Finding Balance

I admit that I have become a bit obsessive over nutritional values since I had my surgery but right now, I have to be. I never took the time to read food labels before surgery and I certainly had no clue how many grams of protein, carbohydrates, or fat was reasonable to consume every day let alone how many calories I should have been eating. Considering those facts, I had to learn these things quickly if I wanted to have a successful weight loss journey.

What I have not yet mastered is balance. When you are re-educating yourself on healthy eating, it is tough to find a good balance when it comes to food. One book says this, one book says that, this doctor says one thing and the one on TV says another. One day sugar is bad, the next day sugar is better than artificial sweetener - shoot, with all the confusion and debate, a person can literally put them self into a frantic frenzy over the nutritional value of a piece of gum.

My husband and son do not like taking me through the drive-thru with them because I have an App on my phone (Calorie Counter by FatSecret) that tells you every little, nitty-gritty nutritional value of what they just ordered. They do not like hearing that the bacon ultimate cheeseburger they just ordered contains more than 900 calories and the large fry has more than 600 calories. If you add in the two tacos and the large cookies & cream milkshake (which has more than 1,100 calories alone) - the entire meal contains more than 3,100 calories, 178 grams of fat, and 287 grams of carbohydrates....in ONE meal. I am not going to sit here and pretend as if I have not eaten that same meal before because I have...several times...and I never considered what I was doing to myself. Since surgery, I account for everything I eat whether it is healthy or not so healthy.

The beauty of my type of surgery (Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy) is I do not get the hunger pangs or the message in my brain that I am actually hungry. I have to eat on a schedule so I can ensure I get the right amount of nutrition a day. I do fight head hunger and I can ignore this about 80% of the time but I do on occasion allow myself a treat, which brings me to my topic of finding balance.

The first time I allowed myself to eat a piece of chocolate (it was actually half of a chocolate bar) I thought for sure I was going to gain ten pounds overnight. I felt guilty over it all night long and was dreading the scale in the morning. The reality of the situation was I did not gain any weight (I actually lost 1/2 a pound that night) and it was the start of a new quest for balance.

I lost 3.4 pounds this week bringing my total to 53.4 but this surgery is a tool and I am not going to treat it as a solution. Since surgery, I have learned how to eat all of the right things and what to avoid but now it is time for me to learn how to balance the two. Without learning balance, I am risking failure and failure is NOT an option for me. I am not going to lose all this weight and risk putting it back on so finding balance now will be the key to my success.