It is Friday

It is Friday at last. It’s also raining. Son of a…

On May 4th I wrote this big gastric bypass surgery update where I said that I am having far fewer side effects then I did a year ago. The bad experiences are less and less common with each new day.

Then last night I had a piece of toast with my dinner. I took a bite, no problem. I took another bite, no problem. I took another bite… uh oh. I knew instantly that I had taken one bite too many. It took about an hour for all the fun to end. The moral of the story being, don’t be over confident. That thing that passes for your stomach these days can still kick you in the nards, Robert. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s a cat to remind you of your place in the universe.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54507468281/in/datetaken/

#365 #365Challenge #365Project #Cat #gastricBypass #gastricBypassSideEffects #gastricBypassSurgery #Kitty #photoADay #photoADayChallenge #photoADayProject #photography #robin #theFoamies #weightLossSurgery

Three Year Anniversary Weigh In

Happy anniversary! Three years ago today I went under the knife and had my insides rewired. Gastric Bypass. Weight loss surgery. Most of my stomach was tied off and a big chunk of my intestine was skipped. It was a brutal experience that required all sorts of lifestyle and diet changes and had all sorts of icky side effects but it was oh so worth it. Health care wise it is the single best move I’ve ever made. Overall it doesn’t quite measure up to marrying Jen and being a step father, but it tops just about everything else.

I weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see I was down a little since the last time I stepped on a scale. That’s nice, huh? My first appointment at the weight loss clinic was January 19, 2022 and I weighed 452 pounds. Yup. The day of the surgery I did not weigh myself. The most recent number I had was from April 29, 2022 when I weighed 431.4 pounds. On the one year anniversary, May 4, 2023, I weighed 204.8 pounds. Suck it, morbid obesity! The lowest weight I ever recorded was the magical day of September 22, 2023 when I weighed in at 198.4 pounds. Sub-200! Glorious! We were told to expect our post-surgery weight to bottom out at some crazy number and then start climbing up again to a more reasonable, sustainable value. That’s been the case for the last year and a half or so. At my two year anniversary I was 211.2. The last time I weighed myself was the three year anniversary of the first check in, January 19, 2025, and I was 222.6. This morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the scale. I was expecting something between 220 and 230 and I got 218.6! Down four pounds since January and back in the teens, babie! Currently I am down 212.8 since the surgery and 233.4 since the start of the process.

I still have problems with food getting stuck on the way into my new digestive system but not nearly as often as before. I can have trouble if I don’t chew enough, or eat too fast, or eat too much in one bite, but these days I can go faster and more per bite than I could have two years ago. Eating is easier now than it was before. When it goes bad it still goes bad. If a bite of food can’t get into my stomach (it’s actually technically called a pouch now) then it has to go somewhere. Either it just hangs out and blocks the path so that nothing else can get in (until it breaks down enough to enter) or it comes back up to say hello again. That’s life these days, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to.

In closing, here’s my selfie a day video from the first year. Enjoy watching me melt away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs-sCfi07s0

#gastricBypass #gastricBypassAnniversary #gastricBypassSurgery #health #threeYearWeighIn #weighIn #weightLossSurgery

This Blows

It is 3:20am. I have been up for an hour now. I had to take a pre-medical appointment dose of awful meds last night after work, and I had to take a second dose in the middle of the night. It took me a long time to get through it and now I have to be sick for a couple of hours. Are any of my current problems gastric bypass related, or is it just the prep-meds? I don’t know. Hooray. This sucks.

My appointment is at 7:30 so I still have four hours to go until the actual start of this garbage. Hopefully a few hours later I will be back home and able to eat food and able to sleep the last of this thing off.

Hooray.

This sucks.

#doctorsAppointment #gastricBypass #health #medicalTest

Seven Hours Later

My last post was published seven hours ago. I’m hanging in there but really can’t wait for this crap to be over. I’m fasting ahead of a medical test and I am hungry. I barely have a stomach left after gastric bypass surgery, but what I have is really jonzin’ for a snack, know what I mean? No hunger pains yet, which is odd given that I get hunger pains all the time. Maybe my brain is trying to protect my stomach? Who knows.

