party on

shopping for dressy dresses is always so unpleasant when you're really plus size. for my prom, i got one made at kleinfeld. for my wedding, i got one made by a designer in my town. then i dyed it black and wore it to a black tie wedding a couple years later because the thought of looking for another dress was painful. 

why plus size dresses with sleeves are so hard to find, i really don't know. most size 28 or 30 women i know are not wearing strapless or cap sleeve dresses - it's just a fact. so i'm embarking on that journey right now for my sister's wedding in september and although i am in a size 18 or 20, depending on the dress, i still VERY MUCH need sleeves no shorter than elbow length. i have very loose skin and lots of it, and sleeves are non-negotiable.

for the friday night portion of my sister's wedding, i ordered this, this, this and this...we'll see what works and return what doesn't. the dress for the wedding itself is still unknown and i will start really, really looking in july when i know better what my size will be.

meanwhile, i'm getting away from what the point of this post was! a couple weeks ago, i donated an old bridesmaid dress to an organization that gives dresses to underprivileged girls for their proms. when i bought the dress, i had the all-too-familiar experience of having to order the largest size it came in as well as extra fabric so that i could bring it to my trusty seamstress* who could basically remake the dress even larger. of course, you pay extra for all those extra steps (and inches). (*note: this is the same seamstress who is now making all my clothes smaller...love that kind of full circle).

i also had a special bolero made to go with it to cover my arms, but not be a dowdy pashmina.  i ended up taking off the uncomfortable bolero and putting on a dowdy pashmina anyway. the worst part of being a bridesmaid for me was never being the largest of a bunch of girls...that was my life, so it barely fazed me. it was more the added attention, expense and effort of the dress itself. 

i felt so good giving it away - not because i was so much smaller than i was then (that feels good any day, of course), but because i knew i'd be making someone's life easier. she wouldn't have to suffer through hot, small fitting rooms and matronly, horrible styles that come in her size, or struggle to find a shrug to wear to cover herself up.

out of sorts

for some reason, the last couple days have found me very un-hungry and generally sluggish. the thought of eating has felt like a hassle and sort of nauseating, but then when i do eat, i feel exhausted and like i want to eat more. i just had 2 egg whites, a small piece of cheese and a few grapes, and now i'm zonked and want a granola bar. weird.

i'm just going to not eat anything else right now and figure it's just a bad couple days...maybe it's the weather change. this hunger thing is weird.

sunday in the kitchen

i've been cooking for a couple hours most sundays recently (i wear a fun apron!), and it's really become a nice ritual. it helps to center me for the week in terms of what i'll be eating, because it's a built in way of planning ahead, measuring and putting things in perfect portion sizes. although it usually takes two or three hours in all, it means that for the rest of the week, i only need to spend a few minutes each day. i've been experimenting with different recipes and ideas, and in the process i often make mitchell eggs or a sandwich which i really enjoy too (i'm becoming kind of a food pusher, which i have to manage carefully).

i always use a garbage bowl, above, which makes everything cleaner and easier. so yesterday, i made scrambled eggs with cheese (good for quick weekday breakfasts alone or in a trader joe's whole wheat tortilla), chicken tandoori (from this recipe...it came out okay, will be better with the yogurt sauce and i might put it in some bibb lettuce leaves from my container garden) and i boiled a dozen eggs which i always do since i have hardboiled egg whites almost every day for a snack. i also cut up a huuuuuge hothouse cucumber which i eat throughout the week on its own, with hummus, or with some light dressing.

i had forgotten to defrost some ground turkey which i also would have made since i've been enjoying that for dinner some nights with sour cream, scallions and spicy beans. i took it out and will do that one night this week since all i do is saute the meat and add some reduced sodium taco seasoning.

i also whipped some sugar free frosting to keep in a tupperware in the refrigerator. i don't feel great about this, but i think i've finally found a sweet treat i can keep in the house that isn't a trigger. it's SO sweet that i just have a little spoonful of it after dinner (some nights, not every) and i don't even want anymore. so that's working right now. i just have to be like a hawk about it and if it stops working...in that i find myself wanting more of it or eating it instead of wholesome foods...then it goes and it doesn't come back.

do you cook one day over the weekend for the whole week?

a day in the life

one of the things i wondered about most when i was pre-op was what my day would look like in terms of food. one on hand, i felt embarrassed by the idea that i was having weight loss surgery, about to change my life so drastically forever, and yet what i was thinking about was the food. but that's the reality for so many people considering the surgery - in some ways, it's the mentality that got us here, and it's not easy to break just because you've made the decision to have the surgery. if we were able to overhaul that way of thinking, we wouldn't need the surgery...and the cycle continues.

i was afraid to ask people online, in my support group, even my nutritionist what a post-op day of food looked like because of that shame, so i wanted to share it with you. i figure i'll do it once a week or so, so you can see the variety of foods i eat, the amounts, the times and what my feelings/thoughts are about each meal and snack. i know it would have been helpful to me beforehand, in fact one of the best message board threads i came across on this site was about what foods you were afraid you'd miss once you had the surgery and how you feel about it now. it was such a relief to me to see that other people had food fears and thoughts beforehand and that i wasn't alone. so i hope these posts can offer some comfort to people who need to know what their new life will look like. 

in broad strokes...

