Sunday, December 6, 2009

Holiday Eating: Before and After

Wow...seems odd to see how the time and gone recently. It's been a very busy week and a half...two weeks? I can't even remember. Perhaps the word "hectic" is more apropos.

I have relatives come up to stay with us for several days over the Thanksgiving holiday. And then there was a family "Christmas dinner" this weekend, so relatives came and stayed with us for another weekend, and I'm well aware that with Xmas rapidly approaching we're going to have yet another round of playing "check off the list of crap to remember." For someone with my mental balance, both from Asperger's and stress, this is a trying time of the year.

But I thought maybe it would be a good idea to review some of the changes I've found since my surgery related to my diet. This time of year, the November/December Thanksgiving/Xmas seasons, are the hardest time for people with dieting issues. This is also a time where people tend to feel more able to shrug off their eating habits because come New Years, they can just promise themselves they'll work it off as yet another resolution. Stuff yourself with stuffing and turkey and gravy and ham and cake and pie and...the list goes on. Tis' the season, after all!

But it's not that way for me. To be clear, at this point in my surgery journey I could probably try a little of just about everything without much dire consequence. Because of my need for rigid routine, I don't normally indulge in such things. I stick to my favorite routine meals; wraps containing some turkey and ham with mushrooms and cheese are my biggest staples, along with my peanut butter on broccoli. I had a modified wrap for Thanksgiving; I put some stuffing in the wrap instead of mushrooms. It was a holiday indulgence.

What was Thanksgiving like before? I'll admit I missed it. I wanted to have huge helpings of stuffing, my favorite holiday treat. I wanted a slab of turkey, the double portion of pumpkin pie (a favorite of all time on my personal list of awesomeness!), and even topping it all off with that so-disgusting-it's-yummy gel-blob cranberry sauce. Mashed potatoes? Pile it on, along with a squirt of ketchup. Yes, I think it tastes good. Leave me alone.

Ooh! Is that a basket of soft, ooey-gooey fresh from oven rolls? Pass the butter! And I'll have a liter of Diet Pepsi, please. And another roll. Corn Pudding!? YES! I'll have a spoonful or three, thank you.

It sounds like so much now. Maybe it was. But it was Thanksgiving and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

This year? I smelled the aromas and indulged only in some stuffing. I had that stuffing in a single serving of a wrap rolled with a couple thin slices of turkey (from a box of turkey bought at Sam's Club, not the bird carved on the counter) and a slice of cheese.

Yesterday was a family dinner from someone on my wife's side of the family. We traveled two hours to have a get together in a Masonic Hall where there were wonderful smelling cakes and pies, meatballs of various kinds (I love...loved...those things). All sorts of little goodies.

What did I have? a standard wrap from my recipe box and a lot of the broccoli, apple slices, baby carrots and cheese cubes. I even went out for a walk during the dinner to see what the town was like because I wouldn't have enough time to go to the gym and I was feeling antsy to work off some of the calories. Did I overeat? Probably to some degree, with the cheese. Nothing hurt. Nothing "backed up" or made me ill in some way. But I did have more cheese than I should have and I tried to make up for it.

Now we'll have a slew of Xmas dinners coming up.

So if you're a bariatric patient or prospective patient, how will things change? This is my first set of holidays with a "new digestive system", and I am more nontraditional in that I avoid trying all sorts of foods most of the time. I opt instead to keep a fairly routine diet that helps establish a routine, so your mileage may very if you do this. I can only tell you what has happened to me and how my choices have affected me.

These dinners were hard. I'm not a sociable person; I find personal interactions to be hard to cope with and seriously tiresome. But the one thing I did share with everyone was the communal meal experience. This year I had my wrap, finished it in five minutes, and got to watch everyone else slurping down their taters' and turkey. I smelled the stuffing. I watched my son slurping down little meatballs sliced in half, dripping in that delicious sauce that they bubble and glurp in the crock pot for hours.

It wasn't easy. And it makes me feel more of an outsider.

I did get some benefits. For example, I went to work the next day with a small container of mashed sweet potato and a cut up banana for breakfast. It was a change of pace that tasted very good (sweet potato has a wonderful ability to taste an awful lot like pumpkin pie filling when done properly).

Previous years would have been meals filled with multiple servings of mashed potato, stuffing, and rolls. Impulse grabbing of yummy goods. This year the closest I had to impulse grabbing were some cheese cubes and stuff from the vegetable and fruit trays.

Last year would have been a lot of lounging. Watch TV, eat more, snack...have pie. Lots of pie. This year was some TV, small wrap for Thanksgiving dinner, and at the Xmas dinner I had my wrap, too much cheese and broccoli, and then went for a walk. On the way home my wife and her family went to Kohls to feed their shopping habits while I went out on an excursion by foot to get more exercise (I was too narrowly focused to have found the crosswalks to get to the Wegman's to find some broccoli I needed at home, or a Sam's Club to find better deals on broccoli). I must have walked at least a mile, maybe two, altogether that day. Last year I'd never have considered trying to get some exercise in to help compensate for a meal.

I don't know if I did well or poorly in terms of not gaining the pounds. Lately I've been plateaued around the 265 mark, meaning I lost around 195 pounds. My feeling on how these dinners went...I have not been obsessing over the meals, so I take that as a knee-jerk evaluation that I didn't do horrible in my indulgences. Mentally I feel as if I were left out of some things and I truly have missed being able to dig in to a giant plate of food. Part of me wanted that old habit back. On the other hand, the big scar on my abdomen reminds me that doing that will leave me seriously ill and/or in pain.

So I have my wrap and I try to focus on other things to take my mind off the ooey gooey goodness that I am no longer allowed to indulge in. My impulse eating is limited to fruits and vegetables and some occasional cheese cubes. No dressing/dip though. Might have something in them that could make me ill.

Anyone else have similar dieting experiences in these times of holiday mirth and gluttony?

4 comments:

  1. Barry,
    You can read my blog to catch up in one posting about my Thanksgiving.
    I think you are doing really well. Hang in there.
    I plateaued for about two months and finally figured out how to break it. It's going back to basics, and exercising, not just doing more around the house. I hate to exercise, so it will be a chore. It does get rid of stress, and I have way too much of that right now.
    But, I am not gaining any weight, so I am satisfied. I still want to lose 45 more pounds.
    Go for it!

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  2. You may feel like the outsider now, Barry, but when you're the slim and healthy one, *they* will be the outsiders.

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  3. @Lee: Exercise, at least starting the exercise sessions, have always been a challenge for me. I also don't like that I don't have guidance in whether I'm doing things right or could do something better. Getting a personal trainer is too expensive. Then there are nights like tonight where I should be at the gym but am watching my son tonight as the wife and daughter are out.

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  4. @Katherine-thank you. I'll add it in here shortly!

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