Metamorphosis

  There's nothing more fun that getting new dishes! These are to mentally deal with the size of the portions I'll be eating after the surgery and the focus on protein first.  They remind of when I was a kid and had all the cute bunnies or whatever at the bottom of the dish. I also have toddler spoons to ensure taking little tiny bites.

  I saw this on Facebook and just had to share it.  I troll Facebook for hours to find these little nuggets of wisdom to share with you. Order two grilled chicken chipotle burritos with no tortillas, in a bowl. I seldom visit Taco Bell, but may have to make an exception.   It sure looks yummy!

 Much of what I need to be eating is on the Keto diet.  I decided to try this Keto bread I bought and was pleasantly surprised. At only 40 calories a slice it's pretty good. Only 5 grams of protein but with 1 net gram of carbs it makes it doable. It tasted best when used to make grilled cheese.  The toast was ok but would want some jam or something for flavor. I still prefer sourdough or a good bread if I'm going to indulge.  This has 150 mg of sodium which is pretty high but no sugars or added sugars. Fat Cat who wants to be a skinny kitty

I'm learning a lot of new recipes and ways to prepare food on this journey.  While looking for ways to eliminate bread I came across this recipe. It was also a great way to get rid of a couple of left over burgers.  First I chopped up some lettuce and added some yum yum sauce.  Sprinkled some hamburger dill pickles on top   Then I fried up some onions and added the chopped up burgers to heat them.  This got piled on top off the lettuce bed; squirted some ketchup and mustard and garnished with more pickles. Easy, tasty and lower calorie. 

 I met with a PA named Andy, who ironically is married to the  nice lady I had for my psych exam. My weigh in showed I'm at 225, so I'm staying under the 229 where I started and must not exceed.  I really felt I'd be much higher after three days with my granddaughter and her husband.  We ate out a lot! I went over the following questions with him: Am I in danger of developing gall stones after this surgery.  Yes.  They provide medications for the first month to counteract this.   What about my low dose aspirin that I take as a preventative measure? He suggested I stop the low dose aspirin unless it's needed as this can irritate the stomach.  After the surgery I will not be able to take any NSAIDS and will only take Tylenol. Can they fix my umbilical hernia during the surgery.  Yes they can, no they won't.  He explained that you only want to do this once and it's best to wait until I reach my goal weight. Is there a danger of eating too much protein?  No  Should

 One of the requirements for bariatric surgery is to have a session with a behavior counselor.  A rather long session -like a couple of hours.  I'm afraid she'll learn in that length of time that I'm certifiable.  Actually I'm not worried about this at all.  I'm older than many of the other patients therefore much more mature and adult, right? When I arrived I was given a pc to answer some odd 325 questions to determine my personality and mental stability. The second session was to determine if I had what it takes to make the changes in my lifestyle to succeed.  After that I had a personal interview to go over the results.  Whew!  I made it. This was a biggie for me I'm glad to have that behind me.

 One of the things my weight loss clinic offers is a series of online seminars with various topics and the ability to ask questions.  The most recent one was called Reflux after Sleeve. This was something I was curious about as many on the Facebook support groups complained about developing reflux after their sleeve surgery and having to have a revision to bypass at a later date. I don't have any serious issues with this, but was concerned that it would get worse and a second surgery would be needed. So many decisions. What I learned from listening to this doctor was that you actually have a 50% chance of your reflux going away after having the sleeve surgery.  For those with no history, there is a small (12-15%) of developing the problem but it can be controlled with medications. He also went to on say that less than 7% will need any further surgery (revision to bypass) unless it's to fix a hiatal hernia. The problems don't develop until about a year and a half after the s

 I didn't realize when I changed the name of my blog to Metamorphosis just how accurate that was to be. This blog is mainly for me to chronicle my journey, but open to anyone who wants to read along. I've always been very open with my life and everything in it. There was a niggling little voice in the back of my head that was warning me to do something about my weight. It told me I'd been lucky so far but if nothing changed my good times would be over. I listen to those voices. Well, not all of them...but this one sounded important. So, I scheduled an appointment with a bariatric surgeon at Banner just to explore the options. He asked if I'd always been heavy and I had to laugh. I've never weighed over 120 until about my 50's (other than 130 pounds when nine months pregnant) when my body had a full fledged mutiny and I blew up like a balloon in the Macy's Day parade.  Looking back it was probably due to many stressors in my life and having undiagnosed sleep