It's been a while...

 I haven't NOT had thoughts lately, but I haven't had thinky-thoughts. I've also been "away from the computer" sort of busy? Yesterday the library had a booth at an event and so I was busy with that all day. I have one next weekend too. 

Right now I'm waiting for the roast to get done in the Instant Pot. I messed it up earlier, so it's taking twice as long to cook. I'm not the greatest in the kitchen, kids. I worry about after surgery when I'll be doing waaaay more home cooking. I worry about making interesting things that don't require a lot of prep, mostly because I have no spoons most days. Which adds to my stress about cooking, and exacerbates the frustration over having such a small kitchen, and my general lack of cooking ability. 

I bought some cook books. Some of them are a little beyond my ability. Well, they're also beyond my grocery shopping capabilities too. I live in a rural area and some things are either hard to get or just plain not available. 

I'm also just not very good at grocery shopping. I get overwhelmed easily in stores and just need to get out ASAP. I even find the Instacart type shopping to be A Lot, because you have to scroll through nearly infinite things in order to find what you want and it's just so much. I usually shop at Aldi because it's small. My general way of thinking is that if Aldi doesn't have it, then I don't need it. 

We'll see how that works after surgery. I may end up shopping at both Aldi and Walmart just to be sure I get everything I need. It will definitely not be pleasant. It'll also be time consuming. Anymore, I hate going out of the house. The pandemic really just reinforced my natural desire to stay at home and not socialize. 

So anyways...this will probably be one of the last roasts I make, unless I can find something that's lean. But is it really a roast if it's lean? I don't know. Like I said--I don't know enough about food. 

I guess I'm just tired and worried, right now. I worry about being tired later, and not having the spoons to make healthy things. I probably just need a nap, then I can worry about this more later. TTFN

Planning for October

So, my surgery is in early September, then in mid-October I'm doing a little bit of traveling. There is a post-conference retreat for the state library's association that I'm going to, and then that following weekend, my sister's baby shower is happening. It doesn't make sense to drive to Pittsburgh for the thing, drive back home, then drive back to Pittsburgh for the shower, so I'm just going to stay the whole week. 

That's being gone 8 days. I'm wondering how I should pack food, exactly. I may or may not be able to eat what they're serving at the post-conference retreat, and I know my sister will do her best to make food that I can eat (cos my sister is awesome like that), but I just want to be prepared.  Probably a lot of shakes, I guess? I'll have my car, though, so I can put in it whatever I need to. 

I have a few forums I can go on to try to figure out what to take with me on a trip. People with more experience tend to be pretty helpful to newbies such as myself. They talked me through the "what do I do in place of candy with the niece?" problem and we came up with tea. I've since subscribed to a tea of the month box for both of us. So hopefully they can help me think this one through. I'm not entirely sure what/how to make things for me post-surgery yet, much less in a traveling situation where I won't have total control over what I'm making and how I'm making it. 

Kit or Thinking Out Loud

 So I'm trying to figure out what kit I'll need after surgery, and what all I need to get done. I definitely need better measuring cups/spoons. Probably a bullet blender, especially for the post-surgery stage where you can only eat pureed foods. A food scale. Some protein shakes to start with so that I have them for after surgery. 

Folks have said not to get too much in the way of protein ahead of time because your tastes change after surgery and something you like perfectly fine now might make you sick afterward. Some shakes have samples you can purchase, so I guess I'll do that until I figure out what I can tolerate. 

I suppose I should do the same with groceries, and not load up on groceries before surgery because who knows what I'll actually be interested in eating after surgery when I get to the stage where I can have actual foods. 

I was looking on a website that sells bariatric-friendly foods, and they do have things like high protein snacks and meals. I think it's a little early for that. 

I have to clear off some shelf space for all of these items. I have a shelf I can probably use if I can find new homes for all of the stuff there. Our place lacks storage in a major way, which is why I got these shelves for the weird empty spot in the kitchen. Getting rid of the bread maker would certainly make some room. And I could move stuff onto the bottom shelf. Right now it's just a storage place for the bread maker and one of the cats. Biscuit likes to sit there and watch the dog eat like a little creeper. 

In general, I need to get the place cleaned up. I need to pair down some things so there's more room, which will help the cause. The dining room table has had stuff on it since forever, and it's mostly stuff I just don't know what to do with. I got the excess linens out of the bedroom eventually, so I am capable of actually following through with my efforts to organize. I just need to DO it. 

Easier said than done, of course. I have ADHD and starting/stopping projects is really difficult. Something that isn't linear, like organizing is especially difficult too. You work on this, see that out of place, skip over to that, forget what "this" even was, find a third thing that needs attention... it's not a good scene. I know it's going to be chaos, and it's going to get worse before it gets better, so I put it off. A lot. 

