Jerked Shrimp, Chicken and Tilapia

I travel for work every week.  I get to sample lots of food and drink that I might not get at home in fancy restaurants.  Oh, wait, that is exactly how I got back in this situation where I am struggling to remember and apply the rules of a compliant VSG'er.  So, in the last month I have traveled and actually eaten out quite a lot.  The trick before yesterday (since I have gone back to the drawing board last month) was that I actually knew where I was going to go to eat (usually because I had picked the place and scoped out the menu and chosen my meals very carefully).  Yesterday was the first time I got caught.

"Hey, do you want to try this really great Caribbean restaurant for lunch today", said my customer as we were finishing up our meeting.  Always ready for lunch, breakfast or any food, I reply, "Yes, that sounds great!!"   Immediate panic.  How can I look up or even anticipate what might be on the menu? My customer says, "I love the jerked shrimp."  Bingo, shrimp is good to eat and they probably will have veggies too. This is what I expected:

We arrive at the restaurant and the non-detailed menu has about 4 choices of jerked this and that. I copy my customer and order jerked shrimp.  "Spicy right?" says the waiter,  "Sure", I reply.  My water glass remains empty (as I do not drink anything 30 min before/after eating anymore).  We share some pleasantries and then the food arrives.  It is a heaping plate of breaded and fried shrimp, on top of rice, with a corn muffin and a side of mac and cheese, oh, and enough brown jerk sauce to almost hide the identification of any of the food mentioned above.  I am frozen.  I can literally not eat anything but the shrimp that is buried under fried batter and jerk sauce. How will I dig those shrimp out?  I will tell you that I had to work very hard to get any shrimp out of their jerky dripping batter coffins.  I so wanted to take a picture of the actual challenge, but I didn't.   The resulting plate looked like I had just stirred it around, all along, I raved at how wonderful everything tasted.  My table was filled with men.  They cleared their plates in quick succession and actually didn't even ask me why my plate was full.  The only one to ask was the server (who was the owner unfortunately and couldn't just ignore this like my customers!) and he immediately asked why I hadn't eaten anything and if I wanted a box. I got a box. Put the box in my rental car trunk and that is where I left it when I returned the car to Newark airport.

Now, I don't like to waste food.  But after all that I have been doing to get back on track, I wasn't going to put one thing in my mouth that could derail me.  Now don't get me wrong.  I will absolutely justify a spoonful of key lime pie or coconut almond ice cream, but just one bite since that first bite is really the best one.  I consider yesterday a victory.  I traveled, I didn't succumb or get off track and I logged and best of all, I got off the plane, jumped in my car and straight to the YMCA for a swim.

These are the challenges that I avoided by doing the easy thing, like "just eat the plate of food, you might not ever get to eat something so.... calorie laden".  That would have been my inside voice saying that.  So fun to actually say I overcame the obstacle and came out ahead!!

Planning

Planning is hard.  Rather, until you make it a habit, planning is hard.

I like to be in control.  I am always shocked how easily I fall out of control.  I have all the tools to make good choices and follow through with good plans!  Why is it so easy to take the lazy way out?
I never feel good being a couch potato or stuffing myself with empty slider foods.  I have really had to examine why I just don't do what I know I need to do when I am not doing it....

Since September 27th I have looked deep inside myself and find my mojo again.  Spending too much time trying to figure out what went wrong in the past does nothing for a present day situation.  I just let it go.  By letting it go, I acknowledged that I did the bad things to myself! Yes, I did this to myself. Any excuses needed to be trashed and forgotten, they wouldn't work moving forward.  At least that was what got me going.  Now, nearly a month behind me, I can attest to the success I have had so far with really changing my attitude about EVERYTHING.

Looking at a revision (read: actually succumbing to ANOTHER surgery) is kind of crazy.  I needed to go through this process of recertification for insurance approval to realize that I had a tool already and it is in my head, not my stomach.  The sleeve may be a little stretched, but doing all the things that I have been doing for the last month are all the things that I would have to do with a revision surgery eventually....  I could end up in the same situation if I wasn't truly compliant again!

I have had a great weekend and never once felt "de-railed".  I took care of my body by starting out the weekend with a great swim (a tough thing for me to feel confident with) and gave my body a day of rest on Saturday.  I started the week out yesterday morning with a great spin class with an instructor that pushed us and encouraged us all the ride.  I even incorporated some adult beverages (Michelob Ultra) on Friday and on Sunday actually took 2 of the elder children out to celebrate their birthdays at Texas de Brazil!!!  I ate from the salad bar and had a good helping of lean meat.  While the 4 others I dined with felt bloated and ready to pass out.  I actually felt great!  The best thing was this morning on the scale when I was down a pound and totaling my loss since I started my reset to 15!

Resetting

I haven't blogged for a couple of years.  Coming back and looking at the fellow bloggers that I used to follow, I see that they too appear to have fallen off of the blog scene.

My last post was in 2014 after my revision to the Sleeve from the Band.  I was doing well at the time and guess I felt in control and on my way back down to the weight that the band had helped me achieve.  The fact is that I assumed that this new tool would work just the same way as the band.  I was wrong.

My initial success, and probably more truthfully, the only thing that got me to be a little successful in the beginning, was the strict compliance with the new rules for my sleeve so that I wouldn't bust open my stomach.  Once the initial healing was over and it was fairly safe to assume I wasn't going to leak or rip open stitches, my compliance totally subsided.

