5 Days down on the diet so far. It's...really hard. The last couple of days I've been noticeably irritable (although I've had to deal with my family at Seder today, that may have been part of it). I've not flunked, although I did have tastes of real food today.
On Thursday, at a talk, I had those tastes - 1 cocktail slice of salami, 1 baby carrot. Friday I stuck to the shakes. Today, I had a shake in the morning. I went to Seder and didn't sit at the table for most of dinner because my family treats Seder as a big feasting shebang. During pre-dinner socializing I managed to ignore crudites, chocolate covered almonds, cashews, matzoh, four kinds of cheese, fruit, chopped liver (not that that last took effort), gefilte fish (same, I consider it aquatic Spam except I like Spam), chocolate-covered matzoh (that one did) and wine/scotch. I had a seltzer, and then I deliberately ate three raisins during the socializing, trying to see if the taste was more satisfying to me than when I used to eat them by the mouthful. I think it was, but not sure.
I took a tiny bowl of matzoh-ball soup (~1 cup in the literal sense) outside onto the deck and ate that, trying to take as long as possible. When the main course was served, I took 3 oz of brisket and 2 cooked prunes and ate that at the table, trying to make it last as long as I could. I had one fingertip of the oranges-and-dates charoset because my cousin made it (oh man, that tasted good :-( ).
I didn't kill anybody.
I managed to end the day at 845 calories, approximately, according to my food log. Only about 100 cal over my goal of 750/day.
Tomorrow I'm going flying, if the weather cooperates - last time before surgery and invalidism for however many weeks.
Got to drive my car today for the first time since January - brought it back into the city to use to fly tomorrow and go to MA on Thursday to have my FAA medical exam. Tuesday I have pre-surgical clearance, which means lots of blood work etc (fuck fuck fuck). At least I don't have to fast for it. Oh yeah, Tuesday I also have to visit my sleep specialist to get a letter of CPAP compliance for the FAA medical on Friday.
I've been laying in supplies for post-surgery. I bought 3 bottles of Centrum chewable adult multivitamins, a bottle of sublingual iron supplements, a bottle of chewable vitamin B12, and a bag of calcium/vitamin C caramel chews, all recommended by my surgeon's office. There's a slightly complex dosing schedule as some of these interfere with others and some need to be taken 4x/day, plus my regular medications (which will need to be crushed). So I think I'll have to work up some repeating phone alarms or something, sigh.
Also bought a forehead thermometer (running a temperature is a critical early warning sign of peritonitis or infection which some of the dangerous possible complications).
On the plus side, I spent the evening educating two of my younger cousins (13 and 15) about firearms, nuclear weapons, spaceflight and command and control systems, so cranky-old-uncle win.
I'm really trying hard to look at this as a change from eating for quantity satisfaction to eating for taste sensation satisfaction. If I can pull that off, this will be doable. If I can't, I'm in trouble. It's very difficult to stay chipper right now, because of course I'm incredibly hungry, and all the potential benefits of this process are in the far future and theoretical, since they run counter to my physiological and emotional state. I had a cigar and coffee on the deck, and realized I am basically in rehab right now, for an addiction to food. If I treat it like that, it may help.
Weight: 324