3 Weeks Out

Ok, so I’m a couple days late on the 3-week update, but you get the point. I’m feeling great and so happy that I had the surgery. I faced a tough challenge last week and learned a valuable lesson. Let me explain. I went on a scrapbooking retreat this past weekend. There were about 20 of us crazy scrapbookers who packed up all our scrapping stuff and headed way up north to a small camp in the backwoods of Michigan. And a big snow storm that had us all huddled inside for the weekend made it feel even more remote. I had a blast and loved catching up with old friends and making new friends and I even managed to get a bit of scrapbooking done. I knew that this weekend was going to be a big test for me. A test to determine if I could eat healthy away from home and function like a normal person. I did fairly well in the eating department. I brought my own food just in case – but for most of the meals that were served I was able to find something to eat that was approved on my current eating plan. So for eating, I did fine. But drinking was a different story. Since we were in the backwoods of Michigan, the water was from a well. And yep, you guessed it, it tasted horrible. I still sipped my water throughout the day, but I definitely wasn’t drinking as much as I should have been. My goal of 64 ounces per day was met with the reality of about 20 ounces. I woke up Sunday morning with a splitting headache, achy and weak muscles and I was feeling very sluggish and slow. I ate some breakfast and felt even worse so laid down for a bit to let my tummy feel better. I should also mention that the protein powders I brought needed to be mixed with water too – and they tasted so bad I avoided my shakes throughout the weekend. So as I was driving home on Sunday afternoon I came to the realization that the reason I was feeling so poorly was because I had dehydrated myself. Not to mention that I hadn’t taken in enough nutrients to keep me feeling well either. After 3 days of poor nutrition and hydration, I was paying the price. I started pushing fluids immediately and was religious about getting all my protein over the next couple days.

I attended a support meeting on Monday night and asked the nurse from the bariatric center if she had any advice for getting rid of this headache. (Tylenol wasn’t touching it.) She said that once you put your body into dehydration and deprive it of the nutrients it needs, that it can take a few days to get back to normal. Great! Just what I needed, another 3 days of feeling bad.

Finally on Wednesday morning (yesterday) I woke up with much less pain and much more energy. Finally! I definitely learned my lesson the hard way on hydration. I will never again go away for the weekend without a case of bottled water. And I’ll definitely be more conscious about my fluids when I’m not on a normal schedule and away from home. In other news … I’ve been trying some new recipes and am on a roll! I’ll share some in other posts. I also finally graduated to my Week 4 Eating Plan which includes canned tuna, chicken and salmon. I’m loving the tuna right now especially since it’s got so much protein!

I’ll close for now. But there’s lots more I want to share.

~Pam