I can’t eat today, but the birds can.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54482797723/in/datetaken/

That is today’s photo a day challenge pic. Blurry backgrounds are fun. Bokeh.

The cats are in a state of hyper vigilance right now. There is a mouse in the house. It was in my home office earlier but it got away. In was later seen in our bedroom but I think it got away again. Both cats are on the hunt so it’s days are numbered. I will catch it and bring it outside if I can, but the feline avengers might not give me the opportunity.

Here’s a picture of Robin from before the mouse presented itself.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54482672049/in/datetaken/

Here’s one of Lily. Robin was already stalking the rodent invader at this point, but Lily wasn’t in on it yet. She was blissfully unaware.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54483320215/in/datetaken/

#Cat #fasting #gastricBypass #health #Kitty #lily #Nikon #nikonZ5 #photography #robin #z5

Today is Going to Absolutely Suck

I have something scheduled for tomorrow. It’s a medical thing. A test. It requires some heavy duty prep-work over the 24 hour period before the test.

The side effect of the preparations is going to be me having one seriously awful day today. Like, grade A suck. Its the sort of thing that would suck for a normal human, but the stomach is involved so people like me who have had gastric bypass surgery (three years ago this coming weekend)… I wonder if it will be worse for me. Probably not, but maybe? We’ll have to wait and see.

Clearly I am not going to share what’s going on until it’s over, if then. 24 hours from now (it is 7:15am) I will be at the clinic, hopefully getting ready to get it over with. I just have to deal with some awful today and a small chunk of tomorrow.

Shit.

#gastricBypass #health #middleAge #test

Four Days in a Row

It has happened four days in a row. I break for lunch at around 1:00 pm. Shortly after my break ends I get hit with a headache. Some days have been worse than others (Tuesday was the worst) but every day this week it has happened.

Usually when something like this comes up, my glasses are the culprit. Tomorrow I am going to zoom my browser in a little. If I make the text bigger it should be easier on my eyes and that will probably solve the problem. We’ll see.

After gastric bypass surgery my first instinct is to blame anything going weird health-wise on my stomach. I think in this case I can rule that out though. It does happen shortly after I eat (which could be a red flag) but it’s only lunch. It doesn’t happen any other time. I often read the news during lunch break, so I’m guessing that is stressing my eyes out a bit. Pretty sure that’s going to be the root cause. We’ll see.

Headaches suck. You heard it here first.

#canIBlameAHeadacheOnMyStomach_ #gastricBypass #glassesEyesight #headache #health

Deutsche Leberstiftung warnt zum Welt-Adipositas-Tag: Lebererkrankungen durch Übergewicht immer häufiger

https://idw-online.de/de/news848086

Bild von pixabay #adipositastag #weltadipositastag #adipositas #gewichtsreduktion #abnehmspritzen #glp1 #bariatrie #gastricsleeve ##gastricbypass #übergewicht

#309.1 - Een Maagverkleining? - JACK&JOZEF -

Op 29 maart 2025 staan JACK&JOZEF in het Theater
https://theateraandeschie.nl/voorstelling/jack-jozef

#ad #nrc #vk #podcast #PodcastGemist #JackJozef #talkshow #Media #gastricbypass #bypass #sleeve #info #premiere #weereendag #vandaaginside #TalpaNetwork #news

Radio Cat

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54312756400/in/datetaken/

Just look at that furry little diva being all bad ass.

Today has been better than yesterday on the healthy front, but I’m not up to 100% yet. Let’s call it 80-85% and assume I’ll be through whatever is bothering me by tomorrow.

Today I managed to completely screw up my daily routine but I’m okay with it. We got snow yesterday, so this morning at 5:30am or so instead of going down to the cellar and getting my exercise in for the day I went outside and shoveled. We didn’t get a lot of snow, but we got enough. Within an hour it was all gone. Not long after finishing up outside I went out and ran some errands. Today is a very important day, after all*.

