Category: weight loss surgery

More Small Steps

I had a tough day yesterday food wise. We had McDonalds for lunch in the car which was bad enough. When I got home I ate some peanuts, and I think there was something else too but I can’t remember. If I had updated my food log in real time instead of waiting until this morning I might remember better. We had Japanese food for dinner, which isn’t terrible but probably still not great. Then I got stupid and had an ice cream sundae and a big bowl of popcorn. I think there was something else in there too. Shit. I also fucked up the no drinks with meals schedule a couple of times. Once I ate less than 15 minutes after drinking and another time I drank less than an hour after eating. It was just really hard to do yesterday. Crap.

Today will be better, I believe. It’s already started out with some changes. My days of intermittent fasting are over. I am going to delete the app I was using and cancel the reminders I had setup. I am once again a breakfast eater. Or, more like a breakfast drinker.

The Dietician asked me to replace one meal a day with a protein shake mixed with 0% milk. Today is the first morning when I have both ingredients in the house. Today is the first morning I had a protein shake. Was it good? Eh. Was it gross? Not really. Did I measure it accurately? No idea. The instructions said 8 ounces of water and one scoop of powder, but there was no scoop to scoop with. I put a couple of table spoons in and ran with it.

Amazon will help. I used to have a single serving electric mixer. I thought it was still around somewhere but I can’t find it, so I ordered another one. I also ordered a scoop. Actually a couple of scoops. I dug a little deeper and the suggestion is 32 grams. I didn’t see a 32 gram scoop on Amazon but I did see a set of scoops of various sizes. I’ll do the math. The minions of Bezos say it will be delivered tomorrow sometime so one more day of estimates followed by a lifetime of accuracy. Something like that. At least I measured the eight ounces of milk correctly.

I also had my morning vitamins and added a vitamins column to my food log. I should find an app to track this rather than a Google Spreadsheet, though ya’ll know how much I love a good Google Spreadsheet.

Now I just have to avoid eating like a fat fucking moron again and we should be good to go for the next Dietician appointment. I have three more appointments in March. Psych starts this week. Nothing next week, then Dietician and then Cardiology. There is nothing booked in April yet, but there will be at least another Dietician and probably another Psych booked soon enough.

Question for the next Dietician appointment. Do the protein shakes count as eating or drinking?

One other unimportant blogging note. I added a new Category to the blog. Weight Loss Surgery. I am nearly positive that I have tagged all of the related posts over the last couple of months but from now on I will start using the new category too. Just in case I need to read through the back story someday. That should make it easier. I might go back and add posts tagged with weight loss surgery to it, but I might not. Who knows. I just thought I’d share. Just a little inside baseball and all that.

Vitamins

The age of Taking Vitamins has begun.

There are four vitamins I need to take post-weight loss surgery and the dietician suggested I start now. I will now be taking three pills with breakfast and two each with lunch and dinner. I think I need a pill caddie, babie.

I took the three with breakfast today even though I don’t eat breakfast. That’s about to change too, but for now I just took the three pills. I had a moment of brain fry with lunch. I have to stop drinking anything 15 minutes before I eat and 60 minutes after. I made myself some lunch and started eating. Then I remembered the pills. Okay, so today’s lunch pills will be approximately 60 minutes after lunch. I’ll figure this out.

The food log is still going, sort of. I haven’t started measuring yet but I am keeping track. I also haven’t started working off the meal plan the dietician gave me. I think that starts next week. I’m also supposed to replace breakfast with a protein shake. I have the shake mix but I won’t have fat free milk to mix it into until over the weekend, so the shakes start next week too.

I still haven’t had any caffeine or soda since February 3rd. That’s going well. The no drinking with food thing is a serious bitch. I keep forgetting about that. It’s resulting in me drinking less water and it might be resulting in me eating less food, but it’s also a pain in the ass to keep on top of. I’ll get there though.

My next appointment is next week with the Psych folks. Oh, am I looking forward to that.*

Okay, back to work. I am just over three hours away from a full week vacation and I really, really need it right now. Freedom is close, but there is a lot of work still in the way.

*Sarcasm. Or #sarcasm, if you prefer.

Pre-Work Shopping

I just spent some time on Amazon selling my soul to the bezos–devil. I need to take a slew of vitamins for the weight loss surgery. I ordered a big pile of them. I also have to take protein shakes. I ordered a ton of it. I need to start weighing my food. I bought a food scale.

I’m freakin’ out, man. I can do this, but I am going to freak out through the whole thing.

I did another important thing. I signed up for Paramount+. Why? Star Trek: Picard comes back for season two tomorrow and I am there. It’s time to find out what Q has been up to all this time.

Fun.

Now What

RPM is over. Now for the annual “now what?” Post.

