Things have been slightly less rosy, but still good. As I have been cleared to eat solid foods, I've been trying to do that every other day or so. In an initial foray, I ate two beef sliders with bacon (just the meat) and felt full but ok. A few days later I had a solid burger (BlackBurger on Canal) - again, bacon cheeseburger, eating only the meat, no bun or veg). This also was mostly OK - at the end, I was full and slightly uncomfortable but generally ok. I mentally adjusted the amount I could eat downwards and went my way. A couple of days ago, I tried a turkey burger from the same burger place, and bought the slightly smaller one so I ended up eating less meat. This was almost a disaster - I stopped before finishing the patty, and tossed maybe 1/5 of it. After entering the subway to go home, however, I started feeling ill. I decided not to get on a train, just in case. After 10 minutes on a platform bench, I gave up and went back to street level to sit on a bench there, wondering if I was going to throw up. I reached that point of 'copious clear salivation' but didn't actually vomit. Eventually, I went home.

Two days later, I had some grilled chicken breast, carefully holding myself to three ounces. Following that, I had 0.5 oz of hard salami. Again, I felt more than a little ill, although not nearly as bad as the turkey burger.

I think that poultry, being dryer and, in the case of the turkey burger, harder than beef, is just harder for me to handle. On the one hand, I like beef, so whee. On the other, I also like chicken and turkey and it has much less fat, so sigh.

One big problem I still have - I eat too fast. I've been trying to slow myself down, but it's really difficult, and I have to basically be paying close attention the entire time I'm eating. This is difficult if I'm eating with someone as it seems to involve having to spend a lot of time staring at my food and losing the thread of conversation, and when I'm alone it's hard because of the boredom factor (I can't be reading, etc.)

I still haven't thrown up from overeating, so there's that. I've managed to learn (some of?) my lesson without it getting to that point. I worry I'm stretching my stomach, but I'm pretty sure 2 incidents aren't critical. I'm seeing my surgeon for a check up in a couple of days.

I'm a little concerned about depression arising from my inability to eat more than a tiny amount at a time, though. This was the original fear, and it's being stoked slightly as I find out I still *want* to eat more than I can. This is weird but I sort of understand it - I'm logging food and counting calories fairly closely, and I find that eating solid food, even meat, means I get fewer calories that day because of my limited stomach capacity for that compared to fluids - and that there isn't as much nutrition in the meat as in the protein shakes. So on those days I ate meat, I tended to get a total of around 600-700 cals, whereas drinking only protein shakes and judiciously snacking I can get up to 900. I think I'm having trouble losing weight because I'm not eating enough; I keep hearing from docs that I should be taking in between 1000-1200 cals/day to maintain the best weight loss, and this is worrying me a bit.

The weight loss itself has slowed quite a bit and settled into a new pattern - I tend to drop 4-5 lbs over a couple of days, and then gain 1-2 back and fluctuate there for 4-5 days before the cycle repeats.

Weight: 275.5