I didn’t get to breakfast until I was starting work at 9:00am. The hunger pains that I wrote about yesterday were definitely a thing and the eating struggles I also mentioned yesterday were also a thing, but not as bad as last night. Since breakfast was so late I didn’t have time to eat a snack mid-way between breakfast and lunch. I ended up going four hours without eating and wouldn’t you know it, when lunch time started approaching those mean old hunger pains were back again. I’m eating lunch now and feeling a little better, though that weird queasiness that has been slowing me down the last couple of days is still there. It is definitely better than it was, but it’s still there. It hasn’t been enough to stop me the way it was yesterday, so that’s a big plus. Maybe I can eat enough lunch so that I won’t be hurting in the lead up to dinner. That would be nice.

*Why is today a very important day. you ask? Because today is my beloved wife Jen’s birthday! It’s not just any old birthday either. It’s a big enough milestone birthday that her present this year was a week at Disney World. Yeah, it’s a big deal. She’s the love of my life and the woman of my dreams and my beautiful bride and it’s her birthday! Wish her a happy birthday!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Jen,
Happy birthday to you!!!!

#365 #365Challenge #365Project #birthday #Cat #diet #exercise #Family #gastricBypass #gastricBypassIssues #gastricBypassSideEffects #gastricBypassSurgery #health #iphoneography #Jen #Kitty #Love #morningRoutine #photoADay #photoADayChallenge #photoADayProject #photography #robin #routine #shoveling #Snow #snowShoveling #weightLossSugery #wife

Tough Day

My stomach and I have not been seeing eye to eye today. I had some problems yesterday that seem to have cleared up by this morning, but there has been a backlash that is trying my patience.

All day today I have been dealing with literal hunger pains. My stomach is empty enough that it hurts. When I try to eat though, it gets rid of the pain but makes me queasy and bloated and uncomfortable. So much so that I have to stop eating. That means that about an hour and a half to two hours after I eat the hunger pain comes back.

I made a small chicken patty and a handful of french fries for lunch. I finished the chicken but could only manage a couple of fries before I had to stop. For dinner I made a hamburger and some tater tots (my wife loves tater tots so I made them for her because she’s amazing and I like making things for her) and I only managed about half of the burger. I just had to stop. Almost exactly an hour after dinner I started feeling the empty stomach blues starting up again so I managed a small snack. Maybe that will hold me over for another hour.

I know that this is going to clear itself up in a day or two (it always does) so I will be fine either tomorrow or the next day. It’s just going to be a long night tonight. I think my stomach is going to make sleeping difficult.

Also, I just want to note this for my own mental health… not that it affects anything or anything… I didn’t write about it yesterday but I thought about it a lot. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my mother’s passing. Maybe my stomach is just manifesting feeling sad about missing my mom. Maybe my stomach knows, you know? I really can’t believe it’s been two years already.

#Family #gastricBypass #gastricBypassIssues #gastricBypassSideEffects #gastricBypassSurgery #health #hungerPain #mom #mother #stomachPain #weightLossSurgery

Is This a Thing Now?

I wonder… did I learn something new about me and my post-gastric bypass digestive system? I went on vacation for a week and my daily routine and diet both went straight down the crapper. I turned everything upside down for seven days. Then I came home and turned it all upside down again in an attempt to get back to normal.

The result? Cramping, discomfort, being unable to eat much, being unable to… ya know… do that thing that normal humans do after they eat… wink wink nudge nudge, you know what I mean? More than that, when my stomach is empty it hurts. Not eating as much as I usually do (what little I can usually eat thanks to my rewired innards) means my stomach is empty sooner and more often and I can’t tell if the pain I am feeling is because there is something wrong or I am just hungry again. I seriously can’t tell.

I think I went through something similar the last time we went away for a full week’s vacation, and I think it’s happened once since then when I was for some reason living off protein supplements instead of actual meals for a few days (why was that? I don’t remember). So I ask myself, is this a thing now? Am I learning something new about my newly rewired body? Maybe. If so I will just need to be ready for it when it happens. Consistency is kind of the key to my mental health these days and if I see this coming when I mess up my diet for an extended period then I will be better able to deal with it. Knowledge is power and stuff.

