I screwed up and I am not sugar coating it in any way or making excuses. I had two Philly soft pretzels (350 cals ea.) I ate one slowly at 4:00pm and the other at 6:00pm. I was hoping that I would get dumping syndrome and I did not. I only felt full. Okay, I am right back on the horse. Other than reminding myself that this was a poor personal choice, I learned something interesting. Food no longer induces the euphoria and relaxation that it once did. I didn't feel any better, just fuller.

Edited March 24, 20188 yr by Mattymatt

And that may be how things will be from now on, you will have an adult relationship with food, it will be there for fueling up, you will give it healthy food for your body to digest and it will repay you in a better and fitter.body, more things will be easier to accomplish and you won't be huffing and puffing like a broken down steam engine.[emoji31] And you won't achieve the proper status eating bad junky foodstuffs.

Sent from my VS880PP using BariatricPal mobile app

Yep, it was a poor decision but one poor decision does not end the game. Again, I am encouraged because eating that food produced an entirely different result then I had expected. So therein lies the positive.

I'm actually really surprised (and a little jealous if I'm being honest) that you didn't dump, because your surgery was almost a month after mine, and I tried just two tiny bites of 100% whole wheat bread and THAT caused me to dump, so I can only imagine what an entire soft pretzel would do.

Like you said, though, one wrong turn doesn't ruin the trip. You just have to let your internal GPS reroute itself and get back on the main road. Sightseeing may be enjoyable, but sometimes it can be dangerous if you're too close to a cliff! (This analogy went off-course long ago, but I'm sure you get my point.)

1 minute ago, istytehcrawk said:

I'm actually really surprised (and a little jealous if I'm being honest) that you didn't dump, because your surgery was almost a month after mine, and I tried just two tiny bites of 100% whole wheat bread and THAT caused me to dump, so I can only imagine what an entire soft pretzel would do.

Like you said, though, one wrong turn doesn't ruin the trip. You just have to let your internal GPS reroute itself and get back on the main road. Sightseeing may be enjoyable, but sometimes it can be dangerous if you're too close to a cliff! (This analogy went off-course long ago, but I'm sure you get my point.)

Yes, you're correct. And please don't be jealous. I really wanted the negative reinforcement and did not get it. This is going to make the journey a little bit harder. The one positive is that the bad food did not make me feel good whereas it used to. All I did was feel full. I'd sooner put good fuel in my body.

Well that was a poor choice and if you keep making decisions like that, you will stretch your new stomach and everything you went through will be for absolutely nothing. You can do better. Be better. You got this!

I guess everyone's surgery really is different - I had mine a week before you and can't even eat half a cup over a two-hour span. Literally, I just hit my limit and no matter how much I want to eat the last tablespoon of chili, no go.

One word of caution: from what I understand, bread in particular swells once it's in your stomach, so even if you initially fit it in it may expand from there. We're both in the very early stages of healing and even when diverging from the meal plan, there are probably certain things we shouldn't eat because it's an actual risk to healing. Bread and grains likely fit in that "absolutely no-go" category.

(full disclosure: I had a mini Cadbury Creme Egg today. No one's perfect.)

2 minutes ago, sideeye said:

I guess everyone's surgery really is different - I had mine a week before you and can't even eat half a cup over a two-hour span. Literally, I just hit my limit and no matter how much I want to eat the last tablespoon of chili, no go.

One word of caution: from what I understand, bread in particular swells once it's in your stomach, so even if you initially fit it in it may expand from there. We're both in the very early stages of healing and even when diverging from the meal plan, there are probably certain things we shouldn't eat because it's an actual risk to healing. Bread and grains likely fit in that "absolutely no-go" category.

(full disclosure: I had a mini Cadbury Creme Egg today. No one's perfect.)

Well, what's done is done and I am not happy about it but I'm going to move forward as a lesson learned. Folks are quite correct to land on me about the unwise decision.

No intention of kicking you while you're down - just in the queue of things we should be eating right now, there are a lot of items that make good sense (don't drink caffeine because it's a diuretic and dehydrates you, don't eat carbs because you're trying to stay below 1000 cals and get protein, don't eat sugar because it makes it hard to control blood sugar spikes) but other than regular overeating, bread/grain is the only one that my surgeon identified as "this could damage your healing stitches". If we're going to show fanatical willpower in any category, "things that could rupture my sleeve" would be the one I'd pick.

Do you know what prompted you to eat the pretzels? Was it habit, head hunger, someone bringing temptation to work when you didn't have something to substitute? I know you mentioned you were curious about dumping syndrome, but we're going to have plenty of time to figure out what we can't eat via trial-and-error in the regular food stage, so there must be something else at play to make the attempt less than two weeks out from surgery. And if you think it's more of a psychological thing (like an almost unstoppable drive to eat something and casting around for a rationale to excuse the impulse) have you brought it up with a counselor at any point?

Edited March 25, 20188 yr by sideeye

Thanks for sharing MattyMatt. I think all of us may have times when we slip up and think we are a failure for doing so. It’s helps when people like you share so we don’t feel alone when it happens to us.

A friend told me that she has conversations with food items: "well, I like you, but do you like me?" There are plenty of items that fit into the first category but not the second. She's better than I am at cutting out things that don't like her, but this is a long journey for all of us, not a quick fix. As long as you didn't do real damage to your healing body, you learned something, and that's worthwhile. Take the lesson, leave the guilt.

Shite happens. Tomorrow is a new day:)

11 hours ago, Mattymatt said:

I was hoping that I would get dumping syndrome and I did not. I only felt full.

Kind of sad that some WLS patients really wish for dumping.

I have no idea how big these pretzels are (but if they're 350 cals each they must be of a considerable size). I wonder how you could manage to eat them when your surgery was on March 12th. That's not even 2 weeks ago. Or is the surgery date in your profile not correct?

meh, I had a cheese curl yesterday. Life happens

Somehow at the 2 week post op mark a lot of us push the "Hello, do you know me? I'm the stupid one who tries to live out the movie Jackass in real life button." I did it. Many have done it.

You can beat a dead horse, but it won't make it run again.

So move on. But as @sideeye said, the disturbing part about that slip-up was the volume and the product used for the test. It really can cause staple line ruptures but worse as my surgeon just explained, she has very few pts with complications or stretched out pouches/sleeves. So I trust her advice. She said at this point in our healing, it is absolutely possible to stretch out the pouch or sleeve.

I figure I can be a dumb ass about rules that keep me safe and my tool in tact,

OR

I can be a smart ass about it.

I would much rather be a smart ass about it. I'm far too intelligent to wind up with a fu*ked up tool 3 months out from surgery. I think you are too.

Edited March 25, 20188 yr by FluffyChix

Completely off topic here....where is the profile pic of the majestic af black cat?