And finally! 60!!!

I finally crashed through the 60 pound barrier after what, a year and a half of this blog? Longer than that I think. 333. Okay, about 3.5 pounds in 2.5 weeks, that's not exactly crashing through now is it? More like flooping through ( i know, that's not a word... but it works).

Having said that I feel very encouraged all the same. I continue to feel good, continue to feel energy, continue to enjoy how I feel. The other night I was riding the bus home, there's a spot where the bus stops on that run for a 20 minute period. I decided to get out and use the 20 minutes to walk because that just seemed better to me than waiting. The bus driver gave me a bit of a funny look when he picked me up a mile or so down the road.

So far solid foods are going well. I'm enjoying getting a normal variety of foods though soetimes it's tough focusing mostly on protein. In some ways it's like I'm back on Atkins as most food I eat is meat or cheese or something of the sort.

I've been down the last week with a cold, at the same time working like crazy getting my first academic paper in 24 years finished and turned in, so I've not gotten in the exercise I should. I still chooseto walk as much as possible as opposed to riding the shuttle in to work, so on the days I'm wrking I get in a couple miles, usually at a pretty good clip.

It's a slow, steady progress. So I can look at it two ways. One is that it's toooooo slow and steady, I want it to go faster. Or I can say wow, I'm the lightest I've been in 6 years, and look at the fact that I've broken another 10 pound barrier....

What do I choose?

Woooooooohoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

After a week of soft food

It's now been 2 weeks. Actually 2 weeks and a day. I continue to feel good and recovery seems to go well. Actually to this point I've not really experienced any real side effects to the surgery and have felt fairly good the whole time.

It has now been a week of soft foods, and I must say that soft foods are a heck of a lot better than a liquid diet. Things such as tuna and yogurt feel a lot more like real food, albeit in very small quantities.

The weight loss has slowed some. In a week's time I lost a total of 5 pounds, quite a bit slower than the week before, but still a very good pace. With the soft foods, I'm averaging probably right at 1000 calories a day if not less, which is not very much. The key is to try to get as much of those calories in protein as possible, and getting a lot of protein in small amounts like I have to can be tricky. They want me to be getting 60-80 grams of protein per day, and so far I've done pretty well at that.

My wife and I went out to eat today for the first time since the surgery. Eating out is a totally different experience now. There are all the sides that go with your food and you can maybe just touch them. For example there was clam chowder soup, and I maybe had 4 or 5 bites of that. Most of that was because I wanted to save room for the chicken I was getting. I know, chicken's not exaclty soft food, but it went down fairly well, with a LOT of chewing anyway. So I ended up taking home half the chicken and leaving most of the soup and vegetables untouched. That's the challenge when there's only abuot 4 ounces you can put away. The waitress looked at me rather funny when we were done like, what's wrong with the food??? In some ways it seems like a waste of money now to eat out though. Unless the food's just THAT good, you know? Still, I think it was a good experience.

So far, so good