This may seem like an unusual post. But I feel it’s an important post. I realize also this is only a mere 24 days post op, so all of this may be very different in a week, a month, or a year…in fact I bet it will!
I’ve been fortunate to have had a seamless experience as far as surgery is concerned. After surgery my stomach felt “weird” for a few days. The day I got home I took one pain pill to help me sleep and that was it. Zero pain other than some minor gas pains from surgery the first couple of days. Beyond that everything has been going good. After losing a lot pre-surgery, I am still losing right at a pound a day post-op (23 pounds in 24 days). I’ve heard all kinds of stories, good and bad, about this surgery post-op. I seem to be blessed with the best possible outcome thus far.
But everything isn’t just sunshine and puppies. It really is a whole new world…and while it’s not terrible, it is something major to get used to.
- Eating is a whole new thing – Where in the past I struggled to keep from eating too much during the day, now I struggle to eat enough. Most of the time I don’t want to eat. I have no desire. On the surface that would seem like a good thing, but it’s not. It’s kind of a bummer.
- Food “confusion” – I don’t know how else to describe this. There are times when I look at food, on commercials or on a plates, and my feeling is somewhere between indifferent and grossed out. But then there are other times i see food and think “I won’t be having that for a long, long time….if ever.” This is all part of what most of this post is about, the mental game, which is there in whole new ways than it was pre-op.
- Fighting the old mindset – One thing I really have to fight with are my old mindsets. Today I was kind of bored….bored immediately triggers a feeling of being hungry. Because in the past I would eat when I was bored, or stressed, or sad, or happy….it seemed like every emotion in the past triggered a feeling that I was hungry. Now when that happened I know I’m probably not hungry and it’s totally a mental thing…but unless you’ve experienced that as major trigger, it’s hard to explain how serious that trigger is. In that few minutes, I felt like I was suddenly starving! I felt like I HAD to have food right then! It was close to my lunch time so I fended it off for a little bit…but it’s a real struggle.
- Not finding food enjoyment – Not only do I not have desire, for the most part food doesn’t bring me enjoyment now. I’ve had a few moments where it did, especially when I ate something good again for the first time (like ricotta bake or Wendy’s chili. But for the most part I am eating because I know I have to. Stuff tastes okay but most of it is just meh.
- I am always worrying about food now – I never worried in the past if I was eating enough or not…I knew for a fact I was eating too much. Now I worry if I am eating enough, and I have to do “macro-math” to make sure I’m getting the right balance of protein and carbs. Am I getting enough water? Is this bad for me? It probably won’t always be this way but right now I’m always looking at labels, weighing things. It can be overwhelming. Last night I made some chicken salad and it was low carb, low calorie but I was really overly worried because I had to use (gasp!) regular mayonaise.
- Is this going to make me sick? – I have both a weird blessing and curse in one. I haven’t thrown up since I was a pre-teen and I can’t remember ever having a “not make it to the bathroom” accident. I know this sounds super weird in the context of a blog about Gastric Bypass, but most weight loss surgery patients experience either “the foamies” or “dumping” and it is probably unlikely I will not experience those…but what I do experience is that some things I eat make me wish I could just “expel” the food and get it over with. Instead I sit with a queasy stomach.
- Struggling to get enough water in – This is slowly getting better but I feel like all I do from the second I wake up until I go to bed is drink water…and yet I wake up 5 times a night totally parched. Also there are times when I haven’t had a drink in 3 or 4 minutes and my mouth will suddenly feel so dry it’s painful and I can’t make any spit. I haven’t been dehydrated so I don’t know what that is about but it’s annoying. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without water. I had to leave a meeting yesterday to go to my car and get my water bottle because my mouth got so dry I could hardly talk.
- Gross Mouth – I don’t know what it is, but my mouth tastes TERRIBLE all the time. It’s the worst at night or after a protein shake (I hate those). I hope it gets better because it’s horrible. It’s most likely ketosis but I hoped it would hae gone away by now. I used to chew gum out of habit in the past, I’m not really supposed to be chewing gum now (not sure why) but I have to just to get the taste out of my mouth.
- Protein shakes – I can’t say much about this. I’m just so tired of them, I don’t like the taste of them, but it is by far the best way to get my protein in for the day. They all have a “proteiny” taste and I’m just tired of them.
- This is a HUGE shift in my, AND MY FAMILY’S, life – My family has and continues to be super supportive of this surgery. I wouldn’t have done it if my wife hadn’t pushed and motivated me….I owe her so much for that. But this is a huge change. In the “old days” we ate out, did drive through or delivery virtually every meal. We might eat a frozen dinner once every week or two…but us making a home cooked meal has been almost non-existent for several years. There are a number of very valid reasons for that, that I don’t want to fully go into. I will say we lost a 19-year-old daughter last year to cancer after battling it and pretty pronounced mental illness for six years. After battling that for six years, then losing the battle, you are good if you can just “survive”…and we’ve been doing that for a long time….and now we are surviving through grief. But while at-home food wasn’t our thing, going out together was….I’ve only been out once in the last 24 days. My wife misses it. And a confession…I never learned how to cook. I’m 50 and I can hardly cook anything. Eggs maybe. Boil some pasta and pour jar sauce over it. That’s it. But I wan’t to learn. I’m trying…I made a “ricotta bake” that was simple and very good. I want to bring some of that back again and also doing it in a healthy way. But I sometimes feel like I am depriving my family of one of our few pleasures.
There are other things too. I didn’t include it above but the 2-week pre-op diet was an absolute beast!
This is a total life transformation and those can be a huge and major upheaval.
But I want to be absolutely sure to say this: I STILL WOULDN’T CHANGE THIS DECISION FOR THE WORLD.
I have a feeling as time goes on I will be more and more glad I did this and like so many I’ve talked to, only sad I didn’t do it sooner!
As much change and adjustment as this has brought, and my 50-year-old soul doesn’t like a whole lot of change and adjustment, I still think it will be a total life-changing thing for the rest of my days. I just don’t want it to seem like it’s all 100% easy peazy lemon squeezy. 🙂