I was given the opportunity to escort a group of fifth graders to Washington, DC this past week. I almost turned it down because I was only 2 weeks postop and I wasn't sure how I could mange the eating on the trip. My husband convinced me to go (it is not everyday I get an opportunity like that...I was replacing a sick teacher who couldn't make it.).

My diet at this point is only clear liquids and protein. Dr. Kelly recommends not adding mushies until day 20. Lots of other people report eating food earlier so I wasn't hyper stressed. I was trying to keeping the operation quiet so I was trying to not draw too much attention to myself!

I brought protein powder to add to OJ every morning and that is what I had for breakfast each morning.

Lunch and dinner was a little tricky. Lunch the first day was provided by the bus company and I just took the turkey off the sandwich and chewed that up into mush and ate it. That went down fine but the cheese stick did not (harder to chew into mush). Our first dinner stop was a buffet. . I ate barely anything (enough to make it look like I was eating). My stomach did not do well with that. It just felt uncomfortably tight. Luckily we did a lot of walking that night through some monuments and it loosed up. The second lunch was really late (2 p.m.) and I ordered hummus at a greek place. It came with warm flat bread (red light food!). The hummus went down fine the bread not so much so. Dinner was at Medieval Times. I did the soup (and attempted a couple bites of the bread) and ate maybe a tablespoon of chicken (did pretty good with that). The next day we did lunch at the Smithsonian and I was really disappointed at my options. In hindsight I probably should have eaten a McD's smoothy. I ordered chicken nugget happy meal. When I say "ate it" I had four french fries and peeled the breading off the chicken nuggets (4 of them) and attempted to eat it. Those did not sit well in my tummy. Turns out that upstairs in the dining area I could have had a yogurt parfait (not advertised downstairs). Dinner that night was a the Pentagon Mall. I had wild mushroom soup (outstanding) and a bit of frozen yogert. Lunch on our last day was at the Golden Corral. Barely ate anything and stopped before feeling uncomfortable.

I'd give myself a grade of "C" on my eating on the trip. I don't think anyone thought I was too odd for not eating more. Most people know that I have been trying to lose weight since the beginning of the year. We walked a ton on the trip. I am going to weigh myself tomorrow morning to see if there was any weight loss on the trip due to the exercise.

I am happy to report that I barely felt hungry at all!!!!

I'm going to back to liquids until my 20th day and then I'll stay with mushies.