. ..

Before my journey began,  I used to:

Drink coke and Pepsi by the case.
Make a gallon of sweet tea and forbid my kids to drink it. It was for me.
Eat 4 or more packs of Reese cups. Every night.
Wake up vomiting.
Wake up in the middle of the night and eat an entire meal.
Have two boxes of Philly cheese steak hot pockets at once.
Sleep all day.
Buy a container of lady locks and eat them by myself.
Eat bags of caramels.
My floor by the bed was full of "hidden" candy wrappers.
I ate in bed a lot.
At fast food places i would pretend to be buying food for the whole family and eat it myself. Multiple sandwiches and fries.
I bolted my food like a dog.
Every trip to the store was for candy bars and soda.
My son blew up to 265 pounds at age 12.

And now:

I journal everything.
I drink either water or black coffee.
I still have occasional sweets,  but I  journal them honestly.
My son is down to 225 at 5'9".
Tonight when i couldn't sleep i went into the kitchen,  but i asked myself if i was hungry and the answer was no. So i left.
I recognize the triggers of my addiction.

I make better choices and i am learning all the time.

Four + weeks until surgery!

Hi everyone, which is probably no one, because no one ever comments.

Anyway, I am past the five week point and now at four weeks plus change until my VSG.

I see a sleep doctor on Monday to adjust my CPAP settings, I have not been sleeping well since I asked my family doctor to change me to the auto pap setting.

When am I going to learn not to self-diagnose?

I bought some supplies for after my surgery and the anti-bacterial soap for before the surgery. I am getting excited, but it is not close enough for me to be getting scared yet. That will come, I am sure.

The thing that has gotten me through my previous surgeries has been faith in God. I know that if it is my time to die on the table, that I have trusted Christ as my savior and I am saved. If I survive, then I am a fighter and I will do the very best I can, with His help, to get better and whip this weight battle.

I am feeling much better about the diet that will be my life, since lately the six month diet is coming easy to me. I rarely have days over 1400 anymore and some of my days are closer to 1200. That is good news in that I have not eaten a lot of the crap that I used to eat.

If I go out for food, I am having salads with low cal dressing or chili. If I have chinese, I am having veggies and chicken with no rice or noodles.

I have not had a reese cup pass my lips or a double or mega stuffed orea in two months. That is really saying something.

Watch my surgery date tracker. Prayers are requested.

I am off to swim. Gotta get that swim in!!!

Working on some short term goals.

Here are the goals that I am working on right now, prior to my surgery:

• Decaffeinating myself. Did you know Green Mountain makes a Haff-Caff? Yes. After a week or so, I will take that down and do a, what? Quarter-Caff?   I fear the caffeine headache, but worse would be to have that bitch the day after surgery.

•  Continuing to lose on the pre-surgery diet. I need to lose or at least not gain with every visit. Next month is my last one!! YAY! Unless I gain. Then I go to hell forever.

Maybe Hell wouldn't be that bad? He's cute, right?

•  Getting my CPAP changed to a BI-PAP. I am swallowing air, probably from too much pressure, so they will be changing my machine.

•  Continuing to swim every day. It is so fucking cold right now. It's really hard to get myself up for going outside and dragging all of my crap to the pool. The locker room and pool area are simply freezing. It's all glassed in and it's just a nightmare. But most of the time, I swim alone, so there are perks. I just keep repeating to myself, "I always feel better after I swim." And it's true. I want to go into this surgery in the best physical shape that I can possibly be in.

• Not scaring myself by googling horrible things like, "VSG Complications" or "Weight Loss Surgery Horror Stories". Enough of that already. I need to start googling success stories. No, there is no long-term track record for the sleeve, but I know enough people who have been there and done it that I know what to expect.

 So, that's about it. Trying to get through these last ten or so weeks without going mad. My mind has been so focused on this for so long. And before the sleeve journey, I was pretty heavily focused on my diverticulitis.