The ADHD is a whole separate issue. It makes things a lot harder than they have to be, and leaves me with low spoons a lot of the time (I'm sure being heavy and horrifically out of shape also contributes to low spoons too). Cleaning and even cooking are huge sometimes insurmountable tasks. So cooking the right foods after surgery is going to be a challenge. No more mostly pre-made stuff that's easy to slap together for me, probably. 

Another barrier I have toward keeping the place clean is that Biscuit loves to knock EVERYTHING onto the floor. I know having less clutter will help with this, but oh god it's discouraging toward keeping the place tidy when there's constantly stuff on the floor. A lot times I just leave it because if it's on the floor, he can't knock it back on the floor. I had a glass bottle of coffee liquor that he pushed off the refrigerator and somehow SOMEHOW it didn't break. He just dented the lid. I hope I'm not cleaning this set of shelves off to have a place to put the scale and the blender just to make a space for him to weasel himself onto, pushing off the blender in the process. 

So that's where we're at. I need stuff, and I need to do stuff. One requires money and the other requires energy and concentration (and a cat who will meet me half way). We'll see how it goes. 

Hey, y'all!

 So I have a date! September 8th, I will be joining the proverbial looser's bench. It seems so far away. I know it's probably not, and it'll rush up on me faster than I think. 

I am a bit anxious. I guess anxious to get started. And also worried about how my life will change. I know it's going to ultimately be for the better, especially if I can stick to everything and make the lifestyle changes that need to be made. 

One thing I worry about is the things that will need to happen in perpetuity like vitamins. I'm not worried about remembering to take them, or afford them. They're fairly reasonably priced. I worry about if something happens to my budget, like one of our losing our job, and having money for them then, and for the healthy foods I will need to eat. I have been jobless before, and the diet suffered a lot. I was buying the cheapest things I could possibly buy to help us get by, because neither of us were working at the time. 

I also like to catastrophize. I think of the worst-case scenario, and then dig a hole from there. I go so far as to worry past what if both of us lose our jobs again to what if I'm homeless? It's like... guessilljustdie.gif (man I wish Blogger had a gif library for moments like these). I know that's unlikely to happen, but I like to borrow angst. 

On a separate note of worrying about things, I also am wondering how I go about actually scheduling all the tests I need? I mean, do you just call a hospital? I guess I should start with my PCP, maybe. I have paper orders for everything, but I guess they could put in for someone to call me to schedule the appointments? IDEK. 

I have other things to do before the surgery, like buying a blender and measuring cups/spoons and a food scale. I think I have a place I can put them when I'm not using them, I'm just going to have to clean that set of shelves off and find new homes for things. Ugh. I'm so bad at cleaning and organizing. In an ideal world, I would get the place cleaned up before surgery, but more realistically, just clean and reorganize the kitchen. That sounds suspiciously like work, however, so it's a rather unappealing prospect. 

I guess I should tell my mom or something? Put a death plan together, on the very low chance that something happens with surgery, this way people know my wishes. I don't mean that in a morbid way, I think it's just prudent to let people know what you want, and reduces THEIR stress, if something happens. In that way, it's only polite to have a death plan. And if I'm anything, it's polite. 

So, anyway--that's what's happening. Wish me luuuuckkkk. 

That'll be nice

 I messed my knee up doing... nothing. It gives out on me and twinges with pain for no discernible reason. So I went to the doctor's because I was afraid of falling on my face. He moved things around and poked and prodded, but couldn't find the source of the problem so he sent me for x-rays. 

There was some weird standing positions, and moving this way and that, then the technician tried to get everything lined up and had to ask me "where is your knee?" Yeah. My leg is that fat. I wasn't insulted, necessarily. I know I'm that fat. But it was depressing. Because, well, I'm that fat. 

Over the last however many years my world has gotten smaller and smaller. I don't do a lot of things outside of the house, or things that require a lot of walking in the heat (I'll still walk in ok weather, but I'm beat afterward). There're places I don't go because I know the chairs are uncomfortable or furniture is too close together. 

I am a bit of a homebody, so it's not really bothered me until lately. Kennywood Amusement Park is one of my favorite places in the world, but I haven't gone there in YEARS because I know I'm too big for the rides. If I'm not doing things I love to do, and I'm not going on new adventures, I'm not living my life. 

There's only so much of it, so I'd better get on with it. There're a lot of things I look forward to after surgery. Not wearing clothes with outrageously big head holes (plus size designers--what are you thinking?), not wearing tents, having more energy to do things, and now not having x-ray techs asking where my knee is. 

