*Sigh*

Ok, so I haven't been vocal for about a week. Like a mention quite frequently, even when I think I am doing well, I'm not. I haven't lost any weight for a while now. I put in all this effort with the recipes and the healthy eating AAAAAANNNNNDDDD... Nothing. Guy pointed out a few things and I have mostly spent the week trying to figure things out and not throw to big a pity party.

I finally found a blog from someone who had this surgery and I find out a lot of information. I have a lot of my hypotheses confirmed but I also get quite depressed at her success rate and at the serious lack of my success. I find myself frustrated and well, as close to depressed as I can get.

Things I learned:

• Like me, this woman could only comfortably eat ground beef, fish, chicken (a little more challenging)
• When you've had an adjustment, you are suppose to go on a liquid diet (not sure if this is protocol or just her way of coping)
• There is such a thing as a productive burp (not quite vomiting) and when this occurs back to liquid diet
• Should you have this happen too frequently you can end up in a cycle of eating and vomiting (huh, kinda like my weekend a couple of weeks ago)

Things that totally depressed me:

• At 3 1/2 almost 4 months she had lost roughly 60 lbs ( I am at just under 4 months)
• The foods she describes don't sound terribly healthy (compared to what I am making)

One of the biggest (and hardest) lessons I have had to learn is not to compare myself to others... Clearly it's something I am still working on. Like I said before, I think it would be incredibly embarrassing to fail at weight loss surgery, right? So as I was saying earlier, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Who knows. I think I need to talk to my physician about this and see if he is concerned or not. Also, I think that even though my portions are way smaller than they were, I need to really monitor this. I wonder how big a portion I should be eating. Am I still eating to much. Lastly, I think I really, really, really have to be strict with the foods I consume. I don't really eat crap anymore, but when I go out with co-workers or friends, I will still get fries and deep fried foods. This sounds really bad - maybe it is, but I don't eat a whole serving, ever. Max is 1/2 a serving. Nonetheless, good bye all deep fried food. Last thing I should probably eliminate is pizza. Again, I rarely eat this, but on occaision (like Friday night), we didn't have the girls and I didn't know what to have for dinner. So we got pizza. I only had a slice, but I guess it's still bad.

That being said, here's the other stuff I did. I now always 3 choices for breakfast, although time wise breakfast is hard to manage. I usually find myself eating whatever I brought around 11 am. Then lunch an hour later. Huh, just thought of something. My food now usually goes something like this:
07:00 (ish) - Smoothie
08:30 (ish) - Grande vanilla latte (non-fat, no foam)
11:00 (ish) - yogurt with granola and cranberries or mini frittata
12:15 - lunch
2:30 - usually peckish by now. might have nuts or one of those 100 cal cookie sacks or another latte
5:30 - dinner
7:30 - frozen yogurt

I will point this out to my physician. I really am curious as to what my portion sizes should be.

Dinners this week? Beet spaghetti (not a great success), Fouplant coconut curry, Tilapia-ratatouille- macaroni, thursday out for dinner with friends, Firday pizza (already confessed to this above), Saturday, dinner at friends (main was lasagna with a spinach salad). Can't for the life of me remember anything else. 

So part of want I wanted to share was how exhausting I find "healthy" eating. I spent the day cooking again. I don't see this ending anytime soon. If I want to be successful, I need to have meals I can eat that are healthy and ready to make or at least quick to make. Ergo, I made sausage and green peas (nice recipe - took a good 1.5 hrs for the peas to actually be fully cooked), I made a red lentil curry and 2 lasagnas (one of which we had for dinner tonight). I spent a total of 6 hours cooking today. Holy Crap! That's like a short day compared to last week. Next weekend I plan on making this crazy chili and some meatloaf on top of that. My spaghetti sauce is still there, so I don't have to make that again. The ratatouille needs to be made again. And I still have 1 supper's worth of Fouplant coconut curry. Then I will have to make that again too. I also need to find other recipes that will work for us. These recipes have to be pretty spectacular; the kids have to eat them, I have to be able to eat them and they have to be healthy. Sigh.

I think I will be a little challenged this week. I have a 3 day meeting starting tomorrow. These meetings are long and slightly arduous. And when I am bored, I eat; the biggest challenge however will be that the food doesn't really work for me. I might just end up brown bagging these meetings. We will see.

I guess in the end, all I can really say is that I can't wait to see my doctor. However, as possibly mentioned before, he is pretty laisser-faire. So I don't know how helpful this will be. Yay Feb 7!

Someone did ask about pictures... I tried to take some, when was that... last week? Anyways the battery in the camera needed to be charged and I still haven't done it. I will do so when I feel less... dissatisfied.