Holiday Recovery & Follow-up Appointment.

So, a holiday recap. This is how you handle the holidays successfully after bariatric surgery:

You don't.

The holidays were tough. With every one of them, I ate too much and was overly full and feeling slightly nauseous. I've been lucky that I rarely vomit, though, so that may have been what kept me going. That, and taking lots of precautionary/reactionary meds - Prilosec, Promethazine, Tums, and Gas-X. (I don't know if it really matters - and I think it does - but I use mint-flavored tums and the dissolvable mint gas-x strips. I find that mint flavor generally soothes my stomach, even if it's a complete placebo effect.) Even eating minimally, I still ate too fast. "OMG this is so good!!! *snarf snarf snarf*"

And that's becoming a bigger problem for me... But I'll get to that.

In addition, there's the cookies. Oh glorious, glorious cookies. I made some as usual, though a lot less than normal. (Pretty much nobody got a full tin, though I did bring plates kinda sorta everywhere.) I did do a good amount of grazing, but nowhere near as I used to eat. Still! It was risky. I was about 6 months out, and that was when I should have been only starting on breads/rice/pasta/potatoes... But I did ok. If I ate too many, I had diarrhea from all the sugar and fats. As usual, your body will tell you when you're eating what you shouldn't - either quantity or "quality."

Overall I came out all right. I did more binging (eating lots, and fast) than I hoped I would, which has tapered off significantly after the holidays. I think a lot of that was derived from stress. Emotional eating is a hard thing to remove from your life, but I think as time goes on, I am having more and more success. The most important thing about that is to be mindful.

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In other news, I had my 6 month follow-up! Ended up being more like 7, because I had to reschedule, but whatever. I weighed in at 195, which is 60 lbs since my official weigh-in at surgery! Pretty proud of myself. Some of my vitamin levels are still low (the same ones - B1 and B12), but I have been falling behind on taking those a bit. >_< My liver enzymes were still a bit high, but we'll just keep watching those.

Clothing is still kind of wonky, but I'm fitting into my own skin a bit better, which is nice. I got some gift cards for Avenue & Kohl's for Christmas. I'm so-so on the Avenue stuff, since I'm getting close to the bottom of their sizing (and their stuff runs large anyway), but I'm sure I can work it! :)