Category: health

The Do-Not-Eat List

At most of my weight loss clinic check ins, they ask me if I’ve found any foods that I cannot tolerate. There generally hasn’t been anything other than sugar, and I have never tested eating sugar, I just know that I can’t eat it without getting sick.

My answer to that question is that there are things I’ve had trouble with, but I can usually pin the trouble down on something I did (ate too fast, ate too much, didn’t chew enough) that caused the problem rather than the actual food itself.

There was one item that I was unsure of though. Quinoa. I freakin’ love me some quinoa, but most if not all of the few times I’ve had it in the 1.5 years since the surgery have resulted in nausea and problems with my redesigned stomach. I still wasn’t sure if it was the food or something I did.

Tonight we had quinoa. I only had a couple of little fork-fulls. It didn’t go well. Damn it. I think I officially have one food on the do-not-eat list. There is one food that I think I am unable to tolerate. Quinoa. Shit.

Oh well. We live and we learn and we move on to the next challenge.

Two Years Ago Today

Two years ago today I went to the weight loss clinic for the first time. It was not for an actual appointment of any kind, it was just so they could take my vitals and then have the first appointment later via Zoom.

The vitals they took included my weight. It stands as the heaviest I’ve ever been. Well… I may have gained a little weight between that day and the first actual appointment, which was when they told me to make some dietary changes in order to lose a little weight ahead of my actual weight loss surgery, but it is the heaviest weight I’ve ever actually recorded.

On January 19, 2022 I weighed 452 pounds.

Today? Two years and one gastric bypass surgery later? I stepped on the scale this morning and weighed 213.2 pounds. That’s a difference of 238.8 pounds.

Holy shit.

Granted, I stepped on the scale three days ago and I weighed 209 pounds, so it’s like the theme from The Facts of Life: You take the good, you take the bad. Dig? Just kidding. This is freakin’ amazing. 238 pounds in two years. The last time I actually posted a weigh in was a couple of months ago (November 4, 2023) and I am down about two and a half pounds since then. I call that maintaining, which at this point in the process is very much my goal.

Happy Two-Years-Since-The-First-Check-In day. Celebrate good times, come on!

Better

Well yesterday sure sucked, didn’t it?

Bad stomach pain, nausea, was it dumping syndrome? Maybe. I’ve felt like that twice before but the other times cleared up after 4-5 hours where yesterday took the whole day. At one point I said to my beloved bride that I had a feeling a good puke would do me well. A few hours later, around 8:00pm, I think, I did throw up a little and eventually I started to feel better. By the time we went to bed I was coming out of it.

It’s almost 8:00am now and I’ve already had more food and water than the entire day yesterday. I’m hoping to take it slow for now. I’m waiting out the hour after eating before having a drink. It’s a little tough as I’m still seriously dehydrated from yesterday. I’ll have it straightened out soon enough though.

My wife was under the weather yesterday too. We both rolled a snake eyes on our Fridays. She seems better now too. Here’s hoping we both keep improving. Wish us luck.

Sick

My gastric bypassed stomach is in full revolt today. There is so much pain.

It’s not the worst pain I’ve experienced but it has hung around the longest, by far.

I’m afraid to eat anything but I have to try. How about a little lemonade to start with?

Here we go…. Wish me luck…

Conjunctivitis

Conjunctivitis… Pink Eye… do I gots it?

Oh yeah, I gots it.

Shit. My eye is more sore and more itchy now that I know what is wrong.

To make matters worse, I have cocked-up the whole gastric-bypass food/eating thing multiple times today and even had a full on puke experience.

I’m better now, I think. Ready to move on with life. I’ll pick up my eye drops at the drug store tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed that I don’t zombify or anything crazy like that.

Wasn’t I Just Here?

Back again.

My stomach has been a smidge off all day. Probably 90% of normal-good. It’s becoming very unhappy right now though. I’m going to need to eat something more substantial than a protein bar very soon. Nice timing, stomach pouch.

