Even after 3-1/2 yrs, it's still a miracle to me

My band is still a miracle to me, even after 3-1/2 years of living with it.

I often remind myself not to take my band for granted, because I would hate to lose it and I don't want its beneficial effects to be diluted by over-familiarity. While I try to be vigilant, sometimes I lapse again into mindless, foolish eating (see below), but I'm happy to report that my band still reminds me that it's doing its job. For example...

I had to work an 8-hour shift at JCPenney yesterday. The day before Easter in a small Southern town is just as hectic in a retail store as the day after Thanksgiving or the day before Christmas. You've heard of road rage? We had fitting room rage, with grown women throwing fits because they had to wait in line for a fitting room and sniping with each other when someone spent too long in a fitting room. I felt like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, with everything repeating itself over and over and over again. By the time my meal break came, I was exhausted. So I sat in the break room, ate the healthy little meal I'd brought from home, and then proceeded to eat every freaking Reese's peanut butter egg in the goody basket on the table, one after the other until I couldn't even taste them any more.

But today is a new day, thank God. My husband and I had planned to have deviled beef tongue for our Easter dinner. I know that sounds gross to many people but it's a treat for us, and tongue is actually band-friendly because it's moist and very tender the way we cook it. I made roasted veggies and rice with onions to go with the tongue. I looked forward to that meal all day. At dinner time I served myself a few tablespoons each of the veggies & rice and a slice of tongue that measured about 3" wide x 4" long x 1" thick. I ate half of the tongue, a bite or two of the rest, and suddenly I realized it was time to stop eating.

How did I, a lifetime volume eater and overeater, know that? I have no idea. And that's the miracle. I felt no discomfort, nothing was stuck, I had eaten carefully and hadn't overeaten, but suddenly I was done. Not only did I feel that I couldn't eat another bite, I didn't want to eat another bite.  Apparently my band and my brain had exchanged some messages unbeknownst to me, and the food left on my plate no longer appealed to me. I scraped it into a plastic container so I can have it for lunch tomorrow, when my interest in it will probably return. In the meantime, dinner is over!

Jean

Jean!  I feel the same way about my band.  I went on a 2 hour walk with the dogs this afternoon and I made an important decision that I'm going to post in a little bit. 

I worked Friday and Saturday 7pm-7:30am shifts ( my normal shift) but as of this morning I had a total of 6 hours of sleep since 8am Friday, so I was tired this morning when I went to bed and slept 5 wonderful hours before my walk.  Oh, I had a couple of Easter cookies at work and I realized I hadn't eaten anything that I consider junk since Christmas.  That was an eye opener!  yay!

Happy Easter!

Hugs,
Kristi

Kristi,

Gah! You tease me by mentioning an important decision you're going to post about at the very same time as I have to turn off my computer because a thunderstorm has started here!

Happy Easter to you, too!

Jean

Jean,

Thank you for posting and continuing to post here.  You make us newbies feel that there is a positive journey ahead of us.  As a newbie coming here and seeing the barrage of "the band sucks" types of posts, it's distressing.  Knowing that there are people that love and understand their band is refreshing.

I am just a little bit out, 4 weeks on Tuesday, but I am very conscious of those feelings that you talk about.  I don't even have a fill yet but i am kinda tight still.  I have already identified my soft stop signals and pay a great deal of attention to them.  I have had a LOT of leftovers to eat at the next meal.  I know i have a long long way to go, but thanks to people like you I can ignore the band bashing posts and pay attention to what I need to!

I'm glad you liked the beef tongue.  Yeah, that sounds really gross!!

I'm glad you liked the beef tongue.  Yeah, that sounds really gross!!

Hey, try it - you might like it!

I'm glad you've been able to get some reassurance from my posts. Remember: people post more often when they're unhappy, struggling, angry, whatever than when they're doing great and busy with life.

Jean

Well. Deviled beef tongue. That's not something you hear (or eat) every day : )

I was just thinking of you today as I started rereading your book again this afternoon for some extra encouragement. I think the farther out we get from the our surgery the easier it is to take our bands for granted and forget what a gift they are to us.  Once I became accustomed to not experiencing frequent physical hunger I started really noticing how often I want to eat for non-hunger reasons. This whole week I've wanted to eat everything in sight and have very little physical hunger. As crummy as that is -- I'm so glad the band has given me the awareness of this feeling. Before I would just eat. Now I thinking first and most of the time succeeding or choosing something healthy.

 I'm so glad the band has given me the awareness of this feeling

Dealing with eating cues unrelated to physical hunger is hard, but dealing with them all mixed in with physical hunger is ten times harder!

Jean,

I love beef tongue! I'm getting ready to order some Blutwurst and Zungenwurst online. ( Blood wurst and tongue wurst ) . Must be a NYer kind of thing!

Diana

Diana,

I've tried blutwurst and it's not something I'd want again. But zungenwurst? Hmmm, sounds interesting!

Jean

Jean,

If you don't care for blutwurst, you probably wouldn't like zungenwurst, since the same base is used to encompass the sliced tongue pieces. Here is the link to the company I use to buy it.

http://www.germandeli.com/stbltosa.html

Diana