You know, strangely enough (knock on wood), I have not had a flare of diverticulitis since I started this diet. I am trying to be very careful of what I eat, but I have done pretty well. I am also getting much better at spotting flares before they become flares. And I take a stool softener every day now, as per my GI guy. Constipation is the enemy to those of us with gut potholes.

No shit, Sherlock, something is helping. And I have high hopes that after the surgery, my diverticulosis will continue to improve, although only a bowel resection will really put it into remission.

I feel good! Eating better.

My dietician had told me to go back to eating like I was in the month that I had the most success. So I have done that. I printed out my logs from My Fitness Pal (username: imawaterbender). What surprised me is that the biggest changes that I made from the month that I lost vs the month that I gained were:

1. I was concentrating on really, super chewing.
2. I was not drinking with meals.
3. I was drinking a lot more water daily.
4. I was not cutting out all carbs.
5. I was eating about 1600-1800 cals a day, rather than 1400.

So, that is what I have been doing this week. As a result, I am more energetic, less lethargic and less pissed off, in general.

So I am off to get into the pool now.

Finishing Breakfast

Today Charlie, my 14 year old son who has autism, was sick with strep throat. This comes on the heels of our 10 year old getting Scarlet Fever. Same bug. Group A Strep.

After running around to get his doctor to prescribe some antibiotics (it would be nearly worth going to medical school just to be able to get meds when needed), I stopped at McDonalds to get some food. I was starving and again -- I did not bring food with me.

I need to make a point to do this EVERY day.

Anyway, I ordered the mcmuffin with egg only, but at the last second ordered a side of hotcakes -- 600 calories of hot cakes.

After eating the sandwich in the car, I was more able to deal with the pancakes in a more logical manner. There were three hot cakes. I ate one and I was prepping the other two to be devoured, when my hand grabbed the salt container and went a little nuts:

Hotcakes Rendered Inert!

I do this from time to time, when my hunger very nearly exceeds my capacity for rational thought. I just do what I call "rendering food intert".

It works. And for the record, the one pancake that I ate was horribly tasteless, but I still might have eaten the others anyway, I was that hungry.

Weigh In (insurance required diet) & Oreos are Satan.

Last night was the LifeStyle Class, which is the dietetic/exercise supervised diet that my insurance requires before bariatric surgery. I was nervous, because I knew I had fallen off the wagon several times.

I weighed in five pounds less than my first weigh in, but I skipped wearing a bra and took off my shoes AND my bluetooth ear piece. Yeah, I am just a little obsessive. I started out at 280 pounds and am down to 269 pounds.

Yeah ME! 

The focus of the LifeStyle class was on good snacking and on getting exercise every day, even if it's just moving more: taking the steps rather than an elevator, parking further away from stores or work and moving more at home.

The support group meeting afterward was about exercise. It's kind of weird, for a support group, because we sit in an auditorium and they do not introduce the members to each other. It's all about whatever program is going on for that week.

Personally, I would rather talk with the members and get some idea of how they have done since surgery. I guess I will look into whether or not there is another support group (other than Facebook groups) in our area.

But this meeting was excellent. Molly was the speaker and she is an exercise guru who is really fun. During her presentation, she had us get up five times to do three exercises (a set each). By the end of the presentation, we had done 50 arm lifts, 100 leg kicks and 100 side bends without really even feeling it. I want to take her class. It's once a week at the hospital.

So that's it for now. Down five pounds. I am going to try to stop eating the darned Oreo cookies, or maybe step down to regulars ones from the double stuff. I  had originally been eating mega stuff vanilla Oreo and although those are definitely the better ones, it's just too caloric.

Here's the breakdown - strictly calories, in case anyone else is interested:

Vanilla Oreo Cookies Regular Filling:  63 calories each
Double stuff  Vanilla Oreo Cookies      75 calories each
Vanilla Oreo Cookies Mega Stuff:        90 calories each

Now if we assume that the cookie portion (which I don't like) is the same in each cookie, we can extrapolate that the "stuff" portion is roughly 20 calories (or less) in each cookie.