Today has been tough. It’s about 3:30pm right now and my guts have been quietly pissed off at me all day. They are rebelling, but only a little and pretty subtly. Mild pain, more like discomfort. Stuff like that. I am going to hit my daily protein goal (80 grams) with ease (I’m at 69 right now, wink wink nudge nudge say no more!). My water goal is probably also going to be hit easily (64 ounces per day) though I am way behind my usual pace at the moment. I’m at 40 right now while usually by this time of day I am somewhere in the mid-50’s. I’ll catch up. I’ve also had some persistent back pain the last few days. I suspect it is a kidney stone in the making, thought it might just be the result of the massive amount of exercise I got in Florida followed immediately by a couple of rounds of shoveling once we got home. Who knows. I have been taking Tylenol for it, which helps, but I wonder if that is affecting my stomach as well? Again, who knows.

I had 50 something years to figure out how my body worked and then three years ago I went under the knife and nuked the entire thing. Now I just have to relearn everything. I figured I would be a pro at this new life by now, but every so often post-surgical reality throws me a curve ball. It can be a pain in the ass, but I also have to admit that it’s all still a little exciting. I think I might just be a serious weirdo. Who knows.

PS: In case anyone thinks that this is me complaining about my new reality, it is not. It’s just me talking to the void and writing it down so that some hypothetical future me might accidently stumble across it someday in some hypothetical future and say, “oh yeah, I remember feeling like that.” I would go through the Gastric Bypass Surgery again in a heartbeat with absolutely zero hesitation. It was totally worth it. Totally.

#constipation #diet #food #gastricBypass #gastricBypassIssues #gastricBypassRecovery #gastricBypassSideEffects #gastricBypassSurgery #health #stomachIssues #stomachPain #weightLoss #weightLossSurgery

Third Anniversary

On January 19th, 2022, three years ago today, I went to my first in person appointment at a weight loss clinic in Chelmsford, MA. The point of the visit was just to establish my vitals and book the next appointments. They measured my height at six feet four inches tall and my weight (the whole point of the visit) at 452 pounds.

Three years and one gastric bypass surgery later (that was May 4, 2022) I honored this special day by stepping on the scale for the first time in six months. 222.6 pounds. A difference of 229.4 pounds. Oh, is that all?

I’m actually WAY up since my last weigh in, on June 5, 2024. I was 203.4 on that day. I guess it’s time to start dieting again, eh? Naw, they always told me my weight would bottom out and then start going up again. At some point it will find its happy equilibrium. I am guessing that would be around 240 or so, but who knows. I would just like to keep the total loss above the 200 pound mark. That’s my only goal, really.

Maybe I will weigh myself again after we come home from Disney World in a couple of weeks. I bet it will be down pretty significantly on that day. We’ll see.

Happy Weight Loss Anniversary to all who celebrate.

#gastricBypass #gastricBypassSurgery #health #threeYearWeighIn #weighIn #weightLoss #weightLossSurgery

French Toast

Oh, the bliss! I feel alive again!

Pre-gastric bypass surgery (2.5 years ago) I was a big fan of French Toast with Maple Syrup.

Post-surgery, where sugar can make me super sick, I avoided French Toast. My wife would make it for the kids and I’d have something else.

We were discussing it last week. There is nothing in French Toast itself that would make me sick. It was just the maple syrup that was a risk. I realized that was the only reason I hadn’t partaken in the delicacy.

Knowing that Jen was going to make it for breakfast today I went looking for sugar free maple syrup and I found some. Fast forward to today’s breakfast and I’m in!

It was delicious. Soooo good!

https://flic.kr/p/2qxoa5F

#Breakfast #Family #frenchToast #gastricBypass #gastricBypassSurgery #iphoneography #mapleSyrup #photography #sugarFree #sugarFreeMapleSyrup #weightLossSurgery

Body Image Thoughts

This is going to be a gastric bypass surgery post. If you don’t want to read about how fat I was, then now is the time to bail out. I promise I won’t be mad. Hell, I’m tired of thinking about how fat I was.

