During last week's diet consultation I was handed a piece of paper that detailed what I was allowed to eat during my pre-operation 10-day diet. A few ounces of meat here, a helping of vegetables there ... it all sounded okay until I realized the list covered what I was allowed to eat for an entire day -- I thought it was just for one meal! Okay, I didn't really think that, but prior to this diet I'm sure there have been many meals during which I have eaten more than I'm eating now in an entire day. Totalling up the food amounts, we're talking 8oz of food for lunch (split between meat and veggies), another 8oz for dinner, with some meal replacements and suppliments thrown in for good measure. Let's say we're talking a total of 24oz of food, or 3 cups. I can guarantee you that on many, many occasions I've eaten at least twice that in a sitting. I'm not talking about Thanksgiving here, I'm talking about a normal lunch, maybe at a Chinese buffet or something. Once you put a pencil to the numbers, it is amazing both how much I was eating, and how little one actually needs to "get by." Note I said "get by" -- not, "get stuffed."

The most ironic thing about the 10-day diet so far is, the less you think about it, the better off you'll be. That being said, it's impossible NOT to think about it. For starters, I'm eating something every 2 to 3 hours. Breakfast at 8am, protein snack at 10am, lunch at noon, afternoon snack at 2pm, dinner around 5pm, another protein snack at 8pm ... not to mention a few sugar-free popcicle and jell-o snacks throughout the day. It's tough not to think about food when you're being forced to focus so intently on it.

Yesterday, the first day of the diet, I did okay. Today, breakfast was tough. The wife and I took the kids to McDonald's this morning. My wife, who was banded earlier this year, had an order of scrambled eggs. My kids both had cinnamon rolls and chocolate milks. I had (drum roll) decaf coffee. Oh, and for dessert, I had a multi-vitamin, followed by a vitamin-c pill. And who says I don't know how to splurge?

I already suspect eating "normally" (however normal a banded person eats) around friends and co-workers, especially in social settings, is going to be the hardest thing to tackle. I'm not sure how I'm going to react the first time everybody says, "hey let's go do Chinese!" before looking at me and saying, "oh, wait ..." The last thing I want to do is be someone else's burdon. I'm doing this surgery for me, not to affect anyone else's lifestyle.

Alright, gotta run -- lime jell-o's a-callin'.