Update on recovery, thoughts on exercise, and what I am eating at one week out

As of yesterday, I am pain med FREE! Not even Tylenol! :happydance: I will be one week post op tomorrow, and I seriously can't beleive how great I am feeling, especially when I remember that my worst day (last Wednesday) pain-wise was just 5 days ago. Yesterday my husband and I went to see a movie, and I was able to wear jeans instead of sweats/yoga pants, which was nice - wearing yoga pants in public makes me feel like a schlub and is one of those things that I have always avoided doing because it seems like a "fat person" thing to do. I still can't wear a bra because of the incisions higher up, but I think that's just a matter of a few more days now.

I walked for about 15 minutes today, and it wore me right out. It pretty much just made my stomach muscles really fatigued (not painful though) which is a reminder that as good as I am feeling, I AM still healing. One thing that I am really looking forward to is being more active, and being able to walk all day. I'd like to take an urban vacation to NYC or another big city and walk all over the place, just because I'll be able to. The big difference, this time, is that I KNOW it will get easier. With all of the other diets I have done, it's been the big "if"...IF I keep doing this indefinitely, it will get easier. This time, I still have a list of things that I have to keep doing, diet-wise, but it's much easier to do it (and for the first few months, almost impossible not to) because I've got the tool of the surgery to help me. Being active is seriously my number one reason for doing this. I've been crippled by my weight my whole adult life. This is the most hopeful I've felt about getting free of this burden, EVER.

Changing the subject a little, I want to talk about what I've been eating during my first week post-op. I want to try to chronicle these things as I progress, both for my own memory and to hopefully help anyone who might eventually come across this blog.

In the hospital:
Water. Seriously. They gave me a tray with a pack of unflavored protein powder, some broth, jell-o, and Crystal Light. The thing is, I was allowed one medicine cup (2 tbsp) of any of those items per hour on day one, and 2 medicine cups per hour on day 2. The CL tasted bad (they made it according to package directions, which has always been way too strong for me), the broth was salty, the jell-o just looked gross. So I drank water. I mean, I wasn't hungry anyway. But I really should have tried harder to get some protein in. It was just 2 days though (I was not allowed anything at all on the day I had the surgery).

Since I have been home, and on "full liquids":

• Muscle Milk Light ready to drink protein shakes in Chocolate shake
• Click (Yeah, I am drinking caffeine. Just one every couple of days though)
• Optimum Choice 100% Whey protein, prepared with skim milk
• 1% cottage cheese
• plain greek yogurt (Fage, Chobani, etc - it has twice the protein of regular yogurt), sometimes mixed with a little bit of sf pudding mix and cool whip for a mousse kind of concoction
• a spoonful of cottage cheese warmed up with a little bit (like half a spoonful) of pasta sauce (for something more savory)
• Campbell's select tomato basil soup with unflavored protein powder added
• a fistfull of vitamins and meds, daily
• 3-4 bottles of grape Propel daily
  

So anyway, if anyone was curious what the first week looks like, there it is. I move on to purees on Thursday, which I am stupid excited about. I have big plans involving pureed beans.