I never really felt restriction.  Never like the band. God, I missed that thing so much.  I missed not being able to stuff anything beyond a total amount of a half of a cup of anything in my mouth without disastrous consequences.  I really didn't mind being borderline bulimic, I knew if the next bite would end poorly, (in hindsight that was really so awful, but I was in control and getting great results, awfully unhealthy for both my mind and body).  I looked and counted on regaining that kind of restriction.  I now realized that I assumed wrong and never asked for the help to make sure that I would use this new tool correctly.   Some doctor's, mine included, believe that the patients that have had the band (especially with slippage etc) just don't get the same results.  I struggled with this and after a year of a slow regain, up to my pre-sleeve weight again, I started the process for another revision to bypass.

The process is a mind-blowing, long and dragged out exercise in the same things that I had now done 2 times already!!! I remember thinking, God, just sign the papers already and get this over with, can't you see I have done this!!!  First you have to get your personal doctor to approve, get a general nutrition class, get a psych eval and then 3 more one-on-one meetings with a dietitian, all before even submitting to the insurance company.  I started this in July and now in October, I still have 2 more months of dietitian meetings and my final approval from my surgeon. To top it off, my insurance has a very specific BMI requirement (with co-morbidity's a little lower) but I needed to actually GAIN a little weight.  So not feeling so great all around: doing this all over again, gaining weight, thinking that this is my last chance and just feeling bad all over.....

This process is meant to weed out those who will not be compliant, by raising flags in the psych and nutrition phases.  I sat with all these "newbies" who hadn't a clue about any portion control or dietary knowledge about what constituted a carb, protein, vegetable or fruit.  I internally rolled my eyes at the questions about why you couldn't eat potatoes and corn as a vegetable or drink orange juice instead of water! (Yes, a woman said she was going to drink 32 ounces of orange juice a day instead of water!).  I left that session and checked off my check list and the following week had my psych eval where I said the same things that passed me the first 2 times.....  My physician is great and said she supported me in a revision, but asked me to be patient and use the time for approval submission to think about this whole process.  That was in late July, I didn't listen to that request, I just barreled on to the next thing on my checklist: the first one-on one with the nutritionist.

This is where it all falls apart.  September 26th was our appointment. She is a nice woman, but in my mind, she couldn't possibly understand what I am going through.  I was there with my MyFitnessPal printout of my last week of food and my exercise. She looked at my weight and it was up from the group session by 5 pounds.  She asked why I thought that it was up.  I told her that I believed my set point for loss was lowered because of the little caloric intake I had with the band.  I could tell that she didn't fully buy into that and asked me a million questions about some of the food choices I was making.  No bread, cereal, rice, pasta for carbs, but no replacement with carbs from vegetables, so that is where the "never satisfied/always hungry" feeling comes from. Non existent amount of fruit. Drinking with meals, not enough water, and a fair amount of beer used as calories......  She then said, a bypass is going to restrict you a little more, but you will get the same results as you are getting here if you do the same things.  "Go think about this and come back doing something to show me you know how to make this work in the future after surgery... and really try not to gain anymore weight."

I made my next 2 appointments for November 1st and December 6th.  I left wanting to smack her in the face and kick everyone around me.  I went home and cried to my husband and said I was done with the whole process and just ready to call off the whole thing.  I called my doctor, who had asked me to be patient.  She saw me the next day.  I was really a mess and even asked her about giving me medicine to curb my appetite.  She said no of course, as I expected, but she said again to give myself time and see if I could "reset" myself.

I went home and really thought about it.  I searched the internet for anyone out there in my same position who had come out on top after a band to sleeve revision and was successful even after a little failure.  I looked for a way to reset.  Then I found it.  A Facebook page that had lots of input on success and failures with the Sleeve.  A number of people said, "go back to basics, never drink and eat (30 min on either side of a meal), protein first (bulky meats etc), chew till consistency of applesauce, put your fork down between bites, incorporate complex carbs (sweet potatoes, butternut squash etc), avoid simple carbs (breads, cereals, pasta, rice), eat fruit (whole fruit), avoid sugar and sugar substitutes to decrease sugar cravings and write ABSOLUTELY every bite that goes in your mouth.  Let your body FEEL full."

So, here I am.  It is October 19th and I started this "reset" on September 27th.  I am down 12.7 pounds!  I track everything, even the bad things, but these days the bad things are only once in a while and I usually plan them into my daily intake (i.e., beer or wine, occasional treat here and there). I plan my exercise and keep it varied, a walk with a friend is usually a lot longer than one by myself. I started back at the gym and bought some nice new workout gear.  I am sleeping better, feeling more alert and actually have felt restriction by "listening" to my body and recognizing feeling full and/or satisfaction.  I plan on going to my next nutrition appointment on November 1st and by then I believe I will have fully made up my mind to step out of the process for revision.  I am going to ask to continue with the nutritionist as a means to check in and keep accountable.  This is probably where I went wrong initially with the sleeve revision assuming that I had it all under control.....

Keeping a log/journal here again will help me to stay focused and in tune with what I need to do to regain and maintain any amount of success (big or small) and not have it always tied to a number on a scale.