Now that week 8 is coming to a close, I figured I’d post some more lessons learned since surgery. You can find previous lessons learned here:
- Coffee…Yum. Just like pre-op coffee does a seriously good thing, in the keeping regular department. I have less than one cup a day. It doesn’t seem to cause heart burn issues for me, your mileage may vary. We have one of those big fancy grind the beans for you coffee makers which I love, but I recently picked up one of the Keurig one-cup machines from Costco. LOVE.
- Airplane Seatbelts are no longer a scary thought. While I have never needed a seatbelt extender, I was also at the VERY end of the seatbelt, and it was a snug fit. On our vacation last week I was thrilled with the fact that I had 8+ inches of extra belt to pull through to be tightened. I thought I took a picture of it, but apparently forgot to save it!
- Fiber Choice Sugar Free fiber chews taste like candy and give you 4 grams of protein, just the fiber boost that I needed!
- Once you start feeling amazing, it’s easy to forget you even had surgery…until you eat.
- Portion sizes are ridiculously small. It’s hard to grasp how to grocery shop and cook when one person is eating normal portions (for a 6’5 guy) and one person is eating post op portions. There are a LOT of leftovers
- I never knew I’d miss berries and cucumbers so much. I’m so happy to be able to begin to reintroduce them to my diet this week!
- I never want to chew another vitamin or calcium supplement again.
- While my nutritionist wants me to get in two protein shakes a day, I am going to begin to experiment with only drinking one and getting the rest of my protein in via real food. In theory I can do this, it will be interesting to see if Sleevie McGavin cooperates. The goal is 80 grams a day. If I can’t hit the 80 grams with one shake and food, I will supplement with ½ shakes or full shakes to get me to 80 grams.
- Seeing the portions people eat makes me feel disgusted. Even though just a short time ago I too was eating those portions.
- Sleevie McGavin is rather forgiving, a lot of people have trouble with a lot of different foods, but so far I’ve been pretty lucky. Ground beef works, turkey jerky goes down just fine, etc.
- I have to remind myself to chew chew chew.
- In order to slow myself down while eating, I still use appetizer utensils to eat with and I only take 1 bite per minute. This gets old, since I’m constantly looking at the clock.
- Since being fully released to work out again, I have this odd sense of not being sure where to begin. This has never been an issue for me before. I’ve started with Walk Away The Pounds, and am flying through it. I’ll just build from there.
I think those appetizer utensils that you bought for me (and you) are a perfect way to help slow down your eating. I read somewhere that if you use chopsticks, it helps, too. Not sure how great you are with them, but that might be a fun thing to try one of these nights.
I’ve never tried Walk Away the Pounds – sounds like you’re really enjoying it, though.
I just bought the WATP Ultimate Collection DVDs on Amazon for $10.99. I’ve heard quite a bit about them from you and from others on blogs, so I figured that they would be a good, excuse-proof way for me to get in some exercise during the rainy months ahead.