My khakis are falling off!

Wore them to work and kind of ridiculous how big they are. Fortunately I have many sizes of pants in my wardrobe, so will retire this pair and go down a size tomorrow. Good feeling!!!

Worked 12-4. Sitting was fine, but was tired. Took a nap from 4:30 - 8:00!

Went to my first Advanced Nutrition Group meeting today. (Have been to 2 Nutrition Group meetings already.) Today learned about stage 3 of diet -- protein!!!

Everyone who was in the group had surgery 2 weeks ago - same day as me. One guy was very proud to report that he had a Subway sub last week, as well as Chicken McNuggets. He began with, "I know you are going to scream at me, but..."  While I was dying for food yesterday, I don't think I could have eaten a sub for $1M last week. (Maybe 1/2 a McNugget.)

What was really interesting was how the leader handled his true confession. She said, "I'm not going to scream at you. It's not good or bad. I'm glad you are ok. This is about your relationship with food." I was shocked. In every other weight loss program I've been in (too many to count), there would have been shame, guilt, judgment followed by a pep talk about getting back on the wagon and trying to have more willpower. None of that here. Heck, they even refer to this as your "weight loss prescription." It is all about what your body needs to heal.

Oh, and there's no competition. Yes, you get weighed in (honor system), and report it to the nutritionist on a form. But no one else knows, there's no clapping or pats on the back or gold stars. The focus is on are you getting your water? Taking your vitamins? Having any negative reactions? (nausea, pain, etc.) This is so different and so positive. Really kinda nice, though a little hard for me to not judge the Subway dude.

Here's what I learned today:

• 80% of my stomach is gone.
• I can still "feel" hungry. And yes my stomach can still rumble.
• Hunger isn't bad. It helps us survive! When I am hungry, I should eat. The trick is knowing the difference between feeling hungry and wanting to eat.
• Right now my body doesn't need me to eat any calories. It is getting all the calories it needs from my body fat.
• My body needs 2 things. One is water. Hydration is the most important thing right now. I'm not really sure why. Two is protein. My body needs protein to heal. If I don't feed it protein, it will take protein from my body, and that will break down muscle. Not good.  

So, on to the protein!!! I can eat! 3-5 small meals a day. Hooray!

Chicken, turkey, fish, cheese, milk, eggs. The trick is that it needs to be very well chewed so that I can digest it easily. The stomach has 3 layers of muscle that mush up food, and without those muscles, I need to do more work before sending the food to my remaining stomach. Cutting it up into small pieces and chewing, chewing, chewing. Then, as long as my body responds well to the food, great, eat it. If not, then stop eating it.

I went to Whole Foods immediately after the meeting and bought cheese sticks, cottage cheese, hummus, sashimi, and eggs. Ate a cheese stick on the way to work and it was so good! Tiny bites, lots of chewing, no pain at all. Yay.

For lunch I had the shashimi. More tiny bits and lots of chewing. (This is how Nancy's dog Gretta eats by the way. Buck, not so much.) In the beginning it was good. As I sped up, not so good. A few stabs of sharp pain, lasted about 10 minutes. :( Lesson learned. Later in the day I had a 3 bites of cottage cheese and 3 bites of hummus, all good.

For dinner I had 2 scrambled eggs with some shredded cheese. Must have eaten too fast, or too much, because again sharp pain for several minutes. Both times I had pain I was multi-tasking, so probably need to focus while eating.

SF popsicles later on to help keep me hydrated. Still gotta do small bites though!

Meanwhile, I have about 20 protein shakes left! Think I'll try to keep drinking those for breakfast and an extra for a snack. Hard boiling some eggs now and will bring egg whites tomorrow, along with cottage cheese, hummus, yogurt, SF pudding and cheese sticks. I'll be gone all day (Liam's playoff baseball game tomorrow night, Yay Liam!) so need to bring lots of food to last the day. SF pudding rocks by the way. When is the last time you had pudding?

My body also needs carbs, so I'll add in veggies and fruit this weekend. (That's the Rx!) Cooked veggies first. No skin on fruits. I think watermelon is going to be my new BF. The nutritionist says there is little nutritional value in bread, rice and pasta, so those will be added in slowly. Kinda interesting.

Little meals. 4-5 bites max. Little bites. That's my mantra. Oh, and water, water, water.