The good and the bad

I woke up yesterday (Monday) feeling great. The real soreness was gone and I just felt good. I was excited that today I would get to have food. When I woke up this morning I had eggs on the brain (one of the 3 foods I can have). I was so excited but yet oddly enough I was scared to eat. I think the fears were just from having only fluids for the last 7 days and just being unsure.

So I will go with the bad first. P.S. Some of you may want to bypass this part because it is pretty gross and TMI (too much information) for some people. This morning I took my egg (2 ounces) and covered them with a little salt and pepper and started eating. Oh my they tasted heavenly. I was feeling so good and woke up today feeling even better prepared to be able to eat and sip for the day. It took about 45 minutes to eat the 2 ounces of eggs because I wanted to make sure I was chewing well enough and took time to eat them. Well about 20 minutes later I got nauseous, then I was getting chills, then I was sweating, then my heart was racing, then I just felt like I was going to die and then next thing you know I threw up the eggs. It hurt so much! I thought I was all better but then shortly thereafter I felt nauseous and felt that way for about 4 hours. I realized that I couldn’t lay back at all I had to sit straight up or sit slightly forward in order to feel less nauseous. About 4 hours later I got up got a bowl, sat at the dining room table and again got the chills, sweats, heart racing and the rest of them came up. I was freaked because I had been drinking fruit punch crystal light so when it came up it was red and at first I thought it was blood until I realized what it really was. It took about 2 hours until I felt ok again. I decided to try yogurt thinking it may settle better and it definitely has. It is unflavored Fage Greek Yogurt and I added one pump of sugar-free strawberry torani syrup and it was yummy! I tried only a few bites at first to make sure it was going to settle ok and it actually made me feel better. So I have just under 2 ounces right now sitting next to me that I am slowly eating. So far so good. We have lots of different flavors of the sugar free torani syrup so I will be trying them out.

Alright I leave the good news for last. The good news is the numbers. I don’t like to always focus on the numbers but they are a way to measure my progress right now and the numbers are shocking. So I got weighed in on Monday and then again the morning of surgery and was down 2 pounds. I stepped on the scale Saturday and had gained a pound. I knew it would happen from talking and reading from others but was still disappointed. It is from your body not sure what is going on and holding on to it plus the swelling as well. So I stepped on the scale yesterday and had lost 13 pounds! Then I stepped on the scale today and lost an additional 4 pounds since yesterday. So that is a total of 19 pounds lost since the day before surgery. So right now I am at a total of 96 pounds lost. I can’t believe I’m already so close to 100 pounds of weight loss. That is such a good start. I still have a long ways to go but I am not trying to focus on the big picture just focusing on 10 pounds at a time. I know this tool I have will definitely help me get to my goal.  I’m excited.

I’ve been doing some soul searching and just trying to figure out this whole thing for awhile now. So far one of the greatest rewards of my transformation is a deeper understanding of me. This goes from post-op until now. When the false ideas of addiction are stripped away, we’re left with something very honest and real. It is definitely like meeting someone again, for the first time. I have experienced this quite a bit actually in the last year or so. Especially in the last week when I no longer had food as an option to go to. I wasn’t hungry and had no desire for food but there were times where I started feeling a certain emotion and I wanted food. It was definitely the head hunger as it is called. Right now I am learning there is my head and my body which are somewhat separate at times and I need to listen to my body more often than I listen to my head. My head is what really gets me in trouble whereas my body is telling me how it feels and what to do. Especially with this surgery I will need to pay very close attention to my body to signal when it is full. When I was eating the eggs this morning my head was thinking it wasn’t enough food (only 2 ounces doesn’t seem like enough when you visually look at it and your brain processes it) but honestly my body was signaling something quite different and probably should have stopped at 1 ounce. It is all a learning process. Unfortunately my first “meal” since surgery wasn’t a pleasant one but fortunately I did learn that I need to listen to my body more often.

This part of my journey as just begun so I know there are many things I will need to learn. I also know that there may be other foods that don’t agree with me and I just have to take it in stride and put it on the list of foods I can’t have or at least try again in maybe a year. Right now it is so early out that I am not totally giving up on eggs but you definitely won’t catch me eating them any time soon. I do know my head is in the right spot which is part of the battle the other part is to listen to my body.

Thank you for your support it is appreciated!

Shanda