First Post Surgery Thanksgiving

A common question these days is how is the first holiday season going to go?

I'm not going to lie, but I was very nervous approaching this holiday season. What will be there for me to eat? I still struggle with poultry, making the typical Thanksgiving Dinner a little difficult. As with most things in life, I planned out my day ahead of time and stuck to the plan.

1) I woke up early and got a run in. This served two purposes. First, I was able to say to myself "I got up and ran for thirty minutes" which is a strong self-affirmation. Second, I was able to self-justify going over my normal calorie level because I had burned so many calories before really starting my day.

2) I protein-ed up. Usually I stick to my protein shake for breakfast, but when I came back to the room from my run, my husband was ready for the free hotel breakfast. I went downstairs and had a pre-made 2 egg omelette with cheese (16g of protein). Then, hours later before we left for dinner, I had a protein shake (25g of protein). Before really starting my day, I had 41 grams of protein. It worked well because I had no interest in any appetizers and waited until dinner (nearly 3 hours after we arrived).

3) We brought acceptable desserts. I am not one to bake, but I've been known to make some candied nuts before. A friend had posted a recipe for candied nuts made with butter, stevia, and cinnamon. And nuts, of course. I made Candied Cashews, which were weird, but my husband really likes cashews. Nest time he won't win. I also made three-ingredient Keto peanut butter cookies. It was 1 cup peanut butter, 0.5 cup stevia, and 1 large egg to make 15 cookies. I made three sets of these, and my husband and I ate them guilt free for dessert.

4) I had a little bit of everything that I wanted. So I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything at all.

5) I stopped when my body said stop. This is a no brainer.

All told the holiday went great. I hope my tips can help others during their first holiday season.

Goal Setting

If you participate in any form of social media, you know you're friends tend to fall into groups. If you're in your early to mid thirties like most of my friend group you have a little from the following:

The Mommies
The Nerds
The Harry Potter Fans (insert other fans here too)
The Crafters
The "Always at the Gym"

So when one of my dearest friends put up she was interested in doing a half marathon, I thought "Well this is unexpected". So I commented something along the lines of "Really?"

Then the text conversation started.

A few minutes later, both of us were signed up for our first half marathon. I wish there were more to it but it was really as simple as that.

This happened on Saturday night, but Sunday morning she was putting me to shame by already going for a run and telling me that she was going to do the leg workout I did on Saturday on Monday morning. But she didn't have a lot of guidance.

At this point, most half marathon plans I've found run for 12-13 weeks, which gives us two months to get to that point.

Until then, I made a plan for us to increase time by 10% every week to two weeks and get three runs in at first, then move to four. I will be sharing this math on my Instagram (@jackienelli) seen in the upper right corner of my page.

I've run since essentially my peak weight, so running is nothing new to me. However, since I started running post-op I've noticed an adjustment was needed for nutrition. No longer can I have a carb filled dinner the night before.

I ran the 10K Across the Bay a few weeks ago and finally got a 10K PR for myself. I attribute part of my success to taking Gu Packs every 40 minutes or so. This will likely be continued in a blog post as training continues.

Anyway, we're both very excited for this run. I'll be posting many of my workouts to Instagram and I'll put some summaries on here from time to time.

Coping with New Normals

Dealing with not being able to overeat again.

There are a lot of fears when it comes to surgery. For me, the fear of the surgery itself was shadowed by the fear of what was to come, and I know I'm not alone.

I can remember in my days pre-op I would over eat from time to time and I would be incredibly uncomfortable. I wanted to sleep, but the rock in my stomach was uncomfortable. I wanted to walk, but the desire to stay still was just as strong.

It's not something you think about until you know this is a sensation you won't really experience again.

For those of you who are pre-op/searching/looking for a friend. The three stages most patients go through, however the timelines are different, are:

Full Liquids: Protein shakes, yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, water, jello, pudding (1 week)
Pureed Foods: If it blends you can have it (3 weeks)
Soft Foods: Pretty much everything except nuts, raw fruits and vegetables, and the skins of fruits and vegetables (3 weeks)

During the first week, the goal was literally a tablespoon at a time of "foods" besides water. This number increases as even the week goes on. By the time I got to pureed food, I had half of a baby food container at a time.

The sensation of overeating makes what I used to go through look like a walk in the park. Every time I overate until about three months in, I would get the foamies.

There are tons of articles about the foamies. But I would describe it was a mucusy, saliva vomit. Very little food comes up, but after a few minutes with the foamies, I would be ok. Not 100%, but more comfortable.

I don't get the foamies anymore because I don't allow myself to get there. Every once in a while I'll eat something my pouch doesn't want to process, or I'll have just a little too much, and I just take a nap to deal with it.

There are times where I'm eating, and I'll literally have food in the spoon, and that's all I have, and I'll leave it there. Literally, one spoonful is the difference between being comfortable and foamies.

So, people wonder how I do it. Because I know what's coming if I eat even just a hair too much. It's as easy as that. I had several bouts with foamies and being uncomfortable, and I think of those as learning experiences. Once a patient gets a handle on that, they should be ok.

Favorite Motto

If you've been reading a lot of my posts, you have probably identified a common theme or mantra that I live by:

If you've failed to plan, you've planned to fail.

I wanted to put down a few things that I do to plan and make life more manageable.

Vitamins: Every Thursday night is Vitamin night. I take about 10-15 minutes to organize my vitamins into an organizer. This 10-15 minutes means every morning, I just grab my container for the day and I'm good. Part of why this works for me is because I use Celebrate vitamins specifically formulated for bariatric patients. If I had more individual supplements, the 10-15 minutes that it took would be extended but still, it would make the rest of the week easier.

Meal Planning: A few days before I go shopping, I write out a little quick agenda of the week's events. I indicate if we have plans, and how those plans affect our eating habits. Sometimes, it might be being out all day so we're going to eat out, or we might have a potluck event that we need to plan for. I organize what we might want to eat on given days (20 minutes if you add in looking for recipes that I've already found) then I...

Write a food list: I take this writing out a food list a step further. I write down all of the ingredients we need and I indicate what recipe it will be used for. I learned this when I went to make a Broccoli Slaw for a party and Broccoli was just stupid expensive at the store so I decided to make something different, but I didn't know what other items were for the recipe, so I bought everything except broccoli.

Organizing Time: Google Calendar has been a lifesaver. But I take it a step further. I put in the times for working out just as I would a doctors appointment. This serves two purposes. I see that it's there and if I'm trying to make plans I know I need to reschedule, and also it makes working out less of a "if it's convenient" thing and more of a "this is a thing I need to do".

By doing all of these things (and more I'm sure I'll think of later) I organize my time and plan my hours properly.