Thing's I've Been Eating: Travel Edition

So I wanted to post a little bit about the things I ate while I was traveling. The first part of the trip was easiest - when I was in Ohio, my friend and I spent all day the first two days at her tanning salon while we were scrapbooking. She bought a few groceries for me and we had a small fridge so it was easy to eat and drink all day long like I was supposed to. The basics were...



Apple slices with peanut butter. I had actually never had this before and didn't plan it or ask for her to buy it... it just sort of happened when we were trying to figure out breakfast. It ended up being DELICIOUS. Yum. It takes me 2-3 sittings to finish a gala apple (which are pretty small), so I use lemon juice to keep the slices from browning too much so I can eat them over a couple of days.



Light string cheese and turkey breast slices. Nothing fancy... but a good meal.



Cream cheese cracker... a flatbread cracker with cream cheese and deli meat and cheese on it. Had a couple apple slices with it also.

This was the kind of stuff I ate at the tanning salon the first day. That night we went to this fun restaurant and I ordered this tasty burger:



I didn't even bother getting it with a bun. I cut off 1/4 of the burger which I ate with a few fries. This was what was left over:



I did take the leftovers "home" but didn't end up having much of it. What I DON'T seem to have a picture of - and can't believe it - is the tuna salad! I ordered tuna salad to go from this restaurant too and it turned out to be DELICIOUS. Chrissy and I ate it several times the next day until it was all gone. She had hers as a sandwich, I had mine on my flatbread crackers. It was just so good.

Now on to CHICAGO eats!

First stop was - as usual - Portillo's Hot Dogs.



Just looking at this makes me drool. I absolutely love these hot dogs. Mmmm. I used to eat either 1 or 2 of them, along with a large cheese fry and a large root beer. This time was very different.



I portioned off 1/2 a chili dog and 4 fries for myself. I wasn't able to finish all of the bun but I did finish all of the hot dog and chili :) Yum. I also had ONE sip of Sarah's root beer when I was all done. That was awesome. :) Here's my leftovers:



The next morning we went to my favorite breakfast place, Walker Bros. I got a Denver Omelette. It was HUGE!!! Check it out compared to my hand:



Here was my portion, about 1/6 of the whole thing, plus a piece of bacon.



I ate pieces of this for breakfast most of the time I was in Chicago! It reheated well and was super tasty.

Now for the WEDDING! I was very curious how that was going to go. Luckily, there was a LOT of time between each course. I just ate the things I really wanted.

First they sent around appetizers and I had ONE meatball. Pretty small but good protein, and it was a good 30 mins before the dinner began.



First course was cream of chicken and wild rice soup. It was a nice small portion and didn't have too much rice in it. It was FANTASTIC so I ended up eating all of it along with a very small piece of roll with some butter.



It looks big in the picture but it's a VERY small plate and a very small bowl.

The next course was a salad. I took a picture, but I didn't touch this. I don't really do salad now, and even if I did, this one had mushrooms and a mushroom dressing.. pass!



The main course was a chicken marsala dish. I pushed all the mushrooms off and just ate 1/2 of the chicken... ignored everything else.



Here's what was left:



At this point I was full but luckily it was a little while before we had cake. The pieces of cake were also VERY thin which was perfect... it was light and delicate, vanilla cake with a not-too-sweet frosting and a lemon filling. Yum.



No leftovers... I finished that :) All in all this was a success! At other weddings I have stuffed my face and if I didn't like everything in the meal I'd be cranky because I wasn't full. This was so much more enjoyable!!!

One of the other meals I had while I was out there was pizza at Tore & Luke's. Just one slice, and it wasn't thin crust.. .I cut it in half and was still only able to eat mostly the toppings, left 3/4 of the crust behind. I ate one half at lunch and another half 3 hours later.



Another night we went to Red Robin. I love this club sandwich...



I ate the fillings of 1/2 the sandwich, one piece of cantaloupe, and I'm not sure how many fries but it was too many. I ended up WAY too full. This was a case of having accidentally gone 7 hours without eating... we were out, we were busy, and I just wasn't able to eat. I was so hungry and ate too fast and before I knew it I was totally stuffed and uncomfortable. I had pain in my chest for like four hours, so that was NOT fun. I have since had this sandwich again here at home, and ate the appropriate amount and it was all okay. Whew.