• between 80g and 100g of protein daily is non-negotiable. 
• i try to stay between 1000-1200 calories a day, closer to 1000 if it's not a day i'm working out. also, if i am working out, the extra 200 calories should be mainly protein. 
• carbs should be around 45 net carbs daily or less; nothing white, must be WHOLE grains
• sugars are minimal...i never eat more than 9g sugar at once, and i try to stay lower. 
• i use the website sparkpeople to track all of the above everyday

okay here we go...and as you can see, it's always a work in progress and a learning experience.

6:30 AM

before my shower, i went downstairs and had a kashi trail mix bar even though i wasn't particularly hungry...i ate it anyway because for the past two days, i didn't eat in the morning because i wasn't hungry and i had a bloated, gassy feeling all day which i think was from taking vitamins on an empty stomach.(you can read more about my up and down hunger here). i thought about adding a light mini-babybel cheese for some protein but really couldn't eat more.

140 cals, 5g fat, 4g fiber, 6g protein, 6g sugar, 16 net carbs

after my shower (having waited the recommended 30 minutes since eating), i had iced coffee with skim milk (a few of them, if i'm honest, which totals one cup of skim milk for the day).

86 calories, 8g protein, 12 carbs  

-these carbs are milk sugars, and don't really factor in heavily in terms of carbs...sort of abstract but my nutritionist and i have it down

12:40 PM

for lunch, i had five ounces of the tofu peanut stirfry i made over the weekend. it's a mixture of tofu (which didn't turn out as firm as i hoped, any suggestions?), edamame, mushrooms, scallions, crushed ginger, peanut butter, broccoli, cauliflower and soy sauce. oh and some rice vinegar and sherry (i've made it without those two ingredients and it tastes exactly the same). i also throw in some cumin, curry powder and chili powder. it's good - better than it looks, and sort of hits that chinese food spot. i've made it with chicken too. 

so this i measured out into 5 ounce portions after making it, and i was feeling like although it was physically comfortable to eat all 5 ounces, it was starting to look like a lot to me, portion-wise. and this is a tricky thing...there's one school of thought that says never to eat more than 4 - 6 ounces at once, and then there's another that says you have to find the limits of your "pouch" so that you're satisfied...i do a combination, while never eating more than 6 ounces if that makes sense, and some foods (like chicken) are denser and fill me on less than others (like nuts and cheese and sugar free desserts...go figure). i ran into a friend in the kitchen at work while i was reheating the tofu who was shocked at what a small portion it was. that made me feel pretty good.

approx 268 calories, 13 carbs, 19g fat, 17g protein

-this is a little high in fat, i think i have to find a way to go lighter on the peanut butter, but overall it's okay, just have to balance it later in the day

1:35 PM

another iced coffee as mentioned and accounted for above, but i added a scoop of pure protein powder to bulk up my protein intake for the day since my breakfast was a little light in that department.

50 calories, 12g protein (milk in coffee counted above)

3:40PM

2 hard boiled egg whites, 1/2 oz gorgonzola cheese, 7 small black olives, 7 grape tomatoes (no reason for the 7's, just coincidence)

i love snacks like this...it's a good mix of textures and tastes, and it all feels healthy and whole. i'm a little uneasy because i didn't weigh it, but i think it's about 5 ounces all together...egg whites are heavy. i need to get a scale for my office.

approx. 140 calories, 4 carbs, 8g fat, 13g protein

4:06 PM
hungrier than before i had my snack, just waiting to drink some water which might help. this still happens, this hunger. some people have the experience of never being hungry, but i'm not having that experience. sometimes i feel like it would be a lot easier if that happened for me. but my nutritionist asked me "do you want that experience?" and i guess i don't. that doesn't seem like a healthy relationship with food either. 

6:25 PM

on the train home and needed a snack...had 2 mini sugar free reese's pb cups...these are somehow not a trigger for me, and work well as a pretty low calorie (considering) sweet bite when i need one. admittedly a little crappy as food goes, but i'm okay with it if it's not all the time.


68 calories, 5g fat, less than 1g net carb, 1g protein

worked out at around 7:30 and actually wasn't really hungry afterwards for a while. that's unusual for me, usually i'm starving after working out. so i drank some iced tea and waited until i felt a little hungrier. i think somehow the reese's really filled/satisfied me.