Okay. Still here?

It’s been 2.5 years since I had the surgery. I’m still down something like 210-220 pounds over that time. I still think the whole experience has been nothing short of miraculous.

But…

Over the last couple of weeks I have been having moments of confusion. I walk past a glass door and see my reflection and I feel totally weirded out. That’s not me that I see reflected in the glass. I am a 450 pound behemoth, not this miniaturized freak I see in the glass.

I look down at the floor in front of me and I see my shoes looking back up at me. That’s not me. If it were me I would see my gut protruding out so far that it completely blocks my view of my feet. Shoes? What shoes?

I look at myself in the mirror and see this weird, alien face with loose skin hanging off his neck staring back at him. I don’t see me. I don’t see the fat face with the skin stretched smooth over the cheeks that are so puffed up I look like Dizzy Gillespie wailing over some Bb dominant 7 chord.

What the hell, Robert? It’s been 2.5 years. You have looked like this for a long time now. Surgery was 2.5 years ago, but you hit the 200 pound lost point over 1.5 years ago. Why aren’t you used to being this new you yet? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you accept the new reality?

I don’t know. I had over 30 years of being a grossly overweight adult. I had just a few years of being 400+ pounds, but that seems to have been long enough to make it permanent in my tiny little brain. I think the real question here is, why now? It’s been a long time since I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me when I saw my reflection. It’s been a long time since I held up the clothes that I am wearing now to those that I wore before the surgery. Why am I weirded out now when I wasn’t a month or two ago?

Is it a holidays thing? Does the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner feast and the knowledge that I won’t be able to participate like I used to somehow trigger some weird body image thing? Is that going to happen every year? Am I somehow, perversely nostalgic for the time when I was so heavy that I couldn’t go for a 100 yard walk without feeling like my heart and my lungs were going to literally explode in my chest? That better not be the case because that sort of thing was so soul crushing that part of me just wanted to die to get it over with. No way am I thinking back fondly to that. At least not consciously. But sub-consciously? Maybe? Damn, I hope not.

What is it about November 2024 that has me in such a weird body image frame of mind? I don’t get it. Maybe I should walk past glass doors and see myself reflected back more often so that I just get over it and get used to the new normal. The new normal is better in every single way. 99.999% of the time I feel that and I literally rejoice in it (seriously), but those other weird surprise moments… that 0.001% of the time… it’s like dude, what the hell is wrong with you?

#bodyImage #gastricBypass #gastricBypassSurgery #health #Life #surgery #weight #weightLoss #weightLossSurgery

Being a bariatric person:
- you eat something you've eaten before many times in the past.
So you think it's gonna be fine.
But no.
Everything is not fine. And nothing's safe.

You're now nauseous and ill for the next few hours, maybe even hanging out at the bathroom for an unforeseeable future.
Welcome to random dumping syndrome.

#GastricBypass #GastricBypassSideEffects #DumpingSyndrome

I wrote a thing about my surgery...

http://touchthefrog.blogspot.com/2024/10/bypass-surgery.html

#gastricbypass #BariatricSurgery

Well, looks like Friday is going to be one seriously shitty day for ol’ Robbie and his rebuilt guts.

I had more sleep last night than any day for about a week. I should have awoken feeling right and spiffy and good. Nope. I woke up with stomach pain. Lots of it. I never wake up with the hunger pains I get when I haven’t eaten for a few hours. I don’t know why that is, but this morning that was exactly what I thought happened. I got up, went down cellar to do my exercise for the day and have a bottle of water. I thought that would alleviate things, at least for a little while. After the exercise was done I could have breakfast and I fully expected that would be the end of that.

Nope. Exercise made it worse and I only got a few ounces of water down before I decided to stop and have breakfast. Unfortunately, eating didn’t help at all. Nope, this is not hunger pain. This is something else. Shit.

