Thursday, July 2, 2009

Food, Farts, and Footwork

Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot, the more you toot, the better you feel, so eat beans at every meal.

I'm being silly. However, I am eating beans everyday-not the green kind. They're perfect for this soft food stage and high in protein with complex carbs that don't shoot up your blood sugar. So what if they make you fart.

I also had some canned salmon which I mixed with cream of mushroom soup (healthy recipe) with no added water or milk instead of mayonaisse. I heated it and added some Le Seur baby peas. Delicious. My husband put his on toast. Salmon ala king. He loved it.

I was very careful to eat according to the soft food diet, making sure I didn't drink anything for at least a half an hour before and after each meal.

I have found out that it's very easy to cheat and get more food just by adding a little liquid to the meal, making it go down the donut hole faster leaving room to eat more. I've also found that if you eat slowly enough and chew everything thoroughly you can also keep eating. I'm not supposed to eat for more than 30 minutes for a reason.

I've been doing quite well, but today I read a lot on a website for lapbanders (who call themselves bandsters) and learned some scary things about people who don't follow the protocol. Right now its the new small stomach and the swelling from putting in the lapband that's creating the feeling of fullness. Some people don't seem to feel that restriction or they make bad food choices and may actually gain weight.

The donut hole isn't that small yet. At about 6 weeks after surgery they'll inject the band with saline, expanding the donut to make the hole smaller. This will become necessary as the fat pad against which it rests begins to shrink, making the lapband looser. Some people don't start losing weight until the band has been filled several times.

That scared me enough to make me get out the diet info. again and not rely on my admittedly unreliable memory for details.

I should tell you also that my neck and lower back, hips, and shoulder are responding to going back on my anti-inflammatory as did sleeping with bolsters and pillows to reset and realign the spine while I slept. I also hung upside down on my incline board for very short periods of time to decompress my spine. Today I stayed mostly very still in a very comfortable position and did nothing to aggravate the discs.

Taking care of myself. Listening to my body and letting it heal. Making use of the medical miracles available to me whether surgery or drugs. Working with my new tummy and following not fighting protocol. Asking for prayer.

We do the footwork. We show the willingness. We leave the results in God's hands.