8:45 PM

had 2 ounces of ground turkey with taco seasoning, 2 tablespoons of an herbed sour cream i made (scallions and chives, and i like to call it "herb crema" cause i'm fancy), 1/4 cup of cajun black beans, some chopped scallions and 1 ounce of smart puffs. that's the part i feel not so great about. but they're really tasty, pretty healthy and surprisingly, not a trigger for me. i buy them in the individual bags and they take a while to eat and i really enjoy them. it's another "as long as they don't replace real food" situations.

307 calories, about 20g net carbs, 14g fat, 18g protein

DAILY TOTAL: 1,059 calories, about 50g net carbs, 51g fat, 74g protein

ASSESSMENT: OKAY. 

calories - i could have had some more calories since i worked out, but didn't want to have snackfoods (like a granola bar or more smart puffs which i definitely wanted)...i would have had to have more meat or cheese and that would have increased the ounces of my dinner. if i had waited a while and eaten more after dinner, it would have been too close to bed. 

i could have... had another ounce of turkey with dinner and skipped the beans, or added some more protein powder to my coffees, or had a more protein-heavy snack on the train.

carbs - a little high on the carbs...the granola bar for breakfast didn't help. better to stick with things like eggs and cheese and turkey/chicken for breakfast. also, the smart puffs are high in carbs. i think a granola/protein bar are an either/or situation with the same day.

i could have...had a better, more protein-focused breakfast

fat - also a little high...peanut butter needs to be reduced in that tofu recipe, but i'm over that recipe for a while now anyway. 

protein - almost! it's hard to keep the calories down and the protein up, which is where the shakes do come in handy...

i could have...if i had added another scoop of protein, would have been fine. or i should have made sure that my snack in the afternoon had more protein.

was this helpful for anyone? it was for me! it was really interesting to me to see how much my hunger fluctuated throughout the day. i always think that some days i'm hungry and some days i'm not, but by writing it all out, i see that actually that happens several times within a day.

does it look like more or less than you expected?

crossing over

i'm loving crossing my legs these days...same way i was marveling at having a lap a few weeks ago. it's so nice to be able to twist and turn myself whichever way i want. one of the millions of things i was missing out on for so long.

the hunger games

my hunger has been up and down lately. some days, i feel totally ravenous and like i could eat constantly. and then other days, i feel like eating is something i can't even fathom, and this is the first time i've felt that. while i don't feel that way all day, i feel it for usually the first half of the day. protein shakes come in handy those days so i know i'm getting the protein i need. some people have that feeling from the beginning of their post-op period but i have not had that experience at all. it doesn't worry me - i get that a lot is going on in my body right now and i will go through changes and ebbs and flows, and i'm okay with that. 

so my strategy will be to just accept what i feel and go with it - if i'm not feeling hungry one day, i'll respect that that's what my body is telling me and i'll just drink protein so i make sure i get enough calories and protein (1000 and 80 to 100 grams, respectively).

i have noticed that there is some rhyme or reason, sometimes. the week before i get my period, i'm starving. and last week, when my allergies were horrible, i wasn't hungry at all. i also notice that when i cook a lot (which i often do on sundays), i feel less hungry generally. partially, i think i taste as i go so i never get truly hungry and partially because, as my friend and chef kelly tells me, the sense of smell that is stimulated when you cook can often trick your mind into being satiated in ways that normally only eating accomplishes. interesting.

don't know

last night was a doozy...i ate my healthy chicken dinner and then i was having a hard time waiting for dessert which was a sugar free chocolate muffin (see the lesson i thought i learned here about sugar free treats).

i decided that even though it had been less than an hour since dinner, i would have dessert. eating less than three hours apart is considered grazing and i'm not supposed to do it. while grazing won't stretch my pouch the way overeating in one sitting will, it’s a bad habit and it makes it easy to take in too many calories throughout the day. the small size of my pouch only stops me from eating a lot in one sitting - it wouldn't stop me from eating a little every hour on the hour and we all know that's not good news for weight loss. but i digress...

so imagine having the thanksgiving dinner feeling but all in your esophagus/throat. that's what i had last night after a couple bites of that muffin. thank god i stopped when i did - not because another 20 or 30 calories would have killed me but because of how sick i would have felt if i had. as it was, i was utterly miserable for an hour or so until i guess i digested a little. i threw up a little which helped (sorry if that grosses you out, though it’s important to note here that for most weight loss surgery patients, throwing up is not what you imagine since we have no stomach acid so its not as gross). i also took a sublingual B12 which i find helps speed digestion sometimes and I need to take it every other day anyway (two birds with one stone).

so as i recovered, sitting very still with my cat, i thought about a lot:

-it’s crazy that so little food created that feeling. reminds me of how much i was physically altered that 3 or 4 oz of chicken and a couple bites of a muffin an hour later would fill me to the brim and beyond. and that makes me think about the damage i would have done without my restriction - about what i would have eaten (and did eat) to bring me to that point of sick fullness pre-surgery time and time again - pounds of pasta, whole pizzas, chinese food to feed a family...

