Category: weight loss surgery

Food Fun

My staff and I just went out for a group lunch. I ate too fast. It was really good and I got carried away so now my gastric bypass surgery’d stomach is complaining. I am dumb. I am bad at following directions. I am bad at eating in this new stomach pouch kind of world.

Oh well.

Here’s my photo a day challenge pic for today. I took it just after I finished my morning exercise at around 6:00am today. It might end up being the cover of Quarantine Tunes Volume Eight. The jury is still out on that one though.

236/365
236/365

Cake

I mentioned in this morning’s edition of The Daily Writing Prompt that Jen baked me a sugar free cake over the weekend and it is wonderful in both the figurative sense (how great is my wife for doing that for me and my weird, redesigned, stomach pouch thing) and the literal sense (de-freakin-licious chocolate cake!!!).

I had a second piece tonight. Just a sliver. I can’t take much more than that. The downside is that I will never be able to eat the whole thing at this rate. Some of it is going to go to waste. That is sad, but I will never not be grateful for the gesture, and I will eat a little bit each day until it goes stale and can’t be eaten any more.

Like I said, how amazing is my wife? Amazing! I think she might actually like me. Insert a gigantic happy grin here.

In other news, I also mentioned earlier that today is my father’s birthday. 82 years old and still going strong. My sister setup a birthday party for him this coming Sunday. I’ll go to that in the afternoon and then go to band practice. It’s going to be an epic Sunday. Maybe I can talk Jen into going to New York on Friday after work and then coming home on Saturday after dinner. Let’s make the epic Sunday a full on epic weekend! There’s zero chance of that, but a boy with cake in his rewired innards can dream, right?

Friday

It has been a pretty quiet day at work today (JINX!) apart from my brief stomach rebellion. I have 32 minutes to go until I can punch out for the day. I am starting to day dream about the weekend a little.

Music. I recorded a vocal track for one song on Thursday. I have a couple more songs that could do with some car music vocals. I have to practice for Sunday’s band rehearsal as well. I have nine songs to brush up on. I don’t know if we have a working PA system or not, but I did pick up a replacement for my dead Shure SM58 microphone. If our old, dinky little PA still works I’ll take it for a test drive. My Vox AC15 amp is in the rehearsal room along with my great big use-with-the-band pedal board. It’ll be nice to visit with my sweet RYRA The Klone overdrive pedal again.

I suddenly find myself in the middle of a whole bunch of TV shows. The X-Files epic rewatch continues, and we’re in season seven which means the quality is taking a steady nose dive. Uh oh. Only a few episodes to go until we reach the two season mostly-Mulder-free stretch. Yikes. I have a new episode of Star Trek Discovery (Disco) to watch. I have a new episode of Manhunt to watch. I have 6-7 episodes of Fallout left. I’ve watched the first two. I didn’t expect it to be so… goofy. I never played the video game so I really didn’t know what to expect. Silliness was not on my menu though. I like the show so far even though I don’t really know what’s happening yet. I’m caught up on Star Wars The Bad Batch. There are only a few more episodes left and I am thinking about rewatching the whole final season. I don’t know. There’s so much else to watch. I’m in the middle of Ripley on Netflix too. It’s pretty twisted. I never read the book or saw the movie so this one is all new to me too. I am enjoying it in a sick and twisted kinda way.

What else is going on? I am hoping to spend some quality time hanging out with my wife, of course. That’s the best part of the weekend. She mentioned she’s going to have to work a lot, which is a bummer, but we’ll make time. I hope to cook for her now and then. Lunches and maybe dinners? We use one of those dinner delivery service things. You know, where they send you all of the ingredients and a recipe with (somewhat) detailed instructions and you prepare the meal yourself. We are supposed to get a delivery today. I like it best when we cook those together. I find that both less stressful and generally enjoyable. Mostly. Some of them are still stressful even when we gang up on them. Does everyone think they are stressful or is it just us?

I did not promise myself that I would avoid the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH this week… so when I go out to do errands… yeah, I am probably going to buy some cookies there. I can stop any time, really. I promise I can stop any time. Totally.

Okay. 20 minutes until quitting time. I haven’t had anything to eat in two hours and 56 minutes and my stomach is starting to ask me why it’s empty. Three hours is usually how long it takes for my stomach to wake up after a meal. We’re pretty much right on target. Here’s hoping I don’t mess up with my snack on the drive home. A repeat of The Foamies… in the car… yeah, that would be annoying. I keep a spit up cup in the car, though I have never used it. Here’s hoping we keep the streak alive!

TMI?

First Time at Work

Well, gastric bypass surgery fans, I just had my first mildly annoying post-surgical experience while at the office.