How's it going?

 Well, still no word from the insurance. It's been less than a week, though, so I can't go expecting miracles.  I'm working on what the therapist said about being mindful of what I'm putting down my gullet. Like, it worked for not eating snacks after dinner (my major grazing time), but I made bad food choices during meals because of... reasons. Basically I hurt my leg and it's hard to clean, so my kitchen is a mess. And I don't want to stand there and cook because... well... leg. I should have made a better choice for eating out, but what's done is done. 

One thing I can say is the fast food was only moderately satisfying. I knew it was rubbish when I was eating it. It tastes only kinda nice at the moment, but you know it's not doing anything for you, other than quelling hunger. 

I know I need to really work on the emotions behind the emotional eating, that two days of mindfulness does not a habit make. But still--there's time. It's not like I need to figure this stuff out right now. Developing new habits takes time, and not reaching for food after dinner is going to take some work to establish. No one ever solved their issues in a day (or two!). I have to work on the FOMO, the "I deserve this" thing, and the holdover behaviors from food insecurity. 

I don't know how/if the therapist will help with working through those things, or if she's just a behavior modification without introspection kind of person. NO one knows how to diet like a fat person, and so I can cut myself off from "bad" foods (yes, yes, I know, don't assign a moral value to foods, but that's another blog post for another time), and do it successfully for a time, but I'll always slide back into the old habits until I deal with the issues. We'll see where it goes with the therapist. 

So that happened.

Thursday I went to see the surgeon. We agreed on the RNY gastric bypass. He explained the procedure to me, but it wasn’t anything new because I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading. Which I suppose is good. No surprises. 

Now it’s turned over to the insurance for their approval. It will take about two weeks they said. My fear is that I won’t have enough comorbidities for the insurance to approve. Basically…I have none, other than undiagnosed sleep apnea (I go for that at the end of the month). The doctors are always shocked that I have no high BP or sugar even though I look and behave like a potato. 

Thursday evening I met with the new therapist. They weren’t going to be able to get me in until the end of the month, but they got me in earlier. I don’t know how I feel about her. She just seemed very quick to spout off solutions. I don’t know if it’s going to work out but I’m willing to try. I really do need to have a handle on the emotional eating before surgery. 

I am going to do my damned best to make this work. I have worries about various issues and past track records, but I’m willing to work on them. I guess that’s all I have for now. 

Emotional eating

 Yeah, I do it. It's very easy. Feel something? Eat it. Get a hit of brain chemicals. 

Some of it is that. Some of it is a sort of food panic. What if it's not there later? What if I don't eat now, and don't have a chance, or don't have anything to eat later? They're irrational fears. I'm an adult and control my own food supply. But a lot of times, when I think of not eating something the moment it has crossed my mind, I get this rush of panic, like OMG IF YOU DON'T DO IT NOW YOU WILL DIE. Ok, maybe it's not that I'll DIE, but I'll feel really angsty and in a bit of a panic if I don't. I know where it comes from. When I was a kid, you'd literally not know when you were going to eat again. 

It wasn't just a food insecurity thing, but also my parents weren't really great about feeding us in a regular fashion. Dinner could be at 4, it could be at 9pm. So if you had extra food at lunch or after school, you damned well ate it, because you never knew when dinner would show up. Or we'd be out forever doing shopping, or visiting someone, and would miss meals because those things or those people were more important than we were. 

It just seemed like everything was more important than we were as kids, and feeding us in a timely fashion was low on the priority list. Heck, I remember getting yelled at for being hungry and saying so, because mom was in the middle of something. Shut up, I'll feed you in a little bit. Or we'll eat when we get home. Or go make it yourself. I cooked a loooot of meals for someone who's a rubbish cook and was, at times, probably too young to be using the stove.

And there were five of us kids, so if you ever got any treats (chocolate, ice cream... non-canned fruit) the impulse was to eat it right away, because it wouldn't last the whole pay period. If you didn't eat it, it would either go bad, or someone else would eat it and you'd be left out. I guess I have a FOMO with food, too. I'm gong to miss out on a flavor journey! 

So that's what I'm thinking about and trying to work through today. I'm not entirely sure how to work through it on my own. But I guess that's what the therapist is for. Three more weeks until I see them? Something like that. Time has no meaning. 