I sat there, staring at the walls for a while and then tried to power through these aches and pains. I played some guitar and did some laundry and then went upstairs. In the past, when these out-of-the-blue stomach pain issues hit me (I think there have been five since having the gastric bypass surgery on May 4, 2022… maybe six. I’m losing count) the only thing that gives me any relief is laying down on the floor on my side, curled up in a ball. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Today has not been nearly as bad as the really bad times, but I tried it anyway. I went fetal on the floor in front of my desk and just stayed like that for about an hour. It helped and by 9:00 I was able to get up and punch into work.

That was an hour ago. I’m starting to feel worse again, but is that because I have been up for four hours and have only had four ounces of water? Is it because it’s been almost three hours since I had anything to eat? My water bottle is staring at me. I think I am going to try to have a drink and see how it affects things. Wish me luck, oh my readers and only friends.

I was able to take some pictures in an effort to crank out the photo a day thing. Here’s one that I did not add to the photo a day photo album on Flickr…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54024995026/in/datetaken/

Here’s another that I did not add to the photo album. The record is The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, side one, by Genesis…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54025172586/in/datetaken/

Here’s the one I added to the Flickr album. This is the winner. Robin, of course. Photo a day 27/365.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/54024273752/in/datetaken/

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/09/27/so-far-so-awful/

#365 #365Challenge #365Project #Cat #gastricBypass #gastricBypassSideEffects #Guitar #health #iphoneography #Kitty #Nikon #nikonZ5 #photoADay #photoADayChallenge #photoADayProject #photography #robin #stomachIssues #stomachPain #weightLossSurgery #z5

Just some random things going through my tiny little brain right now.

I don’t get hungry anymore. In this post-gastric bypass universe I go from feeling comfortably satisfied, skip right past normal hungry feelings, and catapult straight to oh my god I am so hungry it hurts why does my stomach hurt so much?

Normally that isn’t a big deal. I have something to eat and I feel better. Some days though, like the last couple of days, it gets a bit annoying. Some days I just can’t get out in front of the problem. I eat something, then an hour or so later I feel the hunger pains coming back. Normally I can go about three hours without any issues. Sometimes, like when I was visiting my father in the hospital and had other things on my mind, I could go twice that without my stomach perking up at all.

Today I finished breakfast at around 8:00am. I started feeling it at a little before 11:00am. I was drinking water at the time and had to pause for 15 minutes before I could eat again so I didn’t get any food into my empty stomach until 11:20. I had a quick snack. I was done at 11:26. The hunger pains were back in full force by 12:11pm. What the hell, bro? I went on lunch at 1:00pm so I made myself wait to eat anything more. I didn’t want to fill my new little stomach pouch before lunch and then throw off my schedule even more. I was able to sneak in a little water which helped a little but come on, stomach… you have to do better than 45 minutes, right?

Change of subject. Television shows that are currently being worked through.

• Mindhunter on Netflix. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the first of two seasons. It’s creeping me out. Good stuff.
• Only Murders in the Building on Hulu. I think I am an episode behind. The new season is good. I was nervous when I heard it was moving to Los Angeles, but so far it’s firmly grounded in New York where it belongs. It is also nice to have Paul Rudd back again.
• Agatha All Along on Disney+. Episode three is out today, I think. I’ll watch it tonight. I’m enjoying it so far.
• Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. The last couple of episodes feel like a small step back in terms of quality. Word on the street is the next two (the last two episodes of season two) are going to be spectacular. I’m all in.
• Dark on Netflix. I liked the first season. I’m halfway through the second season and it is struggling to hold my attention.
• The Orville on Hulu. Season three is a bit of a slog. The episodes are WAY too long and not good enough to justify the time commitment. It’s not bad, it’s just not that good.
• Futurama on Hulu. Gold. Absolute gold.
• Exploding Kittens on Netflix. It’s not bad, but I’m having a hard time staying invested in it.
• Coming Soon: Penguin on Max. The first couple of episodes are out but I haven’t watched them yet. I’ll get to them soon.
• Coming Soon: Daryl Dixon season two on AMC. The new season kicks off this coming Sunday. I’ll be there.

Dude… that’s a shit load of TV. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a couple of shows too.

