My Gastric Sleeve

10 Secrets to Help You Avoid Overeating after Your Gastric Sleeve

A few nights ago, I went out to a restaurant with a good friend of mine. We were celebrating because she'd gotten a great medical checkup and because she was getting ready to move into a newer and nicer apartment. As we chattered excitedly about all the opportunities opening up to her, I drank a beer and didn't pay much attention to the food I was stuffing into my mouth.

I should have known better. Two hours later, my stomach was in full rebellion and I was, as they say, worshipping the porcelain goddess.

Sometimes I think the further out I get from surgery, the harder it is to remember that I can't eat like other people any more. It's just too easy to slip back into old, dysfunctional habits that have been my friends for a lifetime.

After this newest incidence, I created some important tips to help me regulate my eating. I have one copy hanging on my refrigerator, one on my front door, and one in my purse. They help me, so I wanted to pass them on as a resource that might be helpful to others who've had weight loss surgery.

Halloween T-Shirts (It Doesn't Take Much to Make Me Happy)

My last few blog posts have talked about some of the more difficult aspects of going through weight loss surgery, especially if you're an emotional eater like I am.

This week, however, I wanted to share some good news. My favorite time of year - the fall and the winter holidays - is fast approaching. I've always loved the cheap but pretty Halloween shirts that stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart offer during the holiday season. For the last several years, however, I've been to heavy to fit into one of them.

On Tuesday, I ran some errands that included a trip to Wal-Mart. As I was finishing up my shopping, a rack of Halloween t-shirts caught my eye, and I wandered over to admire them.

Bits and Pieces of My Life

 
What a busy couple of weeks it has been. My non-fiction book, Hospice Tails: Animal Companions Who Journey with Hospice Patients and Their Families, was released June 1, 2011. It is currently available on Amazon, and should be showing up on Kindle in the next few weeks. You can also order it in print or as an e-book through Booklocker.com.

This book marks the end of a project that has been going on since I started working for hospice over five years ago. A lifelong animal lover, I began to collect stories of animals who played a special role in the lives and deaths of their humans. Naturally, I changed names and details to protect the identity of my clients, but I let the bond between human and animal speak for itself.

My goal with Hospice Tails is to make people smile and think about their own special animal friends. If the book brings a tear to the eye...well, that's okay, too.

Clothes Shopping: The Ecstasy and the Agony

 
After three weeks or more of saying I was going to do it, I finally took the plunge. I went to Wal-Mart (yes, I know, politics=bad, prices=good) to replenish my fast-dwindling wardrobe.

When I had the surgery, I was fitting into a size 28...barely. When I went shopping on Sunday, I had no problem putting on a size 20. For those of you like me who are mathematically challenged, that's a loss of eight dress sizes. Let's just say I did a lot of jumping around and humming the theme song from Rocky.

But it wasn't long before the depression began to set in. There's a line in the musical Wicked that I've always loved: "I simply couldn't be happier...no, not simply. 'Cause getting your dreams, as strange as it seems, is a little...well...complicated." 

Clothes

 
I very nearly had an embarrassing moment on Saturday. I had just found out that my favorite bookstore (Borders, natch) was closing, and I wanted to take advantage of the discounts they were offering before the axe fell. I put on my usual pair of blue jeans. Now, I outgrew blue jeans with buttons and zippers years ago. These puppies were held up by a piece of elastic around my over-sized belly. I topped it all off with a Siegfried and Roy t-shirt, and I was ready to go shopping.

I got to the store early and started looking around. At first I was so focused on the books that I didn't notice anything unusual. Then I saw another patron giving me an odd look and realized that I was having a problem with...slippage. That reliable piece of elastic wasn't tight around my stomach...in fact, it was more than halfway down my abdomen, leaving my midriff bare. Even if I have lost weight, that is not a good look for a 40+ year old woman.