Another night we went to Friday's, which has my favorite mozzarella sticks in the world. I was with 2 friends and we got the appetizer:



I had two, with some ranch:



I had planned on splitting the chicken and shrimp dinner with Sarah. But after the two mozzarella sticks, I was FULL! Totally full. Fried stuff seems to fill me up super fast. I couldn't even touch my dinner. It was sweet they even split it onto two plates! Here is what would have been my half:



Sad I couldn't eat any of it... but I loooved my mozzarella sticks :) Sarah took the other half of the dinner home to eat later :)

That's all the pictures I have of food from my trip! I hope you enjoyed it.
I felt like such a NORMAL person on this trip!!!!!! I ENJOYED my food very much still, but I didn't obsess... I wasn't hungry ALL the time and constantly thinking about my next meal. Best of all I was able to be ACTIVE and not exhausted, and when I was exhausted it was because I was up til 3am, not because of being too fat to do anything. It was a great time.

More Real Comparisons

Time for a new round of real life comparisons! The official progress photos are great... but I love doing these too :) I try to find similar poses to get a really good comparison. Let me know what you think! I threw in a couple of the hubby too ;)

4 Month Progress Update

Hi everyone! I'm back!! No reason to worry :) I was on vacation and just been crazy busy since I got back. I will have lots of posts coming up once I get photos from my vacation posted... took photos of a lot of the foods I ate, have lots to say about traveling post op, and also about how seeing myself in lots of new pictures was a crazy experience!

For now though, let's focus on the 4 month update!! I was 4 months post-op on September 20th. Yes, yes... I made a video!! :)

Watch it when you have time :)

My weight at 4 Months Post Op:

Whoo hoo! So happy - that makes a nice round 80 pounds lost at 4 months.

This month I lost 15 pounds, same as last month.

This month I lost 7 1/2". Total of 56 1/2" in 4 months.

What a great month! And best of all, the very next day, I saw this:

Yeah!! I'm in the 220's! A whole new decade. Very excited. Still 229 today, so it is for real :)

Now for the progress pictures! I do have the whole row here with each month side by side. It's getting a bit long so this month, in addition, I also have this month compared to last month, and this month compared to the start.

These are side by side of just last month next to this month:

The things I notice the most since last month - lost more from my face, neck and chin... and lost some of my "side fat" lol, if that's what you call it.

Now for the ones that really made me go.... WOW. The side-by-side comparisons between this month, and the very start.

I was working at Starbucks yesterday putting these comparisons together, and trying not to cry right there lol. I hadn't really seen the current right next to the start before, and it just really hit me. I can't believe how big a difference 80 pounds has made... I honestly can not imagine what the next 70 pounds is going to bring.

I'm feeling wonderful. I could not be happier that I had this surgery. I feel like I am just living my life, happily.

Also, I am late in posting these because of my vacation, but I have my husband's 3 month progress pictures from September 3rd!

This is his 3rd month compared to his 2nd month:

And this is his 3rd month compared to the start:

Ok this has been long enough! Hope you enjoyed the update and I'll be back soon with more posts!

Adventures in Eating Out

This is gonna be a long one! I haven't posted much food lately so I've built up a lot of photos from my adventures in eating out. From a family BBQ, to on-the-go, to restaurants... I've been doing it all. I don't usually CHOOSE to. When Ian and I have the choice we stay home! But I have always planned to live as normal of a life as possible post-op and saying no to social engagements is not really something I want to do... within reason of course!

So here I am going to share my recent adventures in eating out :)


FAMILY BBQ

We've had a lot of family BBQ's this summer but thankfully the last couple have had healthier fare (and not just bratwurst!) At the last one, my aunt and grandma prepared shrimp skewers with pineapple and veggies. VERY tasty.

Here is my plate:

I had not tried rice yet so I wanted to try it. After one bit I decided I didn't care... it tasted blah. It's not worth eating anything that doesn't taste GREAT, right? So I ignored that. The bread on the other hand was SO delicious, especially with REAL butter on it. I took a VERY small piece and enjoyed every bite. In the end I left some hard crust behind, and I left some veggies behind. Here was what I did not eat:

While I didn't eat any of this, I wanted to share it. It's called Caprese, and it's similar to bruschetta without the bread. Thick slices of mozzarella cheese topped with tomato and basil, drenched in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

It's not my thing, but Ian had one and loved it. It's a side dish involving protein, so definitely a score for a post-op.


Dessert I couldn't get a photo of because it was dark outside (and it didn't look pretty either lol)... but so delicious. She cut 3 huge peaches in half and put them on the grill. Once they were grilled for a few minutes, a scoop of vanilla ice cream went into the hole where the pit used to be. This was SO GOOD! I ate most of my ice cream and maybe 1/3 of the peach, I was too full to have any more. I did wait about 40 minutes in between dinner and dessert.