The Algebra of the Filling:

Total Calories in Mega Stuff cookies = M

Total Calories in Regular cookies = R

Total Calories in Doublestuff cookies = D

Amount of "double filling" = X

Amount of "regular filling" = Y

M - R = X

D - R =  Y

You didn't know there would be math, did you?

90 - 63 =  27 (X)

75 - 63 =  12 (Y)

We don't really know how much stuff they put in a double stuff, so I am going to assume that it is between 12 and 27 calories and call it twenty.

You know what, I can deal with 20 calories. I am going to ditch the cookie and just eat the stuff with my coffee. 

I had been eating eight double stuff, which is 600 calories, roughly half of my allowance for the day. If I just have the filling of one, which is all that I crave with my black coffee (they just go together somehow) then that is 20 calories.

I am hoping to just break the whole damned habit. I never liked the cookies until my husband suggested that I dunk them. One addiction at a time...

Chew chew chew, who knew?

Chew Chew Train(ing)

 
I have been immersing myself in the world of gastric surgery and what life is like on the other side. Not because I want to be there right NOW, but because I want to know if I can live a life without 90% of my stomach.

Chewing. Chewing is apparently a huge part of this. Digestion occurs in the mouth with saliva. Your stomach secretes acid, but it does not secrete saliva. Saliva breaks down  the foot while it is still inside your mouth and your teeth are so important.

Dear Lord, I have to become a Masticator.

How much chewing? Well, apparently a lot -  I will get to that. I am a food bolter. This is how I typically eat:

Bite, chew, chew, swallow, swig of ice water (or used to be soda).
Each chew was one chomp of the teeth.
CHOMP, Chew, Chew, Swallow - WATER.
Faster, faster, like someone is going to GRAB my food away from me.
And I am done eating well before anyone else, having eaten more food than anyone else.

I grew up with five kids. If you didn't eat fast enough you were not going to get a second piece of mom's fried chicken.

So, how many chews? Some say 30, one said 42 Chew, I have found that chewing until the food is liquified is different depending upon what food it is. A baked potato is going to take more than pudding.I used to do my bite, chew, chew, swallow, rinse method with steak OR pudding. It was just my way. I never even thought about it.


Well. I chewed. I counted at first, but I can't count AND chew, apparently. So I started closing my eyes, feeling the consistency. I noticed two things:

1. Food tastes better with the eyes closed, concentrating on the food
2. You can't chew all the food if you take bites that are too big.

Small Bites are Essential

Taking a large mouthful means that some of the food is going to slip down, mid-chew, still chunky. I have had to cut my food smaller and then chew until the food does not have consistency to it. I mean, chew until it's liquid.

Next: Eating without water, I have been reading, is crucial with gastric surgery. I could not imagine doing that. How would I wash the food down?

Surprisingly, if the food is really chewed until it is liquified, I don't need the water. I don't feel like I am swallowing pills. I take a sip at the end to clear my mouth and then drink after an hour or so.

Water is important, I drink about seventy ounces a day, but I am trying to hold back on drinking anything with my meals. If I can't do it now, how will I do it then?

Here is the crazy part, for the past day and a half I have been eating the exact same stuff, but I have not had the constant diarrhea that I usually have. I don't have a gallbladder and foods just fly through me, but since really chewing and taking smaller bites and not drinking water with the meal, I am finding that I am actually having formed bowel movements without Imodium.

Who knew. I am also burping more. I never burped before except after drinking soda.

So, chewing my food until it is liquified (as gross as that sounds) tastes better, fills me up with less food AND helps me realize that YES, I can live out this part of the gastric sleeve lifestyle.

It feels good to slow down and I am getting less on my shirt now.