The Terrible, Awful, No Good Eating Day

Oh dear. My daughter had a slumber party last night. The house was full of crap food. Before the party even started, I had a large spoonful of Dreyer's Samoas ice cream. Foolish, stupid move. I had diarrhea within an hour.

And still, I picked. I ate a large handful of Cheetos puffs. A half dozen Hershey's kisses over the course of the night. A couple potato chips. The crunchy crust off a couple slices of pizza. Handfuls of Cinnamon Chex cereal.

In comparison to pre-op life, this would be nothing. But yesterday was bad because I ate uncontrollably, and without regard to my sleeved tummy. Was the lactose-induced stomachache not enough of a harbinger of bad things to come??

I chewed off my fingernails. I haven't bitten my fingernails in months and months.

Okay. What happened? This was the first time I've been around junk food in any quantity. And while I love my daughter and think she has great friends: I don't like slumber parties. Especially in our teeny tiny condo. I was relegated to my daughter's room while they took over the downstairs, and it was noisy and stressful. And pretty damn boring, too. I was already overtired from cleaning all day in preparation for the party.

I'm concerned. On the one hand, I know I need to shake off yesterday's failures and move on. On the other, I fear screwing up my weight loss, negating all the hard work of the surgery and time since. Oh well. Proof positive to me how vigilant I have to be: I am a food addict. Even in the face of all my hard work, put some junk food in front of me and I am right back where I started.

I'm on my period, too. I hope this isn't a new tradition following surgery. One of the benefits of the Mirena IUD is no periods. (Oh hell, in my sexless state, who am I kidding?? It's the ONLY benefit!) So I am feeling bloated, yucky, gross.

Slider foods. Oh - this applies to me, too? Who knew? I have to say, it is whole freaking lot easier to eat a handful of Cheetos than it is to eat a turkey sausage. Damn. Most everything good for me "hurts" my stomach to one degree or another. I had a turkey link for breakfast, and I can feel my stomach working it over now. It's a laborious process. Cheetos? Yum - no pain, just fried cheesy goodness. Dairy may hurt my stomach like a m'fer, but chocolate did not. These were things I did not need to find out.

Too bad I blew it yesterday. In the afternoon, before all this, I had such a wonderful revelation. I am forcing myself into a healthy eating lifestyle. I was out running a ton of errands, and I was hungry. I was grousing to myself that there is no healthy fast food. Nowhere I could run to quickly to get a bite to eat, nothing good for me.

Nothing good for anyone, I realized. Wow. I have never been one to plan our meals, figure out what we'll eat on the road, have healthy snacks on hand for me or the kids. We go through drive-throughs endlessly. No time between activities, no time to shop, no time to plan menus for the week. People who eat healthy must already have the blinders on to the fast food places that I am finally developing. Sure, I've always known it's crap - but post-op, not being ABLE to eat any of that - it is finally making me see. What I have always known was bad, I still considered an option - not *one* option, really - the only realistic option. What a bunch of crap, I realized.

Ah, it seems like every time I take a brilliant step forward in my life, I have to knock myself back a step. It was a terrible eating day, but today won't be. I know what I did wrong, and I just have to get myself back in the game.