I learned a lot about living with Sleevie McGavin in the “real world” while on vacation.  We had a full kitchen in our hotel room, so about 50% of the time I ate out and about 50% of the time we ate in.   So here are the lessons learned (in a completely random format):

• I ate ice cream…twice.  Each time was less than ¼ cup.  I was satisfied with the tastes and threw the remainder away or had the hubs eat it.
• I also opened a Kit-Kat bar that the hubs bought, and only ate one of the four bars.  That has never in my life happened.
• It was VERY easy to find food to eat in Mexico for the phase that I was on at the time.  Plenty of seafood and beans.  This made eating out super easy.
• I learned that you can in fact be happy with only two tortilla chips.  I’m cleared for crackers, and tortilla chips are cracker like, right?
• I ate on plan about 85% of the time (ice cream…tortilla chips…a kit kat) and still lost 6.4 lbs on vacation.
• Getting in protein shakes only happened about 50% of the time.  I was basically forcing them down when I remembered to drink them.  The ones I packed just weren’t sitting well with me for some reason.
• I tracked my food on myfitnesspal.com everyday but two.  The last two days were a cluster f*ck.  We had to switch hotels out of the time share to another hotel, and wound up eating out all of those meals.  I still stayed on plan (hummus and egg plan for dinner one night!) though.
• I got in all of my water almost every single day, some days more than the required 64oz, one day only 32 oz.
• I ran into my second bought of severe constipation.  This again has lead me to seriously consider adoption or at least a c-section.  The pharmacia opened at 8:00 AM…I should have been more prepared and packed a laxative.
• It was sort of nice having a break from the scale, but I did feel a bit anxious about whether or not I was losing weight since I was off of my normal routine.  I caught a glimpse of myself in a few mirrors though and could totally see that I was getting smaller!
• My sleeve is very good at telling me when I’m full, especially if I’m willing to listen to it.  I burp very quietly once, which I believe is my “soft stop” telling me that I am full.  I focused on listening to that while I was on the trip.
• 3 Shrimp 100% completely fill me up.
• Ordering a meal for myself is a waste of money, luckily I was there with the hubs and family so people were willing to share with me.  Also ordered an appetizer on a couple of occasions, and shared the left overs.
• Ordering shrimp or fish tacos is great, I can eat the insides of a couple (just the protein) and get great flavor!
• I felt like a normal person, often forgetting that I even had surgery.  I’m back to feeling like my old self, just with a lot more energy!
• I never got tired whether we were snorkeling, walking, swimming, hiking, etc.!
• You can totally take a vacation and lose weight with the sleeve!