Here’s hoping the pink eye exam goes quickly and I can get the hell out of here. My appointment was for 6:30pm and I didn’t get in for triage until 6:50.

I’m hungry enough that it hurts right now. The last bite to eat was at 5:25, but it was just a small protein bar that I thought would hold me over until dinner. Guess I was wrong. I brought another snack here with me but I don’t want to be eating when the doc comes in. Effin’ decorum, right?

Amazing Advances in Topical Creams

Yesterday’s haiku mentioned that I feel like I have a black eye. I don’t have a black eye though. It’s just swollen and sore. What’s going on?

I might have a guess. I made a doctors appointment for afterwork tonight to see if my guess is correct. If it is, then we’re going to have to keep me away from Worcestershire sauce* for a while. Fortunately there have been some amazing advances in topical creams, so I should be okay if the worst is true.

My question for the doctor… do I have… Pink Eye?

*This whole post is a reference to the first South Park Halloween episode. If you don’t get the references then I apologize for your lack of culture. That first Halloween episode is one of the finest 30 minute television time slots in broadcast/cable/streaming history. It is perfection.

Two Thoughts

Two brief topics for this more-or-less lunch time post.

First:

I screwed up. As often happens, three hours after I finished breakfast my stomach was starting to ache because it was too empty to deal with itself. I had a snack. Peanuts. Lovely. I then… had another snack. Some sugar free cookies. That was a mistake. Not because I had a bad reaction, but because I was stuffed and only about 90 minutes away from lunch time. Now here we are, 10 minutes into my planned lunch break, and I am still stuffed and can’t see myself having a real lunch. Dumb ass. You’d think after a year and seven months I would know what I can and cannot handle in terms of between meal snacks. Nope. I screwed up. 

Maybe I’ll try to eat a lunch-esque something or other about an hour from now. I don’t have any meetings so I won’t have any problems with work scheduling, but I also don’t want to ruin dinner. We’re planning on having some gnocchi tonight and I want that to go really well. I wonder… do we have any meatballs in the freezer? Hmmmm… we’ll see.

Second:

Social media. Shit. Why can’t I just stop with the social media stuff? I mean, I post to this blog 123612764 times a day, why can’t that be enough? What the hell is wrong with me?

I need a twitter alternative. There are a lot of decent platforms, but none of them are quite good enough. I should just back one of them and post there 2496723457 times a day and fool myself into thinking I’m having fun with it. It will be a bald faced lie, but I don’t mind.

So which should I go with? There are three that I am kind of using a little bit. 

  • Mastodon
  • Threads (which makes me sick because it’s a facebook product and facebook is just as slimy as twitter)
  • BlueSky

Mastodon is good because this blog cross posts there. Threads is good (even though zuck is fucking evil) because there are a lot of people that I followed on other platforms that I am following there. BlueSky is good but… I really don’t know why. Probably just because I sort of use it, I guess. 

One Wacky Day

As weird, crazy, wacky days go… that was one.

My stomach was in and out of gastric bypass weirdness all day, including a legitimate yacking during dinner. Fun.

As mentioned in a prior post, I was also exhausted all day. I had six uninterrupted hours of sleep last night, but the way I felt through the day you’d think I was awake the whole night. Of course it’s 10:00pm now and I’m not tired at all. I’m just sitting up in bed watching Deep Space Nine ( my binge watch reached season five today) and wondering if I’ll be tired enough to sleep sometime soon.

Tomorrow is this week’s in-the-office day. The company is giving out the annual holiday gift. This year I passed on the turkey and went with the ham. When will we eat it? No clue. I offered it up to my sister and her husband for Xmas dinner but I think they are passing on it.

I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday morning. It’s my 1.5 year check in with my gastric bypass surgeon. I’m compiling a list of questions. Today’s wacky-weirdness will lead to a few, I’m sure.

Until then… get some sleep, Trekkie-nerd-boy.