HOSPITAL CAFETERIA

A couple days after the BBQ, I spent half a day at the hospital with my mom while my dad was having a heart procedure done. (Don't worry, everything is great now!) I thought ahead and packed a lunch box full of stuff I could eat while I was there. My mom got hungry so we went to the cafeteria, and when I saw they actually had some good stuff, I decided to get a meal there too. For their salad bar you just take a plate and put anything you want from that whole area on the plate and they weigh it. I opted for some cold grilled chicken strips, carrots, and hummus.


Here's my plate, photo taken from afar so you can get an idea of the small plate size on the tray.

Here is what I was NOT able to eat:

I put the chicken and carrot in my lunch box containers and saved it for later :)



OLIVE GARDEN


My sister-in-law and I go to Olive Garden every single time we have lunch together. Because of surgery, it's been a while - we hadn't been since a week before my surgery!! Let's talk for a second about what I USED to consume when I would go to Olive Garden. 1-2 bowls of soup, 2 plates of salad, at least 3-4 breadsticks and 2 glasses of peach tea. Wow.


This time? 1/2 a bowl of soup (which is about 1/2 a cup) and 1/3 of a breadstick. Of course no drink.

It looks like a big bowl of soup, but it's shallow. I ate about half and brought the other half home, which I measured and it was 1/ 2 a cup so I assume the total amount was about 1 cup. That little piece of breadstick is all the bread I had. Big difference from having 4 full breadsticks! I did not eat any salad this time. I wanted to get the most protein from my meal, and also I haven't tried salad yet and I've heard it's hard to digest post op so I didn't want to try it for the first time in public ;)


Closeup of my favorite soup, yum!

And here is my adorable sister in law, Melissa, about to enjoy her lunch:

One last thing I should mention about Olive Garden - since I didn't plan on eating salad, and very little bread, I ordered JUST the bowl of soup instead of the soup, salad, breadsticks lunch and so I saved $2.



ANOTHER STARBUCKS STOP

So I had this one day where I UNEXPECTEDLY ended up being out for a really long time. I had this Best Buy reward coupon I had to spend that day. I went there first and didn't like anything all that much so I decided to check a couple other stores for similar items before deciding what to use the coupon for at Best Buy. I hit 2 stores before I had to make it to my 1-hour workout class. After that I was already hungry but I thought I could hit a couple more stores before going home. Then I kept finding myself near another store I could check. I knew I NEEDED to eat. I pulled through Starbucks and asked for a snack plate - but they were out! I knew a pastry was not in the cards so I decided to go with a breakfast sandwich. Ham, egg, and cheese.

It was a really thick bread so I barely touched that and focused on the insides. But the cheese stuck to the bread so I did have a LITTLE bit of it :) Here is my leftovers:

It tasted SO GOOD, I thought for sure I just ate 500 calories LOL but you gotta do what you gotta do when you are out and need to eat, right? I was pleasantly surprised though when I got home that it was not "that bad"... the stats are: 370 Calories, 16 grams Fat, 32 grams Carbs, 23 grams Protein. I have no idea how to calculate how much of this was in the bread, but I would assume at least 100 cals was the bread (probably more) and at least 15-20grams of the carbs were probably in the bread too. This is not a choice I'd go out of my way to make, but I think it was pretty decent for the situation. And definitely tasty. It also kept me full for about 4 hours!!!


RED LOBSTER

While Ian was on his business trip, I went out to dinner with my aunt and grandma. Their choice was Red Lobster. I figured this would be easy, shrimp and fish are great choices. My dilemma though was that I hate any of that stuff re-heated. I decided to go with grilled shrimp because I could eat it cold after the fact. I paid extra for asparagus as a side which was silly since I barely ate a couple of pieces and it was an extra $3. Ha. Anyway here is the GIGANTIC plate I got:

I decided to use my bread plate to make a smaller portion for myself:

And here is what I left behind:

I also ate 1/2 a biscuit... that was gone so fast it didn't make it into a picture :) Ha.

Overall this is ridiculously overpriced and of no value to me. I sent home ALL the veggies with my grandma. I saved the shrimp but still couldn't get into the idea of eating it the next day so my husband ate it when he got home. With tip I spent $20!! Sigh. So while it was healthy, it was definitely the most I have spent on any meal and it really felt like a waste.

Well that's it for my eating out adventures over the past few weeks. Since I am about to be going on a NINE DAY TRIP (yikes) I'm sure I will have lots to say when I get back about how I dealt with eating away from home for that long.