I have some linens that I took from my father’s apartment. The plan is to donate them somewhere. My sister suggested the MSPCA at Nevins Farm in Methuen. It’s right around the corner from my house. I wasn’t sure if that was something they’d take so I Googled it today. Sure enough, they take bedding. They don’t take pillows or knitted blankets though. If I have any of those I’ll have to bring them somewhere else.

I also took a combination turn table, AM/FM radio, CD player, cassette player from his apartment. I haven’t found a home for it yet. I am thinking that tomorrow I’ll plug it in next to my desk and listen to old Rush records on vinyl while I work. That sounds like a good plan to me.

Okay then. Here’s hoping the hunger pains are taken care of for a few hours at least. I’m crossing my fingers… and symbolically crossing my bypassed digestive system too… whatever that means.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/09/25/random-lunchtime-thoughts/

#diet #donations #Family #gastricBypass #hunger #hungerPains #mspca #Music #nevinsFarm #recordPlayer #records #stomachPouch #Television #turnTable #Vinyl #weightLossSurgery

Me and my stomach have been doing that gastric bypass patient dance all day today. We’re having trouble getting along. We need to work together but today we’re causing problems for each other.

I have eaten three meals. Each meal came with a stomach problem of varying degrees.

I had a protein bar for breakfast. I went a little too fast and felt that blocked/stuck feeling. It wasn’t bad enough to become nausea or to produce large amounts of extra saliva that I have to spit out. I tried gagging it up but nothing came. I had to pause eating for about half an hour before the blockage was gone and then I was able to finish.

I had a burger (cooked on the grill) and some french fries for lunch. The burger went down without any issues. The fries though. I only had about four of them and I should have stopped at three. I felt a little blocked again. I think I was going too fast this time as well. It was never bad enough to require any spitting up. I don’t know how long it took to pass, but it wasn’t long. As soon as I declared myself done with lunch I was off to my father’s so it was probably a couple of hours before I even thought about eating or drinking anything else.

I had a big piece of chicken and a little bit of white rice for dinner. Well, it was big for me. about three ounces. The chicken went down fine. The rice felt a little off. I only had two small fork fulls. I was okay afterward though. I stopped in time to avoid any problems. When I finished dinner I was a smidge below my daily protein goal. I waited about 20 minutes and then had a little tiny protein bar snack. It went bad. I think this time I took too big a bite and it got stuck for real. I gagged up a tiny bit of it and have been spitting out saliva for about half an hour now.

So there we have it. All summed up. Three meals, three stomach issues. Yippee. My doctor told me that in almost every case when there is a stomach problem after eating it’s really the patient’s fault. In all three cases this was my fault. It actually makes me feel better knowing that. If it’s something I did rather than something going on with my new stomach, then it’s something I can control.

220 pounds lost since the surgery. Yeah, these sort of things are 100% worth it. Absolutely.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/08/11/stomach-dance/

#bariatricSurgery #diet #foamies #food #gastricBypass #health #nausea #nutrition #stomachIssues #stomachProblems #weightLossSurgery #wellness

My last two check ins with my weight loss surgery surgeon included a lot of talk about low blood sugar incidents. What triggers it, how to fix it, what it feels like.

Just the other day I was thinking about that subject and how it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve had a low blood sugar episode. I pondered, what is it that I am doing now that is preventing the issue that I wasn’t doing six months ago? Whatever it is, I am happy about it because going a long time without that particular side effect was making me happy.

Fast forward to today. I’m in the grocery store, grocery shopping and I started feeling a little foggy headed. My hands started shaking. I felt weak. Aw, damn it. I thought about it the other day and jinxed myself. My days-without-a-low-blood-sugar-incident streak is officially over.

I sat in the car and had something to eat and felt a little better. I still feel a little beat up but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is I jinxed myself and that makes me sad. Maybe I’ll work on some music to cheer myself up. That would be both fun and productive.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/07/27/sugar-crash/

#bloodSugar #diet #gastricBypass #gastricBypassSurgery #health #lowBloodSugar #weightLossSurgery