Fighting soft food diet

I had to wait for this stage much longer than expected. My stomach was not very keen on any food at all after the surgery. It took a whole month, to be able to proceed to the next phase. Even like this, I had days when I was not able to get inside almost anything and was happy to have some liquid phase meals. 

Every person is different and not everybody is so lucky to have something far resembling real food in two weeks. I am not complaining, it is just stating facts. My stomach didn’t like anything at all for quite a long time and I was doing my best to stay hydrated. At this point, I still had quite a lot of weight to lose, so it was not so hard. I was not hungry anyway, it felt like an ordeal to eat, so I didn’t suffer much. It was mostly the psychological part of the process that was quite demotivating me and that was putting quite a lot of pressure on me.

I knew I should eat much more and much better, I was just not able to. I was not even hitting the goal on liquids for the whole first month. My protein intake was crawling around 30 grams a day, which is very little, so I was heavily malnourished and I was slowly starting to feel it. Three weeks of pre-op diet and then a month of very little intake was something. I felt very weak and was dizzy often, but still, I was doing my best and trying to keep things somehow under control. 

My nutritionist was not happy with my progress and kept recommending the milk and adding dehydrated milk into almost anything I was getting in, but my stomach refused this in quite a nasty way – spasms, abdomen cramps, heavy nausea, I felt like puking after one sip. It was absolute NO no matter how much I was trying to convince myself that I should. I couldn’t. 

What was working reasonably for me were soups with veggies and chicken well cooked and cut into tiny pieces. Even though I was chewing thoroughly, sometimes I had trouble eating it. The next thing was ham. Any you can imagine, on condition it was thin-sliced. It worked as pre-chew, so I didn’t have to work on that too much myself. It was a reasonable alternative to the meals I was recommended.

The thing was that it was already June and it was getting really hot in Spain, so the soup alternative was not working much. I was too hot eating that. I tried scrambled eggs, but I had to wait two months before my stomach accepted that. The very last option was canned tuna. They explain one, in water – no olive oil, nothing like that. I should be able to eat a whole can, but I was happy that I grazed through it for the whole afternoon. My cat was not a part of the family that time, so I was lucky and could have it open around.

At this point, I had a huge display of bags with protein shakes on the shelf in the kitchen. Only having a look at them made me gag. It was way too long and way too much of them in my meal plan, so I developed a strong aversion to them. I had maybe 15 different flavors and I hated all of them; some more than others, though 😂 I slowly gifted them one by one to my friends later. I was never able to go back to them and till today I can’t stand them. No way back to this thing ever, I guess, in my whole life. 

The good part of this was that I was losing quite a lot of weight daily. I remember the first month, that was a wow every single morning. I know that stopping on the scales every day is a big no, but I was just curious and loved to watch the number changing down every single day. I had days when I was losing a whole kilo/2 pounds from one day to another. From this point of view, it was motivating. But thinking about it from today’s perspective, it was maybe closing me more and more in the bubble of I-cant-et-anything. 

I should have been on solid foods a long time already, but I was still struggling with soft foods, some days I had to go back to liquids to get at least something. It happened to me often that I felt the food stuck halfway to the stomach, a big pinch, and it didn’t want to go down. I had to wait till it decided to move and then continue eating. This was frustrating. It felt like fighting with the food all the time. I had reminders on my phone for the times when I was supposed to eat and what. I was dreading the beeps, it was really like that. 

Although I didn’t have any apparent complications, no bleeding, no infection, nothing was technically wrong, my stomach took forever to start accepting food. Another thing I have to mention here is that you eat or you drink. You can’t do both. You don’t have space for this. So where is the priority now? To approach the protein goal (from the far) or to keep yourself hydrated and not end up in an emergency room with severe dehydration? That was a million-dollar question. As the temperatures were rising every day, I was prioritizing liquids. I was doing my best to get as much food as I could, but to tell the truth, hitting the protein goal took me almost half a year, and I didn’t make it every single day anyway. 

Today, 2 and a half years later, I still have some bad days when my boss, the stomach, decides all of a sudden that today is a no-food day and just doesn’t want any food. I learned with time that it is not worth forcing it. I am not able to convince him 😣 If he says no, it is a no and it is not negotiable. It is usually more severe in the morning. I stopped having breakfast. Mr. Stomach doesn’t want them. So now it is only coffee and then slowly some tea or something else to drink; it feels like warm-up exercise for him 😀, and then I can start eating something. Which tends to be lunch. So you can imagine…

I don’t want to discourage anyone, let’s make this crystal clear. I am just saying that there are some paper-based goals you are supposed to reach in some time frame, but your body can have very different ideas about when and how much you will be able to eat.  Be prepared for this. I was obsessing myself with numbers, measuring everything exactly, and freaking out about the missing amounts. I was reading the Facebook groups and comparing myself to all those people who were progressing effortlessly. I felt like a huge loser in the game. 

I was there and I didn’t have anyone to talk this over with, I was in this alone (remember, I had told you this before). Even though my partner did his best and was trying to support me, I had a hard time coping with this trouble. It was an everyday struggle to think about what I would be eating, how much I should get inside, and then compare how little I was able to eat. I still couldn’t drink any plain water, no coffee to give me some energy, but I had the soluble multivitamin that was making me nauseous. Days were passing and I was pushing through. Day by day I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. 

Maybe I was not doing this bad as I am describing it, it was enough to keep going and don’t faint on the spot, but at times, I was close to this. I felt dizzy very often, even getting up from my office chair was like a roller coaster sometimes. There was just a huge difference between what I was used to eating (the normal portion), what I was supposed to eat, and then what I actually could eat. This was hard to process. 

And during all this time, I was supposed to participate in social life, have dinners with friends, and eat out. This was pathetic 😀 Everybody around me eating portions that were so big that were almost escaping from plates and I kept ordering from kids’ menus. And most often I had a plain burger, no bun, no French fries; meatballs were also one of my favorites, but again, with anything to accompany them. And my third option was a chicken breast. And even like this, I was always bringing half the kid’s portion home in a box, to be put in the fridge and then eaten by my partner or thrown away in a few days. 

This was the worst part. Life will not top because you had the surgery. It is you who can’t eat almost anything, everybody else is living their life as if nothing. And here meals are a huge part of the lifestyle. So it was hard to eat out. And still, it is. I was and still can eat much less than everybody else. But they just keep watching you, commenting about how much you have eaten, what you ordered… prepare for this. 

Still, I can’t say that I regret the surgery. At all!!! It was the best decision I could make to sort out this problem. Sometimes it is hard. Some days are great and some are a little less amazing.

For you: just breathe, keep sipping your liquids, and eat as much as your stomach allows you – prioritizing the food we are supposed to eat. Even if it is not wonderful at the moment, it will get better sooner or later, you will get there. For now, keep pushing day by day 😀