Chris's Journey's #31: The Battle for Me Part 5: The New Normal

“It is not important where you were, but it is important where you are going.” – Unknown

One of the more interesting things that has happened to me since the surgery is all the different things my body is now going through. It has been almost 3 weeks since the surgery and almost all gas and surgery pain has subsided. I have the occasional back pain, or if I stretch a little too much my scars hurt a little, but for the most part I am pain free. That is a really good moment. But now, the focus goes from the pain my body felt constantly to now trying to figure out what my body truly needs.

Food

The hardest part of this stage of my journey is determining if my body is actually hungry. I am currently going through a battle of head versus stomach. My head is telling me that I am hungry based upon a clock or the fact that I have not eaten much of anything. My stomach is constantly telling me that I am not hungry. Sure I occasionally get a growling stomach, but even then my new stomach never feels truly empty and that I need to eat. So it is a battle right now for supremacy of my body, with thankfully my stomach has lately been winning out. If I eat when my stomach is mostly full, I really feel that fullness and it is not comfortable, it is actually almost painful. There have been plenty of times where I feel the fullest I have ever felt with only eating one or two bites of something. Today for example, I made myself a really poor omelet (I cannot figure out how to flip it). I sat down to eat this 1 serving of Egg Beaters with a little reduced fat cheese on it. After just three bites, I felt sick. I did not lose my food (if you know what I mean), but I felt very uncomfortable after only a few bites. It took the food a better part of an hour to finally settle in my stomach. For me full is no longer fun.

Now, I know what one of my biggest problems is with the food that I eat. I need to EAT SLOWER! Eating slowly is the best weapon we have to figuring out how full we are. In my head I am trying to eat like I normally have been eating for the past 35 years. Eat fast, and bypass the fullness. Just keep stuffing. If I ate slower from the beginning, I may not have been in the situation I am in now. It is amazing that if you do eat slow, how truly full you are and want to stop immediately. The second thing that I am doing is not drinking anything while I eat. This was a tip the bariatric center gave to us. By not drinking, it prevents the “slider effect” where food goes down easier and through you easier and helps you not to feel full. By not drinking, I am getting full faster and with a lot less food.

I do find that liquid foods (protein shakes, soups, and applesauce) goes down so much easier than the more solid foods I am now able to eat (some meats, mashed potatoes, and bread). As I continue to figure out the new normal with me I will be using more and more liquid nutrition to get protein in as well as calories.

Exercise and Moving

This has been so hard for me. I am able to walk and move around but with the healing from the surgery and the less intact of food I am receiving; my energy level has been next to nothing. I am trying my best to get a minimum of 3000 steps in a day, something that would have been very easy for me before the surgery. Now 3000 steps are very difficult, and something I have to actively work on in order to achieve it. My doctor said it would be a good two months before I felt back to normal, and to not go back to my walking as much as I was pre-surgery until 6 weeks out. But I feel like I want to move, and I really like that feeling a lot.

The Scale

I use to avoid the scale like the plague and now I want to jump on the dumb thing all the time. I made that mistake last Friday and have felt the frustration all weekend. There is a reason why doctors tell you to weigh yourself only once a week. Your body goes through a lot of things. By weighing yourself multiple times a week or even every day, you set yourself up for a lot of pain that is not necessary if your weight is not the number you thought it might be. I learned my lesson on Friday and I will weigh myself on only one scale once a week on the first day of the work week. (My scale is at my office)

The New Normal

So this is the new normal for me, rediscovering everything that my body does. But this is a very good thing for me. By learning about me during this time, I can establish better habits and better motivations for all the work I am doing. This will be a time of frustration and excitement with lots of highs and lows. But the good news for me is, that once the new normal has been established, then I will be able to excel even more than I could ever imagine.

Sincerely, Chris