I scheduled a snack for three hours after breakfast. It was a protein bar. Not a big one, not a small one, just a Goldilocks style protein bar to tide me over until lunch and to avoid the empty-stomach-stomach-aches I get when I wait too long between eating anything.

I was fine until the last bite, then I felt the upset stomach that is a harbinger of The Foamies. That state I sometimes find myself in where something is hanging out just outside of my redesigned little stomach pouch (pouch is the technical term for it, I swear) and my body starts over producing saliva to help break it down so that it can get into my stomach. I end up spitting up a lot, and I sometimes end up gagging up whatever is stuck enroute.

Yes, it can be gross. Yes it can be uncomfortable. Yes it is annoying. It’s not really a bad thing, it’s just a thing.

The reason it is noteworthy today is because it was the first time it happened in the office. It’s not the first time it happened during work, but the previous weekdays between 9-5:30 instances were all while working from home. I had to excuse myself and go to the men’s room to spit up saliva and wait to see if my last bite or two of protein bar would come back out to say hello. They didn’t. I was all better again after about five minutes. No harm done. No co-workers grossed out.

I am going to keep a spit-up cup at my desk though. Hopefully I will never use it, but hopefully if I need to no one will see.

As usual, I feel I must state in closing that this is sooooo worth it. Yeah, it’s annoying and all but it is absolutely worth it given the weight loss and all of the other benefits to my health and well being. 100%. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Month 23 Weigh In

Robert, if you’re not weighing in monthly anymore, why did you bother doing it on the 23rd monthiversary rather than waiting 30 days and doing it on the two year anniversary? I don’t know, leave me alone.

I walked past the scale yesterday and without thinking about it stepped on it. I was expecting to be around 220 pounds. I was less than that. It pleased me. It made me want to step on the scale today, which is the one year and 11 month mark since my gastric bypass surgery. It made me want to update my weight loss spreadsheet for the first time since January 9, 2024 (which was the two year anniversary of the first appointment at the weight loss clinic). So feeling thusly inspired (is thusly a word?), I stepped on the scale this morning… and I was down from yesterday. I was also down from January 9, 2024. Nice.

The last weigh in, almost three months ago, had me at 213.20 pounds. Today’s weigh in has me at 211.60. I am down 1.6 pounds over the last three months. That pleases me a lot. I thought I would be way up. I’ve actually had to start using a looser notch on my belt. I thought I was putting the weight back on, slowly but surely. Nope. 1.6 pounds over three months, I would say that I am officially maintaining. I’m up 13.2 pounds since I hit my low point, which was while I had Covid. I’d love to be below 200 pounds again, but I am more than happy to be at 211.6. It’s an indescribable improvement over weighing more than 430 pounds the way I did back in April of 2022.

Here are the totals over the last two years or so. I have lost 219.8 pounds since the last weigh in before the surgery. I told my father yesterday that I was at 220. Close enough. I am down 240.4 since the first weigh in. My BMI was 55 on that fateful first weigh in day back in January 2022. Today it is 25.8. That is technically still considered overweight, but given the circumstances, I freakin’ love it.

So there we have it. The current state of the weight loss journey. I plan to weigh in again on the second anniversary of the surgery. That will be May 4, 2024. After that… I might not weigh in again for another year. This was never about the numbers for me. It was always about the way I feel. That and being able to be there for my family, when prior to the surgery I had reached a point where I couldn’t function under normal circumstances. In those terms, this is the most successful healthcare experience of my life. The numbers are fun for the stats geek that I am at heart. For that reason, I’ll keep that weight loss tracking spreadsheet around.

Happy 23 months, everyone.

Stomach Fun

Two days from now will mark one year and 11 months since my Gastric Bypass Surgery. That 2nd anniversary is right around the corner.

Today I think back to one of the regular check ins I had with the surgeon. I told her that I was having some issues with pain. I would eat something, then a few hours would go by and I would start to get a bad stomach ache. Am I doing something wrong?

No, she said. It’s normal. You’re hungry.

Huh… hungry, eh? That’s it?

Yup, you’re hungry.

Sure enough, when I get that type of stomach pain I have something to eat and it goes away. That’s all well and good except… well… I don’t want to eat. I want to not be hungry. I want to have breakfast and then not have anything else to eat until lunch, then not have anything else to eat until dinner, then not have anything else to eat until a pre-bedtime snack. That’s not how it works though.

Today I started feeling it about 2.5 hours after breakfast. I started feeling it about 20 minutes before my lunch break. I started feeling it again two hours and 50 minutes after lunch. It was probably 45 minutes before dinner. I had to have a snack. It was a small snack and it made me feel better, but not completely better. Now I’m having dinner so that should hopefully fix things for the next few hours.

