04/28/10: Not what I expected

I feel like I'm taunting bandster hell to come and get me but I gotta blog this anyway.  I so totally did not expect any sort of restriction at this stage.

I thought I'd have surgery and get a little fill and that little fill, whatever it worked out to, would be enough to make a change but not enough to make a change.

I expected to still be able to eat.  Reasonably.  But eat.  I thought, if I put 4oz on my plate, I'll eat those 4oz and want more.  I thought, honestly, I'd be shooting for 6oz on my plate and I might be sated early on but towards the end of my month 1, it wouldn't work so well.  And I thought that towards the end of month one, I'd want 8oz.

I don't know that I had specific numbers tied to anything.  But I know that I expected the 4oz I knew I was to shoot for would probably not be enough.

I can't finish 4oz!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's insane!!!!!!!!!!

And it seems to be a 'you get 8-10oz for the day' thing, not 4oz per meal. 

So smoothie in the morning.  It's a slider.  It'll get in there although it does give a full feeling, to me, and keeps me satisfied for 4-5 hours.

Lunch = 4oz chicken or turkey salad.  Mon, for example, I could barely eat 1.5oz.  Yesterday, I wanted all 4.

Dinner = I'm actually putting 5oz on my plate.  Monday, when I barely touched lunch, I had 3oz pork, 1oz macaroni & cheese and 1oz broccoli.  I ate it all.  But I'd barely touched lunch.  And that was only 5oz and I was stuffed.  Not expecting that cause I was expecting bandster hell to be set in by now, right?  Then we have last night.  I served 3oz of chicken, 1oz of rice and 1oz of broccoli.  But I did eat my lunch.  I ate 1.5oz of chicken, 1 bite of the rice and .5oz of broccol.  I weighed what was left on my plate when I was stuffed and there was still 2.5oz there.  I ate 2.5oz for dinner and I was stuffed.

Again, worried about calories and protein, I turned to my Greek Yogurt - a slider - to get some protein in, later in the evening.

Yesterday ended up at 970 calories.  I am actually shooting for 1200...but I just can't seem to get there.  I so totally did not expect that!  Not now, anyway!

And then, it turns out, my hubby has been making the smoothies recently and I thought he was putting in two scoops of protein which would mean 52g of protein for the whole thing, aside from what we get from the Greek yogurt.  He gets 2/3 of what we make and I get 1/3.  Putting my recipe in sparkpeople, I should be getting 21g of protein with my smoothie.  But he was only putting in 1 scoop which means I've been way under on the protein.  So today we put the extra protein in.  And I was stuffed far quicker than I have been.  I have settled on 6oz of my smoothie and since I can drink it slow...it works.  I want the protein.  I'll take the rest of the good stuff that's in there, too.

This is really odd to me.  I mean, somehow, in reading all the blogs, I just expected bandster hell to start up pretty fast and play tricks on me.  Now, true, I can eat most anything I want.  My only no-no I've found so far is ribeye steak - but I have never eaten a solid diet of that, anyway.  So this is actually, truly nice to me.  I can eat anything I want, I am, this week anyway, choosing good things cooked healthily and I am just flat-out barely eating any of it.  I expected this time to be I can eat anything I want and I can eat a lot of it, too - maybe less than before, but still more than someone with true restriction.

And I have to admit this is what I want.  I don't want to get to the point where I am never hungry or where I am so restricted I have few options or where I have to drink to get protein (although somehow, I'm there).  I don't want to lose options.  I want to keep my options but have hunger at bay.  Surely this will fade and I'll see why I need another fill.  But so long as I'm like this, eating 3-4oz at a meal and feeling stuffed on that - and not having hunger return for 4-5 hours...I want to stay like this.

I have two weeks exactly until my first fill.  I will be so very curious to see what unfolds over the next two weeks.  I am losing.  I am settling on a Sunday weigh-in day and so won't update on what I've lost for the week until I weigh-in and take my measurements.  But every day this week, the scale has fallen.

And water.  Man.  Water is HARD!  I now have a rule that I have to drink one of my magic water bottles before I can have lunch.  Another through the afternoon.  Finish a third before I can have dinner.  But my desire for water is just not there.  And it's not that I want a soda or anything with sugar and/or calories or just anything else.  I just don't want it.  And that's bad!  So I'm doing this 'make myself drink by not letting myself have food until X happens' thing to try and get the water.  At least my water needs are falling, too.  :)  But I'm not getting what I need, that much I know.

On the other hand, I know that my bodily functions have swung way past normal again back to gushing.  So maybe I don't need the water.  :)

Kidding.  I know...I know...I need the water.

In other news...I finally felt like I was up to poking around the belly yesterday to actually feel the port for the first time.  I don't know what I was so scared of, I have been completely pain free since end of last week, only wanting Tylenol after working outside all day on Saturday.  So I felt around and felt it.  It's in there.  :)  Now I know exactly where it is.  I was taking a bath at the time of this exploration so I called my sweet hubby and he comes in. I grab his hand and put it there and he pokes around and pulls his hand back real quick while running out of the bathroom going "ewww....weird".  It was pretty cute.  But it's in there!  I was happy!

I knew it was in there.  Had no doubts.  I leaned forward Mon evening to open the gas tank and it got stuck on my ribs and kind of grinded around to get away from them.  So that wasn't so pleasant...and now that I know it does that, I can lean forward differently.

And that's what I know.  Hope y'all are having a good day!