Listening to My Body - Protein

At our pre-op appointment on December 8th, the nurse went over how we were to drink our protein and hydration fluids after the surgery. She explained to us that Protein was the most important thing for us to get down post-op because it would be the only thing giving us energy and helping us heal.

Since the surgery, each of us has consumed the proper amount of protein we were told to and some days we've had more. This past week I settled into a nice routine. Every day I'll drink about 58 grams of protein in my morning shake. I'll go for a 1.5 - 2 mile walk at 11:30 and I don't even feel hungry until about 3:00 pm. I'll eat something then (with more protein, because I don't want a repeat of that super hungry day) and then I'll eat dinner around 6:00 with another walk somewhere in there.

Well, yesterday I deviated from that routine and I paid for it dearly. Since we are transitioning to soft foods now, MS and decided to just have a slim fast shake (20 grams of protein) and then go to the gym. I felt pretty tired after the gym and decided to eat some salmon salad for lunch. I mixed 2 oz of salmon with a touch of mayo, dill and lemon. I started by eating too fast, and I knew it was happening. I told myself to slow down and when i didn't, I just got up and walked away from the table for a while. That really screwed me up because I was full and had only eaten less than 1 oz of salmon which is only 8.5 grams of protein. It was close to 1:00 at that point and I had only consumed 28.5 grams of protein and 178 calories for the whole day. Needless to say, I started to feel pretty icky.

We went on a little shopping trip until about 5:00 or so. It felt like 8:00. Just as I was about to say, "I think I'm going to go to bed." I asked MS what time it was, and he said 6:00. What the heck? I continued to feel worse. As I sat there I started to get agitated and actually a little angry.  I didn't have the brain power to read anything let alone blog about anything. I knew that wasn't like me at all. That scene from Steel Magnolias where Julia Roberts flips shit because of her blood sugar flashed in my head and I definitely knew I needed to do something. MS got up and made me a full protein shake and very quickly after I drank that I started to feel a lot better. Within an hour I felt good enough to write 3 or 4 posts and we stayed up past midnight. How crazy!

When you only have so much room in that little pouch above your stomach you have to put the right things in your body and you have to eat very slowly. I can see why people have issues with this surgery if they are not getting enough protein. I don't want to feel the way I did yesterday ever again. So if you are getting banded and you take anything from this blog, please let it be that you get enough protein every single day!