By croutons.

So I am 5 days pre-op. It’s been a real struggle today and last night. I’ve had other struggles with the diet on other days too. I didn’t expect a walk in the park. I’ve also been struggling with my blood sugars. I had to stop taking my metformin due to that and making my stomach miserable. I’ve cut down a lot on meal time insulin.

BUT today croutons almost did me in today.

we had some from a dinner a few weeks ago. I saw em and ate 4 of them earlier today. My oh my...I felt like such a failure. They are now in the trash. I sat down and had a reckoning with myself. Was it worth it? Nope. Just enough to make me feel cruddy and not enough to even satisfy anything.

Time to move on. Before I’d eat because I felt bad for it. Today i’m writing this post and I vacuumed the house...lol

Way to go! Temptations can be overwhelming, but you fixed the behavior quickly. So proud of you!

Good that you are paying attention to behaviors.

But you must disassociate yourself from feeling bad, and that food is bad too. It's not and you are not. Food is just food.

The anxiety is causing you to fall into behaviors that before helped you calm down, we use food to chemically and physically deal with an issue, a feeling, avoiding a decision - a myriad of situations. You give it power - so you can also stop giving it power and that is the key to this whole thing.

Do not feel shame. Shame never helps anyone. It will be easier after surgery (to a point) to not eat those items because you physically can't and you will be less hungry overall. But you will need to develop coping mechanisms for the anxiety and feelings that led to eating instead of dealing with whatever is causing them.

This is everyone's battle. You can do it. Good luck.

This is fantastic - sometimes I wonder with whether the difference between me and friends who have never struggled with weight on/weight off is that the NOTICE the impact of food, whereas I just tended to eat almost as a habit. I would eat until stuffed and feeling a bit uncomfortable, but then do it again 5e next day.

Now, I learn. It is oyster season here - a real favourite and a delicacy. I used to eat a dozen - battered and deep fried. I thought that through, ordered half a dozen, ate four and thought “I am not having these again, I am not really enjoying them”. I will try raw ones next week, but this morning even the thought of that is a bit off-putting. Seems like I am developing a different (normal?) sort of feedback mechanism, like your “the croutons were not even satisfying” one, maybe.

Good work - make a note of these proud moments - like sharing them here - to help with the ‘oh god I can’t believe I did that dumb thing’ moments that come later!! ?

1 hour ago, melsabells said:

By croutons.

So I am 5 days pre-op. It’s been a real struggle today and last night. I’ve had other struggles with the diet on other days too. I didn’t expect a walk in the park. I’ve also been struggling with my blood sugars. I had to stop taking my metformin due to that and making my stomach miserable. I’ve cut down a lot on meal time insulin.

BUT today croutons almost did me in today.

we had some from a dinner a few weeks ago. I saw em and ate 4 of them earlier today. My oh my...I felt like such a failure. They are now in the trash. I sat down and had a reckoning with myself. Was it worth it? Nope. Just enough to make me feel cruddy and not enough to even satisfy anything.

Time to move on. Before I’d eat because I felt bad for it. Today i’m writing this post and I vacuumed the house...lol

Unfortunately, nearly everyone has to go through this reckoning of sorts. I know I chewed up a bit of pizza toppings during my pre op diet, and then spit it into the garbage can. I thought to myself, "What if I just enjoy the taste, but I don't swallow". I realized how pathetic I was acting. For something like pizza toppings to be controlling my life.

Stay strong, it only gets better from here. I craved weird things, I know specifically I posted on here that I dreamed of rotisserie chicken during pre op. The one thing I can say that is encouraging is that after your surgery, your taste buds will change. And when you try things that you thought you'd enjoy and you get an IMMEDIATE nausea from it hitting your stomach, that will be the end of those cravings.

This is a common discussion at my monthly support meetings. It seems that we test our boundaries by choosing the foods we know are wrong such as simple carbs. To offset this we try to portion the foods so as to feel we have accomplished something noteworthy. In essence we eat bad things especially right after surgery and try to rationalize it by saying hey, I used to eat a bag of these things now I only eat 1/4 bag I'm making progress. The real progress we make is as the OP stated :

2 hours ago, melsabells said:

Just enough to make me feel cruddy and not enough to even satisfy anything.

That's the real progress. When we realize that even if we want we can portion the bad foods but instead don't reintroduce them into our food eco system. Prior to having WLS I had to attend one monthly support group meeting and the one bit of info I got and remember is this. If it's a food that got you in trouble before do not introduce back into your diet. There are so many other good alternatives that you will not miss it and your long range success will probably be easier.

I know that there are many other theories on this and I say whatever works for you then go for it. One size doesn't fit all for success but I feel that this is a sensible way for me to be successful over the long term.

Today, I got a cobb salad with no pecans. I didn't ask for for them to not include croutons... but it didn't come with any croutons. And I was legitimately sad that it did not have any croutons. I just wanted one! Just wanted to nibble on ONE. Your post is very timely today... thanks for sharing. We can do this

Edited March 9, 20188 yr by honeyedlife