I assume the folks at RPMHQ will kick off another Record Every Month challenge. I’ll do that. I’m thinking two songs each month, sort of like a single. Then at the end of the year re-record the best songs?

In the real world I have to buckle down on the weight loss surgery prep. I have a bunch of directives from the dietician and so far have only integrated two. I think there are three more and one of them is a little Earth shattering.

Outside of that? There’s the band. I think I may have reached the point in the pandemic where I’m willing to try a band practice. I think. We will have to see. Fingers crossed I don’t panic and chicken out.

I’ll see if I can dream up anything else. I’ll let you know.

One More Test

The labs and the ultrasound are done. They had to stab me three times to draw blood and the ultrasound tech was having trouble finding whatever it was she was looking for.

Last time I had an in person appointment I signed up for their patient portal app. I’m kinda hoping I’ll get to see all of the images of my inner workings. That should be fun.

Time for the Next Step

I will be heading over to the hospital for the next step in the weight loss surgery process. Today it’s just blood work, an abdomen ultrasound and an upper GI x-ray. It’s times like this that my job and my home life sort of high five each other. The application I work on covers hospital imaging departments. I haven’t a clue what the machines are called or how they work or anything like that, but when the technologists enter the information into the computer, I know what everything looks like under the covers. Of course the hospital I am working with is not one of our customers so I like to watch staff enter data to see if they get as frustrated as I’ve heard my software’s users get. (*)

I’ll be leaving in five minutes. I have the order sheet. I have a mask. I haven’t had any food or drink since last night at 9:30. I have nothing to be nervous about with this step, and yet I am nervous. I need to grow a pair.

(*) #sarcasm

Now What

Now that the RPM Challenge is over I can start worrying about other things.

Specifically, tomorrow’s doctors appointment. Not that there is anything logical to stress about. I’m having some blood work, an ultrasound, and an x-ray. All prep for the real thing.

But… what if the imaging shows that there’s something screwy going on in my inner works? What if they see something that makes me ineligible for the weight loss surgery?

See? I can freak out about anything these days.

Dietician

I just leaped over another hurdle. I had my first meeting with the Dietician. It was a Zoom call. We talked about how I eat and how much I eat and how I’ve made some changes already. So much more to do. She’s going to send me a meal plan. I really think that will help tremendously. I need someone to tell me what to eat because when I choose for myself I end up eating everything there is.

One thing she wants me to do now, because I will have to do it post-surgery so why not get used to it ahead of time, is no drinking while eating. I never even imagined that would be required. I also never imagined how ridiculously difficult it would be.

I am always drinking something. It used to be soda, now it’s water. The new rule is to stop drinking 15 minutes before eating, and then to not start again for 60 minutes after eating. That’s going to be tough for me, but I’ll figure it out. The timer on my Apple Watch gets used pretty much constantly already. Once I have to time when I can have a glass of water it’s going to be used so much it might catch fire.

I also have to start keeping a food journal. Oh Google Sheets, I’m coming for you!

Not Double Booked

Turns out I was not double booked. The doctors appointment is in fact tomorrow and not today. The electricians are here and for the first time in ages the lights in the kitchen and the dining room are going to work correctly. If they are done by 10:30, or even if they just don’t turn off the internets, then I may be able to attend that work meeting. I’m on vacation though, so I’ll be all incognito like. Hi everyone, I’m not actually here. Ha! I’m so professionally funny.

The best part of all of this is that I have 24 hours left before I have to lose my head being afraid of another doctors appointment. Hooray and all that happy crappy*.

*That’s a Stephen King reference, from too many books to count. I think. Maybe he only used it in one book and I just read that book more than once. Who knows.

Still Quiet

Lunch time post. There are a few more people here than there were the last time I posted. One other member of my group is here too but we don’t sit anywhere near each other. If we yell we can talk to each other, but we’re not being rude like that. I feel a lot more Covid-safe than I did the last two times I was here, and by no means did I feel Covid-unsafe before. Whatevs.

I have vacation time booked for the next two days. There are things going on that I want to take care of, but right now I am so looking forward to what amounts to a mid-week weekend. I have a doctors appointment but I don’t know when. They sent me Zoom meeting invites for both days. They are closed today for the holiday (Presidents Day) so I have to figure it out first thing tomorrow. We also have an electrician coming for another kitchen/dining room fix quote. I am really nervous that the doctors appointment was actually moved to tomorrow (I booked it for Wednesday and no one asked me to change it) and it’s going to happen while our power is off and internet is down. That would suck. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

The Bruins are celebrating Presidents day with an afternoon match up with the overpowering Colorado Avalanche. It’s halfway through the second period and the Bruins are up 2-0. The next couple of games are on the West coast. A win today could be a nice little treat considering I won’t be able to listen to the West games.

Okay, back at it. Three hours and three minutes to go.