To be precise, 1.5kg down since last week. You'd think it's such a small victory, why did she go through all this trouble?
Well, it's 8.4kg down since surgery - 24 days. I'll take that! Plus my body was fighting to rehydrate properly after last week's incident, which means in the first three days of the week I had regained more than a kg.
I've become more disciplined regarding weighing myself - only do that on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It helps towards avoiding obsessing with the scale, and focusing on how I feel in my own body, and my clothes. Clothes? Ha ha ha.... I haven't gone out (bar a quick visit to the hospital for my boyfriend) since the surgery, so really I have no idea if they fit or not.
Food
You can expect lots of posts with this section, of course. It's a bariatric journey blog after all, isn't it? So this week again saw some ups and downs, wrong choices and difficult moments. Days in which I could not eat anything apart from some yoghurt for breakfast and half a protein shake at dinner. True cross my heart. Just the idea of food would make me nauseous - and I was nauseous a LOT this week.
I'm lucky I work from home and they are very sympathetic and encourage me to "ease into going back", which in my case means I take a nap in the late morning and a nap in the afternoon. That is, when the nausea allows me to get into a horizontal position.
I found out that if I eat carbs, they go down MUCH better than meat. That includes the Pasta e Fagioli I mentioned last week, and an Asian soup I made this week. Even a butter bean salad could go down very well.
But of course this is a weight loss journey, so I need to train my body again to eat meat. The only way is to try and cook something that is both soft and at the same time very appetising - see therefore my new Meatballs Pie (torta con polpette) below.
I was able to eat even 2 meatballs last night, and 3 slices of potato. What a victory! Not much nausea after that, which was great.
They say to eat your protein first (where the restriction comes in first) and veg/carbs later. So true!
Sleep
I don't think I mentioned it before, my sleep pattern is very disrupted. I need to go to bed quite early, but then I wake up in the middle of the night (read 1 or 3am) and stay up for two hours or more, drinking tea and smoking my brains out. Then off to bed.
Hey, don't you dare tell me off about smoking - I know already I shouldn't, but cannot stop right now. If anything I'm smoking more. One thing at a time.
Anyway - back to the sleep thing: no wonder I need naps during the day! I need to make an effort and stay up until midnight, so I can sleep to at least 6 or 7am. In that way I'll be able to reduce the naps to a short one at lunch time - a power nap, as they call it.
Tablets
Oh my goodness, there are soo many to take! All prescribed, by the GP, the endocrinologist, the psychiatrist, the dietitian, you name it. It's a matter of a sip of water with one of them, wait ten minutes to see if the nausea kicks in, then if all is well take another one, again wait and see, and so on. I posted that difficult schedule already, you know what I mean. There were two days during the week when nausea was so bad I really could not take any tablets, could not eat, and I could drink maybe a pint of water all day - which is really bad. Now that the nausea is roughly under control I can master both liquids and tablets so everything is getting better.
My boyfriend
What a wonderful man! I'm so incredibly lucky. The psychologist did warn me that I needed to have him onboard and I assured him that he was. And indeed, I couldn't have wished for better support. I'm not talking only about doing everything in the house (I mean, everything!), but he shows appreciation for what I've done - the fact I actually chose the painful path in order to change my life. He knows what he talks about when speaking about surgeries - he had 2 transplants... He keeps saying I supported him for 23 years of illness, and now it's his turn to support me. He is never patronising, never gives advice, just listens and knows I'm basing my new life on all the advice I get from my bariatric team - and I'm supported also by this wonderful facebook support group, where we are all going through the same journey.
Actually "journey" is not even the right term - it implies an "end". This is lifelong, a journey that will accompany me through the journey of my life, if you will.
That's enough writing for this week I think. I'm concluding with the two recipes I came up with during the week - especially if you're at my stage of the bariatric diet you might find them interesting.
Asian (Thai inspired) soup
Ingredients:
1/2 chopped onion (anything but red); 4 garlic cloves
1 tsp each of paprika, turmeric, ground coriander, dried lime leaves, dried lemon grass
1 tbsp each of Fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, light soy sauce, fresh lemon juice, tomato paste, toasted sesame oil
1/2 a small tablet of sweetener
1 tin of light coconut milk, 1 tin of water (rinsing off the coconut milk tin, basically)
125gr of rice noodles broken in pieces
200gr pressed tofu, cubed
Method:
Stir fry the onions and garlic (both finely chopped) in the sesame oil.
Once soft, add all the dried ingredients and stir fry for another 2 minutes and ensure the mixture does not stick (to your non-stick pot ;-)
Add the coconut and water, wrap the lime leaves and lemon grass in a muslin cloth then add them to the soup.
Let it simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Add the raw cubed tofu and simmer for another 10 minutes. In the meantime cook the noodles per the instructions in the packet. Add the noodles to the soup, stir and enjoy!
Meatballs pie (torta con polpette)
Ingredients:
800gr mince meat (ground beef, if you are from the US)
2 eggs, 200gr fresh breadcrumbs
2 tsp each of dried sage, ground nutmeg, dried parsley
1 tsp each of rosemary and thyme
1kg of large potatoes, cut in thick slices
200gr of shredded cheese (I use non-dairy cheese) - cheddar or mozzarella work perfectly
100gr grated parmesan
300gr dried breadcrumbs (pangrattato) to coat the meatballs with
2 tbsp olive oil
Method:
Parboil the potatoes in salted water for 10 mins since boiling - drain and let dry.
Get a big bowl and mix the meat and the rest of the ingredients (excluding the oil and cheese). Make meatballs the size of a small egg and coat them with the dried breadcrumbs.
Line a baking tray with baking paper, drizzle it with the olive oil, then cover in one layer with the slices of potatoes.
Dust them with half the parmesan, then layer the meatballs. Dust it all with the shredded cheese and finish it off with the remaining parmesan.
Cover with tinfoil to avoid the hard crust on the meatballs and then bake at 200C (400F) for 40 mins. Enjoy!
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