Looking Back

I spent some time last night and read through all my first 2 years worth of posts.  It was a delightful and terrible walk down memory lane.


I can see all the errors that I made back then, things that I wouldn't do again. 
  - too many carbs
  - too much sugar
  - no exercise
  - always attempting to eat too more


I also see just how far I have come from and I'm still proud of that. 
Changes that I have made:
  - no soda
  - no booze (not that I was a big drinker anyway)
  - generally make better food choices, more protein
  - 50lbs gone and to be fair, I was headed to 350+, which is not my reality anymore


I feel like this surgery was a pendulum swing for me. I was so far to one side (binging and eating amounts) and the surgery swung it way to the other.  The final result was that I settled in the middle, which is still too many calories to get to where I want to be. I can and do eat 1700 - 2200 a day and I am hungry several times in the day. 

If I get approved and have surgery to re-sleeve myself, then the arc of the pendulum will be so much smaller this time, that I think the final resting place will be more reasonable than 250lbs and more like 1195/200.


Directly after my first surgery consultation in 2012 I went to Shipley's donuts and bought a dozen donuts and ate 11 of them in my car.  The week before my pre-surgery diet started I ate three full sized bagels and a tub of cream cheese.  I also used regularly eat a whole large pizza, followed by a pint of ice cream and a liter of soda. I never left anything on my plate.  

I feel that the mental leap from eating 4,000 calories in a sitting to ~1,000 calories a day was so huge that I couldn't even grasp it.  It was actually mentally impossible for me to see that I need so little food that I could get by on a 1/4 of what I had in a single sitting.  I couldn't conceive of a meal that didn't have a starch of some sort - WAS it even possible to HAVE A MEAL without carbs?


I do a lot better now, I eat better, more protein and actually follow the diet guidelines, +100g protein a day - but the issue is how much I can eat. 
 
I've read this a few times and I don't like how it sounds, but there it is.  Looking back through all my other posts it was nice to have a few that were stream of consciousness - much like this.  So, posting these thoughts for my own good.