-it made me think about why i brought that kind of food into the house again after i thought i learned the trick of sweet foods for me. 

-it also made me think about why i needed that muffin so badly? i wasn't hungry. i knew it would be there in the morning, so why? people say "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" and i am experiencing every day how good thin(ner) feels, but the weird, sad, confusing reality is that although nothing does taste as good as thin feels, it doesn’t always stop a food addict from eating.

why? i don't know.

have a seat

chairs have always been a big deal for me...will i fit? will they be comfortable? will i have to make a scene getting in or our of an ill-fitting chair or one that's too close to the table? i would regularly arrive at gatherings early to scope out the chair situation, if i didn't call ahead or scour the restaurant's website for pictures of the dining room so i'd be forewarned. i became comfortable asking for a table over a booth (generally speaking, booths have been out of the question for years) or asking for a chair without arms (chairs with arms, pretty much a never).

so recently when my boss wanted to take a few of us out to lunch, i went through the usual mental process...where can we go that i'll be comfortable? should i plan to meet them there or take the chance of being embarrassed in front of them all? i think i was forgetting how my body has changed. even though i know, i don't always KNOW.

we decided where we'd go, and luckily, i walk by that restaurant every day when i walk to work from penn station. one day, i got up the nerve to try to sit in one of the chairs...i didn't want to make a scene in the early morning traffic, but i desperately wanted - needed - to know if we'd be able to sit outside in one of them on one of the first glorious days of spring. the chairs still looked small, and the armrests still looked punishing and restrictive. i told myself that if i didn't fit yet it was okay, that i had made such strides already and it would only be a matter of time before this milestone was under my belt too.

I FIT! comfortably, with space on either side! i was smiling from ear to ear and didn't care if i was making a scene at that moment. it felt good. the cold metal felt inviting and congratulatory, not punishing and insulting as it had for so long.

when we went to lunch that day, much to my dismay, it was decided that we'd eat inside instead of outside, which meant that the chairs were not to be. instead, i felt a familiar sense of dread rising in me as we were led to a tight-looking booth. A BOOTH?!?! that i hadn't accounted for. i hadn't done a test-drive. i should have come earlier and assessed...or called ahead...oh god.

i fit. 

i'll tell you, it wasn't entirely comfortable - my breasts were almost touching the strangely-high table. i'll get there though, and like i was prepared to tell myself before, that milestone will be under my belt before long.

"guys who like fat chicks"...as told to the village voice

i have to say, i'm kind of bothered by the notion of feeling proud of being fat, but there are thousands of people that disagree with me on that. i am absolutely all for self-acceptance and self-love...i don't think that any healthy or happy life can grow out of anything but that. but i do have a problem with people liking obesity, in themselves or in anyone else (like the voice article). the reason has nothing to do with societal standards of beauty or marketing companies' campaigns...it has to do with health. 

there's not a single ounce of me (and there are a considerable number of ounces left) that thinks anyone, no matter their size, should be ashamed or made to feel less than because of their weight or size (or anything else for that matter) but i do think it's a scary trap to get caught in, defending and professing love for being fat.

thoughts?

update: my blogging friend bloomie directed me to this website that addresses some of what i guess are common concerns...what do you think?

say cheese(cake)

not surprisingly, sugar free snacks are a problem (read: trigger) for me. i had been dying for a piece of cheesecake for some reason, and discovered that shoprite sells a good one. it's small so it didn't seem too dangerous to have around, but the truth is, although i only ate one serving, i could have eaten many more...in one sitting. goes down a lot easier than grilled chicken. and at 250 calories a slice, just not a good choice.

i've also tried these and these and this frosting (creates a problem you don't want to know about).

god help me if i ever find SF cupcakes. 

as for the cheesecake, maybe i'll bring it to someone's house the next time i'm tasked with dessert, enjoy a slice and leave the rest there. what i've discovered is the same truth most people who watch their weight arrive at - it's best to go out for the treat instead of bringing it into the house. 

i know for me, even if i'm not overeating these sugar free treats, the fact that i'm eating them at all bugs me, for a few reasons. first, because they're packed with chemicals and artificial flavors and that makes me cringe, and second because when they're in my house, they call my name. so when it's time for a snack, the odds of me choosing some cut up cucumbers or a string cheese is slim to none when there's a cheesecake sitting there.

these realizations shed light on just how much the surgery is only a tool. it's up to me to use it and to make good decisions every second of every day.