Back to School...with the Sleeve

   It's been 2 weeks since my surgery and that means it's finally time to go back to school. I'll admit I was a little nervous about the long drive (about 1 hour with slight traffic), but the drive went fine. The part that was the most challenging was regulating my food and water intake when I wasn't at home. I packed my multivitamin, calcium supplement, biotin, 32 oz. water bottle, and a protein drink and assumed I was ready to go. However, I got to school at 7:30am and realized, "Oh no! I won't be home until 3 in the afternoon. I need to put actual food in my body." I talked myself into going into the cafeteria to see if I could find SOMETHING that could work, but I wasn't counting on it. 

   Luckily for me they finally re-opened the salad bar and now provided small TO-GO containers that are bariatric friendly. They have a lot of your usual salad bar favorites, plus hard boiled eggs, chicken salad, quinoa and tuna salad. Those last three items are definitely going to be great options for the next few stages. But today I settled on a hard boiled egg (7 grams of protein) and 1/2 cup of  shredded cheese (7 grams of protein as well). I also purchased a banana, half of which was supposed to become my afternoon snack, but never made it into my belly.

   So at this stage in the game I'm supposed to be eating 5 small meals a day. The hard boiled egg was Meal #1 at about 8:00am, and the cheese was Meal #2 at about 11:30am.

   I got very lucky and happened to have packed my special spoon for no apparent reason. That made it a little easier to eat slowly. As you can also see, I took my food to the car. I really wasn't ready to sit in the cafeteria surrounded by people eating sausage breakfast sandwiches and Doritos. I'm not quite there yet. Plus I feel like people might see me eating my one hard boiled egg and think to themselves, "Oh brother! Who is she kidding? I KNOW she eats more than a hard boiled egg." I know it seems really stupid to think that someone else even cares what I'm eating, but it's just one of those post-op insecurities I've developed recently. I feel like people are watching me to make sure that I'm eating right.

But I survived and drank a full 32 oz. water bottle before I got out of class! I pretty much rocked my first day back.