And Another Milestone is Passed

I had my four-week nutrition meeting.

It was a little haphazard...there were tidbits here and there that seemed contradictory at times; for example, I am supposed to now go from pureed foods to "soft, moist foods". In the sample breakfast, 1/2 a piece of toast.

Unless drenched in butter I don't think I'd count toast as a "soft, moist" food.

After several notes on needing calcium supplements and watching protein, then doing some very vague notes on foods...I asked, "Basically, you're saying we can try whatever we want, as long as the meal is less than a cup or is about the size of my palm, and the stomach tolerates the food?"

"Pretty much."

So I guess I can eat what I want as long as I have three or four meals a day and keep the portion of the entire meal to a very small amount and I'm very very careful about signs that I'm about to yark or fill my shorts. And the foods must be "soft" foods.

So after this meeting my wife drove to Panera for dinner. I ordered a pick-two of French Onion soup and a Cafe Ham and Swiss sandwich on rye with dijon mustard. I ate a little bit of the bread...the mustard was to DIE for!...and the meat and cheese on the half-sandwich happened to be about the size of my palm ("a portion of meat you should be aiming to eat is the size of a deck of cards...", she said)...it took longer than usual to eat, but I ate the ham and cheese with no obvious discomfort. And again...the mustard was fantastic.

The flavor of the ham with that slice of deli swiss was utterly delicious. I probably could have eaten more of the bread, but I wasn't really hungry (wasn't really full either, at least not in a way that I was accustomed to feeling full). My wife picked up a take-out container for the soup and that was that. My dinner was a good sized portion of ham and cheese with delectable dijon mustard and just a touch of rye bread.

I'm confident that in due time an entire meal will be something like a sandwich or half a sandwich. It's fantastic to think that this will be enough for an entire meal, not a sandwich with XYZ together!

The gist of the meeting with the nutritionist is that my "dieting" lifestyle will be entirely focused on portion control. I don't avoid fats. I don't avoid carbs or whatever other fad diet is the current "thing". The only thing I avoid is sugar and I have to focus a little more on nutrition...eat proteins because I need it for muscles and body composition, for example, while breads will make me feel too full to get the nutritional part of my mealtimes. I need to limit my portions and not graze or snack.

The weight loss surgery is supposed to offer feedback; I am supposed to feel uncomfortably full if I eat too large a portion, or end up with the runs and chills and palpitations if I have sugars. I didn't get the uncomfortable feeling while eating tonight. But I don't feel hungry, and that was the other effect the surgery was supposed to have; my hunger should be head hunger and my physical hunger shouldn't really be a factor right now.

There are flavors and textures and experiences that I am looking forward to trying. I don't think there's anything wrong with anticipating this. I am going to be mindful to keep my portion sizes small because if the whole negative feedback thing isn't working in my particular case, I need to keep an eye on what I'm doing.

My stomach has always been made of steel. Maybe to some degree it still is. Maybe it is still hyper-tolerant of foods and such...I may be one of the rare ones that have to be pushed to have dumping syndrome or vomit from the introduction of foods. But I'm not exactly going to try pushing the issue.

So tonight was a good night! Now I just have to see how much of the waters I can navigate without hitting an iceberg...

Yay!