Things to look forward to

 So I'm reading this book about mindset post-surgery. One of the things it talks about is visualizing what you want to achieve post-surgery. I have a hard time thinking about the future. Part of that is because it's component of ADHD, and the other is upbringing. Nothing you were ever told was going to happen actually happened. Even things you got excited about were probably not going to happen, like a promised trip somewhere or a reward of some kind. And a lot of the time, even though there was some exterior reason for "the thing" not happening, YOU were blamed for it not happening. We didn't go there because you were bad, even though the reason was not enough money. You learn to stop wanting things, and to stop looking forward to things. Cos you're never going to get it anyways.  It's really hard to visualize a future that's different than your present, when your present looks exactly like your past. 

I started off having very modest goals for the surgery. Maybe just being as fat as I was the first time I thought I was fat. That was over a hundred pounds ago, so it's a tall order. Especially when, on some days, I'm not convinced I can change my habits and create a new future that doesn't look exactly like my past. You didn't do it in the past, what makes you think that this will be different, dummy? That's what I hear in my head. 

Anyways, this book made a convincing argument for visualization. So I started thinking about what would be the best-case scenario. That I'd lose ALL the weight. That I WOULD be able to keep up with a new lifestyle, and kick the grazing habit, and the sweet tooth. That was about as far as I went. Today, a thought struck me--all of the cute clothes I have had to get rid of due to putting on weight. 

When you get to be my size, you don't buy clothes that you like. You buy whatever fits, and doesn't look totally hideous on you. Even shoes go from cute to practical, because it's harder to tie shoes, so you end up with supportive slip-ons. That kind of leaves jewelry, but I'm not much of a jewelry person. I have some, but I consistently forget to put some on when getting dressed. But clothes--man. I had some cute clothes. The early 2000s were an era of cute clothes for me. Even when I was in a size 26 (oh how I long for you, 26!) I had some really cute things from Lane Bryant. Now I'm past their sizes and they've gotten hella expensive. 

Most plus size stuff is expensive. Even the stuff that looks like you got it in the sale bin at Walmart--stretchy cotton this and that. I look forward to the price of clothes going down, too. Being able to shop in a regular plus sized shop would be great. Being able to wear straight sizes? Unimaginable. But I'm going to start trying to imagine. If you don't imagine what it could be like, and how it would feel, how can you even think you'll go there? You have nothing to look forward to. I'm so used to having nothing to look forward to that I have to practice. 

It sounds kind of shallow to me--to even care about clothes at all. Which is something else from my childhood to unpack on a different day (it's tied deeply to the Catholic ideal of suffering and sacrifice), but we'll get there eventually. But maybe if I want it enough, I'll stay on track to achieve it, instead of being afraid to want anything at all, and getting nothing in return. y/y?

Yeah, ok.

 So my plan was to eat all the rest of the carb-heavy foods in the house (think mashed potatoes and spaghetti) and just not buy anymore. Stick to veg as a side dish with dinner. Then I realize I bought not one, but TWO multi-serving bowls of pasta salad when I went grocery shopping last time. It's like I had some kind of carb amnesia or something. This is for real--this time I eat the rest of the carbs and I don't buy more. Yeesh. 

Books

 I just started reading Bariatric Mindset Success: Live Your Best Life and Keep The Weight Off After Weight Loss Surgery in an effort to get my brain ready for this. I have some issues with food. Not just the ones that appear when you grow up in a food-insecure environment, but also what I suppose is emotional eating? I have to admit, I'm not very in touch with my feelings, but I understand that's a product of being neurodivergent. But I also know that other people who have had issues with food have been successful with WLS. 

So hopefully this book will help me understand my issues, and start to get over them. I know it can't do the work for me, but hopefully it will give me direction. 

I've also been picking up Bariatric cook books, one at a time. I'm not a great cook, and I'm not very creative with it, so any help would be great. The next one I plan on buying is a five ingredient book, which is probably more my speed than the recipes that I consider "elaborate."  I also have a tiny kitchen, which makes working with food really difficult. So we'll see what happens with that, too. 

On a separate note, I'm trying to practice not eating half an hour before and after meals. This morning's effort was successful. However, I ate a single serving of breakfast and I'm still hungry. Or I'm having a panic attack. I often can't tell the difference. Which goes back to that "not being good with emotions" thing. Oh well. 

I have an appointment with a new therapist at the end of the month, and I plan on discussing it. I just wasn't clicking with my previous therapist. Nothing wrong with her, it just wasn't working for me. I'm not sure what we'll work on, but I really wish I could just say "make me feel emotions correctly," and they could wave a magic wand and make it work LOL. Sadly, it doesn't work like that. Everything takes work. And I'm willing to do it. I'm hoping that seeing results this time will encourage me to keep it up. My final diet, I only lost ten pounds in three or four months, even though I was working at it. It was super discouraging. So that's it for now, I guess.