In spite of all I have learned and now know about my "new" stomach and all it's quirks some days I do something that makes me wish I could kick my own butt!
Understand that one person's experiences with this life will NOT exactly mirror any other person's experiences. That being said...this is MY experience. I cannot under any circumstances and in even the smallest quantities tolerate BREAD of any sort! I know this. I've pay for every indiscretion, no matter how small where bread is concerned. No to be indelicate, and this is certainly not going to be the first or last time that I am; there are just some foods that you will learn to expect to either throw up, "dump" (and yeah it means just exactly what it sounds like) or experience pain when you eat them. I have a LOT of foods that don't go down well but I can manage them in miniscule quantities but bread is not one of them. I can take a bite small enough for a toothless infant, wallow it around in my mouth until it's basically a liquid before swallowing it and somehow it still feels like I have a baseball just beneath my skin right in the middle of my sternum.
When and IF it finally goes into my stomach, I'm in pain. It's hard to describe really. It isn't nausea...though that follows once the bread is metabolized because my body turns it into sugar at an astoundingly rapid rate it seems. Initially it's more like pressure; stress on the walls of my walnut sized stomach and it really does hurt. But what does my dumb-ass do? Everynow and again, I think...oh I'm going to be able to handle it this time. I REALLY want just the tiniest slice of that yummy fruit/nut breakfast bread that my mother brought home yesterday.
Two hours later when I'm still trying to expell that COW from my chest and am now GREEN from nausea...I think to myself...was it really worth all THIS? No, no and NO. No bread tastes good enough to put up with the consequences for me. YOU (other bariatric patients) my not experience this and I hope you don't but if you do; don't say I didn't warn you!
The pain issue aside; I realize that my food bypasses a portion of my intestines and I know this has a lot to do with why most gastric bypass patients cannot tolerate sugar. Keep in mind that when I say SUGAR, I don't necessarily mean sweets. I mean ANYTHING that converts to sugar...slowly or rapidly. THough fast carbs are much worse! Yes, this means even fruit can make you nauseated or cause you to throw up. I eat fruit...but I eat it very judiciously. I try to stick to berries because they have the lowest glycemic index. Now and again I will put a fresh orange in my vanilla protein shake (tastes similar to an Orange Julius and makes the otherwise crappy protein palatable). THat usually works out ok since I'm using the entire piece of fruit, not just the juice. The fiber in the fruit helps lower the glycemic load. Drinking fruit juice is about like mainlining simple syrup!
Long story short; I was unable to eat or drink anything for several hours until that damned bread was finally digested. Plus...I got to feel like CRAP for most of the morning; cold sweats, nausea, rapid pulse.
When I finally felt like the worst of it was over which was around noon; I poured a blue raspberry Isopure over a big cup full of crushed ice and nursed that for most of the afternoon. That left me with a protein shortage for the day since I didn't get any in the morning.
Around 4pm I made myself a small green salad and topped it with about an ounce of rotisserie chicken ( I buy a fresh rotisserie chicken every couple of days). I ate the chicken first and then finished with only as much of the salad as I could comfortably hold...which was about half of what had originally been in the bowl. I buy Walden Farm's salad dressings because they are sugar free...or I make my own. Most commercial salad dressings have quite a bit of sugar (not to mention sodium). I particularly like their Honey Dijon dressing on a raw spinach salad!
Tomorrow I plan to behave myself! I'm making a hot cereal of quinoa flakes, flax, unsweetened almond milk, a spoonful of Stevia in the Raw and topped with a few fresh blueberries. Recipe and pictures will be forthcoming! I will take an Isopure to work with me, have half a Power Crunch Bar on the drive home from work. Though these bars only have 5g. of sugar, my system cannot tolerate a whole bar without repercussions! They have 12-14 grams of protein depending upon the flavor though. So even if I can only eat half; that's at least 6g of protein in just one or two bites. I'm going to do an entire article of protein bars and all the GARBAGE that's out there...blechhhhh! Power Crunch is a decent bar though. We bariatrics have our "faves" when it comes to stuff and we are a pretty loyal crowd...out of necessity!
I will also continue with the "story" of my surgery and recovery. My plan is to eventually add a page for each of the "phases" of the bariatric diet which will make finding appropriate recipes much easier. There are SO many aspects of the bariatric life to cover...food addiction and the pitfall some face of transferring that addiction to other harmful things, psychological changes, physical changes and so on. I hope to just take one day at a time and find out where it leads!
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