Post-Op Week 31 Progress Report: The Week Life Happened

This was the Week Life Happened.

This was the week my father found out his wife’s cancer was more widespread than originally thought.  Tomorrow they find out if it is treatable.

This was the week I had to learn to balance my priority of getting healthy with the temporarily more important priority of taking care of my Dad and being there for him.

This was the week I coped with the stress by not eating it.

I think I did a good job.

This week’s progress:  great, considering the stress of the week.  I didn’t allow myself to stress eat, kept myself moving around a lot each day, and guzzled water daily.  I am closing in on my birthday weight range goal faster than I anticipated, but given January’s slow pace, I am not going to hold my breath.  More importantly, I won’t be disappointed if I don’t get there by March 10, and I won’t let the “I’ll never get there” thoughts creep into my head because I know I WILL get there.

This week’s victories:  not stress eating.  Making sure I thought before I bit into something.  Wearing a smaller shirt size–down 6 shirt sizes in 7 months…crazy!

This week’s challenges:  continuing to avoid stress eating and getting to the gym as my schedule allows.  This is hard to do when spending time at the hospital is a new priority.  Life is going to continue to be a challenge as winter winds down and spring approaches, so managing stress with appropriate coping skills is going to be a key skill to keep working on.  I have a Groupon for boxing classes waiting for me to use it, so I may begin using that this week as a form of stress relief/cardio.

This week’s plan:  I’ve got breakfast made for the mornings (ham, egg and cheese breakfast casserole), I’m working on fixing and packing out my lunches for the week (roast chicken breast or turkey breast cutlets–both are high in protein, low in fat and calories, and full of delicious) and roasted Brussels sprouts.  Dinners will be whatever I don’t eat for lunch, but I do eat dinner away from home 3 nights a week most weeks and when I do, I make good choices about my dinner entree.  I do plan on hitting the gym tomorrow evening, and whenever else my schedule allows.  Much of how I spend my time outside of work this week will largely be dictated by how much my father will need my help/support/presence as he and his wife A, find out how extensive the cancer she has is, whether or not it is treatable, and whether she will he going home on hospice care.  Tomorrow is a big, big day.

As yesterday marked 7 months post-op for me, I decided to do a comparison photo collage.  The top set of pictures is me at the beginning of the pre-op diet on June 17, 2013.  The bottom set of pictures is me today.  I am blown away by the difference.  I don’t look like the same woman, and I sure don’t feel like it either.  More thoughts on this tomorrow.

I’ve slacked off on posting my daily foods this week, but I think this week I had a good reason for falling behind.  There simply was too much to juggle.  I had to have blood drawn for a retest of my liver enzymes, and then we were at the hospital with my Dad most of the day, ran our usual Saturday errands, and then spent time with family in the evening.  So here’s yesterday’s eats.  I was a bit unbalanced yesterday–75 grams protein, 68 grams carbs, 17 fat grams and 755 calories.  I drank over a gallon of water and walked 3.5 miles.  It was a carb-laden day, but things could have been much worse.  All our meals were eaten away from home yesterday and all but lunch had leftovers.

Yesterday’s food choices, from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, iron supplement; hubby and I split a chicken shawarma plate with rice, hummus and pita (not shown); scrambled egg, Canadian bacon, ham, a bite of hash browns and a slice of whole wheat toast; grilled chicken breast, sauteed zucchini, squash and onions (I didn’t eat the green beans), part of a whole wheat roll.

Today’s eating was okay, but I went a little overboard calorie-wise.  I got in 104 grams protein, 45 grams carbs, 46 grams fat, and 1085 calories.  That’s 185 more than I like to get on an average day.  I figure as long as I’m 800-900 each day this week then it’ll be all good.

Today’s food choices, from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, iron and B12 supplements; Jack Link’s beef jerky; chicken tortilla soup (no tortillas, and was mostly chicken) and mixed green salad with carrots, cheese, bacon bits and croutons; coconut covered shortbread cookie; leftover blackened rainbow trout with red beans and rice; sample of grilled seasoned mahi mahi; baked barbecue chicken breast with roasted Brussels sprouts. Not shown: sample of ciabatta bread, sample of sliced cheese and sample of sliced deli turkey.