On Food

So we have been on the road the past few days and negotiating eating in restaurants and on the fly for the first time since surgery. Here are some things I found interesting:

1) We heard in the Facebook support group for our bariatric surgery group that one thing you have to get used to is wasting food. You can’t eat anything close to a regular sized restaurant meal anymore, even the “lighter fare” smaller meals they offer. Even children’s menu meals are too big. This is super true. This morning The Lovely Rhonda and I split a lighter meal of a two egg scramble with ham and cheese, hash browns and English muffin. We each ate about half of the half order of scramble on our plates, a couple of bites of the half order of hash browns, and a couple bites of the half English muffin. So between us, half the meal was left behind.

Of course, at home we save leftovers and don’t actually waste the food, but you get the idea. We really do eat very little.

2) It appears the sugar monkey on my back is at least muzzled. I had a tiny piece of cake with a little dab of ice cream last week on my daughter’s birthday and it made me super weird. Well, weirder. I felt kind of sick to my stomach and then super tired for a while. I’m not saying I’m off all sugar for good, but I won’t be eating more than a bite here and there.

3) I don’t really miss soda. Once I gave it up the spell was broken. Some people can still have carbonated drinks after this surgery but a lot of people cannot tolerate them due to the tiny stomach/no room for gas issue. I am a world champion belch queen from way back and could probably have them, but why?

I have started to order the occasional Arnold Palmer because I like lemonade but it’s too sweet, I like iced tea only sort of, and the combination of the two isn’t bad.

Also, and this is TMI so stop reading now if you don’t care to know, carbonation and caffeine are irritants to the bladder. Guess who no longer has to pee constantly and urgently? I’m super cool with this. I have also found that sugar free drink mixes like Crystal Light contain something that my bladder doesn’t like, maybe the malic acid, so I don’t have those very often either. They are now a sometimes thing when I just want something other than water, and I like them diluted anyway. Harm reduction, people!