Like I said though, I don’t want to be tied to food like this. I don’t want to feel hungry. I just want to take advantage of the fact that my bypassed stomach pouch is a little tiny guy and doesn’t require a lot of food to fill it.

I am not complaining. Not even a little bit. I am fine with all of this. I just didn’t expect it and I wish I had another way around it. I don’t though and it’s okay.

Dinner tonight is salmon and it’s delicious. Given all of the grief I used to give my mother when she tried to give us fish for dinner, she would be shocked that I am loving a nice piece of fish tonight. Who even am I?

Fun Times

I have a quarterly review meeting in 25 minutes.

I’m having a low blood sugar moment and feel kinda loopy. Oh good.

A few minutes ago I gave myself a full dose of The Foamies just by drinking water. That’s a first. I’m just shy of two years since gastric bypass surgery and I’ve never had the foamies triggered by a liquid before. It’s always been solid food. It passed quick, but it was a surprise.

My father is having a bad day, health-wise today.

I just got an invite to a training that I took on Tuesday. It says the training starts in 25 minutes. I am so confused. Maybe it’s just the blood sugar thing. I’ve had a protein bar and I’m feeling better. My father is going to get stitches. He’s going to be miserable. I wish I could do something to help.

Blah, this is an example of a Friday that is not living up to it’s potential. It’s supposed to be “Good Friday” today, isn’t it? So far it’s not very good. Blah.

Soup

Tonight my dinner was the universally accepted dinner for people with a bad cold. Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. It was lovely, though it did bring up a question for me.

I am less than two months away from the two year anniversary of my gastric bypass surgery. Things are going well. I haven’t had dumping syndrome once and I have lost over 200 pounds. Huzzah, babie. Life is good.

There are rules that those of us who have gone through the full gastric bypass have to follow. Two in particular. First, if you have something to drink you need to wait 15 minutes before you can have something to eat. Second, similarly, if you have something to eat you have to wait a whole hour before you have something to drink.

Easy peezy, lemon squeezy.

What about soup though? I had a great big bowl of soup tonight and it was delicious and it cleared my stuffy head a little. As I was lapping up the broth I had a moment where I questioned everything. I just ate the chicken and the noodles, should I wait an hour before I drink the broth? I had a spoonful of broth as my first taste of dinner, should I have waited 15 minutes before I ate the chicken and the noodles? Putting it simply, does soup count as a food or a drink? I was lead to believe that one meal could not count as both, so which is it? Should soup be off limits? I chose to count it as food but is that an incorrect choice?

One other, unrelated, rule that I have to follow in this post surgery world is no alcohol. Does that mean I cannot have a dose of NyQuil to help combat my cold symptoms and to help me sleep at night? I am pretty sure NyQuil lives on the no fly list for that reason. I was going to have some tonight but I have decided to error on the side of caution and skip it.

Oh, what a fascinating new world is this post surgery life. Fascinating indeed.

Co-Worker

I have a co-worker with me at my desk right now.

In other news, my stomach is in revolt at the moment. Fun. It’s a gastric bypass side effect kind of thing and it will pass, but I just gagged up some icky stuff and had a full blown case of “the foamies” (look it up). Having said that, there is no complaint here. I ate my lunch too fast and my new redesigned digestive system slapped me on the wrist for it. Post operation side effects like this are 100% worth it, I promise you. Trust me, it’s not an issue at all.

In other other news, I checked the bookfayce page of the Luthier I brought my guitar to last Saturday and earlier today he posted a bunch of pictures showing the progress he’s made. There are pictures of my beloved Gibson ES-335 Pro without any frets, pictures of it with some new frets, and a picture of the neck with a full boat’s worth of lovely, shiny new frets. It still needs a new nut and a new bridge, and he didn’t mention anything about cleaning out the electronics (which is a major bitch of a job to do on an ES-335 as you have to squeeze everything in and out through the F-hole), but the new frets are in! I don’t know if I will share any of the photos he posted. I think I did when he worked on my Les Paul Custom, but not until a few days had past. We’ll see.

Try to picture this guitar with shiny new frets:

In other other other news, I am listening to Steve Hackett’s new album, which was released today. It is called The Circus and the Nightwhale. I am listening while I work and therefore not able to give it my full attention. My initial gut reaction though is this: Steve Hackett’s guitar playing gets exponentially better with each passing day. His songwriting improves in a similar manner. His singing… yeah, he’s better than he used to be but sometimes I still wish he’d hire a full time singer for his recording line up. I’m enjoying the new album. Check it out.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Lunch break is over. My stomach is settling down. Get back to work, Red Head!