Whoa boy! My first problem with the band!

An Unexpected Pain in the... Stoma?

I've been getting pretty cocky in regards to the band. So far, I've been able to go to pureed and soft foods without a hitch. So today, I ate my breakfast, and about an hour and a half later I got hungry again, and decided to eat some Deli Delight Turkey to try to stay satisfied. 


I did this rather casually, without much attention to chewing. On the second piece it happened -- a very sharp pain at the top of my stomach. Yikes! The food was stuck at the entrance to the stomach. I felt freaked out for a second, then decided I was okay, and stretched out to my full height and felt it slip into my stomach. But it did hurt. And it reminded me that my old, casual eating habits are not going to work with this band. So when I eat again (I haven't yet) I'm going to chew like crazy.

Eating too much, too fast, for too long

How did I come to eat too much? I've been thinking about that today, and it once again takes me back to our family dinner table. My parents insisted on family meals. This meant we all sat together (five of us), and ate our dinner. 

My mom was what I thought of as the world's best cook. Raised in Kentucky where the vegetables are fresh and the meats homegrown, she could fry a pork chop or chicken perfectly, roast tender meats, and knew how to cook veggies with seasoning (bacon grease and onions) that would make you want to cry they were so good. Squash and mashed potatoes, green beans with onions, corn on the cob dripping with butter, sliced tomatoes, biscuits or rolls, dessert after every meal. Salads could be fruit with mayo and shredded cheese. Gravy ruled. It was all SO GOOD! And it seemed like plates-full and bowls-full of love to me. I couldn't get enough. 

So one thing that made me eat too much was the food was good. I talked about this before, and its true. Good food makes you want to eat more, there's no doubt. And that full feeling. If you've had it, you know what I'm talking about. That feeling that makes you want to curl up and daydream, sit back and feel content, or maybe just go to sleep. That's another great feeling from my childhood. 

Childhood Eating in Adulthood?

When we were small, it was great that we ate a lot. We were so active we needed the fuel. We rode bikes, swam, ran, rode horses, jumped rope, played tag, walked all over and cartwheeled constantly. We took dance lessons twice a week, rode bikes several miles to piano lessons twice a week, rode bikes to the stables to take care of our horse (which required shoveling and hauling bales of hay and wood shavings), had a sailboat, went to camp, were Girl Scouts, and more. No wonder we were hungry and thin! We moved around constantly. It wasn't until we were teens that the motion slowed, and by then our eating habits were set in stone. A big dinner, yum, yum! A bigger dinner on Sunday, double yum. (Pot Roast every Sunday.) 
 

We started to round out in good ways and some not so good. But how to cut back? We had no idea, really. We subscribed to the "eat a well rounded meal and you'll be healthy" rule. And we were healthy, just starting to look a little TOO healthy, I'm afraid. This is when I started to abstain from eating. Not a great approach. I've written a lot of my dieting history in this blog, and it makes sense if you go from the oldest entry to the newest. I suffered from anorexia for a short time, am a failed bulimic, and have yo-yoed since I was about 16. 


Anyway, just remember to CHEW! And eat slowly. And cut your food into little pieces.

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